As IPTV (News - Alert) providers face increased competition, advertising presents a valuable opportunity to leverage the provider’s network to generate new revenue and enhance the subscriber experience. Operators need the ability to insert ads into linear TV — using support elements embedded in their IPTV networks. Then they can provide local and targeted ads, based on geographical proximity and subscriber data. Traditional spot ads can be delivered at any level of addressability, including national, regional and and even personal. They can also be enhanced with interactivity, providing a more engaging “lean-forward” subscriber experience. Advertising opportunities are expected to incorporate more interactivity and greater relevance to consumers, as brands and advertisers evolve their business models and strategies. This white paper analyzes the market trends, opportunities and pressures that service providers face — and discusses Alcatel-Lucent (News - Alert) solutions that address these needs.

 

 

Service providers of all types are searching for new sources of revenue. Voice carriers initially launched TV, higher-speed broadband and Voice over IP services to improve their competitiveness and prevent wide-scale revenue losses from voice-line erosion. IPTV was introduced to improve the total service provider revenue, and now service providers are seeking additional ways to enhance the revenue that can be derived from their services, such as advertising.

 

In addition, service providers are struggling with competitors’ new business models, which generate “unmetered” bandwidth and over-the-top (OTT) content consumption. This OTT content largely removes service providers from the value chain, while the OTT content rides “for free” on the service provider infrastructure.

 

As IPTV providers face increased competition for subscribers and revenue, advertising opportunities can play a crucial role. They offer a new business model that can augment service revenue. In this new model, IPTV providers are positioned within the advertising value chain, based on the provider’s ability to enhance a brand’s relationship with consumers. In turn, the IPTV subscriber experience can also be improved, because subscribers receive more relevant advertisements and better content, which may be subsidized by ad income. Or subscribers can even “opt out” of specific ad programs. These choices and enhancements can contribute to greater customer satisfaction and reduced churn.

 

To take advantage of these opportunities, IPTV providers need to develop the following capabilities.

 

·         Capture and measure data

Service providers must have effective ways to gather, unify and measure information about each subscriber’s usage patterns, subscriptions, demographics, location, presence, preferences and other unique information that can be valuable to advertisers.

Anonymous subscriber data must be turned into useful marketing intelligence that can be used to create more relevant ad inventory for advertisers and relevant ads for consumers.

 

Finally, IPTV providers must be able to deliver personalized ads to the right consumer, at the right time, to any TV, PC or mobile device. As the industry leader in IPTV, Alcatel-Lucent supports these key capabilities with a Targeted and Interactive IPTV Advertising solution. Building intelligence, this solution enables service providers to generate new revenue — and establish greater value with broadcasters, content owners and consumers.

 

Advertising offers IPTV providers an effective way to generate additional revenue within both existing and new business models. An understanding of the opportunities in IPTV advertising is based on what is important to each stakeholder in the value chain:

 

·         Advertisers want value for their money, with predictable results when relaying their messages — that is, they need effective channels to reach their target market with advertisements.

·         Ad/media agencies want higher budget from their clients, as well as the best media opportunities with measurable results.

·         Service providers want to gain as much share of the marketing mix as possible — to pay for programming and to monetize their network investment.

·         Consumers want better control over the advertising they are exposed to, along with more meaningful content.

 

When it comes to meeting these stakeholder expectations, traditional media appear to be losing ground to digital media. Figure 1 shows global advertising spending of 569 billion U.S. dollars, in 2006, for traditional media such as television, radio, magazines and direct mail. These traditional channels of advertising media are actually experiencing sub-five percent growth rates. Direct mail is currently driving most of the growth, because it can selectively target consumers, while newspapers are the weakest performers.

 

This relatively flat growth is caused by advertisers shifting their ad spend to new digital media such as the Internet, mobile devices and IPTV. What does this mean for service providers? It suggests that advertisers are looking for new ways to create and reinforce brand awareness, and they are quick to adopt new digital media channels to help them accomplish these goals. In general, digital media are expected to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18 percent from 2006 to 2011 — which is far more substantial than the flat growth of five percent forecast for traditional media. More specifically, IPTV advertising in the United States market is anticipated to provide additional revenue of at least 50 US dollars per year, per subscriber. This estimate is based on a mature local advertising business model, while in Europe, ad insertion is an emerging opportunity.

