This Innovator Spotlight is from our latest special report, FASTs Are The New Cable, Part 2: Advertising. Download the full report for free.

“The dynamism of the FAST landscape has highlighted the importance of flexibility in the tech stack,” observes Zype CEO Ed Laczynski.  “Recent shifts - like distribution platforms internalizing CDN and SSAI impact both content owners and software companies like Zype. In addition, we build out dedicated integration technology for every distribution platform to ensure the timely delivery of content, as well as making sure we take advantage of unique tools each platform has (for example, scrubbing in Roku or promo carousels on Samsung).”

ALAN WOLK: If I am a programmer and I’m looking to stand up an ad-supported channel to send to FAST platforms, where does Zype come into the picture?

ED LACZYNSKI: We can support our customers across any and every platform. Ad Insertion can either be handled by Zype or a Third-Party SSAI. If a customer chooses to use Zype SSAI, Zype will manage all ad insertion, so the customer can focus on creating great programming and leave the monetization to us. If a customer prefers, they can leverage a third-party to do their ad insertion, and Zype can provide streams with ad markers for seamless ad break recognition.

We allow customers to export raw playout analytics data as a .CSV file, via API calls, or deliver it straight to AWS S3 or Google GCS buckets for easier data manipulation to help improve and inform workflows, including informing advertising strategy.

And for those platforms or destinations that require ad suppression capabilities for compliance, often a must-have for global distribution across certain platforms, Zype can suppress ad delivery by restricting ads from being inserted via SSAI.

We also offer integrations with ad tech providers like TripleLift and IRIS.TV. TripleLift offers unique native CTV ad formats for brand and product insertion, split screen, and dynamic overlay. IRIS.TV unlocks video-level data and enables contextual-level video advertising.

ALAN WOLK: When you stand up a linear channel (a FAST channel) for a client, who determines the amount of advertising per hour and where the ad breaks should go?

Who determines that and who is responsible for it could be two different things, depending on the nature of the streaming arrangement.

For FAST channels where the publisher is responsible for streaming and ad delivery, they will set the ad breaks, ad pods, frequencies, etc.  They will likely have an agreement with the distributor that sets the minimum and sometimes the maximum amount of ads per hour. 

For FAST channels where the distributor owns the content delivery and ad delivery stack, they’ll take ownership of all of this. The publisher may send in ad break cue points (SCTE markers) to signal when the ads should break, but everything after that point is on the FAST platform. Regardless of the arrangement, ad placement and timing is an art and a science.  Zype offers organizational tools that make it easy for publishers to manage their content in a real-time timeline - including ad placements. We support the insertion of midroll ads within our videos along with reusable playlists and program blocks. Customers can quickly create ad breaks by dragging an ad timing into a scheduled timeline. Responsive adjustments mean programming will update to accommodate ad breaks. 

In either scenario, Zype can meet the distributor's technical specifications on behalf of the publisher.

ALAN WOLK: We hear a lot about what a problem the lack of standardization is on streaming. Why did this happen and what are some measures you think the industry should take to solve it?

ED LACZYNSKI: IP-based streaming - including FASTs - was born out of the open internet, where the only real standards are the networking protocols that ensure systems can talk to each other at a basic level. This is what makes video streaming so exciting. On the other hand, the open internet eschews regulation and standardization without clear leadership. While we have been able to rally around pseudo-standards like HLS for video playback, and various SCTE standards for ad timings, each competitor in the space is left to their own choices and competitive advantages. 

Even more so is the lack of transparency around data in the FAST space. Zype has answered this by providing a set of common interfaces for publishers and distributors, and a first-party data platform for end-user streaming, where we collect dozens of characteristics to help publishers make better decisions on content, increase yield, and ultimately avoid “we’ll be right back” messages.  

As a whole, the industry should seek ways to collaborate to make access to data easier, so that publishers, consumers, and advertisers can benefit from a better experience.

ALAN WOLK: In your experience, what are some of the key reasons there is so little transparency around FAST advertising and what should the industry be doing to remedy it? 

ED LACZYNSKI: The data pipelines to make the experience more transparent for advertisers and viewer-friendly for audiences are only starting to materialize. There are growing pains that need to be worked out to have a better overall experience for everyone involved.

Ultimately, the need to own the ad waterfall and control the opportunity was the main priority for distributors. Moving forward, distributors will of course consider what is important to brands that are advertising, but will also consider the concerns of publishers and content owners. Content owners and publishers need to know what content ran, how was it viewed, and how many people viewed it. Without some focus on transparency from the current, in-demand distributors, we’d expect brands and publishers to make a shift to find more transparent and accessible distribution means – because we all know it’s possible going back to the foundations of FAST and video streaming in an open, unregulated IP-based market.

ALAN WOLK: So given all that, is contextual advertising the way around so many of the issues that streaming is facing?

ED LACZYNSKI: I think contextual advertising and targeted advertising are related to privacy and transparency but they're not mutually exclusive to each other. For example, you can have transparency and still respect privacy and still have contextual and targeted opportunities. Obviously, you could have targeted advertising and not respect privacy, and not be transparent about it. 

I think the right solution is to provide thoughtful, privacy-enabled first-party data, transparent reporting, and opportunities for customers to do contextual advertising. 

Companies like IRIS.TV, who we have an integration with, unlock video-level data and enable contextual-level video advertising. And we’ve seen targeted advertising be really successful, both in FAST and in owned and operated platforms, especially if the data about that viewer is anonymized and not being used for nefarious purposes. Viewers seem to find these approaches very relevant to them and benefit from an improved ad experience. As an industry, we should try to do the right thing on both sides and not limit the kind of solutions we can offer.