Today my thoughts revolve around the integration of Dynamic Ad Insertion, the practicality of its use in Audio, and the dilemmas with Video.
As we know in the podcasting world, dynamic ad insertion is becoming a hot topic for many advertisers as well as podcasters. Companies like Kiptronic and others are beginning to use MP3 concatenation, mixed with advertising placement to build business models. And if you ask me, it’s a good model as long as they can place quality advertisers.
As a network owner, placing sustainable advertising is the toughest practical element of the business. The real value that comes from these companies is the ability to place advertisers with the podcast masses. Actually, a better statement would be; “Real value comes with these firms having the ability to place quality sustainable advertisers”.
In researching Dynamic Ad Insertion for Audio you realize that although it is not exactly “simple”, it is also not that difficult to implement effectively. It really comes down to watching your data and bit rates, normalization, encoding, and being careful with your meta data. Obviously some user experiences on different platforms and devices may require some tweaking, but for the most part this is the science.
With Video, we run into problems with the different types of media formats. Obviously mp3 is the standard for audio, which makes it much easier to develop. With video we are faced once again with cross media formats, where we must approach each project differently based on its viewing platform.
Flash has the market share as we all know on traditional computers and laptops, but there is no established standard for portable media. Windows continues to thrive in the pocket pc and cell phone market, but it is not as flexible as flash. Mpeg is by far the most popular and scalable format for different portable media platforms; and the choice for use in video podcasting, but is yet to be adopted by everyone.
So if you are strictly focusing on Mpeg for podcasting you might be “okay”;but there are still some small problems currently with attempting to dynamically insert ads. If the podcasts are to be played on the Video ipod, some of the MP4 files won’t read properly, this is also true for other portable devices. So for those who are interested in the podcast market, as I am, we need a little better functionality to place confidence in this.
At the same time, what if your media mix is 60% podcasts and 40% online viewers, what do you do?
This brings us back to the current conundrum……
Do you stick with flash because of the reach it has, and wait for better “telescoping” or “dynamic applications” to emerge? Or do you start tackling the issue based on all media formats?
Our viewing audience is currently about 70% podcast and 30% otherwise, and with the burst of video online, and iTV growing quick, we want to cover all formats. We have shows that are already syndicated on websites where they stream our files using .wvx, Then we have other websites which syndicate our content using, .mov and QuickTime applications. Now with the growth of MySpace and YouTube, if you want others to aggregate your videos, flash may be the way to go.
So this brings me back to my previous post from a few days ago, who will unify the portable media market?
Flash lite, MPG, or something else…. (we know apple isn’t going the flash route)?
How do you go about developing a Dynamic Video Ad Insertion model for business on multiple platforms?
(The Article)
http://www.whatiwantpodcasting.com/portable_media_market_file_format_standards_for_distribution.html
Either way, content producers and podcast/video networks like ours, are very interested in finding some sort of homogenous approach to this. As for now, I will develop dynamic applications for all the major media formats (although this is not very time efficient) and concentrate on reaching the largest audience possible through the wide array of frameworks that exist?
Any one else have thoughts on this? I hope this won’t be too much of an issue as more of the market demands some form of unification.
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