 

 

As digital media follows the predicted growth trend, it will continue to steal budget from traditional media. The Internet ad model, for example, now threatens to take major share from TV, outdoor ads, newspapers and other traditional media. These non-interactive ad vehicles are generally broadcast to any and all viewers, which reduces their value to advertisers. But advertisers’ interest — and rates — go up for Internet search capabilities, because these new digital ads are addressed to an interested subscriber. In other words, the subscriber shifts from a passive “lean-back” relationship with the advertiser to an active “lean-forward” position.

 

 

Internet advertising also allows ad impressions, or viewer eyeballs, to be correlated with consumer action, such as click-to-purchase. Very detailed metrics are available to advertisers, including IP addresses of user PCs, the number of actual visitors, the time and duration of their interaction with the brand or product and geographical location. When comparing this level of detail with traditional broadcast TV ad measurement, it becomes clear why advertisers are flocking to this new medium.

 

IPTV can provide similar measurements, with granular metrics that reveal whether current marketing efforts are reaching the desired consumers. This information enables higher rates to be charged for particular segments, because the agency and marketer are both getting better value — with higher revenues generated from lower-cost ad campaigns. In addition, IPTV providers possess an established base of subscriber intelligence and network data, and they own the networks delivering the entertainment services. So they can control the presentation of advertising, either by leveraging middleware applications or through new relationships with content owners. All these capabilities can place IPTV providers in a powerful role in the value chain connecting content providers with subscribers.

 

User intelligence that enables targeted advertising can be valuable to subscribers, as well as advertisers. As shown in Figure 2, Alcatel-Lucent research found that young viewers have a positive response to advertising that is related to their lives and regular content consumption. They typically perceive it as fun, interactive and relevant to the story they are viewing. This provides a valuable opportunity to transform the relationship with subscribers, by using permission-based marketing. With this approach, users can opt-in for targeted ads — instead of being “spammed” with push commercials that have no connection to their interests.

 

 

 

IPTV operators are relative newcomers to the TV advertising area. In the established United States advertising business model, much of the content is subsidized by advertising, and content owners are paid for delivering an audience to the ads. Agencies are employed by advertisers to provide creative services, as well as to purchase and plan advertising inventory that will distribute ad campaigns. Independent media agencies sometimes perform media planning and purchasing, because these agencies purchase media in bulk, which lowers rates. Broadcast networks and cable networks obtain the largest share of advertising revenue by selling advertising slots in the channels they offer. The rate for advertising is typically based on the number of TV viewers per show. For example, the United States program American Idol can command about 700,000 United States dollars per 30-second advertising slot. (Source: Adweek, 2005-2006 season rates for top shows).

 

Pay TV operators, such as IPTV operators and cable/MSOs, are responsible for the actual delivery of advertising to the consumer. But they generally do not own or create programming — and do not get high-value advertising slots from the broadcast networks. But as these service providers bring value into the content-subscriber relationship, by leveraging their network intelligence, subscriber intelligence and control of access networks, they will be able to demand a piece of the advertising value chain. TV operators are absolutely required to protect subscriber identity in the use of their privileged data.

 

As IPTV providers address these new revenue opportunities, they need to understand existing advertising methods — while building up their own unique capabilities that leverage IPTV networks and “anonymous” subscriber intelligence. The advertising options today include linear ad insertion and interactive advertising, with advanced video-on-demand and multi-screen advertising campaigns to follow.

 

Linear ad insertion refers to the process of inserting and replacing ads in normal broadcast-style TV, which delivers the same content to all viewers at the same time. Ads that can be replaced are called “avails,” and the business of ad insertion involves purchase, scheduling and insertion into these avails. Linear advertising includes:

 

·         National ads where all subscribers receive the same advertising for a particular ad slot

·         Local ads where all subscribers in a smaller area, such as a city or neighborhood, receive the same ad

·         Targeted ads, where consumer intelligence is used to decide which ads should be presented to a particular household — For example, if IPTV providers know that specific subscribers are downloading MP3s, they might receive music-oriented advertising, which could include artist-specific ads or sponsored programming choices. These ads enable IPTV operators to charge higher rates to advertisers.

