Implementing ads in a video player (in 2016)

by William Mcmurray

Implementing ads in a video player is not straightforward right now. Almost all free plugins you can find are broken or unfinished and the paid solutions are far from affordable. Here is my summary after days of struggles.

tl;dr

Choosing a video player

Of all the video players I've looked at, the one that is the most advanced and reliable is Video.js. It does all you need plus it has an ecosystem of plugins that you will surely need at some point.

An other one worth mentioning is radiant media player. It's a turnkey solution with a reasonable price. If you don't want to code your player it may be for you.

Choosing an ads plugin

(assuming you choose Video.js)

  • videojs-vast-plugin bad choice It has been unmaintained for so long that it doesn't support versions 5.* of Video.js (except for this pull request that no one seems to merge...).

  • videojs-vast-vpaid bad choice It's more maintained than the one above. It supports version 5.* of Video.js but it doesn't support all the VAST and VPAID specifications. It is currently a disappointing waste of time.

  • videojs-ima good choice !! It is built using the IMA HTML5 SDK that fully support VAST, VPAID, VMAP and all other features that you will need (just take a look by yourself). The same SDK is available on iOS and Android as well. There is not much stars on their github but trust me, it's the one you need !