Peer-to-Peer Network Definition: A peer-to-peer (P2P) network is a computer network in which each computer in the network can act as a client or a server for the other computers in the network, allowing the sharing of resources without the need for a central server.
In a Peer-to-Peer network, each computer has equal privileges and can communicate directly with any other computer in the network rather than going through a central server. This decentralized structure allows for more efficient resource sharing and can make the network more resilient to failure, as there is no single point of failure. However, it can also make it more difficult to control and secure the network, as no central authority manages it.
Here’s an image that shows the difference between a server-based network and a Peer-to-Peer network:
Examples of Peer-to-Peer Network
Let’s go through some examples in order to understand the Peer-to-Peer network in a better way.
Example 1:
One example of a pure Peer-to-Peer network is the BitTorrent file-sharing network. In the BitTorrent network, users can download and share files directly without needing a central server.
When a user wants to download a file, they connect to the network and request the file from other users who have already downloaded it. These users, known as “seeds,” send small pieces of the file to the requesting user, who assembles these pieces to create the complete file. The requesting user can also become a seed and share the file with other users who request it.
Example 2:
Another example of a Peer-to-Peer network is Skype, a popular communication platform that allows users to make voice and video calls and send messages to each other over the internet. In Skype, each user’s computer acts as a client and a server, allowing users to communicate directly.
However, Skype also uses central servers to help users find, connect, and handle tasks such as authentication and security. This makes Skype a hybrid P2P network.
Types of Peer-to-Peer Networks
There are several types of Peer-to-Peer networks, such as:
Pure P2P networks: These are networks in which all computers are both clients and servers, and there is no central server. Examples include BitTorrent and Gnutella.
Hybrid P2P networks: These are networks that combine the characteristics of both P2P and client-server networks. In a hybrid P2P network, some computers may act as servers and provide resources to other computers, while others may act as clients and request server resources. Examples include Skype and eMule.
Collaborative P2P networks: These are networks in which computers work together to perform a task, such as solving a complex problem or analyzing data. Examples include SETI@home and Folding@home.
Mobile P2P networks: These are P2P networks composed of mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, which can connect over a wireless network. Examples include FireChat and Bleep.
Cryptocurrency P2P networks: These are Peer-to-Peer networks that are used to validate and record transactions made with cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Peer-to-Peer Network Architecture
The architecture of a Peer-to-Peer network is decentralized, meaning that there is no central server or authority that controls the network. Instead, each computer in the network is connected to one or more other computers and can communicate with them directly.
In a Peer-to-Peer network, each computer is called a “node,” and each node has equal privileges and responsibilities. Nodes can communicate with each other by sending messages over the network using a set of rules called a “protocol.” The protocol defines how nodes should communicate with each other and what actions they can take, such as requesting or sending resources.
In some Peer-to-Peer networks, nodes may also be organized into “clusters” or “supernodes,” which can help improve the network’s efficiency and scalability. The remaining nodes can still share and communicate resources if one node goes offline or becomes inaccessible.
How Does Peer-to-Peer Network Work?
Peer-to-Peer networks allow computers to communicate and share resources directly rather than through a central server.
Let’s go through an example in order to understand the working of a Peer-to-Peer network:
Two computers, Alice and Bob, want to connect to a Peer-to-Peer network and share a file.
Both computers open a P2P client program, which allows them to connect to the network and search for the file they want to share.
Alice and Bob’s computers discover each other on the network and establish a direct connection.
Alice and Bob’s computers exchange messages using the P2P protocol to request and send the file to each other.
Once the file has been transferred, Alice and Bob’s computers can continue to share other files or disconnect from the network.
Finding, sharing, and connecting to other computers may be more complex in a more extensive Peer-to-Peer network. Some Peer-to-Peer networks use specialized software or servers to help nodes find and connect. At the same time, others rely on nodes to communicate directly with each other using a decentralized search algorithm.
Regardless of the specific method used, the key characteristic of a Peer-to-Peer network is that it allows computers to communicate and share resources directly without the need for a central server.
Advantages of P2P Network
Peer-to-Peer networks have several advantages, such as:
Decentralized: Peer-to-Peer networks are decentralized, meaning no central server or authority controls the network. This makes them more resilient to failure, as there is no single point of failure.
