When the Ad Format Hero Taskforce first updated the Digital Video & CTV Ad Format Guidelines document, our goal was straightforward: define the consumer experience, creative requirements, and technical expectations for a new generation of CTV ad formats. The industry appears more than eager for these new formats, as only small enhancements or changes were requested to this section of the document. However, the Guidelines also house the technical specifications for video files. This particular section of the Guidelines was out of date. We received extensive feedback from publishers, platforms, SSPs, DSPs, streaming technology providers, and creative specialists in support of updates.
The working group used that feedback as an opportunity to modernize the document’s underlying assumptions around how to provide the creative assets.
That’s why IAB Tech Lab is releasing an updated draft of the Ad Format Guidelines for Digital Video and CTV and opening a second round of public comment, until July 16, 2026.
Aligning Standards With How Streaming Actually Works
One recurring theme in the feedback was that many historical video advertising encoding guidelines were written for a world that looked very different from today’s streaming ecosystem. CTV workflows increasingly depend on:
- Server-side ad insertion (SSAI)
- Adaptive bitrate streaming
- Platform-managed transcoding
- High-quality mezzanine assets
- Cross-device creative portability
In many ways, the document has evolved from a simple creative submission guide into a practical framework for how video advertising assets should be prepared for today’s streaming ecosystem. The updated draft reflects those realities by clarifying the roles of ready-to-serve assets, mezzanine files, adaptive streaming workflows, and modern encoding practices.
The result is a document that better reflects how video advertising is actually produced, delivered, and rendered across both CTV and online video environments.
Expanding the CTV Ad Portfolio
The most visible addition remains the continued standardization of emerging CTV formats beyond traditional commercial breaks. The draft still includes guidance for:
- Pause Ads
- Menu Ads
- Squeezeback Ads
- Overlay Ads
- In-Scene Ads
- Screensaver Ads
These formats represent a broader evolution in how brands engage viewers without relying exclusively on interruptive ad experiences. They also create new opportunities for publishers while preserving viewer experience.
As CTV grows up, the industry needs a common language for describing, building, and ultimately transacting these formats at scale.
Interoperability Remains the Goal
A major focus of this second revision was reducing ambiguity. The updated draft clarifies:
- Modern video encoding expectations
- Cross-platform format compatibility
- Interactivity considerations
- Responsibilities across advertisers, platforms, players, and publishers
- Practical implementation guidance for both CTV and OLV environments
The objective of the Guidelines is to create enough consistency that creative assets can move through the ecosystem with fewer surprises and less custom work.
That consistency becomes increasingly important as the industry tackles larger operational challenges. For example, IAB Tech Lab’s ongoing work around “Creative Readiness” within the Live Events Ad Playbook (LEAP) initiative focuses on increasing confidence that ad creatives are available, validated, and capable of rendering successfully when high-concurrency opportunities arise. Those efforts depend on a common foundation of interoperable creative standards, making this work an important building block for the next phase of CTV growth.
That foundation is equally critical as the industry moves toward greater automation in an agentic world. As creative workflows increasingly leverage AI-powered Creative Agents to build, validate, optimize, and package advertising assets, standardized creative definitions become essential for ensuring those systems can operate consistently across platforms, formats, and delivery environments.
We Want Your Feedback
This public comment period is an opportunity for the broader industry to help refine these Guidelines before finalization.
Whether you build streaming platforms, manage ad operations, develop creative tooling, support programmatic transactions, or operate live event workflows, we encourage you to review the draft and share your feedback in the IAB Tech Lab GitHub.
The future of CTV will be built on interoperability. Standards only succeed when the industry builds them together.
Brad Pipkin
Director, Product Management – Advanced TV
IAB Tech Lab