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Guides

Creating ad tags

An ad tag is a VAST/VPAID compliant ad tag. You can learn more about VAST/VPAID in the IAB specification.

To init any ads in your ad schedule, you must add one or more ad tags to your account. Typically you will receive such tags as a VAST url from your ad network partner in a form like (sample from the Google DFP network)

https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ads?sz=640x480&iu=/124319096/external/single_ad_samples&ciu_szs=300x250&impl=s&gdfp_req=1&env=vp&output=vast&unviewed_position_start=1&cust_params=deployment%3Ddevsite%26sample_ct%3Dskippablelinear&correlator=

Make sure you use https ad tags, as http links on a https website will fail.

Those tags will often include macros to be replaced with correct information, which will be replaced with certain values as defined in our ad macros reference.

You can verify your adTags in the Google VAST inspector

You can also use the Google DFP sample adTags to create test scenarios. These tags will always return an ad.

To create an ad tag:

  1. open the “Ad tags” menu
  2. click “+ New tag”
  3. give the tag a descriptive name, which will appear in the list to the left once you saved it
  4. enter the full url of the VAST adTag you received from your ad network partner (make sure to not pre-fill the macros with static values)
  5. optionally adjust the ad timeout (this will increase the time the player will wait for an ad to be returned from the ad server before starting the feature clip. Using a higher value might increase the chances of an ad fill if your ad server does waterfalling/redirects, but a too high value will impact user experience and might turn off visitors)
  6. save the tag Creating an ad tag

Afterwards you need to attach the adTag to an adSchedule.

Make sure you don't have any ad / script blocker enabled for *.flowplayer.com pages . AdBlockers often block all requests which have "ad" or "advert" in them (especially if it's an adTag from a known advertising network), which will also affect the save request for the ad configuration, hence the ad configuration might not be stored in our systems.

Check our ad macro documentation for tips on automating parameter insertion into the adTag.