In late 2023 the IAB Tech Lab rewrote the video placement taxonomy, replacing the fuzzy video.placement flag with the stricter video.plcmt field.

Under the new rules, only ads that run inside a primary sound‑on player where the viewer intentionally came to watch video can be called in‑stream.

Everything else from sticky players, to floating widgets, and in‑banner units, dropped into cheaper buckets such as accompanying content or stand‑alone.

A really small change but one that has had significant impact to the programmatic ecosystem.

The Tech Lab and several SSPs predicted that fewer than 10 % of all web video impressions will still qualify once the dust settles. (indexexchange.com, indexexchange.com)

2024 saw CPMs slide by up to 60%

Fast forward to today, most ad tech vendors within the ecosystem have adopted the IAB’s taxonomy.

Google took action in April 2024, where mislabelling showed massive overnight drops in AdX demand.

Five mid-sized news & lifestyle publishers ran an A/B test either side of the April ‘24 change, and showed a 60% drop in revenue from out-stream units compared to true in-stream.

TTD later that year made the same change, while Amazon, Yahoo & Beeswax have caught up this year.

Word is though, Amazon TAM, still parses the old fields within in the bid stream helping publishers pump CPMs for out dated out-stream - but you didn’t hear that from me.

The slide continues in 2025

Market-wide CPMs haven’t held.

US programmatic data shows overall video CPMs are down by 17% YoY in 2025, with analysts specifically calling out the reclassification as one of the core causes. (databeat.io)

One of the major US SSPs, Magnite, noted that advertisers are now “paying premium rates for scarce in‑stream while treating accompanying content more like display.” (magnite.com)

The likes of SeenThis have made in-banner video the new normal, and any generic video placements have been absorbed into display advertising.

Google are laughing

Despite open web video CPMs sliding, the new IAB classification has magically supercharged YouTube over the last 18 months.

They’ve seen double digit growth since the change, and sentiment amongst advertisers has continued to show YouTube as a safe haven for guaranteed user-initiated video.

All in all, the traditional open web publishing industry is hurting.

Time to make a change

Every day there is a new article on how AI has pushed context & content to the front of any conversation about how to thrive in an AI-first internet.

Investing in content has now become more important than ever.

AI summaries are killing organic web visits, making each visit’s opportunity cost balloon if you’re not running the more lucrative forms of advertising.

On top of that, without rich diverse content you’re struggling to remain relevant when it comes to generative engine optimisation (GEO).

Again, investing in content has now become more important than ever,

especially video content.

Publishers should be:

1. Pushing for user-initiated, sound-on video players on more pages. Meaning they need to create or license contextually relevant video that’ll intrigue & engage users.

2. Pass the right data, to the right people. Every piece of content should be set-up to optimise for AI summaries, while each impression should be inline with the video.plcmt field.

3. Re-evaluate your video strategy. Review your out-stream placements, video partners & SSP relationships to make sure you’re maximising the value of each human visitor, especially as premiums start getting applied to organic visitors.

In times of real volatility it’s easy to stay focused on the short term & stick with minimum guarantees being paid out by old school out-stream businesses, but without change publishers may start to see themselves get left behind.

Out-stream will continue to survive on the open web, but the heydays of out-stream are over as advertisers start paying a penny on the dollar for an out-dated format.