At NAB Show, a number of exhibitors are offering technology designed to help broadcasters generate additional revenue in a changing advertising market.
Traditional linear broadcast is becoming more digital, opening new opportunities for more sophisticated advertising that can help monetize content as it is distributed to multiple platforms.
“It’s certainly a pivotal time,” Emily Boucher, staff product manager at Brightcove, said. “Preserving the overall viewer experience is going to be top of mind. The industry is still working to perfect its ad-insertion technology.”
Beyond that, digital technology offers personalization and targeting, especially on connected TV, where standards are still being developed.
DATA’S KEY PART
“Data is starting to play a big role,” she said. Brightcove’s Ad Insights product is designed to bridge the gap between viewer engagement with content and what’s happening in the ad server. For example, by collecting metrics on viewer engagement and tolerance for ads, the length and frequency of commercial breaks can be adjusted.
“I think ad insights are certainly a differentiator and an area that we are really looking to extend into continuous product development,” Boucher said.
“None of this is easy,” she added. “There’s a misconception that you can do this with a click of a button. There’s still a lot under the hood that goes into it.” And even once the technology is in place, she said, it continues to evolve.
LTN is focusing on network-based media enrichment, according to Malik Khan, co-founder and executive chairman. Creating content is expensive, and to monetize it, you must put it on multiple platforms and create customized ad opportunities for each stream.
“It has to be network-based because you have to bring content in on a mass scale, reliably and distribute it in a customized way,” Khan said. “If you’re data processing-centric and you don’t pay attention to the network side, your costs go through the roof.”
Serving ads in those multiple streams is based on signals, which requires inserting metadata and triggers into the content early in the production process, said Brad Wall, LTN’s chief technology officer.
“What we’ve been focused on a lot the last year and a half is creating services inside of our network, things that traditionally needed to be at the broadcast center and at the integrated receiver decoder [set-top box or satellite receiver] at the other end,” Wall said.
Traditional broadcast and digital video are becoming more similar. “The baked-in ad pod and the baked-in spot inside of a linear broadcast, those days are sort of dwindling,” he said. “The idea is that you can monetize your content in a more dynamic way. We’ve been talking about this for over 15 years, but it is really maturing rapidly and that will be the revenue gold standard of the future.”
Automation is a big part of making that happen, replacing human-to-human communications with machine-to-machine interactions, Wall said.
That’s particularly true when televising sports. Automation and artificial intelligence will be able to determine quickly what ads should run when there’s an injury timeout or some other stoppage. “They happen when they happen,” Khan said. “You can’t schedule them.”
ALL ABOUT AUDIENCE
Ad-tech company Showseeker also sees the traditional and digital TV worlds converging.
“While viewership is increasingly fragmented, both broadcast and MVPDs are on a path to convergence as the entire industry works toward a more unified, audience-based approach to selling advertising,” CEO Ed Hardy said.
“We expect this trend of audience-based selling to be a major discussion point, especially as industry leaders look to modernize their tech stack, reduce costs and improve operational efficiencies.”
ShowSeeker is displaying its all-in-one Pilot campaign and order management platform.
“The entire television industry needs improved, faster and more automated technology that can support this new era of buying and selling advertising,” Hardy said.
Measurement company Comscore is an NAB Show exhibitor. Frank Friedman, chief data and analytics officer and head of cross-plartform measurement, expects discussions about the new multicurrency ecosystem beyond just the Nielsen ratings and what that means for the future of television, streaming included.
Comscore is hosting a panel and cocktail reception. It has invited industry leaders and change-makers to unpack the benefits and collateral damage of the local media revolution and to pave the way for next-gen audience measurement.
“With perspectives from both sides of the fence, the discussion will focus on redefining our industry glossary around currency vs. currency accreditation, linear channels vs. programmatic pipes, and the noise in Big Data vs. the role of digital tech in revitalizing the local ecosystem,” Friedman said.
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