SCTE to Develop Three Addressable Advertising Standards

December 16, 2007 // Published as a news service by IHS

The SCTE Standards Program is defining this process, known as addressable advertising, via Digital Video Subcommittee (DVS) 629, which comprises seven parts or individual standards.

The first four parts were in development and issued for technical comments or consensus balloting stage within the DVS. The SCTE Engineering Committee will start development of the remaining three parts of DVS 629.

Part 5 is the Placement Opportunity Information Service, which defines the interface between software routines of the ad-placement query and notification functions.

The Subscriber Information Service interface specified in Part 6 implements the subscriber information (some level of demographical data) query functions.

Part 7, Message Transport Compliance, provides the "glue" connecting the system together by defining the physical and messaging protocols that transport data between services that are specified in Part 2 through Part 6.

The earlier DVS 629 parts, issued for balloting, encompass the following:

• Part 1 is an Advertising System Overview, which provides an introduction and the overall description of the suite of DVS 629 standards.
• Part 2 defines the Core Data Elements including data types and messaging services within the digital advertising system.
• Part 3, Ad Management Service, explains the requirements of the interface that defines ad-insertion opportunities and the handling of subsequent placement decisions.
• The Content Information Service described in Part 4 defines the content query and notification functions.

Including the initial planning stage, SCTE involvement with standardizing addressable advertising began in 2005 but most of the work was performed in the last year.

Within the DVS Subcommittee, the specific working group charged with building DVS 629 is Working Group 5 (WG5), Digital Program Insertion (DPI).

More than 60 companies are participating in the DVS Subcommittee and about 30 of those companies are involved in developing DVS 629, said SCTE.

The subcommittee has no deadline for completing DVS 629 but competition for the cable telecommunications industry from other media such as the Internet is providing the impetus to move forward in developing these new models and means of delivery of advertising content, said SCTE.

Platforms taken into account in the initial design of the DVS 629 standard include traditional linear advertising, video on demand and advanced set-top box and digital video recorder (DVR) applications.

Source: Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE).