Microsoft Premium Streaming video ads: specs, $25 budget, CPCV

A Microsoft Advertising Premium Streaming video can run 6 to 90 seconds, but only a three-star file, with an exact length of 10, 15, 20, 30, 45, 60, 75 or 90 seconds and a bitrate of at least 10,000 kbps, is eligible for every premium placement. The campaign also needs a budget of more than 25.00 USD and bids on cost per completed view (CPCV), and its Default bid must sit between $0.01 and $0.20. These are different rules from Microsoft's Online Video ads, covered in the 1-to-3-star spec post.

Everything about Microsoft comes from About Premium Streaming campaigns and, for the comparison, About online video ads, both read on 2026-10-03. Sume's side comes from its Timeline 1.0, video inspect and video trim docs.

What does Premium Streaming buy, and what does it not?

Microsoft describes broadcast-quality video on premium streaming services such as Paramount, Roku, LG, Samsung and Rakuten, across CTV (smart TVs and game consoles) and wider OTT; some inventory is market-specific. Placement depends on your video's specs and quality, your targeting and your budget and bids.

Two limits are worth knowing before you plan the clip. The page says neither CTV nor Premium Streaming supports conversion tracking yet ("coming soon"), so judge the campaign by completed views, not purchases. And it advises capturing attention in ten seconds or less and designing for sound off, with text, graphics and captions.

What does each star level require?

The star rating is set by the file. One star is eligible for some placements, two stars for most, three stars for all including the most premium. The page lists exact lengths for each level, not a range.

Compare this with the Online Video page: its one-star tier takes any duration from 6 to 90 seconds, while Premium Streaming's one-star tier lists fixed lengths (6, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75 or 90 seconds). Reusing an Online Video file that is 40 seconds long therefore clears one star there and not here.

How do I build a three-star file with Sume?

All tiers take 1920 x 1080 or 1080 x 1920 among their resolutions, and three-star adds a recommended frame rate of 23.976 to 30 fps, one video and one audio track, and audio and video durations within 500 ms. Sume's Timeline 1.0 render fits that last point because the audio spine sets the length: audio.duration_seconds is the output length, and a video slot may trail it by at most 0.5 seconds. Set audio.duration_seconds to 15 or 30, output.width and output.height to 1920 and 1080 (even integers from 256 to 2160), and output.fps to 24, 25 or 30.

The render program has no bitrate field, and Sume rejects codec and crf keys, so you cannot dial 10,000 kbps in. Check it instead. The probe returns size_bytes and duration_seconds, which give the file's overall average: bytes times 8, divided by seconds, divided by 1,000. That counts audio too, so it slightly overstates the video bitrate; treat a value close to the threshold as a fail. A 15-second three-star file needs at least about 18.75 MB and a 30-second one about 37.5 MB at 10,000 kbps, by the same arithmetic.

# probe is the "probe" block of a video_inspect result (example numbers)
probe = {"duration_seconds": 30.0, "size_bytes": 41_500_000,
         "width": 1920, "height": 1080, "fps": 30, "has_audio": True}

kbps = probe["size_bytes"] * 8 / probe["duration_seconds"] / 1000
lengths = {10, 15, 20, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90}
print(f"average {kbps:,.0f} kbps")
print("length ok:", round(probe["duration_seconds"]) in lengths)
print("size ok:", (probe["width"], probe["height"]) in {(1920, 1080), (1080, 1920)})
print("bitrate ok:", kbps >= 10_000)

What about the clip itself?

Microsoft's advice is that the first ten seconds carry the message and that people often watch with sound off. Write the opening shot as a complete idea and add captions for the sound-off case. If a 6-second bumper-style cut is all you have, it is eligible only at one star here.

• Pick an exact length from the three-star list; 15 and 30 are in every tier.
• Render at 1920 x 1080 and 24, 25 or 30 fps.
• Probe the finished file and compute its average bitrate before upload.
• Plan around completed views: there is no conversion tracking yet.