5 - External DSP Creative Approval

Overview

In the Hivestack platform, creatives need to be approved by the media owner before being scheduled for play. This validation step gives media owners control over what is being played on their screens.

This document aims to clarify the creative approval process in Hivestack for external DSPs.

New creatives sent through the bidstream

A creative submitted through the bidstream is a creative that is sent to us in a bid response. Those creatives are usually sent in the adm field of the response. Their identifier is stored in the cr_id of bid responses (see our OpenRTB doc). When we detect a new creative requiring approval (i.e. a creative with a new cr_id), we automatically send an approval request to the media owner.

The workflow would look like this:

1. The media owner creates a deal.
2. The buyer buys the deal.
3. The deal starts and the media owner starts sending bid requests.
4. The buyer sends his bid responses with the creative in the adm field, wrapped in a VAST.
5. Our SSP sees an un-approved creative in the bid sent, which automatically pushes this creative to the media owner’s creative approval section.

While this seems convenient for external buyers, it can be troublesome because the buyer's ad won't play until the media owner approves the creative. This can make it difficult for a buyer to play at a specific time if its creatives aren't approved yet. To avoid this issue, we allow external buyers to pre-approve their creatives before the desired start date of their campaign.

Pre-approved creatives

To pre-approve creatives, buyers should contact their media owners so they can manually create them in Hivestack and submit them for approval. Creatives submission can also be automated through the creative submission API. The approval status of creatives can also be retrieved through the API. By doing so, external buyers can make sure that their creative is approved before sending Hivestack bid responses that can eventually result in ad plays.

Once the creative is approved by the media owner, the buyer has to send us the creative id that was selected by the media owner while creating the creative in the cr_id of the bid response (see our OpenRTB doc). That way, the buyer can make sure that its creatives are approved by the media owner before the flight date of their campaign.

The workflow would be as follows:

1. The buyer creates a creative.
2. The buyer sends the creative to its media owners, with a creative ID attached to it.
3. Each media owner manually uploads the external creative and assigns the provided creative ID to it.
4. The media owner approves the creative.
5. The deal starts and bid requests are sent.
6. The buyer sends his response with the creative in the adm field and with the creative ID in the crid field.
7. Since the creative is already approved, the campaign starts playing.

Additional information

Creative languages

Being established in Montreal, Hivestack has to abide by some provincial laws regarding the language of creatives. Those laws require creatives to specify the language of their ad. Most buyers don't send us this information when new creatives are sent through the bidstream. This can be annoying for some media owners because they can't approve a creative unless the creative's language is specified. To avoid this issue, we allow the buyer to modify a setting that allows them to use default languages when new creatives are sent for approval through the bidstream.

Creatives for images

As mentioned in our OpenRTB doc, all creatives should be wrapped in VAST, even images. This can come as a surprise for some as in the world of advertising, we usually use HTML/Javascript to wrap images. Since we work in the field of out of home advertisement, we recommend wrapping images in VAST. With VAST, buyers can specify the duration of the ad and use different meaningful tracking events.