Overview

FreeWheel will be enhancing its creative detection logic in MRM for programmatic demand starting in mid-January 2024. This page explains the background for the change and provides technical details. 

FreeWheel's Programmatic module currently detects incoming creatives from DSP partners by parsing various fields in the bid response. As part of this update, Programmatic module’s new creative detection logic will instead use information from the final inline VAST tag containing the actual creative, including (but not limited to) media file URLs.

This enhancement will allow Programmatic module to more efficiently detect unique creatives and generate corresponding Creative External IDs, which can then be used to initiate creative approvals and other creative features. Publishers will be able to approve creatives while maintaining a high standard of quality and compliance with industry regulations.

This update also serves as the foundation for future enhancements, including creative pre-ingest for private marketplace (PMP) deals, which helps ensure publishers have adequate time to approve a creative prior to runtime. (More information on this feature will be released at a later date.)

How Are Users Affected?

No action is needed from users. Any creatives ingested using the previous logic will continue to use that same logic for creative identification, so users will not need to re-approve creatives and should not experience disruption or discontinuity in creative reporting.

Only creatives new to Programmatic module will use the new logic.  

All creative features, including creative approval, will continue to work as usual. However, following this change, the Creative External ID value (visible in reporting, the Programmatic Creative Library, and Creative Approval queue) will be displayed differently for creatives new to Programmatic module.

Details of New Creative ID Detection Logic

Whenever Freewheel gets a programmatic bid, FreeWheel needs to inspect the bid and determine which creative it is using. This is needed to determine creative approval status, assign a brand/advertiser/industry to the creative, and offer reporting at the creative level. This change modifies how FreeWheel does this and provides more accurate detection of all unique creatives.

Old Logic

The current (i.e., old) logic used in Programmatic module for DSPs is often referred to as "triplet ID." With this logic, we identify unique creatives through concatenating four specific values:

1. Freewheel's internal numeric ID for the DSP;
2. the bid response campaign ID;
3. the bid response ad ID;
4. and the bid response creative ID.

For example: 5:234:234:234

Each time this value differs, the system considers it a unique creative.

This method has the drawback that, if a DSP bids with two different creatives but passes the same IDs in their bid responses, FreeWheel will not detect that the two different creatives are actually being used.

And the reverse problem may also occur, where a DSP changes one or more of the above IDs in their bids, despite the underlying creative being the same. In these cases FreeWheel may detect too many creatives, causing clients to have to approve the same creative multiple times.

New Logic

Because of the drawbacks noted in the section above, FreeWheel is moving to updated logic, where we instead use information from the inline VAST tag containing the actual creative, including, but not limited to, media file URLs. The exact information from the inline VAST tag used will vary depending on the particular creative host in use. Different creative hosts have different logic for how they construct media file URLs and populate various fields in VAST tags, so FreeWheel has configurations in place to ensure the creative ID detection logic uses the most appropriate signal for each creative host in order to detect unique creatives as accurately as possible.

With the new logic, FreeWheel no longer relies on any IDs from a DSP's bid response but, instead, only on the final inline VAST tag containing the creative itself. This means FreeWheel can avoid the issues mentioned in the previous section, ensuring FreeWheel should neither over-detect nor under-detect the number of unique creatives arriving through Programmatic module deals. For example, after the logic change, if a DSP sends two bids with different bid response creative IDs, but the underlying VAST tag is the same, FreeWheel will detect it as being the same creative.

This new logic is already in use for Partner Tags and SSPs integrated into Programmatic module. FreeWheel is now also applying this change to regular DSPs integrated into Programmatic module.

Example Syntax

After this change has been fully applied to all DSPs, the Creative External ID format for Programmatic module creatives from DSPs will display similar to the following:

5:bb6baf56221d752628502b6aa8a36a8a1658783297399601

instead of the current "triplet ID" syntax:

5:234:234:234

Edge Cases

In some rare cases, FreeWheel may fall back to the old triplet ID creative detection method. In these cases, the previous syntax (e.g., 5:234:234:234) will be used to populate the Creative External ID. The primary cause for this edge cause involves VPAID creatives, where the mediafile URL will often not be unique for each creative and, as a result, FreeWheel prefers to use the old logic.

Additional enhancements are planned for a future date where triplet ID creative detection logic will be fully deprecated, including for VPAID creatives and other edge cases.

Sharing Creative IDs with Buyers for Troubleshooting Purposes

The new format of the Creative External IDs introduces a potential change in how users communicate these IDs to buyers for troubleshooting purposes.

With the old logic, where the value in the Creative External ID was made up of IDs taken directly from the DSP's bid responses, the value could be given to a buyer, who could then look it up within their DSP.

