Acting Locally to Expand Advertising Exponentially: BigBand Networks Provides a Major Cable Operator with Advanced Local Ad Services Based on SCTE Standards

In cable television advertising, sometimes it’s not so much about how many eyeballs an ad reaches, but how few glaze over during the commercial. A car dealership in a suburb usually doesn’t care about reaching millions of people in the middle of a major nearby city, even if the two areas are close enough to be served by the same cable operator. It doesn’t matter how good the deal is on a new convertible, people simply won’t make the trip. The dealer would rather spend less money reaching fewer—but more interested—viewers, based in the right region.

The power of locally targeted advertising, driven by cable operators, has established a multi-billion dollar annual market. But a sad thing has happened to cable operators on their way to the digital market. As they switch from analog to digital, they increase efficiencies and achieved more effective competitive positioning versus satellite alternatives, but they face losing technology and business models for ad insertion, thereby imperiling the critical associated revenues. And with satellite providers beginning to offer local programming, the community distinction of cable is even more at risk.

The cable industry has however rallied to establish digital local ad insertion. BigBand Networks is showing how to move forward towards more digital programming and advanced services, without sacrificing the critical annual revenue that local advertising insertion provides—and even leveraging the potential of digital content to boost those revenues significantly through techniques such as geographic zoning. The company is in the process of launching a deployment with a top-five cable operator in a widespread, top ten metropolitan market, that demonstrates the power of local digital-into-digital ad insertion on cable. This launch is providing both the technological model for digital ad splicing, as well as a new business case, that enhances the cable industry’s progress with digital programming.

The BigBand Ad Splicing Gateway on BigBand Networks’ Broadband Multimedia Service Router (BMR®) is the solution selected by the operator. Because of the BigBand BMR’s combination of high speed switching, high performance media processing and software intelligence, it is the only platform capable of going beyond splicing a single digital ad for an entire cable system, to providing lucrative zoning – geographic refinement of ad targeting – in this case simultaneously delivering distinctive ads within the same program to more than ten zones.

The BigBand BMR integrates the Ad Splicing Gateway as a modular service within a networked, multi-service environment, and the same platform installations are also being used to provide the operator with valuable services in digital broadcast grooming and Gigabit Ethernet transport of high quality video. In fact, all of these services are highly complimentary, as the local digital ads are being inserted in the same programs that are being digitally groomed, and Gigabit Ethernet transport is utilized as the most efficient manner to deliver ads from centralized servers to each of the zones.

In this installation, BigBand Ad Splicing Gateway is providing:

• Ad splicing from the digital broadcast platform that leads the industry in capabilities such as port density, reliable architecture and ease of use
• Support for the CableLabs®-endorsed digital program insertion (DPI) standards of SCTE 30 and SCTE 35, interoperable with all major server vendors
• RateShaping™ bit rate adaptation that optimizes bandwidth of inserted ads within available capacity, for maximum video quality with bandwidth efficiency
• Simultaneous insertion of different ads into multiple copies of the same program stream with each switched towards particular service zones
• Efficient transport of ads to zones based on Gigabit Ethernet, with media processing at destination to assure video quality

All of these BigBand BMR capabilities are being deployed, demonstrating how more revenues can be derived from local advertising than ever before – and how cost-effectively, with industry-leading techniques such as Gigabit Ethernet transport. In the large and widespread a market of this installation, more advertisers can participate, because of refinement of advertising audience sizes. Also, strategic targeting, based on demographic or geographic profiles, makes each home reached more valuable to the advertiser.

The future holds even brighter promise for digital ad insertion on the BigBand BMR. BigBand Networks already has, in collaboration with several partners, demonstrated a capability to switch multiple ads to the same zone, and have different ads play for different individuals within the zone, regardless of location, based on personal profile. Another area of interest is the impact of targeted ad insertion on ad-supported video on-demand (VOD). And, the “P” in DPI stands for program – indicating the possibilities for application of such technologies in markets beyond ad insertion.

This BigBand BMR installation of zoned ad insertion with digital broadcast grooming and Gigabit Ethernet transport promises an exciting future given the platform’s nature of removing technology, time-to-market and capital budget limitations across an expanding range of services. Already, the BigBand Ad Splicing Gateway is impressively enabling lucrative zoning in this top ten metropolitan area today, and a city, suburb and hamlet (with different ads going to each of them) near you soon.