Creatives can be uploaded in the Advertiser details screen by selecting the ‘New Creative’ button. At this time the platform supports Video VAST tags from reputable Ad Servers, First-party Videos, and Ad Server Audio Tags. If you do not have access to an ad server to create VAST tags, Pontiac offers hosting services at an additional charge via DCM. Reach out through the Help Center for more information.

To upload a Creative, go to the Advertisers tab and click on the name of the Advertiser under which you would like to upload the Creative. Select ‘New Creative’ and select the type of Creative that you will be uploading. A preview of the Creative should appear in the green ‘Preview’ box. Ensure that the Creative does not extend outside this preview box. Complete all relevant fields, then click ‘Save’. Each Creative Type has a max file size as indicated in the Creative Specs. Creatives that exceed the max file size will incur Creative Overage Fees as indicated in our Pricing here: Pricing

Please note that Creatives can only be edited at the Advertiser Level. Please navigate to the Advertiser Level to modify your creatives.

Please thoroughly review all Creative Policies before uploading Creative. All Creative units uploaded will be subject to the Pontiac Intelligence creative audit process as well as any additional SSP, publisher, media owner or other creative approval processes that may apply in the acquisition of ad space.

Pontiac Intelligence reserves the right to reject any creative unit at its discretion, and subsequently suspend the account without advanced warning. If your account is suspended, you will be notified in writing and an investigation will take place within three business days.  If at any point your ad tags are flagged as malicious, your account balance will be forfeited to Pontiac and will not be refundable.

In addition to Pontiac Intelligence’s content policies, certain sellers have additional policies that apply to buyers of those sellers’ inventory and certain data providers have additional policies that apply to buyers of those data providers’ data. Pontiac Intelligence clients wishing to purchase such inventory or data are responsible for understanding and adhering to any such additional policies. Pontiac shall have no liability or responsibility of any kind if a third-party declines to serve any Ads proposed by a Pontiac user, regardless of whether the ads meet the Pontiac Ad Standards or are approved by Pontiac, and users agree to indemnify and hold harmless Pontiac from any losses arising from a third-party’s decision not to serve a user’s ads. 

On the New Creative tab, follow these steps to set up your creative:

1. Click ‘New Creative’ button.
2. Name the Creative.
3. Choose whether or not to set the Creative to Active or Inactive by checking or unchecking the box.
   • Automatically set to Active.
4. Select the Creative Type:
   • Ad Server Tag Video (VAST)
   • First-Party Video
   • Ad Server Tag Audio
5. Set the Duration: Choose from 5, 10, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, or 90 seconds.
   • Note, while rotating tags are allowed, the ads within the tag should not contain different durations. For the bidder, to correctly target and serve the ads in impressions where the Creative meets the criteria of the ad slot, the duration selected in upload must match the duration of the Creative.
6. Assign Weight: Set a value between 1 and 10.
   • The creative weight setting will allow you to customize the amount of a Campaign or Line budget that will be allocated to each Creative associated. If the weights are equal across all Creatives, then the ads will rotate evenly among Creatives of the same duration. For creatives with distinct durations, Creatives will serve according to available impressions for each duration.
7. Input Creative Assets: Video, Audio, or Click URL.
   • VAST URL
     • Enter the VAST URL for the Ad. VAST versions 2, 3 and 4 are currently accepted. For full Creative specs, see here: Creative Specs
     • Creative macros can be added to your tag here to dynamically pass back information for each impression served, for all supported Creative macros see here: Creative Macros
8. Select Creative Sizes.
   • Automatically Detect Sizes
     • Automatically Detect Sizes will scan the tag entered & automatically pull up any sizes available for this Creative. If a specific size is not being detected on your tag, you may need to go into the ad server where the tag was created and add the size.
     • If new sizes are added to a tag after it has previously been saved to Pontiac, these new sizes will not be automatically added to the Creative. You must open the Creative and click ‘Save’ once the new sizes are detected in order to implement the sizes for the tag. New sizes that are detected, but have not been saved yet, will be highlighted in yellow.
   • Manually Set Sizes
     • If you would like to manually add sizes for the tag instead of automatically adding them, select ‘Manually Set Sizes’, and the sizes can then be selected from the size dropdown. For CTV, the recommended dimensions are 1920×1080 and 1280×720. While other sizes can be used, the majority of inventory available is for these two sizes and not including these sizes may limit Campaign scale.
9. Option to enable ‘Serve to all sizes with similar aspect ratio’:
   • A checkbox in the creative upload window that enables the campaign to bid on impressions where the size is not selected/present on the tag but has the same aspect ratio as the sizes included. Note, creatives can scale down to smaller sizes, but will not scale to higher resolutions. The aspect ratios for included assets are visible in the creative specs tab. For example, if your creative includes 1920×1080 (1.78:1), then if this checkbox is applied the creative could also serve in ad slots that require 1280×720 (1.78:1), 640×360 (1.78:1) etc, without including media files in the tag for these sizes.
10. Click ‘Save’.

