CTV & video
Mid-roll
Mid-roll is a video ad or ad break that plays partway through content, interrupting it, like a traditional TV commercial break.
Mid-roll ads appear in the middle of a video: at natural breaks in a TV episode, during halftime in a match, or at set intervals in long YouTube videos. In CTV and long-form streaming, mid-rolls are usually delivered as ad pods of several ads.
Mid-rolls often achieve high completion rates, because viewers are invested in the content and want to see what happens next. They are the backbone of long-form AVOD, FAST and ad-supported SVOD tiers. Break placement matters: well-placed breaks at scene changes feel natural; badly placed ones frustrate viewers. Live events signal breaks in real time, and SSAI fills them.
Mid-roll schedules are often defined with VMAP or stream markers. Because they interrupt content, frequency and ad load are carefully managed; too many breaks drive viewers away. Mid-roll inventory in premium content commands higher prices than Pre-roll on short-form clips.
Think of it like this
Mid-roll is like the interval in a play: the audience stays in their seats because they want to see the second half.
An example
A 45-minute drama on an ad-supported streaming tier in Germany has three mid-roll pods of 90 seconds each, positioned at scene transitions.
Related terms
Pre-roll
Pre-roll is a video ad that plays before the content the viewer chose to watch begins.
Ad pod
An ad pod is a group of video ads played back to back in a single ad break, like a traditional TV commercial break, common in CTV and long-form streaming.
Instream video
Instream video is a video ad that plays within a video player before, during or after video content the viewer chose to watch, such as pre-roll, mid-roll or post-roll.
VMAP
VMAP (Video Multiple Ad Playlist) is an IAB Tech Lab XML standard describing where ad breaks fall in a video, such as pre-roll, mid-roll and post-roll slots.
SSAI (server-side ad insertion)
SSAI (server-side ad insertion) stitches video ads directly into the content stream on a server before it reaches the viewer, creating seamless, TV-like playback that ad blockers find hard to detect.
Sources: IAB Tech Lab VMAP, IAB Tech Lab VAST