Efficient resource sharing: In a Peer-to-Peer network, each computer can act as a client and a server, allowing for more efficient resource sharing. This can reduce the burden on any single computer or server and make the network more scalable.
Lower costs: Peer-to-Peer networks can reduce the cost of maintaining and updating resources, as there is no need for a central server or infrastructure. This can make Peer-to-Peer network more cost-effective for specific applications.
Greater privacy: Peer-to-Peer networks can provide greater privacy for users, as no central server can collect or store user data.
Disadvantages of a Peer-to-Peer Network
Peer-to-Peer networks also have some disadvantages, such as:
Security: P2P networks can be more challenging to secure, as no central authority manages the network. This can make them more vulnerable to cyber-attacks and other security threats.
Quality of service: The quality of service in a Peer-to-Peer network may vary, as it depends on the availability and reliability of other computers in the network.
Control: P2P networks can be more challenging to control and manage, as no central authority regulates the network.
Legal issues: P2P networks may raise legal issues, as people can use these networks to share copyrighted or illegal materials.
How to Use a Peer-to-Peer Network Efficiently?
Here are some tips for using a Peer-to-Peer network efficiently:
Use a fast and reliable internet connection: A fast and reliable internet connection can improve the speed and performance of a P2P network.
Keep your P2P client software up to date: Make sure to keep your P2P client software up to date with the latest version, as this can help improve the network’s performance and security.
Connecting to a large number of seeds: In a file-sharing P2P network, connecting to a large number of seeds can help increase the network’s download speed and reliability.
Use a P2P client with built-in bandwidth management: Some P2P clients have built-in bandwidth management tools that can help optimize the use of your internet connection and improve the network’s performance.
Don’t download or share illegal or copyrighted materials: Downloading or sharing illegal or copyrighted materials on a P2P network can lead to legal issues and harm the network’s performance.
Consider using a VPN: Using a virtual private network (VPN) can help improve the security and privacy of your P2P connection and may also improve the network’s performance.
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In today’s digital age, Over-The-Top (OTT) content delivery has revolutionized the way we consume video and audio content. OTT platforms like Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+ have become household names, offering a vast array of entertainment at our fingertips. However, with the increasing popularity of OTT content, protecting intellectual property and ensuring content security has become paramount. This is where Digital Rights Management (DRM) comes into play. In this article, we’ll explore what DRM is and how it can be used to safeguard your OTT content.
What is DRM?
Digital Rights Management, or DRM, is a technology used to protect digital content from unauthorized access, copying, and distribution. It achieves this by encrypting the content and controlling access through a licensing system. DRM serves as a digital lock that ensures only authorized users can access and enjoy the content. For OTT platforms, DRM is crucial in safeguarding valuable content and maintaining the revenue generated from it.
Protecting OTT Content with DRM
Here are some key strategies for protecting your OTT content using DRM:
1. Encryption
The foundation of DRM is encryption. Content is encrypted at the source and only decrypted for playback on authorized devices. This ensures that even if the content is intercepted during transmission, it remains secure and inaccessible to unauthorized users.
2. License Management
DRM relies on licenses to grant access to content. These licenses can be time-limited, device-specific, or even tied to a specific user’s credentials. OTT platforms can manage these licenses to ensure that only legitimate users can view the content.
3. Watermarking
Watermarking is another essential feature of DRM. It involves embedding hidden information in the video or audio content. This information can identify the source of the leak if the content is pirated, acting as a deterrent to unauthorized distribution.
4. Secure Players
OTT platforms should use secure player applications that are equipped to handle DRM-protected content. These players ensure that content can only be played on authorized devices and that the decryption process is secure.
5. Regular Updates
As technology evolves, so do the methods used by pirates to circumvent DRM. Regular updates to your DRM system are necessary to stay ahead of potential threats. This involves updating encryption algorithms and licensing systems to counter emerging threats.
6. Compliance with Industry Standards
It’s essential to adhere to industry standards for DRM implementation. This ensures that your content is compatible with various devices and platforms while maintaining robust security.
Benefits of Using DRM for OTT Content
How to Protect the OTT Content Using DRM?
Protection of Intellectual Property: DRM helps content creators and distributors protect their valuable intellectual property, preventing unauthorized access and distribution.
Revenue Protection: By securing your content, you can maintain your revenue streams and ensure that only paying customers have access.
