Next Generation Advertising

Multiscreen video advertising at scale

Service providers and content providers must offer innovative targeted advertising products that deliver more value and engagement to their clients seeking to reach the multiscreen consumer.

CommScope Manifest Delivery Controller (MDC) is a market-leading video manifest manipulator—a software solution for server-side dynamic ad insertion, personalization and analytics for ABR IP video.
With the MDC, providers can efficiently deploy and maximize the revenue from their IP video services through:

• Ad insertion targeted down to the individual viewer
• Personalized channel delivery, including blackout and alternate content management
• Personalized nDVR and time-shifted TV playback and real-time bandwidth policy enforcement
• Advanced analytics and reporting

Using the MDC in conjunction with a pre-integrated third-party campaign management system, MDC allows every consumer to receive highly targeted advertisements and a personalized IP video experience.

CommScope MDC enables targeted advertisements and personalized video experiences on IP video services

Unified IP and set-top advertising

Today, cable service providers typically have parallel systems for IP and traditional set-top advertising, resulting in unnecessary complexity and cost. In response, they are looking for ways to more effectively monetize their video content and unify their advertising infrastructure. Ideally, there would be a single system for both traditional QAM and IP-based video services that allows them to sell ads, manage campaigns, execute the ad delivery and provide reporting from a single platform.

Today: Parallel paths for traditional and IP-based ad insertion with separate ads and systems

The top path represents traditional local ad insertion on transport streams that are delivered over QAM to set-tops. Schedule-based advertising systems enable pre-determined ads to be inserted for a pre-configured ad zone. Advertising targeting is based on geography and defined by the network.

The bottom path shows ABR video delivered over IP to mobile devices and IP set-tops. Advertising is implemented through manifest manipulation and can be targeted at the device level. Typically, these ads are sold on an impression basis.

The result is two separate video formats, two sets of ads, and separate sales, campaign management, ad insertion and reporting systems. This makes it extremely difficult and expensive for service providers to maximize the revenue opportunities by offering campaigns that span devices and screens.

To address this challenge, CommScope enables a fully integrated, cross-platform dynamic advertising solution that provides comprehensive network-based IP advertising that can extend to encompass QAM devices.

In addition, our solution leverages the switched digital video platform to allow service providers to capture viewership data and impression measurement of ads on QAM set-tops. This approach can capture viewership of long-tail channels that are not tracked by audience measurement services. This creates additional ad revenue from channels that previously could not support advertising due to lack of measurement data.

• A single source of video and one set of ads
• Viewership and impression reporting from the MDC for IP delivery and the SDV client for QAM set-top video
• A single campaign management system managing ads across all devices
• CommScope Manifest Delivery Controller (MDC)
  • Uses manifest manipulation to target ads in ABR content
  • Personalizes channel delivery, including blackout and alternate content management, personalized nDVR and time-shifted TV playback, and real-time bandwidth policy enforcement
  • Delivers advanced analytics and reporting
• CommScope Video Unified Edge
  • Converts ABR content with targeted ads into MPEG-2 transport stream video for delivery over QAM to set-tops
  • Generates the multiplexes and delivers MPEG-2 MPTS in a distributed access architecture (DAA) environment to an R-PHY or R-MAC/PHY node
• CommScope switched digital video (SDV)
  • Collects data from standards-compliant SDV clients in the set-top and aggregates it for viewership and impression reporting
  • Optionally reduces QAM bandwidth by only multicasting channels currently being viewed (not required to leverage set-top data collection)
• CommScope Professional Services
  • Consulting, design, deployment, optimization and managed services to accelerate deployment and optimize operation of the platform

The CommScope unified advertising solution

Using the CommScope unified advertising solution, service providers will be able to:

• Invest in IP advertising solutions that will also support legacy devices
• Offer a unified advertising solution that allows them to sell ads across their IP and legacy footprint
• Expand advertising revenue through cross-platform campaigns, household-based targeting and unlocked inventory on channels not currently measured
• Offer ad zone-based advertising across both QAM and IP devices
• Offer impression-based advertising across both QAM and IP devices

Related Solutions

• Distributed access architecture (DAA)

Unified linear addressable advertising

The cable network continues to evolve, with many operators adopting a distributed access architecture (DAA). The CommScope advertising solution is designed to not only help service providers migrate from traditional QAM ad insertion to a unified IP and QAM advertising solution, but can leverage a DAA architecture and software-based products to improve set-top targeting and flexibility. CommScope calls this the programmable network.

DAA architectures move the physical layer (PHY)—and, optionally, the MAC layer—to the edge of the network. This means the video-edge QAM functions can be hosted in software, resulting in much more flexibility in creating and changing video multiplexes targeted to specific service groups. As DAA is combined with node splits or fiber deep implementations, the QAM network becomes much more segmented, and the ability to target advertising approaches that of IP devices. The ultimate end game for this architecture is linear addressable advertising—the ability to target individual viewers on both traditional QAM set-tops and IP devices.

How it works

The CommScope Video Unified Edge converts ABR video from a unified video backend to an MPEG-2 transport stream for QAM set-tops. It also acts as the video edge QAM core, creating a larger number of more targeted multiplexes—enabling much more discrete targeting of ads on QAM set-tops. Because these multiplexes are defined by software rather than by the wiring of the QAM network, they can be easily changed and supplemented over time.

Similar to the unified advertising solution, a single unified ad platform serves all devices:

• CommScope Manifest Delivery Controller (MDC) provides ad insertion across all devices using manifest manipulation in ABR video
• CommScope Video Unified Edge converts this ABR video to an MPEG-2 transport stream for delivery to QAM set-tops
• The CommScope switched digital video (SDV) solution collects data from the SDV client on set-tops
• A unified campaign management system enables ad sales across all devices

Unified advertising for distributed access architectures (DAA)

Benefits of the CommScope programmable network for advertising

• Ad zones can be dynamically defined to address short-term events or changes in demographics
• Improved targeting of QAM set-tops through software-defined service groups and highly segmented networks
• Unified advertising solution for all devices

Related Solutions

• Distributed access architecture (DAA)