Programmatic Ad Insertion: Six Tips to Increase Yield

Programmatic advertising automates the buying and selling of ads. With greater precision and flexibility, programmatic ad insertion can help advertisers better capture the attention of desired consumers. It can also impact how consumers feel when consuming your content. A positive viewing experience leads to better engagement with ads, and avoids unwanted disengagement.Programmatic ad insertion is a fairly recent capability. As it becomes a more commonplace practice, it’s important for content distributors to learn how to make a smooth transition toward programmatic ad insertion and generate maximum revenue from their content.

Key Terms for Programmatic Ad Insertion

Before we get into the details, take a look at some important terms used to talk about programmatic monetization with dynamic ad insertion:

• Dynamic ad insertion (DAI): DAI is ad technology designed to seamlessly insert or replace advertisements into linear or on-demand video content. DAI is dynamic because it can be used on the fly without creating latency or buffering when inserted between content and other ads.
• Programmatic advertising: “Programmatic” typically refers to software performing ad buying for digital video distribution. It complements and in some cases replaces the traditional process involving human negotiation, interaction, and scheduling of ads in your channel lineup.
• Metadata: Data that provides information about other data. For example, the genre of the content being streamed. It can also provide information about audience demographics or interests.
• Yield: The amount of revenue gained from advertising.
  
  

How Does Programmatic Ad Insertion Work?

Programmatic complements human ad sales with technology consisting of expansive ad inventories and databases so real-time data can identify the best audience to target for ad campaigns. Advertisements are personalized upon consumer interest based on audience target information like geographical location, buying behavior, or viewing device types.

When ads are personalized based on individual consumer interest, viewers may experience a connection that can lead to optimal results of ad monetization.

As programmatic advertising becomes more prevalent, standards and basic rules will become universally adopted to help streamline monetization.

Strategies to Generate Maximum Revenue with Programmatic Monetization & DAI

Make User Experience a High Priority

When it comes to advertising, user experience is crucially important because an outstanding user experience will keep viewers more interested in your content and engage them for longer periods of time.

In advertising, there are easy things to get right and wrong that can have dramatic effects on user experience. However, a poor user experience could cause viewers to watch less and maybe even cause them to disengage from your content, and your brand.

Tip: For a good user experience, your ads need to be in the same format as your content.

Seek Standards-Based Solutions

Programmatic ad infrastructure has matured tremendously over the past few years. It’s become a bedrock for programmers’ ad monetization efforts. To automate your ad insertion, SCTE-35 management (and data management in general) is an integral part of the workflow.

Harmonic’s VOS^®360 media has an SCTE-35 management functionality that comes straight “out of the box.” When it comes to programmatic advertising, you want to make it as easy as possible for the machines on both selling and buying sides to communicate.

The Open RTB (real-time bidding) protocol is one standard that allows important inventory features to be shared with potential buyers. It helps provide a universal understanding of inventory value. As an industry, the greater the adoption of basic rules, the easier monetization can be.

Tip: Proper SCTE-35 signals are necessary for streaming content to provide frame-accurate ad insertion.

Demand Flexibility and Interoperability for Your Systems

Another key best practice is interoperability across screens while trying to manage hybrid traditional/cloud-based systems. Being able to manage and monetize both IP and QAM-based systems in unison can be challenging. Systems need to work together seamlessly as they continue to converge.

Tip: Unification of monetization workflows is key to reducing fragmentation and operational complexity

Use Metadata to Drive Value for Your Content

Sharing inventory metadata is one of the easiest things to get right. Sharing this information can lead to immediate revenue increases. Properly configuring how bid requests are sent out, and including value-enhancing parameters, provides media buyers with the transparency they need to understand exactly what they are buying. In turn, this makes ad inventory more targetable and valuable.

Metadata feedback is usefully beneficial for proper monetization. This informational feedback on both content and audience provides insights for buyers. The clearer the insights, the higher the yield – plus a better result for user experience.

Some examples of useful metadata for advertisers and programmers:

• The type of device the content is watched on,
• The name of the channel the content is appearing on
• The length and genre of the content are
  
  

Tip: It’s better to overshare metadata than to leave something out that is potentially valuable.  

Ensure a Smooth Transition to Programmatic Ad Insertion

As content distributors migrate away from traditional delivery models and move toward cloud-based solutions, they usually need assistance with this transition. Preserving existing revenue streams while augmenting operations with programmatic models is usually necessary, but the path could have some obstacles to plan ahead for.

Tip: When transitioning to advanced ad distribution systems, layout a solid strategy, and then move forward.  Determine what goals are most important from the start.

How to Navigate Potential Hurdles When Implementing Programmatic Ad Insertion

There are certain pitfalls to keep in mind as you implement programmatic ad insertion.

• Inconsistency: Operating with a system architecture that combines inconsistent formats between content and ads could destroy the user experience by negatively affecting video playout on user devices.  Similarly, having personalization and ad insertion performed on different platforms could cause technical problems that also impact user experience and operational costs.
• Ad configuration errors: When ad pods aren’t properly constructed to account for the correct duration, ad loads, deduplication, competitive separation, and ad adjacency you could see negative impacts on user experience. This can result in lower yield and poor engagement.
• Human error: In a manually scheduled operation, it could seem easier to make sure that two of the same ads aren’t shown in the same break or that two competitive ads – maybe competing soft drink companies, for example – aren’t shown back-to-back. However, manual operations performed in advance require more oversight than a programmatic ad insertion, thanks to automation.
  Manual operations also leave the door wide open for basic human errors. With automation of these tasks, you could have your team spending more time on tasks that add value to your service, like user experience.
• Collaboration with sales:  When deploying programmatic ad insertion technology, it’s critical to ensure that it is complementary (instead of competitive) to direct sales efforts.