Advertising

Video: The Future of SSAI on OTT Devices

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Server-Side AD Insertion sounds like a sure-fire way to insert ads without ad-blockers noticing, but it’s not without problems – particularly on OTT devices plugged into the living room TV. As people are used to watching broadcast television on the TV, some of those expectations of broadcast TV are associated with whatever they watch on TV. The quick channel changing, low latency and constant quality are expected even if the viewer is watching a mini OTT streaming device plugged into HDMI input 2.

Phil Cluff from Mux looks at the challenges that devices other than computers throw up when using SSAI at this talk from Mile High Video. In general, OTT devices don’t have much memory or CPU power which renders Client-Side ad insertion impractical. SSAI can be achieved by manipulating the manifest or by rewriting timestamps on video segments. The latter damages the ability to cache chunks, so Phil explores the challenges of the former technique. On the surface, just swapping out some chunks by changing the manifest sounds simple looking at games consoles, smart TVs, streaming boxes and set-top boxes. Unsurprisingly streaming boxes like Apple TV and Roku boxes support the features needed to pull off SSAI fairly well. TVs fair less well, but those relying on Android tend to have workable solutions, explains Phil. The biggest hurdle is getting things working on set-top boxes of which there are thousands of variations, few of which support DRM and DASH well.

Phil examines the rollout of smart TVs finding that most are more than 3 years old which typically means they are on old firmware supporting features that existed when the TV was released but nothing more recent…such as supporting manifest manipulation. With this bleak picture, Phil attempts to ground us saying that we don’t need to deliver ads on all devices. Most services are able to find a core set of devices which form 80% or more of their viewership which means that supporting ads on devices outside of that core is unlikely ever to be profitable. And if it’s not profitable, is there any need to ever show ads on that device? Initially, it doesn’t feel right to deliver without ads to some devices, but if you look at the numbers, you may well find that your development time will never be paid back. An alternative solution is to deliver ads to these people by getting them to watch on Chromecasts you provide instead of on their STB which is a more common option than you may expect.

Phil finishes his talk looking at the future which includes a HbbTV spec specifically aimed around SSAI and a continued battle to find a reliable way to delivering and recording beacons for SSAI.

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Speaker

Phil Cluff Phil Cluff
Streaming Architect,
Mux

Video: Introduction to DVB’s Targeted Advertising specifications

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

Addressable TV is coming to DVB with targetted advertising specifications. Famously Sky has been one of the main driving forces behind addressable TV in Europe. Sky’s AdSmart technology, launched in 2014 has long allowed advertisers large and small to target very specific viewers. In 2017 DVB spotted the need for an interoperable standard for targetted advertising and today we are seeing the results of their work to date. Usually, broadcasters can charge a premium for targetted advertising which brings them on a par with the ability of the large streaming giants to target ads to their customers. Sky has found that personalised commercials result in 21% more engagement and 35% heightened attentiveness.

Addressable TV has been shown to encourage smaller advertisers to use TV for the first time. Whilst creating a professional advert is not cheap, this is played off against the reduced cost of only targetting a small percentage of households. Capitalising on the localisation possible, Macdonalds, for instance, has used targetted advertising to announce new menus in specific branches.

Targetted advertising shows a promising future for growth, so this seems to be a great time for DVB and HbbTV to be jointly producing standard guidance for the industry called DVB-TA.

Martin Gold introduces the DVB-TA Part 1 – Signalling explaining that this specification is currently going through ETSI for standardisation. DVB-TA accounts for signalling from playout to the encoder, to downstream transcoders/multiplexers and to the receivers themselves. The specification focusses on SCTE 35 and where a receiver can’t understand SCTE 35, there is a way to translate these messages to DSM-CC messages for HbbTV devices. SCTE 35 has been extended and includes a unique programme descriptor and also accounts for PTS adjustments.

Matt Poole follows by talking about Part 2 which deals with communication with ad servers. Matt explains how privacy and working within GPDR has been considered throughout this section. He then talks about the importance of carefully matching the video format of the ad inventory with the viewed channel in order to get the most seamless transition possible and be careful to download the correct file type of asset. Matt then talks about the playoff between reach and perfect user experience.

The talk ends with a 20-minute Q&A session which includes panellists Peter Neumann and Angelo Pettazzi.

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Speakers

Angelo Pettazzi Angelo Pettazzi
Chair of the DVB Commercial Module working group on Targeted Advertising
Consultant at R.T.I. Strategic Marketing, Mediaset Group
Martin Gold Martin Gold
Editor of the DVB-TA signalling specification,
Consultant Architect at YouView TV Limited
Matt Poole Matt Poole
Chair of the DVB Technical Module working group on Targeted Advertising,
Steering group PMO, HbbTV
Peter Neumann Peter Neumann
Platform Solutions Program Distribution,
CBC / Mediengruppe RTL

Video: The future of addressable TV advertising in the UK

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

When it comes to advertising, there’s a lot of value in understanding who you’re talking to. This video examines the practicality of that within the UK and the relative value that brings. Nigel Walley from Decipher looks at how the landscape is changing both in the ability to address the TV externally and the information available within the home.

