By: Joe Hirsch, General Manager of SpringServe
The first TV ad which debuted in 1941 was only 10 seconds long, in black and white, and only cost the advertiser $9. Since then, TV advertising has morphed and matured. But all the while, programmers have needed to straddle the line between getting the advertisers’ message across while keeping viewers happily tuned in.
Broadcast TV has had decades to smooth out the viewer experience using pre-fetched creative for pre-set content blocks and other tactics, but the digitally-enabled world of CTV is much more complex. For one thing, not all SSPs are equipped with the technology needed to properly manage CTV inventory. Furthermore, the ad inventory fragmentation that exists between media owners, content distributors and hardware suppliers that we discussed previously means ads within the same show or ad pod may not adhere to the same quality guidelines.
To help alleviate these ad quality issues in CTV, SpringServe developed several turn-key features within its ad serving platform to ensure the ad experience is smooth and what consumers look for in a premium viewing environment.
- Audio Volume Targeting provides publishers with granular control to prevent a poor end-user experience by blocking loud creatives. With this feature, publishers can define a mean volume level, and all creatives outside the threshold will not pass targeting and will not serve.
- Pod Deduping allows publishers to improve user experience by not showing the same ad more than once in a commercial break. Ad podding is a series of ads sequenced and played together, similar to a linear TV ad-watching experience. By not returning the same media file more than once in a pod, SpringServe helps eliminate the struggle of ad fatigue.
- Creative Size Targeting allows publishers to deliver creatives best suited for the environment. For example, in client-side ad insertion, large file sizes can cause pauses in the user’s feed as the ad needs to load. SpringServe allows publishers to limit and control the bitrates of creatives that serve and remove all media files outside of those limits..
SpringServe created these solutions to address common issues in CTV that degrade the viewer experience such as latency and repetitive ads. These features not only improve the ad experience for end viewers but also minimize the amount of time and effort publishers have to spend monitoring ad creative. Stay tuned over the next few weeks as we talk about other features that help publishers more effectively manage their CTV inventory.
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