Any video ad rule request, including those with standard pods, optimized pods, bumpers, and session ad rules, can be converted into an inline VMAP request by setting the video playlist inred (vpi) parameter in the ad tag.
Inline VMAP is beneficial for server-side video ad solutions, like Dynamic Ad Insertion, where large volumes of parallel ad requests might lead to timeouts or frequency cap and competitive exclusion conflicts. It also reduces overall latency by replacing multiple requests with one.*
Inline VMAP is supported for Ad Exchange, Programmatic Guaranteed, Preferred Deals, and all other deal types. It works with fallback and ad buffet, and delivery troubleshooting tools.
When you include vpi=1 in your ad tag, it instructs Ad Manager to determine the ad rules for the request, and format an internal redirect to fill all of the ad slots.
The following example shows an ad tag configured to return inline VMAP.
https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/ads?sz=640x480&iu=/124319096/external/ad_rule_samples&ciu_szs=300x250&ad_rule=1&impl=s&gdfp_req=1&env=vp&output=vmap&unviewed_position_start=1&cust_params=deployment%3Ddevsite%26sample_ar%3Dpremidpostoptimizedpodbumper&cmsid=496&vid=short_onecue&vpi=1The following values can be used for the output parameter with inline VMAP:
output=vmap: If the network default is set to VMAP rather than the (legacy) ad rules playlist.output=xml_vmap1: Returns VMAP with inlined VAST of the network default version.output=xml_vmap1_vast3oroutput=xml_vmap1_vast4: Returns inline VMAP with the inner VAST version specified. VAST 2 is not supported because the VMAP standard requires a minimum of VAST 3.
Do not use a VAST output value on an ad rule request.
If you are using protections to exclude inventory, Ad Exchange in standard pods cannot respect pod or stream exclusions with other Ad Exchange ads in the pod or stream; in optimized pods, Ad Exchange cannot respect stream exclusions with other Ad Exchange ads. Optimized pods are recommended to minimize this impact.
* When Ad Manager returns the ad rule response, it includes all ad responses. Because of this, there's a slight increase in ad rule response latency. However, when you remove individual ad calls, you see an overall reduction in the time to first frame.
