This narrative begins in 2006. One of the more forward-thinking European broadcasters began the search for a system to take their single national feed, that was funded through traditional ad break advertising, and produce just over 30 variants of this channel. Every channel (regional feed) would now include some regional advertising content, replacing the national advertising breaks at specific times of the day. Starfish Technologies was awarded the contract to design and supply this system. It was implemented using SDI based technology located at each of the regional distribution hubs, the majority of which were unmanned. This system worked well and generated a significant additional revenue stream, so the broadcaster requested an ‘upgrade’ to this system that would also enable local news bulletins and late changing schedules to be inserted into every regional feed. These requirements were best implemented by moving to a centralised architecture and building a complete regional channel system located at its main transmission centre. The first centralised Starfish Technologies system went live in 2009 and again proved reliable, commercially rewarding and with the significant benefit of providing viewers with locally relevant news content.
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We are joined by Tom McDonnell, CEO at Monterosa to hear how they create premium interactive experiences fast and at scale along with the biggest challenges that their clients in sport and media have faced over the last 15 months.
Tom tells us how their clients are able to generate new revenue streams along with their plans for the coming months and years.
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Advertisers are finding it increasingly important to embrace an expanding digital audio landscape. The 2021 Infinite Dial report shows significant growth in digital audio, estimating that in 2021, weekly online audio listeners will reach 193 million, or 68% of the US population, up from 169 million, or 60%, in 2020.
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Because WO Traffic – Radio Interchange was still in development when Townsquare converted to WO Traffic in 2016, Townsquare was faced with a choice.
They could either return to manual handling of their network/barter contracts, which was a daunting prospect, or find a system to handle their barter automatically. After considering their options, Townsquare contracted to use a third-party’s system to automate their barter processes, fully intending to use it as a permanent solution. Although that system served for years as an alternative to manual dubbing, scheduling, and affidavit completion, over time Townsquare experienced challenges with some aspects of using it, especially given their high barter and cash comp volume.
One challenge was the amount of manual work that was involved on the front end of the process. Townsquare had to individually build all of their network barter and cash comp orders into WO Traffic as placeholder contracts, making sure to keep up with constant changes, additions, and cancellations throughout the year. They then had to create materials and manually enter dayplaced (and often dayparted) material instructions into WO Traffic for each network order. Finally, the material numbers for each order had to be manually transferred to the third-party’s system for dubbing and affidavit completion. Townsquare estimates that the duplication of effort for the entire workflow consumed upwards of 2500 person-hours in a year, plus an additional four to six hundred hours spent every December entering new orders, or adjusting existing ones, to match the networks’ contracts for the following year.
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The Monetize segment of the BaM Content Chain® is about managing business processes for content rights and royalties, scheduling linear and non-linear services, subscriptions, and selling and managing advertising. In short, how broadcast and media companies make money; Arvato Systems’ Portfolio Manager, Ben Davenport, sums this up perfectly: “Put very simply, media is monetized through advertising, subscription service or, decreasingly, public funding or subsidy.”
We asked six IABM members to explain the drivers of change in this vital segment of the BaM Content Chain® and talk through the opportunities and challenges they are facing today, and what the future holds.
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With increasing competition in the OTT and Pay TV space,
customer acquisition has become a more challenging and expensive proposition for video services.
As it becomes harder to win new customers, it becomes even more important to retain those customers you already have.
The right conversion strategy is a growth accelerator and will have a significant impact on your business profitability.
In this white paper we will explain how Artificial Intelligence algorithms allow video service providers to
build and automatically run more accurate trial conversion prediction models, which predict future conversion rates based on past audience behavior.
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Competition for viewer “eyeballs”, to use the industry term, has never been more intense. Part of this is due to the proliferation of viewing channels and distribution mechanisms, as well as increasing pressure on the entire economic model for content creation, distribution and monetization.
On the other side of the coin, viewers expect high quality in creation, output and delivery. They want that content delivered whenever and wherever they want, and they want to minimize how much they pay for it. Simply put, viewers’ expectations are at an all-time high, at a time when they have a staggering amount of choices.
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