Sky Media to use Yospace’s live ad insertion solution for Sky Go

Sky Media, the sales division of Sky, has chosen Yospace to provide a solution for dynamic advertising replacement for Sky Go, the TV Everywhere service. Dynamic ad serving will be applied to the linear streams on Sky Go for the first time. The deployment means Sky Media can now offer the benefits of Sky AdSmart, it’s addressable TV advertising solution, across connected devices.

“The enablement of dynamic ad serving in Sky Go linear, and the ability to extend Sky AdSmart on Sky Go marks a big leap forward for both advertisers and viewers,” says Jamie West, Deputy Managing Director of Sky Media.  â€œWe wanted to provide a seamless viewing experience but also consider Sky Go viewers’ more personalised relationships with their TV content.  With these aspirations in mind, it became clear very quickly that Yospace’s platform was the most innovative and technically robust.”

With millions of subscribers around the UK, it was vital that the new implementation provide a seamless viewing experience for Sky Go. Yospace is able to frame-accurately splice replacement advertisements in such a way that the viewer is unable to distinguish replaced content from the underlying stream.
 
Tim Sewell, CEO of Yospace, says, “Sky is the market leader, not just in terms of audience but in innovation in services and features too, and Yospace is delighted to be adding them to our growing list of broadcast customers. Our dynamic advertisement replacement technology allows tailored adverts to be fully personalised, delivering view-through rates in excess of 98%.  When applied to Sky Go, whose audience is measured in millions, we anticipate substantial benefits for both viewers and advertisers.”

The expansion of dynamic ad serving is considered a great benefit to advertisers, who are able to overlay ads aimed at selected audiences, whether using conventional broad TV demographs or precisely targeted Sky AdSmart audiences. There is strong evidence that consumers benefit, too.

Sky Media used its 500,000-home Sky Viewing Panel to analyse the effect of Sky AdSmart ads on viewing behaviour in commercial breaks last year. A study covering 50 million viewing occasions from May to August 2015 showed that channel switching during Sky AdSmart commercials was 48% lower than for standard ads in the first three break positions (where most Sky AdSmart spots appear). This means only 5.2% of viewers changed channels during AdSmart ads, compared to the norm of 10%, in the first three break positions.

Overall, across all positions in breaks, channel switching during ‘AdSmart’ ads was 33% lower than the norm, the study showed. The effect was consistent regardless of channel, household type and amount of viewing.