Leveraging a massive hidden business opportunity
Streaming technology has brought On-Demand Viewing as a new, powerful way for people to enjoy their favorite shows ATAWAD (Anytime, Anywhere, Any Device) everywhere in the world.
Nevertheless, linear remains almost everywhere the primary mean of consuming TV. It is anchored on people’s appointments, like going back from work, and keen on enjoying live-native events, like Sports and News.
This situation translates into a noticeable difference in scale in terms of inventory. For example, in France, while a large broadcaster can yield around 4 to 5 billion impressions available for On-Demand, it will yield around 400 to 500 billion impressions available on Linear, a two-order-of-magnitude difference.
This massive amount of Linear Inventory is sold on a Spot-by-Spot basis, meaning every household will be broadcast the same ads simultaneously. This method feels logical business-wise when products advertised are really aimed contextually at being known by the full population, like sports ads for sports events, for example. It justifies that an advertiser purchases the full audience.
However, it is a huge lost opportunity when ads target a custom-specific socio-demographic, like Women 25-49. In most markets, these targets never reach more than 10% of the audience, making the remaining 90% implicitly or explicitly wasted.
Broadpeak Spot2Spot, available on broadpeak.io and the first implementation of Spot-Level replacement within the flexibility of SSAI, changes the rules of this game. By allowing a broadcaster to technically replace only individual spots within Linear Ad Breaks, like these off-target ones, with more valuable targeted digital ads, it scales up Digital Inventory on the most premium assets (live channels), including in Prime Time, to offer a massive new business opportunity.
Leveraging new SCTE35 decoration
Historically, DAI systems have been working with the SPLICE INSERT mode of the SCTE35 specification, limiting the description of streams to two kinds of messages, CUE OUT and CUE IN, to indicate the beginning and the end of Ad Breaks.
These messages allowed the DAI systems to fill some digital ads in a linear break without knowing the existing linear ad break composition. However, as the number of digital ads is never enough to fill all the linear ad breaks, this degrades the QoE by coming back to linear straight in the middle of a linear ad or showing too long static or animated filler slates.
Spot2Spot leverages the better TIME SIGNAL mode. Streams are described by specific messages indicating the beginning and end of each Linear Ad, allowing swapping one-to-one, replacing only the least valuable, and preserving the QoE. Moreover, reasoning at the level of each spot provides for keeping the competitive separation and integrity of the linear ad break.
Knowing each linear ad, Spot2Spot allows tracking all the advertisements that have not been replaced. Broadcasters can thus know how often each user has seen each ad on linear to optimize the reach and frequency with On-Demand. This can maximize Total Video branding efficiency, ensuring that each advertiser is seen the optimal number of times by the target audience across all video assets.
Spot2Spot can also use the SCTE35 Call Ad Server message, which can be placed up to 15 minutes in advance within the stream. This can smooth the load on all the Advertising stack during the peaks, preventing over-provisioning infrastructures.
Leveraging advanced tech partners
Spot2Spot needs proper SCTE35 decoration upstream and modern Ad Serving downstream to work at full speed. On the SCTE35 decoration, Broadpeak is moving forward with Professional Services and Partners (TV Scheduling and Playout systems, SCTE35 Messages Management systems) to ensure broadcasters can decorate their streams smoothly.
On Ad Serving, Broadpeak works with advanced products, like FreeWheel Hylda and VizNet VizChoice, to give broadcasters the tools to decide commercially which spots to replace technically by Spot2Spot.
Leveraging advanced business partners
Spot-level replacement powered by Broadpeak is one critical opportunity for Broadcasters to work with Operators. Besides DTC streams, where Spot2Spot can be provided directly to Broadcasters, Broadpeak is also actively working with its massive portfolio of Operator customers to power them with Spot2Spot so they are ready to replace the spots commercially identified by Broadcasters, especially thanks to the user data Operators own.
Broadpeak is thus fully engaged in helping Broadcasters and Operators transition legacy TV into the 21st-century Digital Streaming Era.
If you are interested in trying Spot2Spot replacement – which is directly available on broadpeak.io, please reach out to us.