Enhanced User Experience: DRM ensures a seamless and secure experience for legitimate users, which is essential for building and retaining a loyal user base.
Compliance and Reporting: DRM systems can track user behavior and help with reporting and compliance requirements, which is particularly important in the media industry.
Deterrent for Pirates: The visible presence of DRM measures like watermarks acts as a deterrent to potential pirates.
Conclusion
Protecting OTT content using DRM is a necessity in today’s digital landscape. With the rise of piracy and unauthorized access, content owners and distributors must take proactive measures to secure their investments. By implementing DRM technology, you not only protect your content but also enhance the user experience and ensure compliance with industry standards. As OTT continues to shape the way we consume content, DRM remains an indispensable tool for content security and long-term success.
How do you insert ads into your content if you’re streaming video in a VoD environment? The answer is dynamic ad insertion, which lets you serve different ads to different audiences. How does dynamic ad insertion work for VoD? It’s a simple concept that relies on some sophisticated technology.
Quick Takeaways:
Dynamic ad insertion enables the insertion of different ads for different users into streaming video content.
Dynamic ad insertion uses server-side ad insertion (SSAI) technology to inject ads into existing streaming content.
Dynamic ad insertion lets advertisers target personalized ads to specific viewers.
Viewers benefit from seeing more relevant ads in VoD programming and experience a “seamless” stream akin to broadcast viewing.
Advertisers benefit from a more targeted audience and more efficient ad spending.
What Is Dynamic Ad Insertion?
Advertisers have long been able to insert ads into streaming video content, both live streams and video on demand (VoD). Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) expands on that concept by enabling advertisers to insert different ads for different viewers.
Lower revenue, poor advertiser quality, and lack of standardized measurement are top advertising concerns today.
Dynamic ad insertion in VOD content.
With the continuing growth of advertising-based video on demand (AVoD) services, advertising has become a critical part of the streaming video landscape. By using DAI, advertisers can target specific types of viewers based on viewer insights and their own campaign goals. DAI even lets OTT services deliver more ads to specific viewers of VOD content or different ads based on the viewing device. It’s all about delivering seamless insertion and personalization of the ad experience for each viewer.
The primary benefit of DAI is that, unlike traditional broadcast advertising, it doesn’t serve the same ads to everybody. DAI allows the microtargeting and mass personalization that viewers demand and that advertisers benefit from. Viewers get ads targeted to their interests and behaviors, while advertisers don’t waste their ad dollars on consumers who have little or no interest in what they’re selling.
How Does Dynamic Ad Insertion in VoD Work?
To deliver microtargeted ads in OTT programming, DAI uses server-side ad insertion (SSAI) technology. Unlike client-side ad insertion (CSAI), which embeds ads at the device and requires two players (an ad player and content player), SSAI intercepts content from the OTT provider and inserts selected ads into the existing stream. This provides a seamless transition between content and advertising and enables the insertion of dynamically selected ads. (in 2020, Pixelate estimated that 40% of streaming ads are delivered via SSAI. Today that number is significantly larger.)
This all works because streaming video assets aren’t usually single files, but rather a flood of small chunks of video. The chunks are sent over the internet from the OTT provider and then reassembled on the viewer’s computer, phone, or media streaming device. A streaming manifest describes the correct sequence for these video chunks, which also plays a key role in dynamic ad insertion.
Dynamically inserting streaming ads with SSAI is a multi-step process that involves several different entities. It looks like this:
How server-side ad insertion works.
The viewer selects a VoD program to watch.
The viewer’s media player sends a request for the VoD program to the OTT service’s content distribution network (CDN). The request includes information about the viewer to enable advertising targeting.
The CDN is configured to use an ad insertion service for its manifests rather than the content originator. It relays the viewer request to the ad insertion service.
The ad insertion service pulls the template manifest, including ad markers, from the content origin server. The ad markers tell the ad insertion service where to insert ads in the program.
The ad insertion service sends a request to the ad decision server. This request includes information about the viewer such as the viewer’s player, the number and length of each ad break, available demographic info, and so on.
The ad decision server uses the provided information to determine what ad(s) to serve for each ad break, then transmits the URLs for those ads to the ad insertion service.
