From formats to targeted advertising - media transformation in the digital era

Over-the-top (OTT) and multiscreen services today give broadcasters valuable opportunities to boost brand awareness, build revenues, and lead viewers to their linear channel offerings.

To capitalise on such opportunities, however, broadcasters must implement a fast, cost-effective repurposing workflow that allows them to transform aired content for timely delivery via the social and digital media platforms that make video available on computers, tablets, and smartphones.

For each output, the broadcaster must ensure that media accommodates the varying format, packaging, metadata, and container requirements of YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and a host of other services, all the while maintaining compliance with closed-captioning regulations for internet-delivered content.

The broadcaster also must incorporate targeted advertising into the media transformation workflow, leveraging data on ad markers and SCT-104/35 messages to facilitate accurate ad insertion.

Undertaking all of these processes via a manual approach is simply impossible, given the need for rapid clipping and creation of many versions of content.

Automation thus is critical to effective content-generation for OTT and multiscreen services. As broadcasters have discovered, it is also an essential part of maintaining the quality of those services.

With an automated solution for logging and monitoring OTT services, broadcasters can ensure that services are available 24/7 at optimal quality, validate service level agreements with content delivery networks, confirm the presence of captioning and other metadata, and determine that specialised video-player apps are providing optimal quality of experience.

This content was first published at IBC2016

The views expressed are those of the author.