DVB-TA Archives – The Broadcast Knowledge

DVB-TA is a targeted advertising standard produced by HbbTV and DVB with the aim of providing a single standard for addressable advertising across Europe and in TVs. DVB-TA comprises two specifications, one covering signalling of advertising breaks, another deals with communicating with advert decision servers and the preparation of media. This webinar looks at the underlying HbbTV technology rollout in Europe.

This video brings together Sebastian Busse from smartclip.tv, Arturo Larrainzar from Artresmedia and PubItalia ’80’s Silvia Broggi to explain how targeted advertising is working in France, Germany and Italy ahead of a twenty-minute Q&A.

Sebastian is first up with the German perspective starting by outlining the motivations to move to targeted advertising. For traditional TV, he sees problems ahead as digital ad budgets surpass those of TV, consumption moves away from linear TV and tech giants specifically attacking the traditional model. To fight against this, he sees a need to improve infrastructure such as inventory management systems, focus on data control and management plus investing in addressable ad solutions. The way to make this scalable and affordable for broadcasters and TV manufacturers is to congregate around a single standard.

Europe can be a difficult place for standards since the united countries all hold on tightly to their ways of working, cultural norms and needs which creates conflicting demands on standards. However, HbbTV has spread from Germany to Spain, Italy, France and now Poland, Czechia and Austria since 2017. With DVB-TA, broadcasters can have better control over their AD delivery chain, data and addressable ad breaks so much more growth is envisaged for 2022 and onwards.

Arturo from Atresmedia gives a brief overview of Spain’s use of HbbTV which now reaches 17.4 million people in nearly 8 million households. Their approach is to target a cross-device ad model. Partnering with smartclip they were able to profile over 40% of Spanish households and use that data to allow customers to design better ad campaigns which bridge TVs and web audiences.

Arturo speaks about hybrid ads where the video is squeezed to allow a L-shaped banner around the content. Using this and other techniques, Artresmedia has been able to improve campaigns by an extra 4 points, important as extra points are usually disproportionately expensive but this is a simple approach to do the same thing. Next on the list of products is ad replacement.

Finally, the Italian perspective comes from Silvia. Since the first HbbTV application in 2018, they have moved quickly and introduced ad replacement in 2020. With a reach of 7 million households, they can insert banners or squeezes and address OTT. What PublItalia are able to do is track which linear ads are shown on TV and use that to determine which UI/banner ads are subsequently shown.

The video finishes with a Q&A session which covers: GDPR, manufacturers support of HbbTV, HbbTV-TA availability in TVs, identifying logged in users on second devices, CPM stability and many more.

Watch now!
Speakers

	Sebastian Busse Director Addressable TV, International, smartclip
	Arturo Larrainzar Head of Strategy, Atresmedia
	Silvia Broggi International Marketing & MarTech Director, PubItalia ’80

As the amount of video consumed on the internet continues to grow, technologies that unify over-the-air broadcast with internet delivery. Doing this should allow a seamless mix meaning viewers can choose a service without knowing how it’s arriving at their TV, mobile device or laptop. This is the principle behind DVB-I and HbbTV.

In this webinar, Peter MacAvock and Peter Lanigan join moderator Dr. Jörn Krieger to answer questions about how DVB-I works and how the two organisations work together. To set the scene, Peter Lanigan explains what DVB-I is and where it sits within DVB’s other technologies.

Famous for the widespread technologies of DVB-T, -S and -C which underpin much of the world’s broadcasting, DVB have recently developed a broadcast-focused version of MPEG DASH called DVB-DASH on which DVB-I is built. Where there -T in DVB-T is for terrestrial broadcast and the -S in DVB-S for satellite broadcast, the -I in DVB-I stands for internet. Built upon the DVB-DASH standard DVB-I delivers services over the Internet to devices with broadband access whether that’s raw internet or over operator-managed networks. Most importantly, this isn’t just about TVs, but any device.

DVB-I aims to offer a way unify over-the-air broadcast with internet delivery. The apps used to deliver services to smartphones, tablets and desktops tend to create segregation as each provider delivers their own app. However, there is a benefit to removing the need for each broadcaster needing to maintain their app on all the many platforms. By unifying delivery, DVB-I also makes life easier for manufacturers who can deliver a single, consistent experience. Finally, it opens up a market for more general apps which deliver a TV experience without being tied to one broadcaster opening up more business models and a route to independent innovation.

‘Service Lists’ are the fundamental currency of DVB-I. Service discovery is therefore a critical aspect of DVB-I which was first defined in 2019 and updated in 2020. Service discovery is a technical, commercial and legal problem all of which are addressed in the DVB-I Service Discovery and Programmed Metadata standard which provides ways in which clients can access Service Lists and Service List Registries.

Another important aspect of delivery is targetted advertising since advertising underpins the business model of many broadcasters. DVB-TA defines targetted advertising for linear TV and is now being updated to include DVB-I. With DVB-TA, adverts are delivered to the receiver/device over IP based on various criteria and then triggered at the appropriate time as specified by the A178-1 signalling spec.

Source: DVB

Ahead of the Q&A, Peter MacAvock introduces the HbbTV organisation explaining how and why it works closely with DVB to generate specifications that drive Hybrid TV forward. Also a member organisation, HbbTV and DVB share many interests but where the DVB’s remit within broadcast is wider than the device-centric HbbTV scope, HbbTV also has a wider scope than DVB since STBs and other devices are in use outside of broadcasting, for instance in retail. Importantly, HbbTV has replaced MHP as DVB’s hybrid TV solution. DVB and HbbTV are sharing the task of making DVB-DASH content and validation tools available to their members.

The Q&A covers controlling of the quality of delivery, getting around the internet’s different reliability compared to RF. They also address scalability with reference to DVB-ABR Multicast. There’s a question on avoiding illegal channels being included in service lists which both Peters acknowledge is a conversation ‘in progress’ for which the technical means exist, but speficially how to implement them is still in discussion a lot of which surrounds ways to establish trust between the device and the service list registars.

The Q&A finishes by discussing whether telcos/ISPs are interested in adopting DVB-ABR Muilticast, compatability between DVB-I and HbbTV as well as 5G broadcast mode.

Watch now!
Download the DVB-I Presentation
Download the HbbTV Presentation

Speakers

	Peter MacAvock DVB Chairman Head of Delivery, Platforms and Services, EBU Technology and Development
	Peter Lanigan Senior Manager, Standardisation, TP Vision
	Moderator: Jörn Krieger Freelance Journalist

DVB-TA

Video: The Targeted Advertising opportunity for free-to-air broadcasters

Video: DVB and HbbTV Technologies in TV Systems

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