Metadata? Metadata? Who in God’s name writes an article about Metadata? Let alone the Top 3 Recommendations for it. Well, guilty as charged. Actually, the TV video ad ecosystem would not technically run anywhere near properly without it. For the sake of those not in minutia of the video ad serving technology (lucky you), metadata is defined by the good folks at Wikipedia* as “data that provides information about other data, but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself.” So, in this context, metadata is about the data about the piece of entertainment content (the TV show), or data about the ad itself.
Breakpoints
The first type of metadata I recommend you make sure is correct is Breakpoint data. Breakpoints tell the ecosystem data about where to start and end a commercial break in the entertainment content. For example, if you want to have three commercial breaks in your half-hour sitcom, you have to tell the ecosystem where to place them. For the best consumer experience, watch each piece of content, look for the end of a scene, and place a Breakpoint there. (Technically these are SCTE-130 markers and are saved as part of the Entertainment Metadata [in-band] or in a .CSV corresponding file [out-of-band]. (Sorry to geek out on you for a second, there.) Or, some folks are lazy, or want to cut costs, and just place Breakpoints automatically every eight minutes. And that is why sometimes you are watching a show and in the middle of a scene, it cuts to commercial break. Not recommended.
Ad Maps
The second type metadata I recommend you make sure is correct are your Ad Maps, also called Commercial Break Patterns. Ad Maps tell the ecosystem data about how many ads you want in a piece of entertainment content. For example, if you want to have one ad before the show starts, then four ads in each commercial break during the show, and one after the show, that’s the start of Ad Map Metadata. From there, you have to make a few more decisions, such as what length of ads you are going to allow in each break, and the total time allowed for each break. Many of my clients’ typical Ad Map looks like this: Pre-Roll ads up to :30 consisting of :15 or :30 in length, Mid-Roll up to two minutes consisting of :15, :30, or :60 in length, and Post-Roll ads up to two minutes consisting of :30, :60, or 1:20.
Entertainment and Ad Metadata
Finally, there is Entertainment and Ad Metadata. Entertainment data contains data including: the name of the series, the episode, a description of the show, the file name, and the release date. The Ad data contains data including: the company, the brand, the file name, and the release date. If all this data is not present, your video ad campaign will more than likely not run correctly. For instance, if you only wanted to run your ad on HGTV’s House Hunters, but “House Hunters” was not in the Entertainment Metadata, the system would not know where to place the ad, so it places nothing, resulting in zero ad impressions.
Now you may be thinking that all of this makes complete sense and is not that difficult, and you are correct. However, at my company, we monitor, identify and help fix all of these issues for 100+ of our TV network clients, week in and week out. This is because of the difficulty of maintaining a multi-platform world for the consumer at scale. The consumer loves to be able to watch their show where and when they want, and that is a wonderful thing. However, it is a nightmare for Operations folks at the TV networks who have to make sure that is the case, every time, and it is frankly extremely hard to keep up with my three recommendations at scale. But chin up, there are monitoring systems that can be put into place for some of it, and then there is good old manual service assurance.
As always, I hope this is helpful, and *don’t forget to donate to Wikipedia to keep it alive and well https://donate.wikimedia.org/ for blokes like me to lift from.
