This Update Isn’t Witchcraft (Or Is It?) 🧙

Hey smartxers, 

When it comes to issues surrounding adtech, our product team’s problem-solving skills are nothing short of wizardry. No, we’re not suggesting they use spells and potions to develop the smartx platform. Though the daily flock of owls dropping packages on their lawns is quite suspicious…

Abracadabra it’s matched labels ✨

Today, we are summoning matched labels, an inventory feature — released a short while back — that gives us the ability to consider unique platform-specific requirements. As an initial use case, this will help us avoid the issue of certain TV devices cutting off the first or last part of an ad break. 

The backstory 📜

HbbTV ad breaks are delivered as MPEG-DASH videos that are stitched together. However, certain smart TVs sometimes cut off the first and/or last few frames of the stitched video. This results in part of the first and/or last commercial of the ad break being cut off. 

An easy fix for this issue is to add intro and outro bumpers to each ad break. These bumpers are unique to each broadcaster and serve as a backup in case the TV device cuts off any part of the ad break, ensuring that the full ad creative will play.

Prophecy of sorts 🔮

Matched labels allow us to react to platform or even channel-specific requirements that need additional bumper ads before, after, or within an ad break. If an ad now contains a “matched” label with a certain value, it will only be applicable in the selection process if the ad server finds the “matching” label on the inventory side.

This ability to recognize the specific environment we are delivering to improves the user and advertiser experience in addition to giving us more control in our ad break delivery. The ATV use case is just the first of more to come. There will certainly be more use cases in the future where this new functionality will make smartx users’ lives easier.

Yours in smartx updates and other adtech-related hocus-pocus,

smartclip Product Marketing Team