VAST tracking events / Linear
rewind VAST tracking event
Short answer: Fires when the playhead moves backward during linear playback.
When it fires
The user or player rewound the ad. Rare on CTV. Still in the linear event set from VAST 2.0 onward, so a 4.x player that sees it should fire it.
Rewind is a playhead move, and it is rare on a television
rewind fires when the playhead moves backward during linear playback. Desktop and mobile players that expose a scrub bar can emit it. Most CTV players do not, so an empty column on a living-room placement is the expected result, not a broken URL.
The event is linear and has been valid since VAST 2.0. A 4.x player that supports rewinding should still fire this name. There is no 4.0 replacement. If the player scrubs and the URL is silent, the player is not emitting the event. The tag cannot invent the call.
Scrubbing past a quartile
A rewind can move the playhead back across a quartile boundary. Players differ on whether they fire firstQuartile again. The spec defines when the playhead reaches the point. It does not require a once-only latch. A second firstQuartile after rewind is legal player behavior. A report that dedupes quartiles per impression will hide it, and a report that does not will show more quartiles than starts.
If the player supports scrubbing and never emits rewind, the tag is not the defect. There is no alternate spelling. Confirm on one session in the tester. An empty rewind column on a device with no scrub bar is the device, and adding a second Tracking element will not create the call.
When the column stays empty
rewind is in the VAST 2.0 set, and the current version still includes it. An empty column on a current player is not a version mismatch.
Each wrapper hop may include its own rewind URL. The player requests every one of them when the event happens, so a chain of four hops produces four calls for one playback. An http URL on an https page is dropped by the browser before the ad server sees a miss. The event name can be right and the scheme can still zero the column.
Where it is valid
| 2.0 | 3.0 | 4.0 | 4.1+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Legal containers: Linear. An event in the wrong container is not a player error. It is a URL nobody calls.
Using it in a tag
Put it in a Linear TrackingEvents block. It is not valid on the other creative types, and a player does not fire a tracker in the wrong container.
<Linear>
<TrackingEvents>
<Tracking event="rewind">
<![CDATA[https://track.example.com/rewind]]>
</Tracking>
</TrackingEvents>
</Linear>VAST XML fragment only. This excerpt belongs inside a complete VAST document, so standalone validation will fail until it is wrapped in a full <VAST>response.
Related vastlint rules
- VAST-4.1-tracking-event-value: Tracking event attribute not in the valid set for this VAST version
Related events
- pause: Fires when linear playback is paused.
- resume: Fires when linear playback continues after pause.
Check the XML, then confirm the beacons fire
Validate the event names and containers on the document. Test a live URL when the XML is clean and reporting is still empty.