1×1 third party impression trackers can be added to creatives in Pontiac on upload or in the edit screen. Under the ‘Tracker’ tab in the creative window, click ‘Add New Tracker’ to enter the third party tracking URL.

See Creative Macros for supported marcos that can be used to pass aditional information when the tracker fires.

Third Party Click Trackers

Click trackers should be configured in your ad server as the click URL for the creative. See Creative Macros for supported macros that can be used to pass additional information when the tracker fires.

On the Specs Tab, see the Creative Size, Bit Rate, Mime, and Aspect ratio’s of the media files in the tag.

On the Flights tab, choose to have the Creative Always On or Active for a specific Flight.

Flight dates can be applied on each creative to easily schedule and facilitate creative swaps on a Line or Campaign. For example, if you have a new creative for each week of a Campaign, you can associate all of the creatives to the Campaign, and set flight dates accordingly so that you do not have to edit the Campaign and swap creatives each week. The creative will only be eligible to serve during the date intervals selected unless the creative is set to ‘Always On’, in which case it will be eligible to serve whenever it is assigned to a Line or creative with current flight dates.

In the creative upload or edit window, under the ‘Flights’ tab, you can change the creative dates setting to ‘Flights’ then configure the dates when you would like the creative to serve. To add multiple flights, select the ‘Add Flight’ button.

To remove a flight, click the red circle next to the selected dates. If a creative is switched from ‘Flights’ to ‘Always On’, all existing flights will be removed.

Pontiac Intelligence reserves the right to reject any Creative unit at its discretion, and subsequently suspend the account without advanced warning. If your account is suspended, you will be notified in writing and an investigation will take place within three business days. Audit results can only be changed by resolving the issue that caused a Creative to be rejected or flagged as sensitive.

Audit Status

Creative audit results will be displayed under ‘Audit Status’ next to the name of the Creative, in the ‘Creatives’ section of the Advertiser, Campaign or Line. Audit status will be indicated by a symbol; a yellow triangle for ‘pending’ audit, a green check box for ‘approved’, a green triangle for ‘marked as sensitive’ and a red box for ‘rejected’. Hover over this symbol to view additional information about the audit status.

In the Creative audit process, all ad units uploaded to the Pontiac platform will be assigned an IAB category and a brand using the Advertiser’s web domain or click URL if applicable. Both parameters are used by the publishers in the bid request to control the types of ads.

The IAB category assigned to your creative can be found by clicking on the creative name to open the creative details window. This field is displayed below the creative in the ‘Creative Category’ field:

These categories come from the Open RTB Specs, that can be found here in table 5.1 ‘Content Categories’: Open RTB Specs v2.5

If you believe the incorrect IAB category has been assigned to your creative, create a ticket in the Help Center for assistance.

Creatives that are flagged as ‘Sensitive’ will display a green triangle in the ‘Audit status’ column. Hover over this symbol to review the sensitive category the creative was assigned to. You can also see the category and sensitive attributes by opening the creative window. These are also displayed under the preview of the creative:

Sensitive creatives will only be allowed to run on the platform through the open exchange and on deals that explicitly accept content in the specified sensitive category. In the ‘Deals’ section of the ‘Inventory tab’ there is a column that lists sensitive categories that are accepted on each deal.

For inquiries regarding inventory that may be available for a sensitive category, reach out to our team through the Help Center.

The following sensitive categories are allowed on the Pontiac platform, but ads will be restricted to deals, exchanges, and publishers or venues that have explicitly approved this content. Pontiac makes no guarantee that inventory will be available for any of the following categories or that creatives will be approved by SSP or publisher partners. As a platform user, it is your sole responsibility to ensure compliance with all applicable local and national laws, restrictions, or regulations, including licensing and/or registration and targeting requirements in each market where the content is serving.

• Political
• Gambling
• Religion
• Pharma
• Alcohol
• Adult content
• Cannabis, CBD & hemp
• Tobacco vaping & smoking products
• Firearms & weapons

Political and Gambling advertisements will require additional documentation as prompted within the platform.

Political creatives will only be allowed to run on the platform through deals that explicitly accept political content. Depending on the Partner or Publishers, there may also be additional creative approval processes in order to run on these deals.

This information can be found in the ‘Deals’ section of the Inventory Tab. Deals that allow political content will have ‘Political’ listed in the ‘Permitted Sensitive Categories’. If additional publisher approvals are required, this will be noted in the ‘Publisher Approval Required’ field. To request publisher approval for a deal, reach out through the Help Center.

