Innovid now screens inventory for HTML5 video ads for the first time

At the risk of sounding melodramatic, Flash video ads have only days to live.

On Monday, July 3, the steady death march for the once-popular media format reaches what could be its final fadeout.

On that day, Google will no longer support Flash video ads on its industry-dominating tools, including DoubleClick’s Campaign Manager, Bid Manager or Ad Exchange, or in AdWords or DoubleClick for Publishers.

And, in another sign that HTML5 video ads are taking Flash’s place, video ad serving platform Innovid announced today that it is working with authentication service DoubleVerify to keep HTML5 video ads away from bad pages on desktop web sites.

Those site pages are ones that DoubleVerify judges to be fraudulent or to contain content that is hostile to an advertiser’s image. The objectionable content is determined by scanning the inventory’s content and comparing it to keywords or other guidelines provided by the advertiser.

This is the first time that Innovid, which says it has about a third of the market, has taken these precautions with HTML5 video ads. Here’s a screen showing impressions blocked:

Innovid VP of Product Ronen Idrisov told me that, until recently, HTML5 video ads were only a small portion of the ads served by his company for agencies or brands. That’s the key reason, he said, that Innovid previously only offered this premium anti-fraud and brand safety service for other types of video ads, like Flash or VAST, but not for HTML5.

Currently, Idrisov said, HTML5 video ads are roughly half of the total, but they’re obviously coming on strong.

Innovid’s own Global Benchmarks Report for 2017 found that VPAID HTML5 inventory soared 3,000 percent since 2015, and increased 357 percent from the first half of 2016 to the second.