 

Revenue comes from sale of ads into the 30-second TV advertising slots known as avails. The ads are inserted into a broadcast stream at the broadcast station or by a TV operator, guided by digital or analog markers that indicate where ads should appear. The process is known as linear ad insertion. For example, in the United States, about 100 cable-only TV channels have 16 minutes of advertisements per hour, with two minutes per hour provided for cable distributors to replace ads. Ads can be 10, 15, 20, 30 or 60 seconds long. The schedule of avails is known in advance, so ad campaigns can be planned prior to ad insertion. Avails are marked with a protocol called SCTE-35, an in-line signaling protocol embedded in the TV streams. The TV streams are comprised of MPEG-2 transport streams that contain the video streams, audio streams and other required tables, as well as splice point data.

 

 

Significant engineering considerations are involved in deciding how to implement ad insertions in a visually acceptable way. The two main methods are: Elementary Stream (ES)-Splicing and Transport Stream (TS)-Splicing. ES splicing resembles video encoding/decoding, whereas TS splicing is fairly similar to packet switching — a particularly strategic difference that favors TS splicing in IP networks.

 

With ES-splicing, the elementary video and audio streams are edited at the nearly decoded level, requiring significant cost, stream latency and decrypted streams. Moreover ES-splicing can adapt a variety of input streams into MPEG-2 compliant output but with great cost.

 

With TS-splicing, specific frames are replaced within the transport stream. Therefore, TS-splicing requires a means of embedding metadata and conditioning the source streams to:

 

·         Ensure MPEG-legal output streams

·         Prevent STB video buffer underflow or overflow, which causes visual errors

·         Allow a seamless splice back to the original stream, which requires closing of the main stream Group of Pictures (GOPs) on either side of the splice point

 

The key advantages of TS-splicing include: the lack of decryption or decoding requirements, the drastically lower processing required to accomplish the splice and the ability to manipulate streams of any type without regard to codec.

 

Because TS-based ad insertion is fundamentally similar to network packet switching, Alcatel-Lucent integrates TS-based ad insertion with its network elements, allowing service providers to leverage their networks to insert ads.

 

Interactive advertising is a complex and rich method of delivering consumers to advertisers in new and compelling ways. Consumer engagement is active and measurable, which offers high value to advertisers in comparison to traditional ad impressions. Interactivity also enhances the consumer experience. Interactivity by itself does not have to be coupled with advertising content; it is already being used for subscriber feedback, voting and to request more information. However, it can be accompanied by ads that provide revenue to platform operators, such as IPTV operators, or to broadcasters.

 

For the interactive ad community, a number of ad types are important within the TV domain, including:

 

·         Banner ads associated with portals or microsites, where the electronic program guide (EPG) includes a means to display a custom screen — which provides interactivity, along with the scheduled or targeted appearance of ad images or embedded video

·         Dedicated advertiser locations (DALs) where a sponsor banner can be embedded at specific EPG guide locations

·         Requests for information (RFI) where a consumer can request electronic, mail or phone communication from an advertiser or merchant using the EPG

·         Long-form content, where an interactive link provides a way to initiate advertiser-sponsored content; for example, through VoD

·         Telescoping ads, where a network trigger embedded in a TV program, a linear ad or an EPG portal can launch interactive or VoD content, while simultaneously pausing the original TV stream

 

This type of advertising is very similar to linear ad insertion and offers similar targeting opportunities. However it provides more options for when and where the ads are inserted. For example, they can be inserted before the video asset is acquired, when it is purchased — or dynamically, during video play-out. Ad placement can be spaced throughout the video, like linear ad insertion. The ads can all be placed before the video content — or after it. Targeted VoD advertising is not widely available today for several reasons: VoD originally entered the market to supply premium movie content, and subscribers are unlikely to accept ads on that medium. In addition, the business models and technology for inserting ads in non-movie VoD content are not well developed.

 

To diversify their access to consumers, advertisers and agencies are seeking cross-platform advertising strategies that combine the best new media channels, including IPTV, the Internet and even mobile campaigns. Multi-platform campaign capabilities are emerging, with content owners studying their effectiveness. For example, they are assessing the potential “reach” of ads delivered over multiple media, such as TV and the Internet or TV and mobile.

 

Telescoping ads are generally linear TV spot ads offering the opportunity to receive more content. A network trigger associated with the spot ad is transmitted in-line with the ad, perhaps using the DVB-IPI protocol. The interactive application client detects the trigger and prompts the subscriber to press a button for more content. If the subscriber presses the button, the currently viewed content is paused while the STB client switches to the other content. This new content could:

 

·         Allow the subscriber to request more information

·         Provide a long-form VoD clip such as an extended product ad

·         Resend another interactive application with ad content.

