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What is “microcasting” and why does it matter?
Most cable operators have already configured their networks to target
local advertisements into specific geographic zones. But the boundaries
of those zones are tied more to how the physical plant was laid out,
than to viewer demographics.
Microcasting is the application of a demographic overlay to the existing
geographic zones. That way, advertisers can send ads that are more
relevant to consumers based on their interests rather than simply their
location.
With microcasting, for example, operators could send one ad to the
television in a home's family room targeted at young people who like
video games, and a different ad to the office tv targeted at the person
who handles the family's finances.
How is microcasting related to Switched Digital Video (SDV)?
Microcasting is a byproduct of switched digital video, and switched
digital video (SDV) is a enabler of microcasting.
SDV works by delivering only those channels requested by viewers. Over
time, the channel requests that are collected by the SDV equipment can
be correlated into viewing patterns and placed into demographic
categories. The easy example is the set-top that’s always parked on some
kind of sports channel, or sporting match. That box becomes part of a
group of four demographic slices that can receive addressable ads – in
this case, the "sports fan" demographic.
What’s an example of that?
Let’s say the advertiser is a car manufacturer, and that car
manufacturer has four advertisements – one for a hybrid, one for an SUV,
one for a performance convertible, one for a sedan. With microcasting,
maybe you send the hybrid ad to the single person, the SUV ad to the
sports fan, the performance car ad to the middle-aged man – and the
sedan goes to everyone else.
How does it work?
Microcasting in a SDV environment has two main components: The switching
server, what we call a USRM, which stands for Universal Session and
Resource Manager. It’s the USRM that collects the information from
individual set-tops, about what channels were requested. The second
component is the MPEG Digital Ad-splicer.Technically, the ad splicing
works the same as it does with existing digital-into-digital ad
insertion systems. If an ad splicer sees a trigger inside a video
program stream, it communicates with the ad server, which plays out a
commercial spot. The splicer does a frame-accurate splice into the
program stream, and out of it, when the commercial ends. In that sense,
it’s all the same.
But in this example, there are now four different ads for this one
program stream – the splicer creates four versions of it, and can splice
each of the four different ads in.
In an SDV system, if a particular set-top fits into one of four, or
more, demographic types, it can receive a targeted ad.
How are the demographic categories created?
Demographic categories can be determined by individual cable operators,
or by participating advertisers. The demographics can be statically set
or dynamically determined by viewership. They can be based on
programming, time of day, advertising zone, or subscriber demographics –
age, gender, household income, etc. It’s pretty flexible in that regard.
How do you address the hot potato that is the protection of a
consumer’s right to privacy?
Set-top boxes have a unique identification number. It’s how they
identify themselves to the digital video switch, so that the switch can
send them the programming they requested. However, that ID number isn’t
and can’t be correlated to a particular address, or a name. It doesn’t
contain any personally identifiable information.
In other words, set-top ID numbers can be categorized into groups, but
there is no mechanism to go down to the individual box, and know what
someone is watching.
MSO’s are committed to complying with the Cable Privacy Act, and
therefore, have required that SDV systems protect Personally
Identifiable Information (PII) through one-way hashing algorithms such
that an individual’s identity cannot be determined. With Microcasting,
however, groups of consumer STBs can be clustered into demographic or
geographic zones without ever exposing any PII. This is actually a key
differentiator between Microcasting and Unicasting.
What if it’s VOD content that’s being requested? Can those ad avails
be targeted?
Yes. There are two ways to go about it. One is to microcast, as
discussed above. In that scenario, when a consumer requests a VOD event,
step one is to see if that box falls into a particular demographic
slice. If yes, microcast.
It’s also possible for the VOD system, such as the Cisco Content
Delivery System (CDS), to double as the ad server and manage ad
insertion natively. Its Ad Management System (ADM) detects avails in
real time and gathers session-specific information, such as content and
subscriber metadata, which it communicates to an Ad Decision Service
(ADS) in the form of a placement request using the messaging protocols
defined by the emerging DVS 629 standard. The ADS consults the campaign
manager, selects the optimal ad based on various criteria such as
sponsorship buys and geographic or demographic targeting attributes, and
returns a placement response to the ADM. CDS then dynamically inserts
the ads in the content stream and sends a placement complete message to
the ADS for reconciliation with the billing system.
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