Nigel starts by looking at how the broadcast TV companies and the online streaming companies are able to target and concludes that broadcast can often fine tune to the region and and include dayparting whereas though we assume streaming companies can target by individuals, in reality Nigel asserts, they typically target by household. He goes further to explain that almost 50% of viewing is still linear TV with YouTube taking up 12.4% of the 50% which remains of the 4hours and 42 minutes of average viewing time per day.

Nigel makes the point that with HbbTV and many of the streaming services being available on the ‘big screen’, it makes the idea of ‘broadcast’ vs ‘streaming’ a nonsense as they are already converged. The big difference is in how we can provide the ads to these platforms. The Virgin and Sky closed platforms comprise nearly 13 million viewers with Freeview plus others making up nearly 16 million. Nigel highlights that 30% of viewing is with the BBC and hence no advertising, although trailers may be delivered using addressable technologies.

Nigel explains that Sky’s Adsmart has been extended to Virgin cable. Then explains how YouView and other channels move up to the big screen – the TV. The important issue for publishers is how the Sky and Virgin platforms end up as controlling influences. Nigel explains the Linear Addressability of the platforms showing that YouView is the next potential area this will happen. There’s also the opportunity for smart TVs themselves to help in delivering these ads. “What can a broadcaster do alone” asks Nigel which he answers by saying ‘very little’ unless they are Sky or Virgin in the UK. They can deliver addressable TV into apps and computers, however.

Nigel finishes with a call to action to the broadcasters to change their focus from individual apps to the ways they and agencies can work together to reach more, and more targeted viewers.

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Speaker

Nigel Walley Nigel Walley
Managing Director,
Decipher

Video: ATSC 3.0 Seminar Part III

Posted on by Russell Trafford-Jones

ATSC 3.0 is the US-developed set of transmission standards which is fully embracing IP technology both over the air and for internet-delivered content. This talk follows on from the previous two talks which looked at the physical and transmission layers. Here we’re seeing how IP throughout has benefits in terms of broadening choice and seamlessly moving from on-demand to live channels.

Richard Chernock is back as our Explainer in Chief for this session. He starts by explaining the driver for the all-IP adoption which focusses on the internet being the source of much media and data. The traditional ATSC 1.0 MPEG Transport Stream island worked well for digital broadcasting but has proven tricky to integrate, though not without some success if you consider HbbTV. Realistically, though, ATSC see that as a stepping stone to the inevitable use of IP everywhere and if we look at DVB-I from DVB Project, we see that the other side of the Atlantic also sees the advantages.

But seamlessly mixing together a broadcaster’s on-demand services with their linear channels is only benefit. Richard highlights multilingual markets where the two main languages can be transmitted (for the US, usually English and Spanish) but other languages can be made available via the internet. This is a win in both directions. With the lower popularity, the internet delivery costs are not overburdening and for the same reason they wouldn’t warrant being included on the main Tx.

Richard introduces ISO BMFF and MPEG DASH which are the foundational technologies for delivering video and audio over ATSC 3.0 and, to Richard’s point, any internet streaming services.

We get an overview of the protocol stack to see where they fit together. Richard explains both MPEG DASH and the ROUTE protocol which allows delivery of data using IP on uni-directional links based on FLUTE.

The use of MPEG DASH allows advertising to become more targeted for the broadcaster. Cable companies, Richard points out, have long been able to swap out an advert in a local area for another and increase their revenue. In recent years companies like Sky in the UK (now part of Comcast) have developed technologies like Adsmart which, even with MPEG TS satellite transmissions can receive internet-delivered targeted ads and play them over the top of the transmitted ads – even when the programme is replayed off disk. Any adopter of ATSC 3.0 can achieve the same which could be part of a business case to make the move.

Another part of the business case is that ATSC not only supports 4K, unlike ATSC 1.0, but also ‘better pixels’. ‘Better pixels’ has long been the way to remind people that TV isn’t just about resolution. ‘Better pixels’ includes ‘next generation audio’ (NGA), HDR, Wide Colour Gamut (WCG) and even higher frame rates. The choice of HEVC Main 10 Profile should allow all of these technologies to be used. Richard makes the point that if you balance the additional bitrate requirement against the likely impact to the viewers, UHD doesn’t make sense compared to, say, enabling HDR.

Richard moves his focus to audio next unpacking the term NGA talking about surround sound and object oriented sound. He notes that renderers are very advanced now and can analyse a room to deliver a surround sound experience without having to place speakers in the exact spot you would normally need. Options are important for sound, not just one 5.1 surround sound track is very important in terms of personalisation which isn’t just choosing language but also covers commentary, audio description etc. Richard says that audio could be delivered in a separate pipe (PLP – discussed previously) such that even after the
video has cut out due to bad reception, the audio continues.

The talk finishes looking at accessibility such as picture-in-picture signing, SMPTE Timed Text captions (IMSC1), security and the ATSC 3.0 standards stack.

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Speaker

Richard Chernock Richard Chernock
Former CSO,
Triveni Digital