13 YOUR TAKE Yospace
enough: ad stitching tech should act as middleware between a broadcasters’ video delivery workflow and the ad decisioning or programmatic ecosystem. As such it must be fully interoperable, but independent of these other platforms to ensure long-term success (more on this below). The DAI platform must support the open IAB VAST standard, versions 3.0 and 4.0. One of the biggest selling points of DAI is accurate and real-time measurement. Given current industry standards for measurement, where practical, an SDK in the client should fire tracking pixels back to the originating ad server, defaulting to server-side reporting where client-side isn’t possible (as is the case with a number of connected TVs). RELIABILITYAT SCALE Even if you achieve one-to-one addressability within a seamless viewing experience, achieving it at scale is another matter. Any form of advanced targeting dictates that millions of ad calls must be made per ad break. One of the latest innovations for live streaming in this regard is pre-fetch, which allows ad calls to be made in advance, even if it’s not clear when the next ad break will be. The most valuable ad breaks are often the most complex to leverage. Sports events are often very dynamic in that ad breaks are
timed according to the state of play (after a touch-down or time-out) or are unplanned (extra time in a football match). However, the most difficult ad breaks to unlock are often the most valuable, and your DAI provider must be able to support all these more demanding use cases, and at scale. IT IS VERY, VERY IMPORTANT THAT YOUR DAI PROVIDER IS AGNOSTIC TO THIRD-PARTY SYSTEMS other functionality, such as ‘non-linear startover’, or live rewind. There is increasing talk in the industry about reducing ad loads (while maintaining
revenues through targeting) to cater for younger viewers who are being brought up on ad-free experiences. Adaptable ad policies can be managed through a ‘stream management’ provider on a per viewer basis, but only if the streams are personalised rather than just segmented. Broadcasters are beginning to position their OTT products for mainstream adoption, and this marks a new era for the concept of television and TV advertising. With it comes a huge opportunity to excite viewers and greatly enhance the value of television. With the right DAI partner this will drive engagement for many years to come.
FUTURE-PROOFING The most advanced DAI providers are often recognised as ‘stream management’ specialists rather than simply ad stitching enablers, due to the level of integration required with a broadcaster’s end-to-end workflow. It is very, very important that your DAI provider is agnostic to third- party systems along the way – you don’t want future strategic decisions regarding data management, programmatic or ad- decisoning to be compromised by ‘stream management’ being inextricably tied to your decisioning or programmatic workflow. ‘Stream management’ also recognises
* SCTE-35, aka Digital Program Insertion Cueing Message for Cable, is the SMPTE standard that supports the splicing of content into live streams
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