February 11, 2010

CMC Improves Ad Delivery

The Comcast Media Center (CMC) has upgraded its AdDelivery product to fully automate the delivery of ads.

“I think you’d be surprised that there’s still a lot of manual work,” said Gary Traver, SVP and COO with the CMC, referring to the processes involved in the ad distribution chain.

He said Radiance, a company the CMC purchased more than a year ago, allows for efficient and secure delivery of very large files over the public Internet. Radiance’s technology takes ads from ad agencies and post-production houses and electronically delivers them to cable systems and broadcast networks.

In addition, the CMC is working with Telestream’s product AdManager, which transforms content from one format to another and interfaces from one device to another. Telestream understands the metadata that is sent along with the ad and transforms it into play-to-air format “with no human hands touching it,” said Traver.

“Because we’re using the Internet, we’re able to send many versions of ads to many different locations in unicast format that allows for advertisers to create variations by geographic region,” he said. “That’s AdDelivery.”

But the CMC’s AdDelivery is just one technology Comcast Corporation is using to address advanced advertising.

Last year, BlackArrow announced it was working with Comcast to dynamically insert ads into its VOD programming in its approximately 500,000-sub Jacksonville, FL, system. (For more, click here.)

“BlackArrow is helping with scheduling and trafficking of placement of ads,” said Traver. “We’re delivering the media.”

He said improvements like those the CMC has made with AdDelivery are just one part of the chain that’s necessary to make interactive advertising possible, and that the CMC is working very closely with Comcast Spotlight, the advertising sales division of Comcast.

Smaller systems

Sunflower Broadband, an operator in Lawrence, KS, uses the CMC’s HITS AxIS in conjunction with SeaChange’s AdPulse product to dynamically place ads in its VOD content. (For more, click here.)

Traver said HITS Axis is a network-based interactive TV system, designed to help small- and medium-size operators enter the interactive TV space. At some point, Ad Delivery and HITS AxIS might converge, he added.

–Linda Hardesty