Connected TV creatives

Connected TV devices have a large screen size and support high-definition video creative formats. The following specifications are recommended across most CTV publishers. We recommend working directly with publisher to review your CTV assets and ensure they meet their specification requirements.

Connected TV creatives best practices

• Use CTV creatives hosted in Campaign Manager 360, Display & Video 360, or by a third party ad server.
  • For Campaign Manager 360 hosted creatives, set your publisher transcode settings. This option determines if you’re controlling transcodes from the placement or if you’re using the transcode settings from each creative assigned to the placement. You will also have the option of selecting the transcode requirements underneath your placement's settings for any of our supported publishers. Choose which serving files to include with your video by referring to the requirements of the publisher. Make this choice in the Serving files section: select ON under Include in serving to include a file.
  • For CTV creatives hosted in Display & Video 360, the maximum upload file size is 1 GB.
  • Set creative duration to ensure rotated creatives have the same settings at the placement level.
  • Avoid telecine, interlacing, or duplicate frames. Telecine refers to footage that has been converted from its native or source rate (e.g. 24 frames per second) to broadcast or another rate by inserting a duplicate frame every fourth frame, or by blending or interlacing every third frame together.
• Use VAST tags (VAST 2.0 standard is recommended). The majority of publishers do not support VPAID on Connected TV.
• Do not use tag wrapping. Most publishers do not support wrapping on Connected TV.
• Use creatives that include at least one MP4 asset with a bitrate of 15 Mbps or higher. Depending on the publisher, additional assets/renditions may be required.
  • Bitrates will vary by publisher. Review your CTV creative against the publisher’s specifications.
  • MP4 creatives are required.
  • SSL compliant creatives are required.
• Check that your creatives meet publisher-specific guidelines. Some publishers have their own creative detection systems that detect violations. We recommend pre-auditing creatives with publishers.

Exchange-specific connected TV creative guidelines

The following are exchange requirements for CTV creative specifications:

• Freewheel - For CTV Programmatic Guaranteed deals, Freewheel requires creatives to be approved by the publisher before they will start sending bid requests to Display & Video 360.
• Netflix - For CTV deals, Netflix requires creatives to be approved. Line items in Display & Video 360 that are targeting Netflix deals, are in an Active state, and have a valid creative assigned will automatically send the creative to Netflix for approval.

Publisher eligibility checks for connected TV creatives

For line items with video creatives, the Connected TV publisher eligibility column is available in the line item details Creatives table. Display & Video 360 performs a limited set of checks on creatives to evaluate conformity with the recommended file type, video resolution, and bitrate specifications of selected CTV publishers. Review CTV creatives and ensure they meet publisher specification requirements. Eligibility details are included in the Creative Status tab.

Publisher-specific connected TV creative guidelines

For CTV publishers not listed, work directly with the publisher to get their creative specifications.

Connected TV creatives file requirements

Provide ready-to-serve creative versions for high, medium, and low quality (along with a mezzanine file). The mezzanine file is used for video to fit programmatic needs, but requires time to go through an encoding process. High, medium, and low file sizes are ready to serve.

There are separate CTV creative specifications for YouTube inventory. Learn more about YouTube CTV creative guidelines