Video: Implementing standards-based Targeted Advertising on broadcast television


Last month, we featured DVB’s Targeted Advertising solution called DVB-TA. In that article, we saw the motivations to move to targeted advertising and how it was in use in Spain’s Artresmedia. Today’s video follows on from that introduction to DVB-TA with a range of speakers talking about implementation methods, interoperability and benefits to standardisation.

DVB’s Emily Dubs introduces the presenters starting with Nicolas Guyot from ENENSYS who speaks on the subject of the media value chain and TV’s reach. In Europe, the weekly reach of broadcast TV is still high at around 77% meaning the medium has still got strength. In terms of getting targeted ads on there, however, only a subset of devices can be used. In France, 36% of homes have a smart TV. Whilst this is a minority, it still equates to ten million TV sets. We hear about how France TV trialled targeted advertising for HbbTV where they collected consent and data which they used to segment people into four categories. The categories were finance, health, family and weather which they used to place ads in front of the viewer. With a view to scaling this out, the view was that standardisation was important to ensure ad placement was well understood by all equipment as well as measurement metrics.

 

 

Angelo Pettazzi from Mediaset makes a case next for standardisation. For Mediaset, moving to Targeted Advertising is a strategic move and mirrors the points made in the first video focusing on the need to keep TV advertising in line with what advertisers are looking for. In short, TA will maintain the relative value of their advertising slots. There are other benefits, however, such as more readily opening up advertising slots to local businesses and SMEs by providing availability of lower-cost slots.

Standards feature heavily for Mediaset. They have 4 million HbbTVs active monthly on their platform which simply wouldn’t have been possible without the HbbTV 2.0 standard in the first place. Using these devices they had previously tried a proprietary TA technology based on HTML5 but they found it didn’t always work well and the switching time could vary. They see the TA spec as a move towards more confidence in products along with the ability to substitute only single ads, a whole contiguous block or multiple substitutions in the same break.

Joe Winograd from Verance talks next about the use of Watermarking for targeted advertising. Advert timing and other signalling are usually carried separately to the media as SCTE-104, -25 or -224. However, there are times when a distribution chain is not yet compatible with this separate signalling. Linear advert substitution is usually done on the device, though, so by embedding this same signalling information within the audio and/or video feeds themselves, the receiving box is able to decode the embedded data and insert the ads as desired. Modifying video/audio data to carry messages is called watermarking and usually refers to the practice of marking a feed to uniquely identify it for the purposes of crime prevention. This method, however, is designed to carry dynamic data and is defined by the ATSC un their standards A/334, A/335 and A/336.

Pascal Jezequel from Harmonic speaks next about Dynamic Ad insertion interoperability. His main point is that if we’re to be inserting ads in a world of linear and OTT and streaming we should have one standard which covers them all. We need a detailed standard that allows precise, frame-accurate timing with smooth transitions. DVB-TA and HbbTV-TA initially focussed only on broadcast but is now being extended to cover streaming services provided over broadband. This interoperability will be a boost for operators and broadcasters.

Last in the video is Unified Streaming’s Rufael Mekuria who briefly explains the work that DVB is doing within the DBB-TA work but also within DVB-DASH. Having DVB involved helps with liaisons which is proving critical in ensuring that SCTE-35 is compatible with DVB-DASH. This work is in progress. Additionally, DVB is working with MPEG on CMAF and DVB is also liaising with DASH-IF.

The panel ends with a Q&A.

Watch now!
Speakers

Nicolas Guyot Nicolas Guyot
Product Manager,
ENENSYS Technologies
Dror Mangel Dror Mangel
Product Manager,
Viaccess-Orca
Angelo Pettazzi Angelo Pettazzi
Consultant,
Mediaset Group
Joe Winograd Joe Winograd
CTO,
Verance
Pascal Jezequel Pascal Jezequel
DTV Global Solution Architect,
Harmonic
Rufael Mekuria Rufael Mekuria
Head of Reasearch & Stanardisation,
Unified Streaming
Emily Dubs Emily Dubs
Head of Technology,
DVB Project

Video: Introduction to DVB’s Targeted Advertising specifications

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.

Watch now!
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