February 7, 2012

Latest Interop Gathering Targets Dynamic VOD Ads

At the most recent interoperability event hosted by CableLabs, participants focused on the integration of national and local advertising content and the delivery of specific viewer-relevant messages within video-on-demand (VOD) sessions.

 â€¨In its continuing effort to support the advancement of advertising technology and specifications, the CableLabs Ad Lab hosted an Advertising Interop that included seven participants, each of which contributed such infrastructure as ad decision managers (ADMs) and ad decision servers (ADS). They also demonstrated interoperability over a variety of use cases in dynamic insertion of advertising into VOD content.
 

Canoe Ventures demonstrated its national VOD Dynamic Ad Insertion platform as a key benchmark for participating suppliers. BlackArrow touted its Advanced Advertising System to highlight important workflow capabilities, including:

>> Support for national and local ad splits via Stewardship and Fulfillment Interfaces (SaFI) Campaign Information Package (CIP) ingest, and SCTE 130 real-time ad-routing;
>> Mid-roll support via the BlackArrow Placement Opportunity Information Service (POIS) and Content Information Service (CIS) product modules; and
>> A modular, scalable SCTE 130-based solution set for advanced advertising.


Additional participants included:  Avail-TVN, Harris Corp., Nagra-OpenTV, SeaChange International Inc. and This Technology. Each provided encoding and metadata preparation using Web-based software solutions for an inventory of entertainment content and ad spots.

Key achievements made at the Interop included:


>> The ADM and ADS systems were able to identify ad placement opportunities within a VOD listing, draw from the inventory of advertising inventory, and dynamically place the most relevant ad in either a pre-roll, mid-roll or post-roll location.
>> Placement opportunity, content and subscriber information systems were involved to select the most relevant ad to be played out to the specific subscriber.
>> Using multiple ad decision servers and a decision router, ads were dynamically placed from national, regional or local inventories as defined by the placement opportunity information.
>> A number of participant combinations were integrated for the first time during this Interop, demonstrating the value of the CableLabs SCTE 130 profile – a defined series of interfaces and processes for supporting addressable advertising delivery – and the CableLabs Document Profile Architecture that streamlines the testing and validation process for SCTE 130-compliant technologies by allowing developers to emulate multi-platform architectures.  
>> SCTE 130 messaging was demonstrated between systems using the IPv6 addressing protocol.

All of these steps used the SCTE 130 interface standards that define interfaces between logical components of an advanced advertising system supporting linear, on-demand and DVR delivery platforms, and enabling granular levels of addressability.
 

“This CableLabs event demonstrated that MSOs’ systems, enabled by leading technology providers, are ready to handle national and local inventory splits for VOD advertising,” comments Arthur Orduna, chief product officer at Canoe Ventures. “This is a milestone along the path to delivering the appropriate operational support for nationally stewarded VOD advertising, which will enhance the value of the platform for programmers and advertisers alike.” 
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Added Paul Woidke, chairman of SCTE’s DVS Working Group 5 and senior vice president and general manager/Advanced Advertising at Nagra-OpenTV, “By coming together in the CableLabs setting, we continue to validate the SCTE 130 advertising interface standard with a particular focus on the VOD revenue opportunities which cable operators are poised to exploit.”

“By having multiple participants bring their routers, servers and other infrastructure, we were able to replicate an environment that would be valuable to a cable operator,” concluded Rob Klippel, vice president/New Products & Operations at Comcast Spotlight.  “This event demonstrated that national, regional and local advertising opportunities can be served from multiple sources and coexist within a single VOD session.”