The Broadpeak BannersIn2 solution for insertion of non-linear ads (such as L-Banner ad units) is built to work alongside the standard mechanisms offered by broadpeak.io for linear ad replacement with live streams or insertion of ads in AVOD streams. It uses the same underlying mechanisms of communication between the client, SSAI engine and ad server.

Powered by SIMID

The solution is powered by the use of the IAB Secure Interactive Media Interface Definition (SIMID) standard to implement non-linear ad creatives, whether those creatives are static (eg. L-Shape/L-Banner/Squeeze-Back) or interactive.

A SIMID Creative - which is essentially an HTML+JS document - contains all the necessary metadata to display the non-linear ad content as well as a mechanism to inform the player of the actions it must take to allow it to display correctly and be interacted with.

The creative is then displayed in front of the video player, and - if necessary - the player is resized and positioned to avoid overlaps with the creative.

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Device compatibility

The use of SIMID entails that the targeted devices must support the ability to show such an overlay with HTML/JS. Most devices do (eg. iframe in web, webview on Android).

For devices without such ability (notably Apple TV / tvOS and Roku), the BannersIn2 solution can still provide the raw data necessary to display the non-linear ad. However most of the work of orchestration will fall onto the app developer. Contact us if you need to support these devices.

Ad units

The BannersIn2 solution can be used for both

• Non-linear ads, with creatives placed around or over the main content, which continues playing uninterrupted
• Linear ads, in which a non-linear creative is used alongside a linear video creative, for example to enrich it with personalized information or an interactive call to action

Creative templates

The BannersIn2 solution is designed to work from raw non-linear ad data returned by an ad server, and dynamically creates SIMID creatives from it. A system of templates provide flexibility on the way that data can be displayed.

The templates available and the data they require are described in Creative templates.

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3rd party SIMID creatives

The BannersIn2 solution is designed to work with raw information, and uses its own SIMID creatives.

In some circumstances, it may be possible to work with 3rd party, but this usage will have to be evaluated on a project basis. Contact us if you have this type of requirement.

Components and Roles

Fundamentally, BannersIn2 relies on the same components as other broadpeak.io Dynamic Ad Insertion or Virtual Channel services and supports the same type of data flows. See Triggers for details.

There are however some specific aspects worth highlighting in the way the components operate:

Ad Server

It remains the role of the ad server to serve ad information, even for non-linear ads.

Unlike with linear ads, for which VAST is a generally well adopted protocol, there is a lot more variation of formats used by ad server to provide non-linear ad data (often linked to the way they deliver display ads).

The BannersIn2 solution is therefore built to offer flexibility to obtain and extract this data from ad server responses. See Ad Server response for additional information.

Ad Gateway (Interactive Ad Maker)

For non-linear ads, the call to the ad server needs to transit through the "Interactive Ad Maker" module of the broadpeak.io Ad Gateway, which:

1. Parses and normalises the response from the ad server.
2. Detects and extracts non-linear ad information from that response
3. Generates a SIMID ad creative with that information
4. Returns that information to the SmartLib for use on the client-side

SmartLib

BannersIn2 heavily relies on the use of the Broadpeak SmartLib client-side SDK, installed within the app, which - among other things - relays to it information about non-linear ads that have been returned by broadpeak.io.

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The solution is architected to minimize the changes to the existing Smartlib APIs.

It is therefore recommended that developers who have not yet used Smartlib for DAI services start that integration first as it provides a large portion of the flow in both cases.

For details, see the Smartlib Documentation

SIMID Controller

The application also need to implement client-side functionality, in the form of a "SIMID controller", which interacts with the SIMID creative and the application to orchestrate the proper display of the non-linear creative.

Although this functionality sits outside of our remit, Broadpeak does provide open-source reference implementations to speed up the integration process. More information is provided in Client-side Implementation

Sequence Diagram

This diagram shows the standard workflow of a broadpeak.io SSAI service (here: for a live ad replacement service). The functionality specific to non-linear ad insertion is shown in the light purple box.