BlackArrow Provides Mid-Roll VOD Ad Support

BlackArrow has enhanced its advanced advertising system for video-on-demand (VOD) to include dynamic mid-roll functionality, as well as application programming interfaces (APIs) that support integrated workflows with third-party advertising systems.

Dynamic mid-roll ad insertion expands the market opportunity for VOD advertising by enabling inventory owners to develop flexible new advertising business models that support both existing time-shifted television currencies such as Nielsen’s C3, as well as new ad packaging strategies that contemplate multiple broadcast windows or other targeting criteria. Through the use of standard broadcast metadata, the BlackArrow solution inserts advertising during time- and context-specific points in any program and enables programmers to replace – or skip altogether – any ads bound to an original static VOD asset.

These new capabilities, coupled with the existing ad policy functionality in the BlackArrow system, also provide the associated benefit of single pitch. Programmers will now be able to pitch a program asset once and leverage the same asset for static or dynamic VOD distribution, along with the corresponding flexibility to swap-out ad copy, ad creative, ad loads and other parameters without incurring the incremental costs of re-encoding and redistributing assets.

In addition, the new release includes a series of APIs that facilitate the flow of VOD orders from existing, third-party linear or online ad systems into the BlackArrow system for execution. This affords BlackArrow clients with extensive choice and flexibility in the design of their advertising workflows, and simplifies operations by leveraging the systems and processes already in place without retooling.