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What Is SIMID? The Standard Behind Modern Interactive Video Ads

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For years, making a video ad interactive meant trusting a piece of code to take over the video player. That approach caused enough problems that much of the industry stopped allowing it. SIMID is the standard that brings interactivity back, built so that publishers stay in control and advertisers can still give viewers something to click, explore and buy.

If you buy, sell or build interactive video advertising, here is what you need to know.

What SIMID is

SIMID stands for Secure Interactive Media Interface Definition. It is a standard from IAB Tech Lab, the industry body that also maintains VAST, the format most video ads are delivered in. The current version listed by IAB Tech Lab is SIMID 1.2.

SIMID defines how an interactive layer, written in ordinary HTML and JavaScript, runs on top of a video ad and talks to the video player. It covers interactivity and nothing else. Measurement and verification are handled by a separate standard, Open Measurement.

The problem it solves: VPAID

Before SIMID, interactive video ads were usually built with VPAID (Video Player-Ad Interface Definition). VPAID let the ad's own code run inside the publisher's page and control the video itself: loading it, playing it, pausing it.

That flexibility came at a cost:

  • Performance. Heavy ad code could slow down or stall the player, and the publisher had little say in it.
  • Security. The ad had access to the player and the page around it, sharing the same JavaScript environment.
  • Reliability. If the ad's code failed, it could take the player down with it.
  • No server-side ad insertion. Because the ad controlled the video, VPAID could not work with server-side ad insertion (SSAI), where ads are stitched into the stream before it reaches the viewer. SSAI is how much of today's streaming and live TV delivers ads.

IAB Tech Lab's answer was to split VPAID's two jobs apart: Open Measurement for verification, and SIMID for interactivity.

How SIMID works

SIMID changes who is in charge. The ground rules are simple:

  1. The player controls the video. The publisher's player loads and plays the ad's video or audio, just as it would for any other ad. The interactive layer never touches the media directly.
  2. The interactive layer is sandboxed. The creative runs in a cross-origin iframe on top of the video. It cannot reach into the player or the publisher's page.
  3. They talk through messages. The player and the creative communicate only through a defined set of messages: the player reports what the video is doing, and the creative can make requests, such as asking to pause or to extend the ad while a viewer explores. The player decides whether to allow them.

In a VAST 4 ad, the video file and the interactive layer are delivered together. The interactive part is listed as an InteractiveCreativeFile with apiFramework="SIMID", alongside the regular media files. A player that does not support SIMID can simply play the video without the interactive layer.

Why it matters

For publishers, SIMID removes most of the reasons to block interactive ads. The player keeps control of playback, the ad cannot touch the page, and a broken creative fails on its own instead of breaking the player. Because the player owns the media, interactive ads can also run with server-side ad insertion and in live streams.

For advertisers, it means interactive units can run in places VPAID never could. And because the viewer chooses what to engage with, interactions become a signal in their own right: what people tap tells you what they actually care about.

What SIMID does not do

SIMID is deliberately narrow:

  • It is not a measurement standard. Viewability and verification belong to Open Measurement.
  • It needs a device that can show HTML over video. The specification notes that some TV sets and streaming boxes restrict loading external assets and cannot implement it.
  • It is for interactive and dynamic content, not a general-purpose way to run code inside a player.

That device limitation is why interactive TV advertising still needs more than one approach. Where a screen cannot run an interactive layer, a QR code can hand the experience to the viewer's phone.

Where VideoStorm fits

Interactivity is what VideoStorm does. Our patented format turns a standard video ad into a menu of choices, so viewers can preview the content, products and destinations an advertiser offers and go directly to the one they want. Formats like RainMaker let viewers add products to a cart without leaving the ad, and StormTracker turns every choice into first-party data about what viewers actually want.

For screens that cannot run an interactive layer, ScanStorm and ForeCaster use QR codes to bring the same experience to the viewer's phone, whether the ad runs on CTV, linear TV or a billboard.

Want to see what an interactive video ad can do for your brand? Get in touch.

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