Announcing v201108

Today, we’re pleased to announce the v201108 release of the DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) API. In this release, we have included support for video, postal code targeting, custom creatives, creative placeholders and more.

Video Support

The API now supports video environments (including Flash applications) in addition to the traditional browser environment.  We added the environmentType attribute in line item and ad unit size to distinguish whether the line item or ad unit targets a browser or video player. When a line item is set to target video players, it can only target ad units with ad unit sizes that also have the video player environment type. Ad unit sizes set to target video players can have companions, which are a set of ad unit sizes that will display alongside the video player ad.  

Postal Code Targeting

The postal code targeting feature is now available in the DFP API.  As a developer, you can use this feature by creating a Location with an ID and adding that to your geoTargeting object.  The correct ID can be fetched using the PublisherQueryLanguageService on the Postal Codes table. For examples on how to fetch IDs and set targets in the DFP API, please take a look at our previous geographical targeting blog post.

Custom Creatives

Also available as a DFP Premium Solution feature, the CustomCreative type provides a way to represent a creative with an arbitrary HTML snippet along with its associated file assets. The custom creative assets in a custom creative can be images, CSS stylesheets, and JavaScript files that are referenced in the HTML snippet. In this release, creative asset IDs will be shown on creatives that have assets, but they cannot be fetched directly. The ability to create and update assets through the API will come in a future release.

Creative Placeholders in Line Item

Line items now have a creativePlaceholders attribute which replaces the creativeSizes attribute in older versions. The attribute is required and represents a slot that a creative is expected to fill in a line item. A creative placeholder can have companions, but only if the line item’s environment is set to video player.

Ad Unit Sizes

The adUnitSizes attribute replaces the sizes attribute in the AdUnit object. The permissible creative size in an ad unit is now specified in the size attribute of an AdUnitSize object.

These highlights are just some of the features we have in the v201108 release; more details can be found in our release notes.  We value developer feedback, so if there are any features that you would like to see in future releases, please let us know at our forum.

  Jeffrey Sham, DFP API Team