Blurred figure walking past an orange pleated curtain

INSIDE SEENTHIS · DELIVERY

Get seen in the few seconds you have

A video ad has a few seconds to render, influence and make an impact on the user. SeenThis prepares the video before the campaign, then adapts its delivery to the conditions as it plays.

INSIDE SEENTHIS · DELIVERY

Get seen in the few seconds you have

A video ad has a few seconds to render, influence and make an impact on the user. SeenThis prepares the video before the campaign, then adapts its delivery to the conditions as it plays.

INSIDE SEENTHIS · DELIVERY

Get seen in the few seconds you have

A video ad has a few seconds to render, influence and make an impact on the user. SeenThis prepares the video before the campaign, then adapts its delivery to the conditions as it plays.

IN THIS ARTICLE

01

Why delivery matters

02

Prepared before the campaign

03

The footage and the layers travel separately

04

What happened in real campaigns

Change the connection while the ad plays

The ad rides a commute: home Wi-Fi, the street, a train, a tunnel, then station Wi-Fi. Each new version arrives with the next segment the player requests.

Why delivery matters

Every impression is a moment you’ve paid for, a chance to reach someone. How the ad loads and plays decides how much of that moment the creative makes count.

On a streaming service, the viewer has chosen to watch. They started the content themselves, so a few seconds of loading is expected and accepted. A display ad has to earn attention while the consumer's interest and focus lie elsewhere. It has to play the moment it appears, on a fast laptop or on a phone with a changing connection, sharing bandwidth and processing time with everything else on the page.

The page and the ad placement belong to the site owner and the vendors they've chosen to power the site. Browser support, autoplay rules, available bandwidth and whether the placement is in view all affect playback. SeenThis’s player and delivery technology are built around those constraints, with streaming options and fallback behavior for different environments.

Agencies bring the strategy, buying and creative direction; publishers bring the inventory and its audience. The creative can be activated through the campaign’s ad server or DSP, and SeenThis handles its delivery and playback in the supported placement.

Prepared before the campaign

The film is encoded once into several versions and cut into short segments. A conventional video file can begin playing before the whole file has downloaded. But a single version still has to serve viewers with very different connections and devices.

SeenThis encodes several versions before the campaign, with variable bitrate so complex scenes get more data and simple ones less. Each version is cut into short segments, listed in a manifest and served from a content delivery network; the player picks a version for each upcoming segment. Quality analysis compares encoded video with the source to help balance visual detail and data use. One of the measures is VMAF, an estimate of perceived video quality.

The visual below is a simplified illustration. Behind each ad, the creative is encoded in multiple codecs, bitrates and segment lengths, and playback adapts in real time to every viewer’s device and connection.

Fine print survives at 1.24 Mbit/s and dissolves at 0.25 Mbit/s

Close-up of the Velocity shoe label at 1.24 Mbit/s, where the small print stays sharp

1.24 Mbit/s · VMAF 82.4

The same shoe label at 0.25 Mbit/s, where the small print turns blurred and blocky

0.25 Mbit/s · VMAF 55.4

The same frame of a product label, enlarged. VMAF compares each version with the source at full size.

Busy scenes get more data; the end card almost none

kilobytes per 2-second segment, 1.24 Mbit/s version

310 KB constant

Track

351

Knit close-up

380

Colorways

351

Sole

344

Fine print

384

Gravel

412

Studio

167

Headline

191

End card

A constant bitrate at the same 1.24 Mbit/s average would use 310 KB for every segment. The last segment is under a second long.

The footage and the layers travel separately

The video and images go through encoding and streaming. Text and buttons are drawn by the browser. An ad made in SeenThis Studio can combine a video with separate text, product images and a button. Each of those layers can be animated on the creative’s timeline.

A price can stay editable text instead of becoming part of the video image. Connect that text to a feed, and the offer can change without rendering a new video.

The animation system follows the creative’s playback timeline, so the layers’ motion can stay aligned with the video.

The video can be encoded for efficient streaming while the rest of the creative stays editable, so teams can work on delivery and design together.

What happened in real campaigns

Published results, each with the comparison it was measured against.

Hand holding beer bottles above a golden wheat field

Attention. 3.4x the attention of static banners and 45% more than outstream video, measured by Lumen.

Read the case

Orange Mitsubishi pickup truck driving on a dirt road

Engagement and performance. Mitsubishi with PHD saw a 315% higher CTR and 25% lower cost per click compared with its standard display activity.

Read the case

Child playing with a Toniebox and figures at home

Commerce outcomes. During Amazon Prime Day, Tonies saw 43% more add-to-cart actions and 14% higher product sales compared with standard display.

Read the case

Built together, from creative to playback

Since 2017, we have developed adaptive streaming for advertising. That work now extends across Studio, our animation engine, video encoding, streaming technology and custom player.

Building these parts together lets us decide how each part of an ad reaches the screen, and refine how the ad looks and moves alongside how its video is prepared, loaded and played.

See how SeenThis would deliver your next campaign