2018: The Year Ahead
All of a sudden we’re here: 2018. As seems obligatory at this time of year, anyone who’s anyone is being asked their views on the year ahead. No-one’s asked me, which is of course an outrage, but here’s my two penny’s worth anyway.
Sports to drive Live DAI in 2018
Ok, so this may seem an obvious one. But with the Commonwealth Games and FIFA World Cup on the horizon, this assertion is more pertinent in 2018. No doubt we’ll see a flurry of activity in the build-up to these tournaments as rights-holders launch extra channels online in a bid to offer fans as much of the action as possible. With that of course comes huge revenue opportunities through server-side dynamic ad insertion, especially as we get to the knock-out stages of the World Cup where extra-time and penalties will lead to extra ad breaks.
Read about previous major tournaments in these case studies on the Rugby World Cup and Australian Open.
User Experience
The main beneficiary of the above will be the viewer: more channels, more matches, more great content. Also, features like live rewind, or start-over, and scrubbing to key points in a match are becoming commonplace. The advertising systems have to sit alongside these tools, of course, which presents another challenge. In the case of Medialaan in Belgium, viewers are served shorter ad breaks in start-over streams so they can catch up with the live action.
Collaboration
The broadcast industry is moving closer together, as it must do in order to realise the value of data-driven advertising online. The threat of GAFAN looms large and that will only spur the industry on in 2018. I expect more announcements like the one from Channel 4 and BT Sport this week.
I also expect significant movement towards centralised trading and measurement for online advertising. This goes hand-in-hand with a standardised ad copy management workflow, which is a topic Yospace discussed at length last year.
These are also subjects we’ve discussed with major broadcasters and ad buyers in the US and Europe recently. Read the findings here.
I wish you all the best for a productive year ahead. Let me know if you're at MWC or NAB as it would be great to catch up!