All Political Creatives must run under an Advertiser with the ‘Political’ box checked and the disclosure form completed. If the disclosure form has not been filled out and a creative is marked as political in the audit, the Advertiser and all associated Campaigns will be disabled until the required information has been entered.

Pontiac Intelligence permits political advertising on CTV platform (advertising relating to elections, ballot initiatives, or political candidates) in the United States, but requires that such advertising comply with applicable law. We also require that you certify certain information about the ads and the political organization that purchased them for certain political advertising on the state or local level, as legally required.

All necessary information must be entered directly into the Pontiac platform.  The platform will guide you through a series of questions.  The below exemplifies the nature of the information that must be provided, but is subject to change.  Failure to supply all applicable information into the platform could prevent your ads from serving.

1. Are you in any way running ads related to an election, ballot initiative, or political candidate in the United States?  If yes, please complete a and b below.
   1. I certify that all such advertising has been paid for, or will be paid for, with funds from financial institutions in the same country and currency where the election, ballot initiative, or campaign for political candidate is being held.
      1. Yes:_____.     NO:_____
   2. I am unaware of any portion of the payment being provided by foreign nationals or foreign principals organized under the laws of a foreign country or having their principal place of business in a foreign country.
      1. I am unaware:_______     I can Confirm:________

• Does your creative include a disclaimer stating who paid for the advertisement and whether it was authorized by the relevant candidate or paid for by an independent expenditure committee?
  • Yes:_____   If Yes is checked, continue to question 3.
  • No: _____   , If No is checked, stop here. All creatives of political nature require this disclaimer, so please go back and adjust the creatives to clearly include this disclaimer
• Is your campaign running at the Local/State or Federal Level?
  • State/Local _____: If checked, continue to question 4.
  • Federal_____: If only Federal politics are involved, please move to question 5.
  • Both_____:      If Both are involved, move to Question 4.
• Is your State/Local campaign running in California, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New Jersey, Virginia, or Washington?  If Yes, please Fill out Sections a-g below in full.  If No, and you are running at the State/Local level OUTSIDE of one of these states, please complete a-g below with as much information as applicable.  If the information cannot be completed fill out the field with N/A.
  • US FEC ID:.                                                                                                                                 
  • Organization Name:.                                                                                                                        
  • Address (Address/City/State/Zip):.                                                                                             
    •                                                  
    •                                                  
    •                                                
  • Phone Number: .                                                                                          
  • Treasurer Name: .                                                                                
  • Subject of the Ad:.                                                            
  • Method of Payment: .                                                                            
• If your campaign is running at the Federal Level, provide your ID number issued by Federal Elections Committee.
  • US FEC ID:.                                                     .
• Is your campaign being paid for by an Independent Expenditure Committee, as defined as follows: a political committee that makes only independent expenditures; that is, it spends money on political communications that expressly advocate the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate and does not coordinate with a candidate, a candidate’s authorized committee, or an agent of the candidate?
  • Yes:_____  If yes is checked, AND the campaign being run in New Jersey, or New York State, please attach the separate State Registration Form to the email along with this completed document.
  • No:_____  

The following content is prohibited across all Pontiac products. Any ad unit flagged under one of these categories will be blocked from serving on the platform and may result in account suspension or forfeiture.

• Profanity, Hate Speech or Defamatory Language
• Graphic or excessive violence
• Pornography, Nudity, Obscenities, or other ‘Adult’ Content
• Inappropriate content (at our discretion)
• Sale of, or instructions for creating, guns, bombs, ammunition, or weapons
• Discussing or promoting sale of federally illegal drugs, including marijuana, illegal pharmaceuticals, and other schedule 1 drugs.
• Malware, privacy and security violations
• Broken Ads or blank creative
• Enabling or Permitting Piracy
• Charging for government forms and services
• Misappropriation of Copyright, Trademark, Trade Secret, or Patent
• Executes or Downloads Files without User Interactions
• Causing degradation of site performance (ex: excessive animation, weight)
• Illegal Material or Content
• Misleading or sensationalized messaging, content, or images
• Pop ups or any ad or landing pages that spawn them.
• Content that intends to, or does, induce user action through misleading appearance or behavior, including, but not limited to, creatives that mimic video players, functional buttons, errors or warnings about viruses, missing codecs, and corrupt disks.
• Displaying fake errors to induce user action, or messaging that implies knowledge of a user’s computer or operating system.
• Creatives must not rotate brands or advertisers.
• The landing page must match brand of the advertisement.
• The landing page must contain a privacy policy.

All creatives uploaded to the CTV platform, and advertiser landing pages when applicable, are subject to the Pontiac audit process. This process may take up to 1 business day and Pontiac reserves the right to deny any creative, even if they are compliant with listed standards and policies. Any ads deemed malicious or inappropriate at Pontiac’s discretion will result in your account being suspended.