Triton Digital announced today that it is DAAST-compliant, among the first technology providers to fully adopt the proposed audio advertising standard. DAAST was developed by the IAB and its Digital Audio Ad Serving Template Working Group, and announced in RAIN News here.
Triton’s announcement applies to its recently launched Tap advertising platform, released in September. “Tap is fully capable of supporting DAAST compliant players,” said Benjamin Masse, SVP & GM, Advertising at Triton Digital. “This is extremely important because it adds liquidity to the marketplace, which will lead to an increase in quality inventory and improved control and effectiveness for advertisers.”
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 standard specifies approved assets within an audio advertisement, including companion ads, “ad pods,” and skippable ads.
When RAIN News spoke to Benjamin Masse, who was co-chair of the IAB Working Group, he noted: “We had to come up with a recipe that would be accepted by all parties, including the advertisers. When ads come through Winamp or iTunes, we need to count that ad as fully delivered, in a way that agencies trust. DAAST makes transaction and affidavit on impressions much easier.”
Further adoption might depend partly on education and training. In September, Scott Cunningham, Vice President of Technology and Ad Operations at the IAB, told RAIN, “We’re developing educational training that might take the forms of webinars or videos for developers.” One of those webinars happened today. “Most standards are released as PDFs, which describe how to do something. We want to take it to the next level, so folks have a good bridge to implementation,” said Cunningham.