Missed the live session on 22nd April: Watch On Demand

Given the current global context and ‘stay-at-home’ culture many of us are experiencing, it’s clear that appetite for media content will not abate anytime soon. Even prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, the media industry has been shifting monetization options to accommodate this demand in order to deliver a more personalized and relevant video experience to the widest range of consumers. The traditional cable and satellite pay-TV bundles have been joined by subscription video on demand (SVOD), advertising-led VOD (AVOD) and a new generation of blended models.

To improve the experience for both subscribers and advertisers, targeted advertising is growing – alongside adverts that are tailored more closely to the content, viewer demographics and even the device. There are now more opportunities than ever before for content to provide viewers with richer and deeper targeted ads coupled with data and reporting. As the world of TV advertising meets the internet, we can see that an ever-increasing amount of Direct To Consumer (DTC) and TV Everywhere (TVE) multi-screen services offered by broadcasters and operators are enabling advertisers to move from traditional “one-to-many” linear approaches to “one-to-one” session-based conversations with targeted audiences in a high value premium TV environment. Such targeting is being achieved thanks to high quality, first-party data inherited from long-standing relationships with end-users.

MediaKind’s Advertising and Alternate Content capabilities

Innovations such as interactivity are starting to become more common on all video mediums. The overarching trend is that advertising management, delivery and ultimately monetization needs to get smarter. Another requirement is that the process must be flexible enough to deal with the local regulatory requirements and technical hurdles that come from increasingly international distribution. Additionally, the complexity behind implementing these agreements is de-multiplied by the number of criteria that drive such deals (zip codes, device types). This results in millions of possible combinations that require careful management, particularly in the case of large US operators.

With these driving forces in mind, both OTT and traditional broadcasters are gravitating towards smart and highly scalable cloud-ready platforms that can simplify linear ad replacement, and dynamic ad insertion that work across existing workflows. Our advertising and alternate content capabilities, for instance, achieve such goals, fully leveraging existing industry standards to avoid lock-in situations for our customers (see below).

The importance of leveraging industry-standards

As the media landscape becomes more complex with the surge of new OTT based services, multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) must continue to offer natural value-adds to advertisers. For this, global standards will be critical for MVPDs looking to successfully manage programmatic advertising workflows. Given the complexity behind handling distribution rights agreements, it will become increasingly vital that the industry adopts and supports key video standards such as the SCTE-224 standard, which is now regarded as the most advanced and standardized data model dedicated to distribution rights.

Today, SCTE-224 is being very rapidly adopted by both broadcasters (as a way to define such rights) and by operators (as a way to enforce these rights) – this is particularly evident in the US. Moving forward, the combination of SCTE-35 to handle-in band signaling and SCTE-224 for processing out-of-band rules (such as blackout and program substitution) will be vital for easy deployment and implementations.

However, each local market must also be catered for. For example, in the US, the need to support SCTE130-3 to handle the flow of data between any utilized Ad Management Service (ADM) and an Ad Decision Service (ADS) is a must. Having the key technology in place is a requisite for operators but almost as important is the ability to adapt in line with the market. Even with a crystal ball, it is difficult to predict how consumers will gravitate towards different types of content consumption models. And with the current global health crisis temporarily impacting traditional TV heavy hitters such as sports and weekly soap operas, operators need to be ready to react to the shifting needs of consumers and advertisers as quickly as possible.

Join MediaKind’s webinar on April 22, 2020!

We have recently launched a new application paper, titled ‘Unifying Advertising and Alternate content across Broadcast & IP Networks’). Within it we look at the various different use cases and applications that can be applied, including viewing rights, placement management, media composing and advanced TV advertising.

And on Wednesday April 22 2020, 3pm BST/7am PDT I will be presenting this paper, looking at some of the aforementioned advertising and distribution rights related challenges but also how these new approaches enable exciting opportunities for monetizing services. Learn more about MediaKind’s PRISMA products, and how they are designed to unlock the full revenue potential for content distributed over any network, while protecting against constantly evolving challenges introduced by a digital world. I hope you will be able to join me for the session next week – I am ready to take any of your questions!

Missed the live session on 22nd April: Watch On Demand