The ad insertion service adds the URLs for the ads to the manifest and sends what is now a complete manifest (content + advertising) to the viewer’s player via the CDN. At this point, every viewer receives a unique manifest.
Playback begins on the viewer’s device.
The viewer sees the ad(s) as inserted into the VoD programming.
The ad insertion service or the viewer’s player generates data about the ad viewership. This data is then transmitted to the ad service for reporting purposes.
How Does a DAI System Decide What Ads to Serve?
One of the key attributes of dynamic ad insertion is the ability to serve personalized ads to individual viewers. It’s this ad personalization that offers value to all parties involved.
How does a DAI system know what ads to serve to what viewers? Ad targeting is part of the overall DAI process, based on information about the viewer provided by the publisher’s viewer’s subscription services on their devices. The OTT provider may know that viewers of a specific gender, age group, income level, and location want to watch a given program. That information enables advertisers, to attach highly personalized ads to programming that matches their viewer targets.
Bidding on specific ad slots is handled via programmatic advertising. Programmatic advertising uses machine learning and other technologies to automate ad buying and serve targeted ads to individual viewers. The State of Connected TV/OTT: Ad Supply Trends Report from Pixelate reveals that programmatic video advertising now reaches 72% of U.S. households.
The entire programmatic advertising process involves OTT providers, supply-side platforms (SSPs), demand-side platforms (DSPs), and advertisers. An SSP is an automated service that lets OTT providers sell their ad blocks to multiple DSPs. A DSP is an automated service that lets advertisers place ads with multiple OTTs via their SSPs. The OTT provider deals with one or more SSP, whereas advertisers deal with one or more DSPs.
The OTT provider tells the SSP what ad blocks are available and information about the program content and viewer demographics. The SSP transmits that information to one or more DSPs. The DSPs use that information to match available ad blocks to relevant advertisers, who’ve targeted the audiences that match what the OTT is transmitting. Advertisers can buy based on pre-determined pricing (Programmatic Guaranteed, DealID based) or, depending on the OTT provider, bid on available ad blocks via the DSP. In either case, the DSP will choose one or more advertisers to send to the SSP for consideration of inclusion in the ad break.
The result is that viewers see personally relevant ads seamlessly inserted into their VoD programming. They get an enhanced viewing experience while advertisers reach a targeted audience and get better value from their ad spend. This also benefits OTT providers, who generate greater ad revenues and keep their viewers more engaged during commercial breaks.
Contact us today to learn more about dynamic ad insertion and SSAI.
The rise of Targeted Advertising (TA) in 2023, with solutions like Sigma’s Targeted TV Advertising, offers a ray of hope amid the challenges faced by broadcasters and operators. While the industry witnessed record-high viewership during lockdowns, the revenue from advertising, a crucial part of the sector, took a hit.
Nevertheless, there’s a sense of optimism in the industry. TA solutions, which deliver ads tailored to consumers’ individual interests, even down to the household or individual level, are gaining mainstream acceptance. While TA’s share of the overall ad spending remains relatively small, its growth trajectory continues upward, despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Notably, eMarketer predicts that Connected TV (CTV) ad spending in the US will surge from $8.11 billion in the previous year to $18.29 billion by 2024.
2023 Vision — Targeted Ads come of age
While the United States is undeniably a significant hub for the growth of Targeted Advertising (TA), recent months have witnessed a surge in TA activity on a global scale, encompassing Europe, APAC, Latin America, and various other regions.
In the final months of 2023, Europe alone witnessed a flurry of developments: UK commercial broadcaster ITV unveiled its Planet V platform, FranceTV Publicité and Orange launched pioneering linear campaigns in France using TA, Molotov, a French OTT live and catch-up TV platform, introduced the new AVOD service Mango, and Movistar rolled out a TA service on channel #0 in Spain, with plans for expansion in 2021. Notably, similar initiatives were initiated by Mediaset in Italy, Proximus in Belgium, RTL in Germany, and a host of other projects globally.
Broadcasters across the world are either introducing standalone solutions or forging strategic alliances, such as the collaboration between rival Pay-TV companies Sky and Virgin in the UK. Simultaneously, ad tech companies are experiencing a comparable surge in activity. Samsung, for instance, made its Connected TV (CTV) inventory programmatically available through SpotX ahead of schedule in response to increased viewership during the Covid pandemic. LG, on the other hand, invested $80 million to acquire a controlling stake in TV ad data firm Alphonso, with the objective of establishing a first-screen, cross-device advertising platform complete with integrated analytics.
