Accessibility

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Defining the problem
  3. SMIL-in-SMIL
  4. Online vs. offline
  5. Extending SMIL-in-SMIL to XML-in-SMIL

Referencing external ad packages in AMODs using SMIL-in-SMIL and XSL

Defining the problem

Content publishers often work with an ad partner to integrate ads into their content. A simple Adobe Media Orchestration Document (AMOD), as written by content publishers, needs to have references to the ad assets as well as the main content (see Listing 1).

<smil xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/SMIL21/Language">
  <head>
    <layout>
      <region id="banner" />
      <region id="content" />
    </layout>
  </head>
  <body>
    <seq>
      <video region="content" dur="300s" clipEnd="150s"src="http://www.contentPublisher.com/episode1.flv"/>
 
      <par>
            <img region="banner" dur="30s" src="http://www.adNetwork.com/banner1.jpg" />
            <video region="content" dur="30s" src="http://www.adNetwork.com/inrollad1.flv"/>
      </par>
 
      <video region="content" dur="300s" clipBegin="150s" clipEnd="300s" src="http://www.contentPublisher.com/episode1.flv"/>
    </seq>
  </body>
</smil>

Listing 1. A simple AMOD with ad references

This is a fairly straightforward example of a video clip (5 minutes long), split in half with a mid-roll video ad (30 seconds long) in between, and a banner ad that runs in parallel with the video ad.

Notice, however, that the ads come from the ad network. In order to create this AMOD, the content publisher needs to know a lot about the ad network's storage scheme. The publisher also needs to know about measurement URLs and other metadata about the ads. Such cross-organizational knowledge of internal systems is often an unrealistic expectation. It would be much more convenient if the content publisher had to include only a reference to an ad package residing on the ad network's server, which, in turn, could have all the asset level details specified. Schematically, Figure 1 shows what a simple AMOD with ads might look like.

Figure 1. Simple AMOD with ads

What is desired is the ability to reference the ads as an external ad package, as Figure 2 illustrates.

Figure 2. AMOD with reference to an ad package

This ability to reference external ad packages from AMODs is called SMIL-in-SMIL, for the obvious reason that such references are themselves valid AMODs. In fact, SMIL-in-SMIL, as the name suggests, can be generically used to reference any AMODs, not just ad packages. The following section describes how.

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