xg ADR Ad Decision Router

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1 xg ADR Ad Decision Router Application Note Overview Video service providers (VSPs) who wish to monetize their inventory face a complicated landscape of options, restrictions and requirements. In such a landscape, the process for making ad insertion decisions can benefit from indirection, provided by an ad decision router (ADR). The ADR enables different ad opportunities to be routed to different ad decision services (ADS) based on various criteria. The criteria can be rights-driven for example, which ADS hosts the campaign for a specific opportunity, program or channel; or the criteria can be value driven for example, which of several real-time bidding engines maximizes the revenue generated by inserting an ad in an avail. The ADR conforms the requests to the various ADSs, so that the ad insertion components do not need to utilize multiple variants of SCTE-130 or VAST when interfacing with multiple ADSs. The ADR also allows service providers to readily change between multiple ADSs without having to re-architect or re-test their solution, enabling operators to switch between best-of-breed ADS vendors much more easily. Lastly, the ADR can provide many value-added features that optimize ad decisions, such as ad-decorations and ad-prefetching. Solution Description Imagine Communications xg ADR is an advanced, highly scalable decision router that complements the company s rich portfolio of dynamic ad insertion products, including xg POIS, xg ADS, xg AIM, Landmark ad management and Selenio Video Delivery Edge (VDE). These components are shown in Figure 1 below, illustrating Imagine s ad-insertion delivery ecosystem, which leverages open-standards-based interfaces, such as IAB VAST and SCTE-130. Figure 1. The ad insertion ecosystem.

2 The Ad Insertion Ecosystem Before discussing the ADR in detail, we will review the components of Imagine Communications dynamic ad insertion ecosystem, designed to maximize advertising revenue from linear and live and on-demand multiscreen ad delivery. The components in the ecosystem are: Landmark and xg advanced advertising systems manage ad sales and campaign management. SelenioNext and SelenioFlex transcoders can be used to create multi-bitrate (MBR) output suitable for fragmentation by the Telurio Packager. These transcoders offer either high-density (with hardware acceleration) or pure software options with APIs that can be used to drive SCTE-35 cues for either ads or blackout events into their output. Telurio Packager converts transcoded MBR output into fragments that are sent to the CDN for distribution to clients. These fragments can be downloaded via HTTP by Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) clients or sent to the Selenio VDE for re-combination into streams suitable for IPTV or QAM network broadcast. Selenio VDE combines ABR fragments into transport streams, integrating ad insertion capabilities. This software product can be virtualized to create zoned broadcast ad insertion using the same decisioning and analytics framework used by a multiscreen dynamic ad insertion (DAI) system. xg AIM is composed of the award-winning: Playlist Server (PS) A manifest manipulator that manages the insertion of targeted ads to individual users. The PS detects ad markups, provides targeting information and delivers alternate content campaigns in linear, VOD and cloud DVR ecosystems. Ad Workflow Engine (AWE) Provides ad and ad-supported channel workflow management, Playlist Server cluster management, event & alarm aggregation, failover and node functional status. xg POIS (placement opportunity information service) determines whether ad insertion opportunities (avails) belong to the ad insertion ecosystem. The POIS can also inject alternate content events, such as ad opportunities or program substitution, into a stream via an ESAM interface to the transcoder that injects the POIS-supplied SCTE-35 cues into the transcoded stream. The POIS ingests AMI data to specify ad opportunity data and ESNI scheduling data to manage blackout data. Blackout information is sent to the ADR s ACDS (alternate content decision service) for blackout decisioning. xg ADR ad decision router helps manage and place advertising across the live and on-demand multiscreen video ecosystem at scale, and is discussed in further detail in this Application Note. xg ADS ad decision service makes decisions on which ad to target for which user. Telurio Edge is an ad origin server, providing a basic HTTP server that can be used to host ad files. ADR Use Cases xg ADR can support multiple use cases and provides an important cornerstone in any ad delivery ecosystem. In the following sections we review these use cases in detail. ADS Indirection/Intermediation Request Routing In many ad insertion deployments, the ad campaigns for different content, whether linear or VOD, will be served by different ad decision servers. In such a situation, the ADR can direct ad decision requests to the correct ADS. The ADR can utilize multiple criteria to drive an ADS selection: the ADS may be selected based on the linear channel viewed, the specific program viewed, or based on querying a POIS to determine the nature of the ad opportunity for example, whether it s local or national.

