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. 

Table of content:

• Video advertising and the role of video players
• How are video ads served by the video player?
• How does the video player work for programmatic advertising?
• The 5 key video player features 
• Fluid Player features
• General Features
• Monetization and user experience features
• Additional features
• VAST Standards supported by Fluid Player
• How to set up Fluid Player for your site
• Conclusion

Video advertising and the role of video players

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.

How are video ads served by the video player?

Essentially, video players allow the serving of ads in three different ways:

• Pre-roll: The most popular one, the ad plays right before the video content an end user wants to watch.
• Mid-roll: these ads are shown after a set time of the user playing the video content. Depending on the length of the content there can be more than one ad.
• Post-roll: The ad plays right at the end of the main video content.

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:

1. The user visits the publisher website where video content is available via a video player. 
2. Before playing the main video, the video player sends an ad request to the ad server.
3. The ad server returns a VAST XML format response with instructions for what ad to show, how and when to show it and other tracking information. Here is a mid-roll example:

• • Show the ad after playing the main video for 60 seconds 
  • After 5 seconds of playing the ad, show the Skip Ad button 
  • After 10 seconds (standard), send a request to the ad server notifying an AD VIEW event.
  • If the user clicks on the ad, a new call to the ad server is done to register a CLICK event and subsequent events that need to be registered.

    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.

How does the video player work for programmatic advertising?

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:

1. The user visits the publisher website where video content is available via a video player. 
2. Before playing the main video, the video player sends an ad request to the primary ad server.
3. The primary ad server returns a VAST Wrapper format response.
4. The VAST Wrapper prompts the video player to send a second request, this time to the secondary ad server - the Advertiser’s ad server.
5. The secondary or advertiser’s ad server, sends the VAST XML response with the instructions of what ad to show, how and when to show it and other tracking information.
6. Once the ad stops showing, the main video continues to play.

The advertiser will have full visibility of their ad performance, on their own ad server. 

The 5 key video player features 

When it comes to choosing a video player, publishers must look for some essential features before making a decision:

1. A performant video player must integrate easily with ad networks, advertiser ad servers and ad exchanges. This capability will ensure that the publisher will have plenty of demand sources for their ad inventory. 
2. The player must support the VAST and VPAID IAB standards which are the most common ad serving templates and are used for the majority of video ads served today. 
3. It must give publishers the ability to serve different types of video ads.
4. It must be lightweight so that it does not interfere with Google’s Core Web Vitals and cause latency issues. 
5. Finally, it must be easily customizable. Publishers should be able to adapt the look and functionalities of the player based on the look and feel of their own website and the type of video content they show. 

Fluid Player features

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.

General Features

• It’s completely free, with open source on GitHub
• Scripts and resources available via CDN
• APIs available for Control, Events and Utility
• Compatible with modern web browsers
• Easily customizable 
• Supports multiple resolutions: 480p, 720p, 1080p
• Allows adding multiple video sources for user to switch between different video quality levels
• Ability to have more than 1 player per page

Monetization and user experience features

• Plays In-Stream & Live Streaming Video Ads
• Has advanced VAST capabilities
• VPAID video metrics
• VMAP support
• Custom call to action text when playing a video ad
• Compatible with any ad network, ad exchange or video ad server

Additional features

• Timeline Preview, Keyboard Shortcuts by key and Autoplay control features
• Has a custom HTML banner option, which shows when the video is on pause, as an ad text message in the top right corner of the video screen
• Allows multiple subtitles and captions
• Allows the addition of a custom logo

VAST Standards supported by Fluid Player

• Multiple VAST tags (pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll)
• Linear (video) ads
• Non linear VAST tags (banner images (gif/jpg/png)): VAST nonlinear banner overlay support which works like an in-video ad allowing insertion of an image (gif/jpeg/png) during video playback
• VAST Wrappers
• VPAID Ads (Linear, Nonlinear, switch over from Nonlinear to Linear)

How to set up Fluid Player for your site

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.

Conclusion

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!