As previously mentioned, the interest in Ad-Supported Video on Demand (AVOD) has seen a substantial upswing as audiences seek fresh content without incurring premium costs. Projections from Digital TV Research indicate that the AVOD market is set to grow by 120% from 2019 to 2025, jumping from $24.3 billion to $53.5 billion, and contributing 32% of total OTT revenues.
With an ever-increasing number of viewers turning to Connected TVs (CTV), exceeding 50% in select countries, and a surging demand for AVOD-driven content, the structural dynamics of the broadcast industry are shifting towards streaming as the dominant mode of consumption. Consequently, advertisers are increasingly keen on replicating the successes they’ve achieved on digital platforms within the realm of television.
SpotX, a prominent player in the evolving ad tech industry, highlights in its Global Video Advertising Trends 2021 survey that ad spend is aligning with evolving consumer behavior, and it’s gravitating toward OTT and CTV at a pace faster than previously anticipated.
The challenge of complexity
The rich opportunity of Targeted Advertising
One of the limitations that operators face when looking to enter the market, however, is complexity. A research study in 2019 discovered that marketers have an average of 28 different technologies in their ad tech stack, with 70% believing that number would grow over the following three years due to the complexity of the advertising ecosystem. It would be hard to argue they are wrong.
Even narrowing the discussion down to the television space, there are a large number of competing technologies, standards, and solutions that operators can choose from. In most territories, there isn’t a clear market leader and the choices become complex.
An illustration of the difficulties here is offered by the efforts at industry standardization with at least one high profile project moving into a key phase. The DVB and HbbTV have been working together to build the forthcoming DVB-TA specification, and indeed we have been a part of these efforts at VO (you can see our recent presentation at the DVB Demos day in November last year here).
Currently, work on the DVB-TA specifications ecosystem continues within the DVB Project. This includes the implementation of SoME (Signalling on Media Essence), where audio and video watermarking are used to signal targeted advertising replacement opportunities present in supported legacy STBs via a broadband connection.
The operator opportunity in the ATV market
If that complexity can be addressed, and it can, targeted advertising provides multiple new revenue opportunities. The headline is of course the possibility of ad replacement in linear primetime, which allows operators to increase the number of ad slots without increasing ad load; charge premium rates for them; and decrease churn as viewers have been shown to respond more favorably to targeted ads.
But there are other significant opportunities as well, especially when you consider that, with their first-party data, operators have everything they need to start making money now.
Additional opportunities include:
Leverage the UI – Operators can increase inventory still further by serving ads within the UI of their apps. This can be further explored when the user is actively interacting with the UI, such as when browsing content.
Catch-up content – As we wrote in Time is Money: the hidden revenue potential of time-shifted viewing, operators can use TA technology to serve ads attached to catch-up content. With more viewers watching more minutes of catch-u every year this is a powerful proposition
Self-promotion – With many companies in the OTT sector offering triple-play services and more, TA provides a valuable route to increasing the efficiency of their own promotions, both for additional services and for specific content
Freemium to premium- Operators can offer free (or almost free) content access, backing it up with significant ad revenues, to increase their market penetration and OTT migration, and create leads that will become premium customers in the future
It’s also worth pointing out that there are solutions on the market, such as ours, that do not require the latest equipment to be installed in viewer’s homes to make this happen. 50% or more of viewers worldwide are watching television on legacy devices that do not necessarily support OTT services, and this is an audience that needs to be reached for maximum benefit.
Targeted advertising works both with and without inventory. Operators with existing inventory can offer creative monetization options enabling them to optimize between their different monetization channels and on top of that use AI-based insights to increase the efficiency and scope of their segmentation. This boosts reach and revenues as a result. For operators without inventory, an off-the-shelf smart infrastructure enables them to connect with various TV channels and support multi-ad servers. This allows them to leverage their existing first-party usage data to offer attractive segmentation to advertisers, while also supporting and measuring ad-insertion.
And with Sigma SSAI, in particular, providing a rich opportunity for the launch of new services to capture audiences hungry for increasing amounts of content, it seems there is no better time to adopt a technology that satisfies both advertisers and audiences alike.