 

When the subscriber has completed the interaction, the STB client resumes the original content. This step is important because subscribers typically prefer not to miss their TV shows. The sequence of button presses involved in telescoping can be used to provide response data to the advertiser, thereby creating extra ad value.

 

Overlays are text, graphic or video content superimposed on existing content. One of their main goals is to provide local or targeted customization of advertisements, without expensive customization of the original ad clip. For example, a local logo and phone number of an auto dealer could be overlaid on an auto brand advertisement. Ideally, implementation of simple overlays would trigger the STB interactive client through the network — perhaps with DVB-IPI — launching a local STB-based overlay on a specific portion of a currently playing ad.

 

The first requirement of linear ad insertion in IPTV is an arrangement between service providers and content owners which enables replacement of ads by the IPTV provider. The IPTV service may be based on virtually any middleware system, and it generally requires TV streams to be transmitted using IP multicast with the MPEG transport stream header unencrypted.

 

To enable personalized targeting of ads, subscriber intelligence must be available to the ad insertion system. As a first step, networks should provide an integrated provisioning system that relates to consumers by their subscriptions. This step requires specific network elements with integrated management systems, so consumer preference and subscription data can be accessed. Providers also need to integrate different views of subscriber data within diverse media, such as TV, mobile and Internet. Subscriber data will be scrubbed to ensure absolute privacy. Finally, ad placement opportunities should be aggregated across the different media to enable effective ad sales.

 

With ad insertion capabilities integrated into the Triple Play Service Delivery Architecture (TPSDA) platform, IPTV operators gain significant advantages, such as lower CAPEX and OPEX, a simplified architecture and more flexibility in deployment location. Implementing ad insertion on existing access, switching and routing platforms also improves scalability, by reducing the physical interfaces required. In addition, the TPSDA platform’s video enhancements, such as assured linear TV delivery (RET) and fast channel change (FCC), offer scaling improvements, when compared to ad insertion implemented with standalone servers.

 

Interactive capabilities must be integrated with the delivery network to enable advanced advertising capabilities, because interactivity improves average viewer retention, service value and, potentially, advertising value. Interactive applications are already being delivered with the Alcatel-Lucent 5930 Interactive Media Manager (IMM) platform across several TV platforms — enabling advertising to achieve high value through subscriber interaction and customer acquisition. Integration of linear ad insertion with the Alcatel-Lucent 5930 IMM can achieve a larger audience for a particular ad campaign, and it has the potential to enable innovative ad and commerce types, such as telescoping, local overlays, click to buy and requests for information (RFI), which can be embedded in linear ads.

 

This solution can be valuable in markets worldwide. IPTV operators need some form of linear ad insertion to satisfy content agreements for cross-promotion of related content channels, announcements and other basic marketing communications. Consequently, the solution supports national ad insertion. In many markets, including the United States, Mexico, Singapore, Russia and any location where IPTV operators operate their own channels, there are growing markets for linear ad insertion — particularly local and targeted ads. The interactive TV market is advanced in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe, and it is expected to grow throughout the rest of the world.

 

The TPSDA network shown in Figure 4 provides TV, phone and Internet service delivery across an entire service provider network. The TV service originates at the national video office and is brought over an optical network to the appropriate regional video offices. The services are then distributed by broadband service routers (BSRs), through broadband service aggregators (BSAs) and finally delivered to residences through the broadband service access node (BSAN). As the figure illustrates, there are several levels of addressability in linear ad insertion, depending in where the ads are inserted into a TV service. The least addressable is system-wide or national insertion where ads are sent to all viewers of a specific TV channel. Typically, tens to hundreds of encoded streams can be processed with a single ad insertion device. In a regional (or local) method, ads are inserted in a local area so that all residents of a large city who are watching the same TV channel see the same ad. Ads can be inserted even closer to subscribers in a region defined by a “central office,” which corresponds to a few thousand households. Ads can also be individually differentiated by household, so they are targeted to subscribers with specific characteristics in common. The choice of network location depends on carrier requirements. A higher monetary value is typically associated with a higher degree of targeting, if the ad is associated with audience measurement to verify that ads have been viewed.

