For FAST Channels, Server-Side Ad Insertion Is A Potent Revenue Tool

Broadcasters have more ways to get their content in front of consumers than ever, and those distribution opportunities are expanding rapidly, but it is important they can monetize them as effectively as broadcast TV or streamed linear channels, catch-up TV and boxsets in their own BVOD.

With free ad-supported TV (FAST), broadcasters can raise the market-wide quality bar with their tier-one content, often harnessing existing program rights. Broadcaster FAST can complement BVOD line-ups or Smart TV FAST offerings. An important subset of FAST is the pop-up channel, which can expand coverage of a live event like a sports tournament.

The broadcasters’ point of differentiation is their ability to deliver the same high-quality user experience in FAST as found on their flagship linear channels (streamed and broadcast), allowing them to maintain their CPM rates. That points to them extending their server-side advertising insertion (SSAI) capabilities to this new distribution type, ensuring seamless, frame accurate ad insertion regardless of device.

However, with audience numbers likely to be lower than on standard linear channels, the key is to harness SSAI cost-effectively. The right kind of vendor business model will help. For example, you can treat FAST viewing capacity (measured in concurrent viewers) and impressions as part of a whole alongside standard streamed linear.

Pop-up channels will benefit from highly automated streaming and SSAI infrastructure to spin-up, monetize and then close down channels. With the right approach, the incremental cost for broadcasters of a new FAST channel that is monetized using SSAI can be very low.

When adding a new platform to harness SSAI, you need some interoperability testing of the video decoding. Beyond that, the broadcasters’ existing SSAI monitoring and telemetry can be leveraged to ensure an optimized viewing experience while maximizing the commercial opportunity offered by these new endpoints.

The final challenge is to ensure accurate advertising measurement. This can either be achieved through integration of the same ad-measurement SDKs used for existing SSAI monetization or accurate server-side tracking options for live streaming modes that streamlines testing and validation across multiple devices.

Another important opportunity for broadcasters is start-over viewing during live or other linear television. Historically, the monetization opportunities associated with these modes of consumption were limited in the event that viewers were scrubbing around while viewing until they catch up with live. Now, monetization of these viewing experiences is becoming possible.

The big change is support for interstitials in HLS and XLink in DASH. Today, to efficiently deliver scrubbable start-over user experiences, the latter requires a client plug-in ahead of specification ratifications delivering consistent player support for XLink. With HLS interstitials, historic ad breaks (those that were shown to the live audience, but which are now in the past) are only resolved (with ad calls and ad decisioning) when a start-over viewer reaches them.

Before interstitial support, an SSAI solution would have required that historic ad breaks were resolved at the beginning of the start-over session, but this is inefficient and would have broken both direct and programmatic sales models because there was no guaranteed impression afterwards. This is because historic breaks were resolved for all viewers regardless of if that viewer chose to scrub back in time. Even if they were to scrub, back then there was, of course, no guarantee a viewer would reach the break and so convert the ad decision to an ad impression.

Now, start-over can also be added to the list of new endpoints where broadcasters can efficiently serve their content with SSAI. It confirms the universality of SSAI as a way to monetize broadcaster content in the digital age.

Tim Sewell is CEO of Yospace.