Introduction

The Revive Adserver software, which powers both Revive Adserver Download edition and Revive Adserver Hosted edition, has always had a small set of features related to displaying video ads. However, this was based on the somewhat outdated VAST1 protocol. A commercially available plugin called VidiX has been on the market for several years, enabling the Revive Adserver software to use the much more recent and well accepted VAST2 protocol.

In June 2023, the developers of the Revive Adserver software and Aqua Platform, the vendor offering the VidiX plugin, announced that the VidiX plugin would be transferred to the Revive Adserver project and subsequently made open source. Once that’s completed, the VidiX plugin – by then renamed to “Advanced Video Ads plugin” will become an integral part of the Revive Adserver software and available for everyone. It will ship with version 5.5 of Revive Adserver Download edition in September 2023*.

* preliminary date

Advanced Video Ads plugin in Revive Adserver Hosted edition now!

While preparing the plugin to be incorporated into the Download edition, it became clear that it was already perfectly fine for general use, and that’s why the teams decided to make it available in the Revive Adserver Hosted edition right away.

So starting July 31, 2023, the Revive Adserver Hosted edition gains access to the ‘new’ VAST2 functionality.

How to use the VAST2 functionality in Revive Adserver?

The documentation pages in the How-To section over at the Revive Adserver Download edition website have already been updated, they now include:

• A page that explains and shows how to create a video ad, more specifically both an Inline Video ad and an Inline Network Video ad.
• A page that explains and shows how to create and use a video ads zone and how to retrieve the VAST2 code that needs to be inserted into a video player or a VAST2-compliant ad system by a third party.

No extra costs

There are no *additional* costs for using the new VAST2 functionality inside Revive Adserver Hosted edition.

Overall monthly costs for your entire Revive Adserver Hosted edition account are – as always – determined by the number of ad requests in that month, for all types of ads combined, including the new VAST2 video ads.

Every time a video zone’s invocation code is called from a video player or third-party system, one request is counted, even when the ad server does not return a video ad, and even if it does return a video ad but nothing is played-back.

No video file hosting

The ability to use a media file as a video inside a video ad does not mean that the video file can be uploaded into Revive Adserver Hosted edition. You’ll have to find some other way to make the media file available on a web server, for example on your own website, or perhaps on a CDN service.

Also note that you can not use a video hosted on YouTube as your video ad!

In conclusion

The team supporting Revive Adserver Hosted edition is pleased to make the Advanced Video Ads plugin available to all subscribers, and we hope that our users will be able to benefit from this addition.

We’re pleased to provide the VAST2 enhancement, as a way of saying thank you to all subscribers for contributing to the success of Revive Adserver Hosted edition for the past 5 years.