Ad Debug

We provide near real-time data on the ads requested for your content. Analyze this information to gain insights into ad insertions, such as:

• Verifying ad requests and responses.
• Checking for errors and discovering their root cause.
• Performing end-to-end auditing of a single playback session.

Ad Jobs

Ad insertion data is collated and presented as an ad job. The scope of an ad job varies according to whether it belongs to a live stream or VOD content.

• Live Stream: The system generates an ad job whenever playback encounters an upcoming ad break.

• VOD: The system generates a single ad job upon initiating playback. This ad job contains data for all of the asset's ad breaks.

  

An ad job describes:

• The set of ads that were requested.
• The ad decision server's response for each of those ads.
• The tracking data that we provided to the ad decision server.

As illustrated above, each ad job consists of the following components:

• Ads: Each ad listed under the job corresponds to a single ad during an ad break. Data shows whether the ad was selected for use during the ad break, the position in the ad break the ad was inserted into, and the status of the ad asset.

• Transactions: A transaction describes an ad request and the response provided by an ad decision server.

  • Request: An ad request is generated for the initial request to the ad decision server and for each wrapper spawned from it. The following information is captured for each ad request: raw URL, macros, HTTP headers, and processing information.
  • Response: For each ad request, we provide the raw XML provided by the ad decision server and a summary of the response, including errors. If the ad request resulted in VMAP and VAST wrappers and a creative, then that information will also be included in the raw XML response.

• Beacons: A beacon consists of the tracking data reported by our system to the ad decision server.

Data Retention

The retention policy for ad insertion data is 7 days.

Basic Usage

Find and review ad jobs through the Ad Server Debug page.

Locate Live Channel ID

1. From the CMS, click the Live Channels tab.
2. Select the desired live channel. Basic options and live channel information will be displayed on the Details tab.
3. Find the live channel's system-defined ID under the GUID label.

Find a Live Event ID

1. Navigate to the Live Events page (Events > Live Events).
2. Select the desired live event.
3. Verify that the Details tab is selected.
4. Find the live event's system-defined ID under the GUID label.

Locate an Asset ID

1. Navigate to the CMS library by clicking the Content tab.
2. Select the desired asset.
3. The asset ID corresponding to the asset selected in the previous step is listed under the GUID label.

Find Playback Session ID

Implement the Preplay API within your custom player to retrieve the playback session ID.

Search Settings

Use the following settings to search for the desired ad job data:

Search for Ad Job Data

1. Navigate to the Ad Server Debug page (Services > Ad Server Debug).
2. From the Ad Playback Type option, determine whether ad job data for a live stream or VOD content will be returned.
3. Define the time period for which ad job data will be returned.
   • Click within the From option and then select a start date and time.
   • Click within the To option and then select an end date and time.
4. Optional: Define other ad job filters.
5. Click Fetch Ad Data.

Refine Search Results

Refine your results by modifying the desired ad job search option(s) from the Query pane and then clicking Update Query.

Filter Search Results by Ad Job Status

Filter your results by status by clicking the filter icon and then clearing the statuses that should be excluded from the search results.

Ad Job Data

Search results consist of a list of ad jobs that meet the specified search criteria. The following information is reported for each ad job:

Transactions

View an ad job's transactions by clicking on an ad job from the Ad Server Debug Query Results page. The following information is reported for each transaction:

Transaction Details

View a transaction's request and response by clicking on it from the Transactions tab of the Job Details page.

• The Request tab describes either the initial request to an ad decision server or a wrapper.
• The Response tab provides the raw XML response provided by an ad decision server and summary information.

Request

The Request tab describes either the initial request to an ad decision server or a wrapper. This tab reports the following information:

Response

The Response tab describes the response from an ad decision server. This tab reports the following information: |

Ads

View the list of ads returned by this ad job here. The following information is reported for each ad:

Beacons

View an ad job's beacons by clicking on an ad job from the Ad Server Debug Query Results page and then clicking on the Beacons tab. The following information is reported for each beacon:

Troubleshoot Ad Jobs

Troubleshoot ad jobs that contain completed transactions with warnings, failed transactions, or both.

