The Secure Interactive Media Interface Definition (SIMID) is a new ad format for interactive video ads. It was designed to be the successor of the Video Player Ad-Serving Interface Definition (VPAID) according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. SIMID addresses many of the issues with VPAID, including slow loading times, security limitations, and being difficult to debug with only a single error code (901).
SIMID support is available in the HTML5, Android, and iOS IMA SDKs for client-side ads starting with the following releases:
Improvements in the SIMID API Model over VPAID
Unlike VPAID, the code for SIMID ad creatives runs in a secure sandbox so that it cannot access other resources on the page. With SIMID, the player maintains control while the creative sends messages to the player about which actions are needed to perform its functions. This is demonstrated in the diagram below:
As a result, SIMID offers the following advantages over VPAID:
- Improved security by sandboxing the ad from the publishers page
- Improved asset transparency by including the media file in the VAST response
- Support for pre-caching
- Faster load times
- Improved error reporting from more granular error codes
Using SIMID with the IMA SDK
SIMID creatives are ready to be used within VAST ad-tags. To get started, see the IAB’s example on GitHub or test it yourself using this SIMID ad tag. If you have questions about the IMA SDK, see the SDK documentation or reach out to us on the IMA SDK forum.
