IBC: MainConcept Combines Immersive Advertising With Encoding Efficiency

MainConcept, a provider of video and audio codecs, is showcasing its new codec-based, server-side ad-technology at IBC (Sept. 15-18, RAI Amsterdam) at Stand 7.C27. The technology empowers broadcasters and video services to embed personalized, overlay ads into a stream, at scale, in a simple, flexible and efficient way.

With MainConcept’s codec-based ad-technology, highly targeted and personalized overlay ads can be embedded, server-side, into the main programming. Personalizing ads may help ensure they are engaging and relevant to the user. Additionally, overlay ads help improve the viewer experience since they don’t interrupt the content like a traditional ad-break, or obstruct the user’s view. For the highest level of ad-immersion, content-specific ad placements are also enabled. The server-side ad-insertion method is device independent so ads can be delivered to any device, even legacy, and adblockers are bypassed which prevents ads from being skipped or forwarded.

MainConcept has reimagined its core codec SDKs for AVC/H.264 and HEVC/H.265, enabling a variety of ad placement options. Its newly released VVC/H.266 SDK is equipped with robust immersive ad placement features for embedding advertisements into both foreground and background video programming. The company says its ad-tech enhanced codec SDKs “combine codec efficiency with extreme flexibility for inserting advertisements in tiled, multi-layered or sliced formats. MainConcept next-generation video SDKs empower advertisers to reach consumers in an endless array of creative display configurations, while maximizing video encoding efficiency to save cost.”

Thomas Kramer, MainConcept VP strategy and business development, said: “In this new era of ad-supported content, broadcasters and video service providers are challenged with keeping viewers engaged, and with delivering highly targeted and personalized ads. Achieving this at scale with server-side ad-insertion techniques has not been feasible before now. MainConcept’s new codec-based ad-technology will help content distributors and service providers improve engagement, unlock monetization opportunities and further help to increase ad revenue.”

As programming via streaming continues to accelerate across major consumer markets, FAST and AVOD content distributors and advertisers need better ways to distinguish their offerings from the competition. MainConcept says its codec-based ad-technology “has the dual advantages of targeting in a less obtrusive way and disabling ad blocks, making it far more likely that the audience segment is exposed to the intended advertisement.”