Frequently Asked Questions

General

• Can I deliver Equativ video ads without using Equativ's Video Plugin?

  Yes, thanks to the standalone VAST request or or Equativ Embedded Ad Manager. Equativ's modules (EAM or Video Plugin) provide access to additional features such as ad rules, passbacks, user identification, anti-fraud patterns and other advanced configuration options.

• What type of reporting does Equativ provide for a video ad?

  Equativ provides the reporting of VAST and custom metrics through the reporting tool in the Manage solution. More details here.

Integration

• How can I integrate Equativ's solution into a custom player?

  Read the step by step guide to integrate the Equativ Video Plugin with your HTML5 content player.

• Can I deliver ads in a content playlist with the Equativ Video Plugin?

  Yes, it is possible! But to accomplish it You will need to call sas.video.register method for each playlist item (before it starts). Before registering a new video plugin it will be needed to call sas.video.clearPlayer method, to remove the previous one. The only parameter you need to send in that method is a string of the player container's id.
  So, for example, let's imagine You use JW Player. Instead of such hypothetical way to register the video plugin:
  

    jwplayer(container).on('ready', function () {
     if(typeof sas != 'undefined' && typeof sas.video != 'undefined') {
       sas.video.register(pluginConfigurationObject);
     }
   });

  You would need to implement it in the following way:
  

    jwplayer(container).on('playlistItem', function () {
     if(typeof sas != 'undefined' && typeof sas.video != 'undefined') {
       window.setTimeout(function () {
         sas.video.clearPlayer('containerId');
         sas.video.register(pluginConfigurationObject);
       }, 0);
     }
   });

  Note: for this kind of integration there can be an issue with playing postrolls completely if there is another content item to be played. So we encourage to set postroll instances number for the last content item only.

• How can I debug a console error?

  Enable the verbose mode to display the console logs; add a verbose parameter to the requested resource as follows:
  http://r.sascdn.com/video/controller.js?nwid=<YOUR_NETWORK_ID>&verbose=true

• Why do I get the error “No Access Control-Allow-Origin” in the console log?

  This error will only occur when trying to display an ad from a third party adserver using a VAST Wrapper template. The Equativ Video Plugin uses a JavaScript file for making ad requests and parsing VAST responses. A VAST request requires the ad server to supply CORS headers in the HTTP response so that it can be loaded by other domains, using AJAX or the Fetch API.
  Unfortunately, not all ad servers in the industry support this by default. Equativ advises all customers to ask for the redirection with CORS headers.

• Why do I get the error “Uncaught TypeError: Cannot call method "toLowerCase" of null” in the console log?

  This error indicates that the targeting options (site, page, formats) may not have been set correctly. Please review again the documentation and sample integrations to make sure everything is correct, before contacting the support team.

• Can I set a timeout for the adcall for video ads?

  Yes, the plugin uses two timeout levels:

  • Single requestTimeout: allocated time for performing a single VAST request (first request to Equativ or subsequent Wrapper requests to third party ad servers). The default value is set to 3 seconds.
  • totalTimeout: ensures that an ad will fire its impression in a certain amount of time. Otherwise, Equativ tries to display the next ad, with the same time constraint. For the first ad in an ad pod, Equativ starts counting when loading the VAST. For subsequent ads in an ad pod, Equativ starts the measurement when the previous ad was completed or in case it was skipped. By default, ads must fire their impressions within 8 seconds.

  Both values can be changed by loading a custom configuration with a modified publisher section. For more details, see Publisher Options.

Configuration

• What can I do to make an ad non-skippable?

  By default, linear ads are skippable; there are two ways to make an ad non-skippable.
  1. By changing the configuration of the insertion in Equativ's Manage UI; see the 2 fields on the Creatives tab under the source selection.

  • Skip offset to define a time after which the ad is skippable.
  • Use publisher's skipoffset checkbox (selected by default). Uncheck this field if you want to use the skip offset value from the creative level; otherwise, the value defined in the plugin configuration will be taken into account.

  To make an ad non-skippable in Equativ's Manage UI, deselect "Use publisher's skip offset" and leave the "Skip offset" field empty.
  2. Using a custom configuration; see the parameter skipDelay in the publisher section; set this property value to -1 to make ads non-skippable. For more details see Publisher Options.