How Server-Side Ad Insertion Supports Broadcaster Roadmaps to an All-Streaming Future

We are still some way from an all-streaming future but there is plenty of evidence that preparations for this outcome are accelerating, from sharpened regulatory interest in prominence on connected TVs, to a UK over-60s advocacy group demanding late broadcast switch-off dates rather than early ones.

For broadcasters, larger BVOD catalogues, closer integration of FAST with BVOD, streaming-first windows for top drama, and next-generation free-to-air platforms all fit with a strategy to stream more.

'Broadcast Scale'
The challenge for commercial broadcasters is to rapidly carry their large broadcast linear audiences and their share of advertising revenue into an all-streaming world.  If they succeed on point one they have the chance to excel at point two because broadcasters will have a unique selling point in the streaming environment: broadcast scale with mass reach addressability.

Commercial broadcasters with aggressive digital strategies will be better placed to compete against the growing collection of global SVOD services offering ad-supported tiers, as well as against YouTube, or even TikTok. And ad-tech stacks are ready to support streaming acceleration, with server-side ad insertion (SSAI) one of the foundational technologies.

SSAI supports addressable TV ambitions at super-scale, whether for live or VOD, with the broadcast-standard, frame-accurate ad insertion that will protect the user and advertising experience regardless of the end device.

End devices are relevant here. Broadcasters will need to serve a multitude of Smart TVs including budget displays. The Smart TV OS market is fragmented, with no signs of consolidation. The next two decades will also see the growth of the connected car entertainment market, with its own entertainment OS hinterland.

SSAI removes complexity from device reach, and broadcasters will not have to worry about hardware capabilities. If their streaming app works on the platform/OS in question, SSAI will work seamlessly.

Future for Addressable Advertising
Client-side ad insertion could be an innovation drag in these circumstances, especially when you hit a long tail of devices that add only small incremental audiences in return for client-side development efforts. Recent work in server-side tracking of ad views would even remove reliance on client-side SDKs for audience measurement when using SSAI.

Server-side ad insertion is the future for addressable advertising in VOD, even if legacy client-side ad insertion has historically served broadcasters well enough. SSAI removes buffering and transitions that are still evident today, and brings consistency regardless of the platform served or broadband connection.

SSAI is the gold standard—and "born digital" broadcaster rivals, coming late to the ads market, are adopting it.

Support for Interstitials in HLS and XLink in DASH is an important development for SSAI in the on-demand space. This means ad breaks can be resolved when the viewer reaches an ad break, rather than at the start of a VOD viewing session. The impact will be reduced start-up times and streamlined inventory and audience planning.

In linear and live television, SSAI has long trumped client-side solutions. The challenge here on the road to all-streaming is audience sizes, not just for sport but increasingly for hit entertainment shows.

A key to success is SSAI with smart integration into the programmatic advertising ecosystem so that ad requests from millions of concurrent viewers can be processed between ad servers, SSPs and DSPs at such speed that ad calls never ‘time-out’. Time-outs leave a media owner with a choice of showing viewers a UX-destroying ‘Your programme will resume shortly’ message, or falling back on in-house ads that earn them nothing, or giving up on programmatic break opportunities.

Media buyers like to trade programmatically, and more digital will mean more programmatic, so this is not a luxury but a must-have moving forwards. Pre-fetch is an innovation that makes SSAI more scalable with programmatic, by spreading out the ad calls ahead of an ad break, and it can also be applied to direct sold breaks.

All the same SSAI benefits can be applied to broadcaster FAST channels. Here, the challenge is ensuring a highly automated streaming and SSAI infrastructure that keeps the incremental cost of a new FAST channel very low, while ensuring full monetization.

SSAI will be central to the successful migration of commercial broadcasting to all-streaming, however long that takes. It gives broadcasters the chance to fully monetize streaming audiences and offer buyers the mass reach addressability they want.