 

At the desired network location, an ad insertion system detects the insertion signals and prepares to substitute the stream with ad content. At the precise moment indicated by the insertion signal, the ad content is transmitted in the same fashion as the original TV stream. The Alcatel-Lucent targeted advertising architecture has been uniquely designed so that downstream equipment, including the client set-top-box (STB), does not require modification because it is generally unaware that a change has taken place. At the end of the ad, the insertion device reverts to the original TV stream. The targeted stream can also be transmitted using unicast to the STB, in cases where the operator is willing (and able) to modify the client software. However, this approach requires excess bandwidth between the ad insertion element and the broadband access node.

 

The components shown in Figure 4 provide the necessary back-office functions to coordinate subscriber and network intelligence, ad inventory, ad purchase, content ingestion, content management and ad placement decisions. Their key functions include:

 

·         Ad ingestion — Accept media clips and metadata with conversion to the correct encoding rates, with subsequent storage in the ad server — and control by ad content management

·         Ad content management — Distribute ad content where appropriate and control media lifecycle and usage

·         Ad campaign management — Present a view of ad inventory to external agencies, coordinate purchases with ad schedules and record ad play-out for billing purposes

·         Ad decision server — Coordinate subscriber profile with ad purchase to decide which ads will be sent to subscribers who fit particular characteristics

·         Ad server — Stream ads to the ad insertion system when requested and coordinate ads with the

·         ad decision server

·         Subscriber profiling — Assign subscribers to specific categories based on collected data

·         Audience (News - Alert) measurement — Maintain behavioral TV viewing state and collect statistics for assessment of subscriber tastes and other characteristics

·         Mobility and Internet data — Maintain information about a subscriber’s mobile service and location

·         Third-party and external data — Maintain properly scrubbed data that can link back to income, age and credit history (Note: There are regional-specific sensitivities to this capability.)

 

National ad insertion places ads into avails system-wide, prior to encryption by Microsoft (News - Alert) A-servers (in the case of Microsoft Mediaroom middleware) or any other CAS/DRM system. The ad insertion system is provided by components integrated with the Alcatel-Lucent network. Figure 4 provides a component diagram. (Other components required for an end-to-end solution are described in subsequent sections.)

 

Although advertising at the national level does not require subscriber-specific data to associate ads with subscribers, it does offer a separate opportunity to collect viewer data and optimize the IPTV service to the network. For example, the Alcatel-Lucent Intelligent Services Access Manager (ISAM) 73xx and IP switching and routing elements (7x50) can collect real-time channel-viewing data through a built-in IGMP monitoring service that tracks channel-viewing status for all viewers. These real-time statistical reports can be aggregated in external databases such as the Alcatel-Lucent 8920 Service Quality Manager (SQM) or the 5410 Presence Server.(In contrast, traditional systems collect TV ratings data with special add-on boxes that sample TV viewers.)

 

Local ad insertion places ads into avails in a specific regional area served by a video hub office (VHO) that distributes TV to thousands of subscribers. Compared with National Ad Insertion, local ad insertion enables geographical differentiation between subscribers of different regions, but often requires awareness and accommodation of the encryption often required for video distribution. Local ad insertion components are shown in Figure 4. In the case of Microsoft Mediaroom, a D-server is located in the local office. With MiViewTV or other middleware, the D-Server is omitted, and the BSR (Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Router), BSA (Alcatel-Lucent 7450 Ethernet Service Switch), BSAN (Alcatel-Lucent ISAM 73xx) or the standalone Alcatel-Lucent 5910 FCC/RET server can accomplish fast channel change (FCC) by using assured linear TV delivery with RET/FCC. The Alcatel-Lucent solution can provide real-time or aggregated TV viewer data.

 

 

The local ad insertion solution provides a communications link between the ad insertion component installed in the Alcatel-Lucent 7750 SR, located in the VHO, and an ad server co-located in the VHO. The TV stream contains SCTE-35 ad insertion signals that are detected by the Alcatel-Lucent 7750 SR — which responds by requesting ad content from the ad server for that particular time and TV channel. A suitably localized ad clip is placed in the otherwise unchanged TV stream, so all clients receiving the TV stream get the inserted ad, instead of the original.

