The Value of Getting Ad Insertion Right

It seems that the conversation on the growth in OTT is an old one - except it isn’t. OTT continues to strengthen, gaining more subscribers every week. As this happens, broadcasters are providing OTT capabilities alongside their traditional TV platforms, making targeted ad insertion even more crucial in the modern TV landscape.

For both OTT and linear TV, advertisements are the key broadcast revenue stream. In recent years, targeted advertising has been one of the strongest ways to generate more revenue as the advertisement is likely to be interacted with, and therefore, more valuable. Ads can be targeted based on location and viewer profile if the metadata has been applied correctly.

Why Replace Ads?

So, why replace advertisements in OTT? Because it boosts revenue, whether it’s pure linear TV, linear to OTT or pure OTT. To make the ad slots as valuable as possible, broadcasters need to make them audience-relevant to increase the likelihood of engagement. However, with OTT, advertisements can become outdated as content can be viewed past the original airing date. Super Bowl ads may not make sense well after the event and may disengage viewers, reducing advertisement value.

Rights issues can also make OTT advertisements unusable. If a broadcaster has advert rights for a linear stream only, including the ad in OTT breaches that legal agreement. To fix this, you can replace the advertisement (preferred), or black out the content.

Replacing ads according to personal preferences and profiles makes advertising all the more appealing. This very personalized service generates additional value for all, including the consumer, and the advertiser and all providers, both linear TV and OTT, should be exploring this possibility. 

Why replace advertisements in OTT? Because it boosts revenue.

Why replace advertisements in OTT? Because it boosts revenue.

Targeted Advertising

Not only should broadcasters replace irrelevant ads, but they should be targeting new ones based on context . For example, if a viewer is watching baseball, then ads for sports gear, or a popular trainer brand is more likely to catch the viewer’s attention than other types. In addition, this advertising can be geo-targeted.

This is even more useful for OTT as consumers watch on mobile devices and engagement, such as ad skipping or clicking, can be tracked. This gathered data helps to further target the correct audiences for those ads, increasing the ad slot value, and generating more revenue.

Importance of Generating Worth

Adding OTT platforms alongside linear TV can be seen as expensive, time-consuming and difficult to manage. However, with proper replacement and targeted advertisements, generating revenue can be easily accomplished. This can help cover the cost of reformatting for OTT, plus retain audiences with personalized viewing experiences.

This is also important for pure OTT providers, especially since ads can often be the only revenue source. For both traditional linear providers adding OTT services, and pure OTT providers, offering targeted advertisements has the potential for a television experience far beyond that of linear TV.

The Right Metadata

To replace adverts with ones that are targeted, you need the right metadata. The correct application and automation of metadata makes all the difference.

To seamlessly replace one advert with another, content aggregators need to know the exact start and end times of the segment being replaced. Metadata in the form of industry standard SCTE 104 and SCTE 35 can accurately mark the first and last frames of ads in linear content. This needs to be seamless and undetectable to viewers, and fully automatic, delivered by a system that can identify in advance when ads need to be replaced. A system with these capabilities can make linear programming delivered via OTT achieve its full revenue potential.

The Right Technology

You may think that targeted and dynamic ad insertion isn’t widely deployed because its labor intensive, with extensive time required to insert metadata markers and format content. However, current technology now can automatically insert accurate metadata at the outset, thereby enabling all consequential actions of ad replacement.

Targeted advertising is no longer unachievable, as the technology is there to fulfill the consumer demand for true ad engagement. 

Roger Franklin, CEO, Crystal

Roger Franklin, CEO, Crystal

You might also like...

Remote Contribution At NAB 2025

The technology required to get high quality content from the venue to the viewer for live sports production remains an area of intense research and development, so there will be plenty of innovation and expertise in this area on the…

Playout Monitoring & Compliance At NAB 2025

Automation, interoperability, and scaling are overarching themes at NAB 2025, associated with continued progression of hybrid video services that are tilting more and more towards streaming. For monitoring and compliance, this means increasing integration across the whole workflow and content lifecycle,…

Streaming Delivery At NAB 2025

Hybrid workflows combining cloud and on-premise systems, and application of AI for personalization, are major streaming themes for NAB 2025. There is an even stronger focus on remote production than at previous shows, especially for live sports. Security of live streams…

OTA TV Transmission At NAB 2025

It is time to consider the state of the US TV Transmission industry and how this might be reflected on the NAB 2025 show floor.

Channel Creation & Playout At NAB 2025

Playout is moving to the public cloud as broadcasters take this next step in their strategies for master control, even as some analytics functions are being drawn back towards on premise systems. This will be reflected by the offerings and…