In the past year, I have been involved in building next
generation advertising solutions based on SCTE-130 and IAB VAST standard. I
have been asked countless times of what these standards are for and how they have
been adopted. This blog is my attempt to give a brief introduction to SCTE-130
and IAB VAST, discuss how each standard is adopted in today’s advertising
industry. In a second blog, I will discuss how these standards are different
and discuss the possible convergence of both standards.
SCTE-130
What is SCTE-130
SCTE-130 is a standard from The Society of Cable
Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) aiming to build a unified platform for
addressable advertising. SCTE-130 standard consists of a set of XML based
protocols and will work in traditional cable deployment, i.e. setup boxes, for
both linear and VOD programming.
Core Elements in SCTE-130
SCTE-130 consists of the following core elements and each of
them plays a crucial part in selecting, playing, and tracking an ad.
Core Element
|
What does it do?
|
Ad Management Service (ADM)
|
Initiating ad insertion request to ADS
Reporting activity events (whether ad was successfully
placed, if the ad was skipped, etc)
|
Ad Decision service (ADS)
|
Deciding which ad to play
|
Content Information System
(CIS)
|
Storing availability of an ad
|
Placement Opportunity
Information System (POIS)
|
Storing the opportunities to place an ad
|
Subscriber Information System
(SIS)
|
Storing subscriber related information, like demographic,
geographic information
|
Who services Ads
Once a decision has been made on what ads to insert, the insertion
device will insert the ads in the right place and will report back the activity
events (whether ad was successfully placed, how much of the ad was viewed, paused,
skipped, etc) to ADM.
Basic Flow for Ad Placement Decision and Tracking
In the following section, we will show the basic flow for
two different types of ad insertions, VOD and schedule-based linear ad
insertion.
VOD Ad Insertion
Schedule-based Linear Ad Insertion
Linear Ad insertion is typically based on a schedule that
contains what Ad to play within a specific time window on a particular channel.
For example, when an Ad placement opportunity comes in between 7-7:30 PM, play
the soda ad.
IAB VAST
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) is comprised of
more than 500 leading media and technology companies that are responsible for
selling 86% of online Advertising in the United States.
What is IAB VAST
IAB’s Digital Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) is designed
to standardize the communication protocol between online video player and Ad
services.
What is in IAB VAST
- Defines a standard ad response for in-stream video
- Includes guidance for most on-demand video players (i.e., Adobe’s Flash, Microsoft’s Silverlight and Real Player)
- Includes accommodations for linear video and interactive ads (e.g.”pre-roll”) as well as non-linear ads such as clickable banners and overlays
- How to track ad playback
Who serves Ads
Online video player (Flash or Silverlight) is the one that
carries out the actual Ad insertion.
Basic Flow for Ad Placement Decision and Tracking
What is not in IAB VAST
In contrast to SCTE-130 standard, IAB VAST defines what Ads
to play, but not when to play it. It is up to the player to decide when to
insert the Ads. The Media Abstract Sequencing Template (MAST) format
specification proposed by Akamai is an attempt to address the sequencing of
in-stream advertising content.
In short, VAST standard defines what Ads to play and MAST
standard defines when to play Ads.
MAST has been widely supported by Flash Strobe Media
Framework as well Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework.