 

Targeted advertising presents specific ads to selected groups of individuals. Targeting is accomplished by differentiating particular groups, either through the TV show they are watching — or through other measurements and analyses. These measurements may identify target groups and send advertisements directly to the subscribers in those groups. Since default ads are eliminated after the last replication point, subscribers who do not receive targeted ads continue to receive default ads. Essential requirements include: provisioning of an ad decision system that associates subscriber groups to advertiser ad campaigns and the coordinated delivery of ad streams into subscriber VLANS. Figure 4 also shows the components required for targeted ad insertion.

 

In this model, targeted ad insertion is performed in the Alcatel-Lucent 7450 ESS integrated targeted ad insertion component, similar to that provided with local ad insertion. In the future, targeted ad insertion will also be provided in the Alcatel-Lucent ISAM, and for larger access node sizes (7302 and 7342), this is also an economically attractive option.

 

Unlike national and local ad insertion, targeted advertising splits the input TV stream into multiple output streams with different ads inserted. Alcatel-Lucent is unique in allowing the subscriber’s set top-boxes (STBs) to remain unchanged — by making the output streams in the RTP and IP headers indistinguishable from the linear TV multicast stream. Although the ad streams are differentiated in the ISAM by placing them into different subscriber VLANs, they remain on the same IP multicast address. As a result, the STB is unaware of the change in content.

 

The Alcatel-Lucent 5930 IMM platform offers the ability to create interactive graphical applications based on the underlying middleware of the display system, whether it is IPTV, satellite TV, cable, Internet or mobile. The platform’s innovative and exceptional characteristics include a template-based system for rapid application development, automated data feeds, middleware and platform independence and linkage to external VoD assets. Figure 5 shows the system architecture, which includes components that provide easy-to-use interfaces for media agencies, managed template creation, distributed, load-balanced deployment and integrated workflow and asset management.

 

 

The Alcatel-Lucent 5930 IMM can support a wide variety of business goals — such as enhanced TV sponsorship by a media agency — and a range of applications that can start small and expand. Today’s main advertising capability is based on banner ads, inserted into the electronic program guide (EPG) or into portals or microsites. But the platform also enables games, voting and competition, as well as enhanced TV, portals, microsites, participation TV, SMS, MMS and video chat. Interactivity can improve viewer retention during individual TV sessions and over the long term, with reduced subscriber churn.

 

 

The Alcatel-Lucent 5930 IMM can enable interactive TV services using several different TV platforms, and deployment models can vary significantly. For example, IPTV and other platform operators can use the Alcatel-Lucent 5930 IMM to develop portals that enhance their services. The barrier to entry is low because this product is available as components — or as a hosted solution with minimal investment. Broadcasters and content owners can also use the Alcatel-Lucent 5930 IMM to support media-rich content channels, transmitted to subscribers by participating platform operators. Both platform operators and broadcasters can enable basic subscriber response capabilities — and support microsites for advertising revenue generation. With its template-based approach, the Alcatel-Lucent 5930 IMM makes it easier for media and advertising agencies to enter the increasingly complex new-media environment, by simplifying the creation of new ad campaigns.

 

 

The following Alcatel-Lucent products are elements of the linear ad insertion solution. Specific

product needs are determined through analysis of the IPTV provider network, business and

technical requirements.

 

·         TPSDA Assured Linear TV Delivery Platform with integrated local ad insertion capability and integrated targeted ad insertion capability

·         Alcatel-Lucent Intelligent Services Access Manager (ISAM) family of products with targeted and interactive-enhanced features

·         ISAM family of products with IPTV presence server features

·         Alcatel-Lucent 5410 Presence Server for audience measurement

·         Alcatel-Lucent 8920 Service Quality Manager (SQM) for audience measurement

·         Alcatel-Lucent 5620 Service Aware Manager (SAM) — element management system (EMS) for IP platform management

·         Alcatel-Lucent 5750 Subscriber Services Controller (SSC) — subscriber management system

·         Alcatel-Lucent 5520 Access Management System (AMS) — EMS for ISAM management

 

The following products are elements of the interactive advertising solution.

 

·         Alcatel-Lucent 5930 Interactive Media Manager (IMM) for enhanced subscriber experience and banner ads in portals and EPGs

·         Alcatel-Lucent 5910 MiViewTV for banner ads in the EPG

 

In the near term, the IPTV ad insertion solution will provide national, local and zoned linear IPTV ad insertion, so service providers can start with a national or local ad insertion system that will evolve into a targeted ad insertion system — or introduce targeted ads all at once. Linear ad insertion can be integrated into a TPSDA platform or offered as a standalone TPSDA network element. To enhance the consumer experience with rich media portals and microsites, 5930 IMM is offered on both Microsoft Mediaroom and the MiView TV environments.

