DAAST specification for audio ad serving now in adoption phase

Six months after its introduction by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the Digital Audio Ad Serving Template (DAAST) is in its adoption phase. “Industry adoption of DAAST enables digital audio ads to be easily run and tracked in a consistent manner across publishers, similar to other digital marketing mediums,” said Scott Cunningham, Senior Vice President, IAB, and General Manager of the IAB Technology Lab.

The purpose of DAAST is to promote a technical ecosystem in which advertisers, publishers, agencies, and consumer playback devices are aligned to coherently deliver and track streamed audio advertising. The intent is to unify an industry fragmented by conflicting ad technologies and platform solutions.

“It’s looking good.” –Benjamin Masse, SVP & GM, Advertising, Triton Digital

Adoption of the template, and compliance with it, are needed to turn DAAST from a specification into a standard. For an update, we reached out to Benjamin Masse, SVP & GM, Advertising at Triton Digital, and Alexis van de Wyer, CEO of AdsWizz.

“Behind the scenes, a lot of people are working hard to make DAAST work,” said Benjamin Masse. “I think there’s strong support from all the different vendors to be DAAST-compliant.” Triton Digital was the first ad-technology company to announce full compliance with DAAST.

Masse anticipates relatively quick industry grouping around the ad-serving standard, comparing its trajectory to the Video Ad Serving Template (VAST), a six-year-old specification covering the video side of streaming ads. “Contrary to VAST, I don’t think it will take 3-4 years for most of the industry to be DAAST-compliant. I think that within a year (from the release of DAAST), maybe by October, we should have most of the players DAAST-compliant.”

Alexis van de Wyer of AdsWizz thinks that DAAST, as a standard, will benefit the entire industry. “We strongly believe that we need to be open and integrate with other players. It’s the only way for the industry to flourish. We believe that an ecosystem that does not work together, is an ecosystem that will struggle to grow. The industry as a whole has so much to win.”

van de Wyer noted that AdsWizz is engaged with multiple implementations of DAAST, one with Xaxis, a programmatic ad-buying platform.

Scott Cunningham said the IAB is fostering DAAST adoption. “Several audio companies have prioritized the DAAST implementation and currently support it or are planning to support soon. We’ll aim to get a better sense of its traction as well as provide education in the coming months.”

“The adoption and enthusiasm are there,” said Benjamin Masse.