National TeleConsultants Supports Proof of Concept for Identifying Content and Advertising Assets (CIMM TAXI)

GLENDALE CA, March 15, 2013—NTC recognizes the importance of technology and its impact on the media and entertainment business. The creation of digital content and distribution over digital platforms creates new opportunities to develop metrics that will enable highly targeted and engaging advertising models. Growing media fragmentation across many platforms has created challenges to content rights holders and advertisers in maximizing the value of assets.

"By attaching identification tags to content and advertisements that survive production and distribution processes, media companies will be able to track where and how often their assets are consumed, creating opportunities to better monetize content in today's fragmented viewing platforms," noted NTC Chief Technology officer, Eric Pohl, who has taken a leadership role in development of the CIMM TAXI Proof of Concept.

In its role as a key media and technology thought leader and solutions provider, NTC actively supports the efforts of CIMM (Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement) and the TAXI (Trackable Asset Cross-Platform Identification) project. NTC proposed approaches, solutions and development of the Proof of Concept for CIMM TAXI. As the results of the POC are analyzed by participating media entities, NTC will continue to foster development of industry standards to provide embedded media content identifiers that bring new metrics to content consumption.

National TeleConsultants Develops Unique Approach to Monetizing Repurposed Broadcast Streams for Leading Broadcast and Cable Network

GLENDALE CA, February 4, 2013—Over the Top (OTT) consumption of content is trending upward, requiring traditional broadcast and cable networks to develop new monetization schemes for consumption of their content. Leveraging existing approaches and systems is key as more disruptions and transitions occur with each technological advance.

NTC developed an innovative approach to support ad insertion into repurposed broadcast streams for OTT consumption for a major network. This approach, using metadata embedded in the linear stream to describe the content of the stream, enables the repurposed stream to take advantage of targeted dynamic ad insertion technologies. The inclusion of interfaces to the broadcast facility's automation system provides a bridge between the linear broadcast stream and the OTT stream.

"By leveraging the descriptive metadata associated with the broadcast stream, accurate insertion of advertising content into the repurposed stream can be automated and enable the utilization of targeted, dynamic ad insertion systems," commented Brad Williams, NTC Principal Consultant, "saving broadcasters time and money, while enabling new revenue generating opportunities." NTC continues to support our client's patented technology with refinements to the model, with the intent to deploy to MVPDs and station affiliates.

National TeleConsultants Enables Major IPTV Service Provider to Comply with Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation (CALM) Act

GLENDALE CA, December 17, 2012—The CALM Act mandates compliance to specific loudness criteria, such as requiring the use of technology to ensure that commercials be aired at the same average volume as the program content. Broadcasters and MVPDs were required to comply with the regulation as of December 13, 2012. NTC developed an automated quality inspection process to support advertising loudness monitoring for compliance with the Act, and to quarantine ads that failed to meet the requirements.

"Our client's revenue is dependent on ingest and playout of ad content provided by partners, so NTC developed a low cost, highly automated solution to meet CALM Act compliance," stated Peter Adamiak, NTC Managing Partner.

The system facilitates the testing of archived advertising assets maintained for future insertion, and new assets submitted by advertising partners. NTC developed workflow modifications to automate correction of certain noncompliant assets, greatly reducing increased costs due to inefficient workflows and processing. Over 350,000 assets were evaluated and corrected, enabling the service provider to maintain compliance with the new regulation. The system is now used on all assets submitted by advertising content providers.

National TeleConsultants Develops Content Sourcing and Processing System for Major IPTV Service Provider

GLENDALE CA, October 8, 2012—Commercials are a critical revenue stream for any MVPD. Optimizing the sourcing, ingest, and management of advertising content is key to maximizing revenue. With the goal of enabling a reliable, secure, and low cost mechanism for advertising partners to submit content and schedules, NTC designed and implemented an advertisement submission portal for a major IPTV network.

The content sourcing portal developed by NTC receives and processes thousands of advertisements submitted via the Internet daily by advertising partners. The portal provides the content contributor with the ability to monitor the ingest status of the assets and schedules, including the distribution of as-run verifications. The portal is integrated with existing systems for asset and schedule receipt systems, requiring no modifications to those systems.

"The creation and deployment of this portal reduces costs significantly by using a high degree of automation, helping to maximize revenues derived from advertising partner submissions," stated David Potter, NTC Vice President of Software Solutions. Ads are processed through an automated workflow that performs quality control checks, creates associations to interactive advertisements on alternative platforms, and stages advertising content in-market for insertion.