Tuesday, March 6, 2012

SCTE-130 vs IAB VAST (part II)

In the previous blog, I expanded on the major differences between SCTE-130 and IAB VAST.
In this blog, I will continue examine the rest of the major differences between SCTE-130 and IAB VAST.
In the fourth and final installment, I will discuss the upcoming convergence of advertising decision making between the online and cable deployment and how it presents an compelling business opportunity to bridge the gap between SCTE-130 and IAB VAST.

I will discuss the key different between two standards in the following areas,
  • Type and Interactivity with Ads 
  • Complexity 
  • Protocol Format 
  • When to Play Ads 
  • Deployment, Serving Ads, and Tracking Playback events 
  • Targeting and Addressability 
  • Report gathering to improve addressability 
  • Measurement and Operational Efficiency Best Practices 
In this blog, I will discuss the last five areas.

Deployment, Serving Ads and Tracking Playback Events

Ad Ingest
Unlike the online world, where videos can be served from CDN and consumed by video player directly, an ad must be ingested, transcoded, moved to CDN or onto the video server’s local storage, before the ad can be streamed to setup boxes.

Since ADS is an independent component, ADS will not play an ad until the ADS is sure that particular ad has been ingested and moved to storage where it can be streamed by video servers.

When an ad has been fully ingested, the ingest process will notify all subscribing ADSs through CIS notification interface that this particular ad can be placed during an ad break.

Response
IAB VAST response contains direct links to videos, banners, and overlays, which can be downloaded and played by the video player directly.

SCTE-130 response, on the other hand, contains asset and provider ids, information that will be used to identify the actual ingested ad video files to play by the video server.

Deployment
The Ad server is typically deployed on a publicly accessible network and videos and images are deployed on a public accessible CDN.

In SCTE-130 world, most components will be deployed in MSO’s central sites (session manager, SIS, CIS, POIS, ADS), and some (ADM, video server, splicer) will be deployed on the edge sites.

Serving Ads and Tracking Playback Events
IAB VAST
In the online world, ads are hosted on a CDN, streamed by either a media server or Apache server. The video player is responsible for sending playback events to the Ad server at the appropriate event (video start play, first quartile, midpoint, third quartile, and complete) in real time.

SCTE-130
In the cable world, ads can be hosted on a CDN or shared storage and streamed by a video server. The playback tracking events are handled differently for VOD and for linear Ad insertion.

VOD
For VOD insertion, setup box communicates user’s activities (pause, fast forward, etc) to the streaming video server. Video server collects user’s activities for the entire playlist (content and Ads) and uploads the entire playback events to ADM at the end.

LINEAR
For linear ad insertion, ADM collects playback events from the splicer and the streaming video server and the combined results will determine the success or failure of the ad insertion. The playback event is then sent to ADS.

Targeting and Addressability
SCTE-130 provides the following mechanism for targeting and addressability,
  • Subscriber Information System (SIS), a standard interface that exposes subscriber’s demographic and geographic information 
  • A standard way of passing any targeting-related information from ADM to ADS 
IAB VAST does not define such standard and relies on each Ad server to define its own Ad tags.

Report gathering to improve addressability
Report gathering and analysis is relative straightforward, as the video player will report playback tracking information back to the Ad server directly. The Ad server can mine this data and improve addressability based on user's interaction with the ad.

Report gathering for SCTE-130, on the other hand, can be challenging because of the inherited complexity and multiple systems involved. Video server will report back playback information to ADS through ADM for billing purpose but this information really needs to go back to Subscriber Information System (SIS) in order to improve future addressability.

Measurements and Operational Efficiency Best Practices

IAB offers set of comprehensive guidelines on measurements and operational efficiency best practices.
Digital Video

IAB VAST publishes the following guideline for digital video advertising,
  • Digital Video In-Stream Ad Metrics Definitions 
  • Digital Video Ad Measurement Guidelines 
  • Digital Video Ad Format Guidelines & Best Practices
Measurement Guidelines
IAB publishes measurement guidelines for the following,
  • Ad Impression 
  • Ad Campaign 
  • Ad Verification 
  • Audience Reach 
  • Click 
  • Digital Video Ad 
  • Mobile Web Advertising 
  • Rich Media 
  • Rich Internet Application
Operational Efficiency Best Practices
IAB publishes the following operational efficiency best practices,
  • Ad Load Performance 
  • Rich Media Ads in Asynchronous Ad Environment 
  • Billing Methods 
  • Impression Exchange Solutions 
  • Interactive Advertising Workflow 
  • Interactive Campaign Setup 
  • Revenue Cycle 

Sunday, March 4, 2012

SCTE-130 vs. IAB VAST (Part I)

In the previous blog, I gave a brief introduction to SCTE-130 and IAB VAST. In this blog and next, I will expand on the major differences between SCTE-130 and IAB VAST. In the fourth and final installment, I will discuss the upcoming convergence of advertising decision making between the online and cable deployment and how it presents an interesting business opportunity to bridge the gap between SCTE-130 and IAB VAST.
I will discuss the key different between two standards in the following areas,
  • Type and Interactivity with Ads
  • Complexity
  • Protocol Format
  • When to Play Ads
  • Deployment, Serving Ads, and Tracking Playback events
  • Targeting and Addressability
  • Report gathering to improve addressability
  • Measurement and Operational Efficiency Best Practices
In this blog, I will discuss the first three areas.

Type and Interactivity with Ads

SCTE-130 standard is video centric and relies on EBIF standard to provide interactivity with ads through setup box.
IAB VAST standard supports video, interactive ads, banners, and overlays. IAB defines video player’s interactivity with ads through IAB VPAID standard.

Complexity

IAB VAST

The IAB VAST standard defines the correspondence between a video player and Ad servers. Here are the components in an IAB VAST deployment,
·         Millions of online video players
·         Ad servers
·         CDN that hosts videos, images, Flash files, Silverlight files
·         Media servers or Apache servers

SCTE-130

On the other hand, SCTE-130 standard consists of the following core components,
·         Ad Management Service (ADM)
·         Ad Decision Service (ADS)
·         Placement Opportunity Information System (POIS)
·         Content Information System (CIS)
·         Subscriber Information System (SIS)
Each core components can be developed and deployed independently, and most times they are from different vendors.
To add to the complexity, these core components need to communicate with the following external systems to carry out the Ad insertion,

Systems
Description
SCTE-130 Core Components
Session Manager
Session Manager is responsible for setting up video sessions on behalf of the setup box
ADM
Video Server
Video Server streams/broadcast videos to setup box
ADM
Splicer
A piece of equipment that can perform frame-accurate ad splicing into network broadcast streams
ADM

All these systems must work together to carry an ad insertion event and this is the challenge SCTE-130 attempts to address. This is why SCTE-130 is such a complicated and overarching standard.

Protocol Format

Both SCTE-130 and IAB VAST use XML based protocol. However, IAB VAST does not define a standard request message, only suggested Ad tags that describes duration, player format, height, width, bandwidth, and supported downloading method. SCTE-130, on the other hand, uses XML as both request and response messages.

When to Play Ads

SCTE-130

In cable deployment environment for VOD content, the session manager will request the entire playlist with Ads filled in from ADM during the session setup time. A SCTE-130 playlist response looks like the following, assuming VOD content has no embedded Ads in it,

  1. Play pre-roll Ad video1 (30 seconds)
  2. Play pre-roll Ad video2 (30 seconds)
  3. Play VOD content 0-30 minutes
  4. Play mid-roll Ad video3 (30 seconds)
  5. Play mid-roll Ad video4 (30 seconds)
  6.  Play VOD content 30-60 minutes (end of the content)
  7.  Play post-roll Ad video5 (30 seconds)
  8. Play post-roll Ad video6 (30 seconds)
Clearly SCTE-130 response contains information on when to play ads. When the session manager receives the playlist, the session manager will hand over the playlist to the video server, which will stream the content and ads to the subscriber.

IAB VAST

IAB VAST standard does not contain information on when to play ads so it is up to the player or a different standard (MAST) to decide when to play the returned ads. Typically the VAST response is played right away by the player. In contrast to cable deployment scenario, where the entire playlist is constructed at the beginning of the playback, the online video player must be aware of each ad break in the VOD or linear content and makes IAB VAST request and plays VAST response at the appropriate ad break time.