Troubleshoot an Ad Job

1. Click on the desired ad job.
2. Click on the desired transaction.
3. From the Request tab, review the URL, query string parameters, and headers for the request submitted to the ad decision server.
4. From the right-hand pane, review the Failure Reason field.
5. Click the Response tab.
6. From the right-hand pane, review the following fields:
   • Failure Reason: Indicates the reason that a transaction failed.
   • Errors: Indicates any errors that occurred when processing the response.
   • Warnings: Indicates any warnings that occurred.
7. Use the information uncovered in the previous step to perform additional investigation into the failure, error, or warning.

Warnings

A warning indicates that the request to the ad decision server was incomplete or improperly formed. For example, a warning is generated when the request contains missing parameters or values.

A warning triangle icon appears next to both of the following:

• Ad jobs that contain at least one transaction with a warning.
• The transaction to which the warning applies.

View the warning by hovering over it as illustrated below.

In the above illustration, the ad job contains a warning that indicates that a transaction contains 4 empty impressions. Inspecting the transaction's raw response reveals that it does contain 4 empty impressions. Reviewing the <Error> tag indicates that an error also occurred. Although the ad decision server returned 4 empty impressions and an error, an ad was still served to the viewer.

			<Impression id=\"3rdparty\"/>
			<Impression id=\"3rdparty\"/>
			<Impression id=\"3rdparty\"/>
		<Impression id=\"3rdparty\"/>

Failure

A failed transaction indicates that an ad impression was not delivered either because the transaction did not complete on time or it resulted in an empty or malformed response. View the failure reason by hovering over the transaction's status.

Ad Request Failure Reasons

Failures can occur at various stages of processing an ad request. Edgio categorizes the failure reasons into failure types based on these stages.

The failure types are:

• Request
• Response
• Parsing
• Processing

In certain cases, the "Error" section of the job or transaction details includes additional information about an ad failure that can be sent to Edgio Support to help troubleshoot an inquiry about a failed job or transaction.

Request

An error occurred while establishing an HTTP connection to the ad server and downloading the ad response. To troubleshoot request failures, contact the ad server. The ad server may have some data, or it may not have any data. The Ad Analytics reports can be used to gather data on how frequent these errors occur.

Request Errors

Response

A high-level check of the response contents ensuring they are in a valid format. For these failures, the ad server should be notified.

Response Errors

Parsing

Reading and parsing the response to extract the ad information.

For the no ad break, no ads returned and no media file errors, the ad server did not provide the needed information and should be contacted to see why the responses did not include that data. Parse errors can occur for a variety of reasons. Contact support with any questions and be sure to include any additional information provided in the “Errors” section.

Parsing Errors

Processing

After parsing there are some additional actions taken to ensure the ads are prepared for stitching. Also covers any issues before or between the other stages.

Processing Errors

Audit a Playback Session

Verify that ads are being served properly or troubleshoot ad delivery by auditing a playback session. If you audit your own playback session, you can view the ads that were served and then review the corresponding ad jobs that were triggered by those ads.

Audit Your Own Playback Session

1. From within your web browser, open developer tools (e.g., Chrome offers DevTools).

2. View your own network traffic by clicking on the Network tab.

3. Start video playback of the desired live stream or VOD.

4. From within the Network tab of your web browser's developer tools, select a playback request.

5. Copy your playback session ID from the pbs query string parameter.

6. Navigate to the Ad Server Debug page via Services > Ad Server Debug.

7. Paste your playback session ID within the Session ID option.

8. Click Fetch Ad Data.

9. Review ad job data.

   Retrieve the latest ad job data by performing the following steps:

   • Update the To option to the current time.
   • Click Update Query.