Last updated: 04/21/05
Local Commercial Insertion
Local ad insertion systems enable cable headends and broadcast affiliates to insert locally-generated commercials and short programs into remotely distributed regional programs before they are delivered to home viewers. The revenue generated by local ads and short programs is quite significant—revenue from local ad sales in early 1980 was approximately $8 million. In 2003, the estimated revenue from local ad sales was expected to top $5 billion. These figures underscore the growing importance of advertising for multiple systems operators (MSOs).
Analog Ad-insertion Systems
Until recently, most ad-insertion systems were entirely analog—programs were distributed as NTSC video with analog cue-tones to cable headends. Cue-tones signalled the local operator to replace national ads with local ads. Ad-insertion equipment— splicers and storage devices—were used in headends for local insertion. Storage devices—tape decks—were used to store the ads.
Analog cue-tone systems have limited capability and cannot support advanced functionality. For example, in an analog system, the insertion equipment cannot detect a program change—in a sports overtime scenario, when a high-value ad could be played, a low-value ad is usually played according to the schedule created the week before. Also, in the analog domain it is difficult to implement targeted/addressable ad-insertion.
Hybrid Ad-insertion Systems
With the advent of digitally-compressed video, most ad-insertion systems have been replaced by hybrid systems. Hybrid systems cannot integrate the delivery of compressed video, such as standard-definition television (SDTV) and high-definition television (HDTV), efficiently or economically. Additionally, most equipment used in hybrid ad-insertion systems is proprietary and, therefore, is not interoperable. In hybrid systems, ads are stored in MPEG-2 compressed format in local storage; the network feed to the headend can be analog or digital. The channel emanating from the headend to subscribers homes also can be analog or digital. If the network feed is analog embedded with analog cue-tones, the digital ad is retrieved from the local server, decompressed and converted to analog. When the analog ad is ready to be used, the analog splicer switches from the network feed to the local ad. At the end of the ad, the splicer switches back to the network feed. The analog output of the splicer is encoded to digital if the channel is digital. If the network feed is digital with embedded cue signals, the digital cue-signals are converted to ON-OFF signals and the digital feed is converted back to analog. If the channel is digital, the analog output of the splicer is digitally encoded. If the network feed and channel are both digital, the feed and the ad are converted back into analog prior to ad insertion. The ad-inserted analog content is then encoded back to digital before delivery to the subscriber. The conversion from digital to analog and then back to digital is an expensive process and video quality deteriorates from the conversions.
Digital Program Ad-insertion Systems
To overcome the limitations associated with analog cue-tone and analog/hybrid ad-insertion systems, particularly in compressed video delivery environments, the cable industry began the Digital Program Insertion (DPI) initiative with the goal to create a set of DPI standards to assist in replacing existing analog/hybrid ad-insertion systems—the equipment built upon these standards also will be interoperable.
The first standard, SCTE 35 2001 (formerly DVS253), Digital Program Insertion Cueing Message for Cable, supports splicing of MPEG-2 streams for digital program insertion including ad insertion. A companion standard, SCTE 30 2001 (formerly DVS380), Digital Program Insertion Splicing API, creates a standardized method for communication between servers and splicers for the insertion of content into any MPEG-2 output multiplex in the splicer. These two standards allow for interoperability and interchangeability of ad-insertion equipment and represent an enabling milestone in cable television advertising. In 2003, SCTE 35 was greatly enhanced to exploit advanced DPI capabilities. The enhanced SCTE 35 standard enables implementation of targeted advertisement and other time-triggered applications, such as network/local storage.
Digital-to-Digital Insertion
The MPEG-2 standard has been widely accepted within the broadcast industry; more and more network programs carrying local commercial avails (digital cue-packets) can be delivered to headends. MSOs, in turn, can transmit those programs to subscribers’ homes in digital format. Keeping the process of local commercial insertions completely within the digital compressed domain will be most economical and, by keeping this process in the compressed domain from the uplink center to subscribers’ homes, it also will preserve the quality of the network-supplied video. For large-scale deployment of digital commercial insertion systems, it is necessary that MSOs move away from using proprietary equipment to using standardized equipment. To create such an environment, the cable industry initiated the standardization of various interfaces and a cue-signaling method. The DPI group (known as working group 5 (WG5) under the SCTE’s DVS subcommittee)—after successfully creating the SCTE 35 and SCTE 30 standards—has been working on creating new drafts to standardize subsystems in the DPI end-to-end architecture. These include the automation system to compression system API (under balloting), ad-server file format, traffic system to ad-insertion system API, and client-based advertising API.
Interoperability Testing
To ensure interoperability, CableLabs has been performing two interoperability events a year to test the compliance of equipment to the SCTE 35 and SCTE 30 standards. To date, CableLabs has qualified equipment from 6 vendors for generation of cue-packets compliant to SCTE 35 2001; ad-server equipment from three vendors compliant to SCTE 30 2001; and splicing equipment from two vendors that can detect cue-packets and communicate with an ad-server over Ethernet (per SCTE 30 2001) to insert local ads into network feeds.
Digital program insertion offers MSOs tremendous revenue potential as they begin to offer more advanced services (such as video-on-demand); DPI provides a higher degree of security, a greater capability for targeted advertising, and faster and more efficient ad insertion.
We invite your participation in this exciting project. For more information, please contact us.