The arrival of ATSC 3.0/NextGen TV—and its ability to combine broadcast with IP—has the potential to transform TV commercials from one-way mass-market blasts to two-way personalized interactive experiences.
“ATSC 3.0 provides OTA broadcasters the same level of interactivity that you’re seeing with digital content on the web today,” said Anne Schelle, managing director of the Pearl TV broadcaster consortium. “Everything that advertisers can do with digital online, they can now do over the air using ATSC 3.0.”
Dynamic Ad Insertion
The biggest advantage of ATSC 3.0-based TV advertising is its ability to provide sponsors with all of the features offered by online interactive advertising. This advance finally releases broadcast television from the bonds of 20th century one-way TV advertising, which is about as up-to-date as VCRs.
“Online, there's the ability to enable dynamic ad insertion plus things like overlays and interactive application ads where viewers are actually engaging with advertisements,” said Schelle. “When TV stations broadcast in ATSC 3.0 to ATSC 3.0-enabled TV sets connected to the web, all of this interactivity becomes available over the air for live linear broadcasts.”
Ad Insertion Platform Sàrl is a Swiss technology company with 15 years experience in the ad insertion business, and one that is harnessing the advertising possibilities offered by ATSC 3.0 through its ‘Ad Break Composer’ platform.
“This new standard promises more dynamic and interactive experiences for viewers, from higher resolution content and audio quality to personalized ad delivery tailored specifically for each individual viewer,” said Laurent Potesta, CEO and Founder of Ad Insertion Platform Sàrl. “Design-wise, it will enable dynamic ad insertion capabilities as well as the ability to customize ads based on user data such as location or demographics."
An advantage for both broadcaster and viewer is the ability for ATSC 3.0 to reach viewers who are most likely to be receptive to it. With ATSC 3.0, “each viewer gets a targeted ad break for their specific targeting profile,” explained Ahmed Swidan, director of Personalized TV for Ateme. Ateme offers an ATSC 3.0 advertising solution that handles stream signaling from the transcoding side up to fetching, transcoding and stitching ads in ATSC 3.0 live streams. “This increases the monetization potential for the station owners as they are able to split their inventory effectively,” Swidan added.
Meanwhile, ATSC 3.0 retains the mass market reach of 20th century television that the web with its one-to-one service model cannot match. The result: “NextGen TV provides advertisers the same kind of reach they are accustomed to with local broadcasting, while layering-in addressability,” said Kerry G. Oslund, vice president of Strategy and Business Development, for station group The E.W. Scripps Company.
Scripps is already adding ‘Start Over’ and ‘Pause Ads’ functions to some of its programs in support of ATSC 3.0. For example, “a viewer who gets home at 6:10 pm and wants to watch the entire 6 p.m. local news will be able to ‘start over’ after watching a very short sponsorship message,” said Oslund. Display ads will also occur whenever a viewer pauses their video feed under Scripps’ ‘Pause Ads’ feature. As well, “in one market, we have connected programmatic adverts into the VOD content we provide via a broadcast application.”
All told, “ATSC 3.0 will allow station owners to harness the revenue potential of turning their inventory from a linear advertising model to full addressability,” observed Swidan.”This will allow them to fit more campaigns in their inventory, which will in turn increase their revenue.”
In addition to providing TV advertisers with interactivity, addressability, and personalization of their OTA-delivered ads, ATSC 3.0 gives them a superior delivery medium that supports 4K video at up to 120 fps, along with High Dynamic Range (HDR) pictures and superior sound.
“Obviously the actual video content—including the story that it tells—is the key to an effective ad,” said Guy Hadland, CTO of UniSoft Corp. [UniSoft’s A344 interactive content environment can replace content at the receiver level, while allowing broadcasters to gather data on viewer habits and measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.]
It’s the Data
But interactive ads offer many other pluses to broadcasters, Hadland added, including allowing viewers to request further product information via their smartphones, find local dealers/stores related to advertised products in their areas, and even take part in political polls during elections.
The personalized addressability of ATSC 3.0 can also provide accurate real-time information about viewers’ preferences based on their actual content choices and duration of viewing times. Compared to previous ways of measuring local audiences that relied on representative sampling, “NextGen TV will bring stability to the local measurement marketplace,” said Schelle. ”Given that there’s huge value in local TV viewership, I think this will increase the value of local advertising overall.”
Potesta says 3.0 will make broadcasters far more competitive when it comes to providing the data ad companies are used to.
With ATSC 3.0 “advertisers now have access to a wealth of data about viewers’ preferences which they can use to create highly targeted campaigns, as well as dynamic ad insertion technology that enables them to deliver different ads in real-time depending on individual viewer behavior or content being viewed at any given moment,” he explained.
“With this increased level of customization available through ATSC 3.0, advertisers are able to create far more effective campaigns than ever before—ultimately resulting in better ROI for their business investments in television advertising overall.”
