SCTE-04/5 and Beyond: Ad Insertion in an OTT World

Ad Insertion is a very important part of many video delivery systems because of the monetization aspect-it generates revenue! With Over-The-Top (OTT) video delivery on the internet, the holy grail of advertisement is finally achievable-it is technically possible to send individual, personalized ads to each viewer. Such systems are based, in part, on the traditional ad insertion workflows that use the SCTE-104 and SCTE-35 standards as their starting point. This paper provides an overview of such systems, showing how a traditional ad-insertion workflow at the programmer side can be used as a basis for an OTT system. We also show some other uses for the ad insertion infrastructure (for program delimitation) and comment on the importance of frame accuracy.

THE PROGRAMMER SIDE

The general ad insertion workflow is:

Start with video feed, containing programs and ads. This is typically a national network feed. Some of the ads are high-priority national ads and some of the ads are low-priority national ads that could be replaced by local ads down the chain.

An automation/playout system decorates the baseband video feed with markers that delimit the ads. These baseband markers are defined in SCTE-104.

An encoder converts the baseband video into a compressed bit stream. The baseband markers are translated into compressed stream markers for transmission with the content. The compressed stream markers are defined in SCTE-35.

Somewhere in the reception chain, before the video is delivered to the consumer, new ads are spliced in the locations indicated by the markers. This is where OTT systems take over.

The Programmer Side is responsible for generating the compressed bit stream with the appropriate ad insertion markers. A general diagram is presented in Figure 1 .

Figure 1: Programmer Side Workflow Diagram

Click on the Image to Enlarge

LINK:	http://www.tvtechnology.com/expertise/0003/scte10435-and-beyond-a-look...
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