 

The next capabilities to be enabled include relevant, personalized ads, based on geographical, demographic, subscriber preference opt-in or behavioral targeting. Consumer privacy will be maintained, while the ads’ relevance to consumers is improved. No changes in the STB are required, so the solution is middleware (client) independent. Other future introductions include expanded ad formats — with targeted interactive ads that can aggregate interactive and linear ad insertion ad space, enhancing the consumer experience for better ad value.

 

IPTV providers have an opportunity to improve competitiveness and increase revenues by installing advanced advertising solutions that leverage core assets — including their networks, subscriber intelligence and first-mile network quality of service. These assets differentiate IPTV  providers in the advertising market place, because they can be used to provide personalized, targeted advertising, as well as interactive capabilities. In brief, they offer powerful ways to transform the relationship between advertisers and consumers. And as a result, service providers can claim a new position in the advertising value chain — and benefit from a new business model that goes beyond reliance on monthly subscriptions.

 

Alcatel-Lucent is strategically positioned to lead the market in delivering advertising solutions to IPTV providers. Alcatel-Lucent offers the following differentiating factors for its IPTV platform and for its ad insertion platform. Alcatel-Lucent...

 

·         Is the leader in end-to-end triple play networks, deploying TPSDA with over 50 service providers worldwide.

·         Is #1 in IPTV integration, having secured video integration projects with 59 customers to date (1H2008)

·         Network-element based TS-splicer ad insertion offers computational efficiency compared with traditional standalone ES-splicers

·         7x50 platform leads the market in subscriber-aware service delivery, video networking and processing capacity

·         ISAM leads the industry in IP DSLAM and FTTx deployments for triple play services

·         Network-based (Alcatel-Lucent ISAM and 7x50) audience measurement provides real-time tracking of channel viewership, along with additional value to carriers in developing advertising metrics

·         Leadership in interactive TV deployments with 5930 IMM

 

As the industry leader in IPTV, Alcatel-Lucent can help service providers generate new revenues — and improve their competitiveness — by installing advanced advertising solutions. The Alcatel-Lucent solution can leverage subscriber intelligence, support interactive advertising and enable network-aware IPTV targeted ad insertion. The Alcatel-Lucent Triple Play Service Delivery Architecture (TPSDA) provides the foundation for ad delivery, which is integrated into network elements. This cost-effective, high-performance system provides integrated QoS across a proven platform. It is backed by an ecosystem of partners and Alcatel-Lucent’s world-class professional and integration services.

 

Alcatel-Lucent provides industry-leading design, integration and installation through its IPTV services team, and the solution is supported by an ecosystem of leading third-party suppliers chosen to satisfy each IPTV operator’s requirements. Third-party suppliers contribute to ad delivery with capabilities such as stream conditioning, ad ingestion, traffic coordination and billing. Alcatel-Lucent services focus on optimizing network design for service provider needs and selecting the most suitable network components. An IPTV network can be managed completely by Alcatel-Lucent or built for IPTV provider management.

 

The standards used to control ad insertion have been developed by the United States cable industry, based on Society of Cable and Telecommunications Engineering (SCTE) standards. The relevant standards include:

 

·         SCTE-35 addresses spot ad timing by in-band signals.

·         SCE-30 describes local or zoned ad server/ad inserter content transactions.

·         SCTE-130 targeted ads — defines interfaces between different elements of an advertising system.

·         SCTE-118 defines file format between the traffic system and ad insertion system.

·         SMPTE-312M defines MPEG2 constraints for transport stream splicing such as closing the GOP.

·         SCTE 104 addresses the API with splice information for encoders.

·         SCTE DVS 714 defines H.264 constraints for ad insertion.

 

Ad insertion with household-level targeting requires a sophisticated level of control between the various information systems and the ad insertion systems. The Alcatel-Lucent targeted ad solution is based on these standards, which enables an end-to-end solution with the greatest degree of compatibility and independence from specific third-party vendors. A simplified view of the SCTE-130 targeted ad standard is shown in Figure 6. The standard defines the interfaces between components, which work together to satisfy the needs of targeted advertising.