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OTT Advertising – All You Need To Know About Over The Top Ads

Published On August 30th, 2023 3431Tech Talk
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Hello!

The mass media of television kept alive our imagination whilst keeping alive the livelihoods of soap writers and television hosts. It had also let commercial brands thrive within even small segments of tv commercials. You can’t complain if they keep getting creative with it.

Their ecosystem considers it a symbiotic relationship, say. One holding the other up likewise. Now that television has stepped up- suited in evolutionized tech that requires a mere voice signal to get your television hour going. The adverts have gotten better too. They have become skippable. In the case not, if you are willing to spend an extra buck or two, you may very well turn to premium membership touted for an ad-free experience.

Though, you must know that OTT Advertising predominantly helps the platform provider of an OTT subscription service in running their business. Businesses too, most forwardly invest in advertising on the OTT platform for the same reason of major migration of audience onto over-the-top media entertainment.

The stats in support states that: ott video advertising is the largest segment within the ott video sector, at a market value of 183 billion USD this year (2022). 

What Is OTT Advertising?

To elaborate on the OTT advertising definition, it can be stated as follows. OTT Advertising is the streaming of advertisements of branded commodities alongside the video streaming in service by an OTT. The benefits of OTT advertising are, wider brand publicity for the advertiser since it is believed that OTT media subscribers make up a much larger audience base and spend much longer here.

It is delivered on the platform via the internet as a consistent part of the general running of the business. The structural difference to advertising on OTT is that it is specific to the intended audience’s interests which is unlike the regular tv commercials with a mass approach.

How Is Over The Top Advertising Delivered?

Here are certain steps are taken while delivering ads on the platform. The mode of delivery can differ on the choice basis of the ad protocol, relevant to the platform and its compatible OTT device. Now for the steps,

  • In the first step, the audience grouping is done for a particular campaign. This list of people is drawn from the platform database and filtered by certain qualitative metrics.
  • In the next turn of events, the focus is on the launch of the ad for which the OTT ad tech supporter will link up the audience group (from step one) to a specific subscriber listing on all ott platforms.
  • In this step of workings, the ad is being played to the audience, and tags are used as an instruction to the media player on how to play the video to the viewer. The instructional information is processed by the video player.
  • In the final step, reports concerning the outcome of the ad are transferred to the advertiser.

OTT Ad Insertion Methods

The incorporation of ads into videos is distinguished by two ways. There are CSAI (Client-Side Ad Insertion) and SSAI (Server-Side Ad Insertion).  

CSAI: Imagine this to be the passive way of ad insertion. Here, the ad is prefixed onto the platform in advance of the viewer perusing the video linked to the ad. This method accounts for most cases of ad insertion, despite its downside of having a higher possibility of getting blocked out by ad-blockers. 

SSAI: This method stands up for an active choice of ad insertion. Since the ad gets “stitched” into the video which will bypass any unwanted breaks in the video. The video quality to is maintained at the highest level in this technique of hooking an ad to the video. You are right to suppose this is a better way of OTT advertising even if it is not majorly opted. Data that can help the publisher to decide either to choose CSAI vs SSAI



Key Challenges Of OTT Advertising

While the OTT industry may be booming and so may the prospect of over-the-top advertising with it, there are set challenges posing limitations to the progression of OTT advertising. The industry is an unregulated one without standards in place for the well-rounded performance of OTT in advertising. You may see setbacks like,

No Standardized Identifier– without their presence in place for support with maintaining the relevance of ads to its viewer, it might become harder for the marketers in delivering audience-focused advertisements. In the absence of a universal standard for device identification, targeting, and frequency mediatory help, it can go awry with marketing efforts.

Unclear Transparency– in case of lack of a universal identifier, the platform and device will show up with different IDs which will lead to the challenge of spotting the services audiences are buying from but nothing on who the audiences are.

Campaign Performance Metrics– considering most OTT platforms are still behind- they cannot identify the performance on which an ad just ran, there is a dire need for better circumstances in this respect. It is the obscurity of the targeting and attributing actions that render an OTT campaign’s metrics hollow without much value.

Discord in Tag Compatibility– it can be stated that not all kinds of tags on all platforms are one with OTT giving way to discord in the compatibility.

At Risk of Fraudulent Behavior– the OTT inventory is ever increasing stretching its industry with it. As it happens the risk of fraudulent behavior hikes up as well. Server Side Ad Insertion is the solid method of advertising on OTT TV app solutions but it is difficult to detect the precise traffic rate of ads streamed via this method. This presents a gray area to fraudsters for lurking and dishonestly earning from running ads with false claims of high traffic.

Benefits of OTT Advertising

Now for imagining all the good, there is too OTT programmatic advertising, we shall list down what are the practical benefits of employing the forum of OTT for advertising from the advertiser’s point of view.

  • Targeting – this aspect homes in on the target audience of that particular ad elevating the level of specificity in advertising as well as keeping the ad at a tolerable length for its viewers.
  • Flexible Ad Running– there is scope for changing places of banners and video ads in any of the cases of linear, live, and on-demand streaming. 
  • Revered Analytics– the outcome of the whole deal of advertising with an OTT provider is to get access to the audience therein and assess their engagement with the brand’s content. The data mined from this point helps in realizing the worth of the ad through its trend statistics. 

Read Also: Netflix Business Model – How Much Money Does Netflix Make?


How To Generate Revenue From The Ad-Based OTT Platform

Now that we covered the pros and cons of OTT advertising. It is indeed the time to hit the discussion on practically generating revenue from ad-based OTT services. You have CONTUS VPlayed at your disposal to guide you through the entire journey of launching a platform and monetizing its prospect. 

If you look at it, there are many ways to make money off of a platform owned by you, with the first step being launching an OTT platform. Then the service of a supply-side platform such as PubMatic or SpotX is employed to act as a mediator between the OTT platform and ad server. 

The SSAI model enables a smooth shift from ad to video as well as an escape from ad-blocking on the platform. Then it creates a manifest file to collect data on the ad viewer without details of their person. The data is their device’s IP address that can be targeted later for pushing more brand media to.


 
Do you have any idea about starting an OTT platform with ads support?

In Conclusion

We are nearing the end of our discussion on what does OTT advertising mean to the industry. We have also covered the benefits and challenges of the video monetization concept in OTT. Now that you have a certain grasp of it if you are looking for an OTT platform provider to launch your very own platform with advertising support. Then you must check out CONTUS VPlayed.

John Mathews

CJ is a product marketing enthusiast, whose interest fuels his journey in crafting transformative strategies that reshape the modern messaging landscape. With an unwavering commitment to excellence.

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