3 A typical use-case occurs when a service provider aggregates content from multiple content owners that utilize different ad management vendors and hence different ad decision servers. Each content owner may mandate that the service provider utilize their ADS, and the service provider would like to additionally use their own. An ADR solves this issue immediately. The ADR not only allows for more than one ADS to be deployed, but it also allows them to be easily replaced, mitigating vendor lock-in and enabling rapid and flexible changes to ad campaign management. This is of particular importance in a dynamic ad insertion market, where large-scale changes in programmatic, linear-parity for multiscreen, individual targeting, and similar product evolutions are taking place. It s worth noting, as shown in Figure 2, that the ad placement requests may originate in clients or head-end-side components, such as manifest manipulators. Figure 2. An ADR sending ad placement requests to different ad decision services Analytics Routing As ads are delivered, the splicing component, whether a client, manifest manipulator, or other module, will send analytics data to confirm the insertion. Typically, either an SCTE-130 Placement Status Notification (PSN) or VAST beacon is sent at every quartile of an ad that is, at the beginning, fourth, half, three-fourths, and end of the ad. These notifications have to be routed back to the ADS that made the ad decision for verification, and the ADR facilitates the routing of this data, as shown in Figure 3. In the case of VAST beacons, the beacon may need to be translated to an SCTE-130 PSN if the ADS that made the decision used this protocol. In this case, the ADR translates the beacon before forwarding it. Request Decoration Incoming ad placement requests do not typically carry very much information. A typical request will specify a user ID, but no other demographic information that can make the ad placement opportunity more monetizable. The ADR is in an ideal position to decorate, or fill in, auxiliary information from other sources to enrich the ad decision request. Figure 4 shows the ADR making requests from a subscriber information system (SIS), placement opportunity information services (POIS), content information services (CIS), and a session service (SS), and adding returned data to the ad decision request before it is passed to the ADS. The ADS can then use this data to make better, and hence more valuable, ad campaign decisions, which are returned (via the ADR) to the ad decision requesting device. Figure 3. An ADR routing placement status notifications back to the source ADR that made the original ad placement decision. Figure 4. An ADR sending ad placement requests to different ad decision services.

4 Blackout/Program-Substitution Decisioning Imagine s ADR contains an integrated ACDS, which holds blackout data it receives from Imagine s POIS and makes blackout (or program substitution) decisions at the ADR for example, a sports blackout where programs cannot be shown in certain geographical regions. To facilitate blackouts, the ADR also contains a geolocation service that can convert a user s IP address to a ZIP code. This allows blackout decisions to be made on geographical (or potentially other) data. See Figure 5. Figure 5. Blackout information in an ESNI format is passed into in the POIS which passes it to the ADR. Pre-fetch of Ad and Blackout decisions the Super Bowl Problem The so-called Super Bowl or sports overload problem occurs when many viewers are tuned into the same linear program and hence reach an ad opportunity and a need for an ad decision at nearly the same time. The time-distribution of the ad decision request is related to the fragment duration used in the ABR stream and the client buffer, but it is typically a few seconds. If the viewing audience is large, the load on the ADS is high for a short time; supporting such a high-peak utilization requires significant compute resources. The compute resources then languish during the bulk of the viewed program during which no ad decisions are required. In order to mitigate this inefficiency, the ADR, working with the POIS, can pre-fetch ad decisions and reduce the ADS load. This works in the following way: When the POIS confirms an SCTE-35 cue for the transcoder, it notifies the ADR that an ad opportunity is imminent The ADR consults a Session Service (SS) to determine which users are currently viewing streams that will require ad insertion decisions The ADR pre-fetches ad decisions for those viewers and caches them The ADR has a significant latency to pre-fetch, consisting of the SCTE-35 pre-roll time, the transcode latency, the packager latency, and the distribution of the manifests to the client, as well as potential latency on the client side In aggregate, this may increase the overall pre-fetch time by 10 times for the original distribution in ad decision requests When the client needs an ad decision, it is delivered by the ADR from its cache while clients that joined later and were not included in the SS have ad decisions fetched in real time from the ADS The same workflow supports blackout/program-substitution requests By pre-fetching alternate content decisions this way, the ADR reduces the compute requirements for ADSs by as much as a factor of ten!

5 Protocol Translation Imagine s ADR can convert VAST requests into SCTE-130 requests, and then convert the responses back, as appropriate. As seen in Figure 6, IAB VAST clients make requests to the ADR, which can convert these to SCTE-130 requests, if the appropriate ADS only supports this protocol. The SCTE-130 Placement Response can then be converted back to a VAST response for the client. Subsequently, when the client issues VAST beacons to signal ad playback, the ADR can accept these beacons and convert them to SCTE-130 PSNs that are routed to the appropriate ADS for analytics and reporting purposes. Figure 6. The ADR is in an ideal position to convert VAST to SCTE-130 to facilitate heterogeneous decisioning ecosystems. Both requests and responses are translated, as well as VAST beacons, which are routed to SCTE-130 PSNs. High Availability and Clustering Imagine s ADR supports a high-availability architecture, allowing multiple instances of the ADR to be run in a cluster, with a shared cache ensuring that if any member of the cluster fails, no data is lost. Moreover, any member of the cluster can respond for any other member, so that simple load balancing is sufficient for interacting with the cluster. Lastly, the ADR s clustering capability means that it can scale to arbitrarily large numbers of simultaneous requests, allowing operators to grow their ad insertion ecosystem as their service grows. Conclusion Imagine s xg ADR is a powerful monetization tool that should be deployed in any ecosystem requiring ad decision services. By intermediating ADS requests, the ADR allows content owners to easily add a new ADS or replace an existing one, without having to modify their network or call routing. xg ADR is robust and scalable, and supports a complete set of high-availability features. It future-proofs current investments and de-risks ADS vendor selection. Lastly, the ADR is built on industry standards and open APIs and can work with Imagine or third-party components to support and optimize service providers monetization initiatives Imagine 2016 Imagine Communications Proprietary and Confidential AN_XGADR_0516