Five critical things that TV operators should think about when it comes to choosing a solution for DRM protection.
With content budgets rising all the time, whether for original productions or rights purchases, operators are understandably paying increasing attention to the protection of that investment. It is a challenging part of any business strategy as piracy organisations are constantly evolving and finding new ways to intercept and illegally re-stream video. Digital rights management (DRM) is thus a critical part of any overall OTT business plan, whether a new launch or an established service, but there are many different things to consider when it comes to choosing the right DRM protection for your business needs.
Here then is our quick checklist of items and issues that will guide you when it comes to choosing your own DRM solutions.
5 key considerations for DRM protection
5 things you need to consider when choosing DRM protection
1. Recognise the value of your content
There is a direct link to the value of your content and the value that pirates can charge for accessing illegal copies of it. This means that the more you pay for your rights, the more you need to pay attention to how to protect them. Your content will be targeted; it’s a question of when and not if.
Sports rights are historically some of the most expensive in the industry and sports has been one of the main areas to be targeted in recent years, as piracy has moved to a live streaming model. Content protection here is an absolute prerequisite and is increasingly demanded by rights holders as part of any deal. Rights holders are all too aware that any leak anywhere in the world can have repercussions on their business wherever it may be situated. The prevailing mood is that they cannot be too careful.
2. Multiple devices = multi DRM
The days of watching television on a single big screen TV set in the living room are long gone. Today’s viewers watch digital content on a multiplicity of screens, from phones that they can put in their pocket to giant LCD screens that dwarf anything seen in the days of the cathode ray tube. And they expect that content to be there when they want it to be. The difficulty is that each platform has its own application language, methodology, and native DRM security, meaning that whatever you offer, viewing needs to be secured across all of them.
A multi-DRM approach is the only way that this can be done. It supports as wide a range of devices and formats as possible, as well as offering integration with third party DRM solutions such as Widevine or Microsoft PlayReady. Viewers don’t care about rights management issues; they simply expect their content to be available at anytime, anywhere, and that their viewing experience will be seamless.
3. Network considerations
Different DRM solutions generate DRM protected files in different ways, and the ideal DRM encryption solution you choose will depend on whether you leverage unicast, multicast or broadcast networks – managed or not. It’s a situation with plenty of flexibility and fairly constant evolution and iteration, and may evolve as your content delivery network advances and you reassess the ecosystem of your protected files.
It is worth pointing you that that leveraging adaptive streaming protocols such as MPEG-DASH, Microsoft Smooth Streaming and HLS is vital to maintain optimal video quality under a range of network conditions and on any device type.
4. Looking at the big picture
Any DRM solution you choose, not to mention the way you implement it, are a part of the overall content licensing agreements you sign, as rights owners become more concerned about the downstream management of digital rights.
That means it is not just the DRM you are selecting, but also the method of implementation that matters, as well as the level of security around the integration, and how security management will be handled over time: it is a complete package. Rights holders want to know that there are mitigations in place to prevent DRM protection removal, especially as DRM removal software has become more widespread
Integration need not be a lengthy process, however. VO’s own multi-DRM solution can be integrated into an operator’s ecosystem within a few weeks.
5. Hitting a moving target
Piracy is changing and evolving all the time. The amount of money – often illegal revenues of crime syndicates – being spent on establishing illegal operations is significant. This means that anti-piracy measures, including offering protected DRM content, have to constantly evolve too, to keep up as well. Technologies such as DRM Dynamic Watermarking thus become important over time, as workarounds for existing security methods become widespread amongst the pirate services, and the industry has to cope with increased DRM removal.
Managing risk
In the end, an effective DRM Solution is all about the management and limitation of risk. A solution looking to provide DRM TV needs to fulfil a range of criteria:
Deploy a set of technologies that fit your business models, that work both now and in the future
Provide rights owners with reassurance.
Integrate tightly and securely in all devices that are being used for your service. This covers both their hardware and software environments.
Piggyback on the security capabilities of the devices, and provide hardware anchorage wherever possible. This can be achieved through features such as STB secure chipsets, Trusted Execution Environments for smartphones, and more.
Take a holistic approach that does not rely on DRM alone. Additional services such as anti-piracy tracking and watermarking should also be considered too, as an essential part of your overall content protection.
