Ana Kealy
Ad Serving
Ad Tech
Publisher
Video ads are the most compelling ad format as they manage to engage audiences and convey messages consistently. With this in mind, many publishers are looking for the best video player for video ad monetization. Free and open source, Fluid Player has established itself as one of the best video players for publishers. Through its reliability and flexibility, it helps them make the most out of their video content.
Since 2020, the worldwide video ad spending has continued to grow, and the projections from Statista, show that this trend will continue in 2024, reaching an estimated value of $120 Billion:
Source: Statista 2023
The same source revealed that during the 3rd quarter of 2022, the reach of online videos was almost 93% among internet users worldwide. Video advertising is thus a very attractive prospect for advertisers, and publishers need to be able to meet their expectations.
Not only do they require quality video content and a powerful ad server but they also need the right video player to deliver highly performant video ad formats, whilst being lightweight, and increase their website’s performance.
The choice of video player is crucial for publishers as the means through which they can serve ads: it is an interface between the user and the advertiser.
Fluid Player for example, is compatible with all relevant ad formats including In-Stream, and Live Streaming, allows features such as Calls to Action and ultimately increases the publisher’s website revenues, performance, and user retention.
Essentially, video players allow the serving of ads in three different ways:
To fully understand the role and value of the video player, let’s see how it actually works, and what are the steps involved in serving video ads:
4. Once the ad stops showing, the main video continues to play.
To execute all of these steps, the player must support HTML5 video and VAST tags.
For programmatic advertising, the process is a bit different as the primary ad server (could be the publisher ad server, ad exchange or ad network), returns a VAST Wrapper ( sometimes called VAST Ad Tag URI or VAST redirect). Therefore, the video player needs to support VAST Wrapper.
Here is how it works:
The advertiser will have full visibility of their ad performance, on their own ad server.
When it comes to choosing a video player, publishers must look for some essential features before making a decision:
Fluid Player has a lot to offer to any Publisher that is looking for a free, open source video player. Below, we list all the features that make it the best choice for video monetization.
Fluid Player can easily integrate and be customized so that it matches perfectly the look and feel of your site. It comes with many useful features, such as keyboard shortcuts, timeline seeking (which allows for better control when searching through your video content) and configurable Skip Ad & CTA buttons with Friendly URL. The player is VAST and VPAID compatible, with many integration options and has comprehensive documentation available with setup and feature instructions.
To set up you can use Fluid Player’s Builder. This tool helps you to customize the player to your requirements, in no time at all! You can implement your styling choices and see the changes in real-time in the video player on the left.
Under the ‘Controls’ tab you can select or deselect which controls your online player will feature, such as autoplay, mute on load, Theatre mode, Autohide controls, play/pause animation, playback speed, download, and show play button:
On ‘Style’, you can pick the primary color and poster image:
Under ‘On-pause html’, you can paste an iframe code to be shown in the center of Fluid Player when a user pauses the video.
On ‘Advertising’ you can enable or disable several options regarding the ads shown in the player, such as Pre-roll, Mid-roll, Post-roll, CTA ad text msg, and the ad text position.
To use The Builder, you just need to cut and paste the code created in the code generator box below the player to insert into your website:
<script src='https://cdn.fluidplayer.com/v3/current/fluidplayer.min.js'>
</script>
<script>
var myFP = fluidPlayer(
'video-id', {
'layoutControls': {
'controlBar': {
'autoHideTimeout': 3,
'animated': true,
'autoHide': true
},
'htmlOnPauseBlock': {
'html': null,
'height': null,
'width': null
},
'autoPlay': true,
'mute': true,
'allowTheatre': true,
'playPauseAnimation': true,
'playbackRateEnabled': true,
'allowDownload': true,
'playButtonShowing': true,
'fillToContainer': false,
'posterImage': ''
},
'vastOptions': {
'adList': [],
'adCTAText': false,
'adCTATextPosition': ''
}
});
</script>
<video id='video-id'>
<source src='video.mp4' type='video/mp4' />
</video>
For a complete guide on setting up and using the builder, see The Builder masterclass! Or the coding quick setup guide in Fluid Player’s documentation.
Video players are an integral part of video advertising, and can have a massive impact on the overall user experience and revenue. The free open source Fluid Player can be a great choice as it delivers for both the end user and the business. Integrating Fluid Player on a video site is easy, quick and needs no programming experience. It is the perfect companion to the EXADS ad serving solutions or any other ad server.
If you want to find out more about EXADS’ Fluid Player, you want to learn more about our video ad server, or the video capabilities of the other ad serving platforms we build, get in touch with us!
Ana Kealy
Product Marketing Manager
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