Because the value in the Creative External ID will not directly relate to any value from the DSP's bid response, this will no longer be possible with the new logic. As a result, it will not be of use for a buyer if they attempt to  look it up within their DSP. Please note that FreeWheel is implementing measures to ensure that publishers and buyers can effectively troubleshoot creative issues, both now and in the future.

Currently-Recommended Tools

FreeWheel recommends the following tools to effectively communicate with buyers about problematic programmatic creatives going forward:

VAST Tag in the Programmatic Creative Library

FreeWheel will continue to store the associated VAST tag for all programmatic creatives in the Programmatic Creative Library. When combined with other details such as the deal ID and advertiser, buyers should be able to easily identify the creative in their DSP. 

Bid-Level Log Files

Three fields have been added to the FreeWheel bid-level log files that are the same values that FreeWheel's old creative detection logic concatenates:

• DSPCreativeId
• DSPAdId
• DSPCampaignId

Users can use bid-level log files to see which DSP IDs are used in conjunction with a particular FreeWheel internal Creative ID (using the CreativeId field). There will always be a one-to-one relationship maintained between “Creative External ID” and the FreeWheel internal Creative ID, which is what is used in FreeWheel's bid-level log files.

Recommendations for Future Tools

FreeWheel is also planning future enhancements to make communicating creative problems to buyers easier in the future. The timing of these changes is being determined and will be communicated through multiple channels prior to release. Meanwhile, examples of enhancements under consideration include:

Displaying DSP IDs in the MRM UI

The values DSPs return in their bid responses will be displayed in the Programmatic Creative Library:

• DSPCreativeId
• DSPAdId
• DSPCampaignId 

So you can see which bid response IDs are associated with a particular creative.

Sharing FreeWheel Creative IDs with DSPs

In the future, FreeWheel will enhance the creative API offered to DSPs, so the API will pass DSPs the IDs that Freewheel has assigned to pre-ingested creatives (i.e., the Freewheel Creative External ID). DSPs can then expose these directly to buyers.

Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) Creative IDs

For clients using the Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI) Creative ID feature for programmatic creatives, the SSAICreativeID will typically be populated using the value from Creative External ID (except when a Universal Ad ID is available). As a result, when FreeWheel deploys the new logic, the format of the value passed in the SSAICreativeID for new creatives will also switch to using the new syntax described in the "Example Syntax" section above. (As noted, existing creatives will continue using the old creative detection method, so the value passed in SSAICreativeID will not change, meaning stream stitchers and other transcoding systems relying on SSAICreativeID as the creative key will not need to re-transcode any previously transcoded creatives.)

Migration Process

To ensure a smooth transition to the new creative ID detection logic, FreeWheel will apply the new logic only to new creatives. When FreeWheel migrates a particular DSP to the new logic, the following process will be used:

1. Once a bid response is received, FreeWheel will first calculate the creative ID using the old logic of concatenating IDs from the bid response (e.g., 5:234:234:234). Please see "Old Logic" in the "Details of New Creative ID Detection Logic" section above;
2. FreeWheel will then look up whether a creative with that specific Creative External ID value is in the system. If it is, FreeWheel will use that creative for creative approval, brand/advertiser/industry information, and creative reporting;
3. If an existing creative is NOT found using the old detection logic, FreeWheel will then use the new logic, where the final inline VAST tag from the bid response is inspected(e.g., 5:bb6baf56221d752628502b6aa8a36a8a1658783297399601). Please see "New Logic" in the "Details of New Creative ID Detection Logic" section above;
4. FreeWheel then looks up whether a creative with that specific value as the Creative External ID is in the system. If it is, FreeWheel will use that creative for creative approval, brand/advertiser/industry information, and creative reporting;
5. If an existing creative is NOT found at Step 4 above, FreeWheel will then create a new creative with the Creative External ID value being populated with the value from the new logic (e.g., 5:bb6baf56221d752628502b6aa8a36a8a1658783297399601).

This process will help ensure that there is no disruption for already-active creatives, neither in terms of needing to re-approve them nor in terms of disruption or discontinuity in creative reporting.

Release Schedule

FreeWheel will update the logic individually for all DSPs integrated into Programmatic module in three phases:

• Lowest-earning DSPs are included in the first phase (the week beginning on January 15, 2024);
• The Trade Desk (TTD) plus middle-earning DSPs are included in the second phase (the week beginning on January 22, 2024);
• Highest-earning DSPs are included in the last phase (the week beginning January 29, 2024).

To mitigate potential risks, the initial cutover to the new logic will exclusively involve private marketplace (PMP) deals; the transition for Programmatic Guaranteed (PG) deals is expected to take place at a later date. The value in the Creative External ID for PG creatives will also switch to the new format as soon as FreeWheel migrates each DSP for PMP, but this is purely a visual change. PG deals will continue to rely on values in bid responses for creative detection purposes until FreeWheel migrates the PG logic at a later date.