Consumers are now used to dealing with DRM digital rights, with music services such as iTunes and Apple Music leading the way when it comes to audio and acting as powerful gatekeepers to protected songs and other media. However, the same situation is not yet the case when it comes to video and from the growth in Kodi Boxes to the almost total replacement of bittorrent with live streaming piracy services, video content and copyrighted works have never been under so much threat. However, there are definitely actions you can take to stay in control and make sure that digital content is protected, and that list starts with a robust security agent powered by DRM.
How can targeted advertising make time-shifted viewing a revenue source for TV operators and broadcasters?
In recent years, more people have been changing the way they watch TV. They’re using something called time-shifted TV (TSTV). This means they watch TV shows at their own time using services like catch-up and network recording. This way of watching TV is becoming more popular all around the world.
For example, in the UK, people spend an average of 30 minutes each day watching time-shifted TV, which is about 15.6% of their total TV time. In the United States, people watch about 3 hours and 27 minutes of time-shifted TV every week, while they spend 26 hours and 5 minutes watching live TV. In France, in 2019, 7.8 million French people used catch-up services to watch shows, which is 13% more than in 2017. These numbers have likely gone up even more because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
As more people use time-shifted TV, the technology behind it has also improved. It started with things like VHS tapes, then came PVRs (Personal Video Recorders), and now we have cloud PVR solutions like the one made by Broadpeak. But one thing that hasn’t changed is that people still don’t like watching commercials, and this causes broadcasters to lose money.
New way to deal with this problem
Instead of just fast-forwarding through ads, we can use something called targeted advertising. This helps broadcasters make money without annoying viewers.
By using the right targeted advertising technology and a mix of client and server-side ad replacement and insertion, TV operators can show time-shifted TV with fewer ads or even no ads at all, and they don’t need to change the content. This lets operators offer different pricing options, like paying for an ad-free service or watching some ads to make the service cheaper. This is something a lot of people are okay with, as a recent survey showed that 53% of people are willing to watch ads to lower the service price.
The best part is that this solution doesn’t depend on the regular ad slots in TV shows. Ads can be put into recorded content without changing it. The usual pre-roll ads are still there, so there are more ads available overall. Event-based advertising, where ads show up when viewers do things like fast-forwarding or pausing, is another way to target ads. Advertisers like this because they know viewers are paying attention when these ads show up.
A winning formula
The introduction of targeted advertising in time-shifted television is a win-win scenario for various stakeholders in the broadcasting ecosystem.
Time is Money: the hidden revenue potential of time-shifted viewing
For broadcasters, it presents an opportunity to monetize content beyond its initial transmission, while also offering advertisers a highly rewarding means of audience segmentation. This is a significant attraction gaining momentum across the industry.
Operators, on the other hand, benefit from increased ad inventory and can extend valuable advertising slots to advertisers, opening up the potential for further revenue growth without alienating viewers with low ad tolerances. This approach is cost-effective, as it doesn’t require investments in costly on-premises or domestic equipment for subscribers. Instead, it can be implemented as part of operational expenditure (opex). This additional revenue stream allows operators to offer viewers more features and services at the same price or even lower their tier pricing, enhancing the overall value proposition.
For advertisers, this development provides access to a growing segment of viewers who engage in time-shifted television. Targeted advertising for time-shifted viewing, whether as pre-roll or conventional mid-roll slots, extends the reach of their advertisements. Advertisers can ensure their ads are actually watched, particularly pre-roll, which is often designed as “unskippable” by major SVOD providers and has gained consumer acceptance. Event-based advertising offers additional certainty that the viewer is actively engaged with the content during ad placement, further enhancing the effectiveness of campaigns.
Extending campaigns into the catch-up window offers advertisers flexibility for real-time campaign optimization, maximizing revenue growth.
As for viewers, they are likely to approve of this development. With fewer ads, thanks to targeted advertising, viewers are more engaged with the ads they do see, as the content is more relevant to their interests. This improvement in user experience and a reduction in ad load can lead to higher retention rates.
Furthermore, the ability to access ad-free services through a paid subscription, along with various options in between, adds value to the offering. This can increase viewer retention and reduce churn, as well as contribute to improved GDPR opt-in rates, as viewers appreciate the control and customization offered by these services.
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