BROADBAND VIDEO ADVERTISING 101 The web audience’s eyes are already on broadband THE ADVERTISING CHALLENGES OF video, making the player and the surrounding areas the ONLINE PUBLISHERS perfect real estate for advertising. This paper focuses on what publishers need to know about online advertising in Why put advertising on your broadband video? When order to meet their business goals and adapt as the online video plays on a site, the user’s attention is largely drawn advertising environment shifts. away from other content areas on the page and is focused on the video. The player, therefore, is a premium spot for advertising, and this inventory space commands a premium price. But adding advertising to your online video involves a lot of moving parts and many decisions. You need to consider the following: • What types and placements of ads do you want? • How do you count the ads that are viewed? • How do you ensure that the right ad gets shown to the right viewer? Luckily, there are many vendors that can help publishers fill up inventory, manage their campaigns, and get as much revenue from their real estate as possible. This paper focuses on the online advertising needs of the publisher and the services that can help them meet their advertising goals. THE VIDEO PLATFORM COMCASTTECHNOLOGYSOLUTIONS.COM | 800.844.1776 | © 2017 COMCAST TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS ONLINE VIDEO ADS: THE BASICS AD TYPES You have many choices in how you combine ads with your content. The best ads are whatever engages your consumers, keeps them on your site, and makes them click. To find the best mix of formats, work with your campaign management system to see what mix of formats drives click-through rate. AD TYPE DESCRIPTION Bumper Bumpers are short ads at either the beginning or end of a video that can take the consumer to a different website or bring up another video when clicked. Bug Bugs are graphics that overlay the video and take the consumer to a different website when clicked. Companion Companion ads typically run alongside the video player and provide consistent visibility of the ad throughout the viewing experience. Contextual Ad Contextual ads are matched to videos based on metadata in a video, providing greater relevancy to the consumer. Linear Video Ad A linear video ad is shown before, while, or after the consumer watches the video. Types of linear ads include pre-rolls, takeovers, and bumpers. Lower-third Lower-third ads overlie a horizontal section at the bottom of the video. Mid-roll Mid-roll ads playing during a designated time during video content viewing. Non-linear Video Ad Non-linear video ads run concurrently with the video content so that consumers see the ad while watching the video. Types of non-linear ads include overlays and companion ads. Overlay Overlay ads display over the video content. Post-roll Post-roll ads play after the video content finishes playing. Pre-roll Pre-roll ads play before the video content starts playing. Takeover Takeover ad units do just that; they overlie or “take over” the entire player window or hosting page. Telescope Telescope ads involve a “hot” area of a video that when clicked, send the user to another site or display greater detail on the advertised product. As new ad formats emerge, you don’t want to be stranded first visible to the end user. In the case of video ads, additional with a broadband video management solution that can’t beacons can be sent throughout the playback of the ad to support them. Advertisers will benefit from customized and measure how much of the ad the end user watched. unique ad experiences, so be ready to respond by setting up a flexible media management framework that lets you Before you engage a campaign management vendor, be quickly adapt your video player to new demands. sure that you understand how they count impressions and are comfortable interpreting the results. You can learn HOW ADS ARE COUNTED about efforts to standardize impression counting from the Each time a consumer looks at a video ad, it counts as Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). an “impression.” Systems for measuring impressions are complicated and vary widely. Several methods for ad counting AD POLICIES are in use on the Internet today, some of which involve the use Video ad policies define when ads are allowed to play (pre- of “beacons.” A beacon is a request for a piece of content roll, mid-roll, between content clips, or post-roll), how often that is designated as a tracking asset (and often is never seen they’re played, from which source the ads are served, and by the end user) sent to the ad counter when ad content is to whom the ads are displayed. THE VIDEO PLATFORM COMCASTTECHNOLOGYSOLUTIONS.COM | 800.844.1776 | © 2017 COMCAST TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS You set up ad policies in your video management system, the advertiser’s web landing page), completed play, time your ad server, or in a dedicated ad policy system. When a spent viewing, and percent complete. video is played, the player checks the policies and asks the ad server for an ad that meets the policy’s requirements. For example, you can set a frequency policy that, if a video AD VENDORS AND TECHNOLOGIES is under five minutes, the player let a second video run and AD NETWORKS then insert a pre-roll ad before the third video. For longer Advertisers go to an ad network and buy a set number videos, you can set a policy to pause the video at chapter of impressions, and publishers go to ad networks to fill points to insert a mid-roll video ad, or to display overlay their inventory. An ad network aggregates inventory from a ads throughout the video. large number of publishers, and then sells it to advertisers. Advertisers want to get their ads on as many sites as If you’re using more than one ad server or campaign possible as easily as possible, and an ad network spreads management system, policies can control which ad their ads across web. Both publishers and advertisers servers the player calls, and in what order. And if your benefit from not having to spend resources on establishing system collects demographic data for your audience, you many individual relationships with partners. can set policies on what types of ads to show, say, East Coast women from ages 35 to 50. For broadband video advertising, advertisers and publishers use ad networks that specialize in video ads. Video ad It’s important to set ad policies which maximize revenue networks facilitate third-party ad serving by taking video without fatiguing your audience and causing viewers to ads and translating them into code that the publisher’s leave the stream before the end of the content. online player understands, a much more involved process than simply populating a space on a web site with a static METADATA display ad. Effective advertising is relevant, compelling, and non-intrusive to the audience. Your best campaign starts with data, so Most video ad networks charge for ads based on CPM, think about your advertising goals when you manage your but there are also pricing models that are based on CPA video content so as to prepare more useful data for your (the advertiser pays on cost per action, e.g., when a target advertising partners and technologies. They’ll have more clicks on something specific or registers) and CPC (the to work with if you tag your video with metadata that they advertiser pays for every ad click). can use to improve the matching of ads to your content. AD SERVERS If the metadata you add for your advertising is packaged Video ad servers are technologies that handle policy together with your video and all other metadata, then management, including those for ad type or format, frequency, when a consumer plays your video, the player gathers the and targeting. They often offer reporting features so you can metadata, passes it back to the video player, which hands get data on impressions, clicks, and other user activity. it to the campaign management system as targeting data to help it select the most appropriate ad. Ad servers give the publisher code to add to their player that tells a user’s browser to call the ad server for an ad. Categories like sports or news, titles, and short- or long- Then the ad server delivers ads that meet advertisers’ form are common ad tags that the ad server uses. Your criteria, which can include format, which ad to show, and video management system shouldn’t limit the metadata when to show it. Criteria can also include audience age, you can create, and it should be easy to generate the data gender, geographic location, etc. you and your advertising experts require to make decisions on ad placement to create the most valuable campaigns. Many publishers use multiple video ad servers. Usually an initial video ad request is made through a primary ad Typical impression measurements include initial view, video server, and then the player or the primary server redirects click through (when the user clicks an ad and is taken to to a secondary server. THE VIDEO PLATFORM COMCASTTECHNOLOGYSOLUTIONS.COM | 800.844.1776 | © 2017 COMCAST TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS Video ad serving is different from display ad serving in that video ads are placed directly where the viewer is looking at content, and therefore the ads can be more intrusive. Therefore, it’s important that an ad server be capable of functions such as setting the interval length of ad display (frequency capping) and showing the most relevant ad to the viewer (targeting).