BlackArrow Demonstrates Multiscreen Advertising for Linear TV Delivered Over IP Platforms

NEW YORK, Oct. 4, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- BlackArrow, a worldwide provider of advanced advertising solutions for New Television platforms, today announced new technology which bridges the gap between traditional linear TV ad sales and ad execution on new platforms to extend premium pay-TV advertising to new screens.

At the September 2012 CableLabs® Linear and IP Ad Interop event in Louisville, CO, BlackArrow previewed a new set of services and interfaces, collectively called Linear Extensions for Dynamic Ad Insertion, which are designed to seamlessly blend the outputs from traditional linear TV ad systems with dynamic ad insertion capabilities.

Consisting of services that manage linear schedules, linear placement opportunities, ad decisioning, subscriber and zone information services, as well as services which interface with the new CableLabs Event Signaling and Messaging (ESAM) specification, the BlackArrow technology enables pay-TV operators to monetize linear TV delivered to tablets and other IP devices in a number of ways, including:

• Linear Replication, which uses linear schedule ingest and real-time dynamic ad insertion to replicate, on tablets and IP devices, the original linear TV ads; and
• Linear Addressability, which combines subscriber information from the BlackArrow Subscriber Information Service product and real-time dynamic ad insertion to deliver household-addressable linear TV advertising to any platform.

Working together with other leading vendors and leveraging ESAM and SCTE 130 standards, BlackArrow showed how the new technology interoperates seamlessly with downstream signal acquisition, encoding, packaging, and manifest proxy providers to provide an end-to-end solution for delivering and monetizing live and linear adjustable bit rate (ABR) IP streams to multiple screens.

At the Interop, the POIS component of the BlackArrow solution cross-referenced in-band signaling metadata delivered within the live TV feed against expected ad opportunities scheduled by a traditional linear ad system.  This allowed encoder vendors to ensure the stream was conditioned properly for seamless ad insertion.  For packager vendors, the BlackArrow system provided the necessary metadata to be encapsulated within the stream to inform the ad decision process.  The SIS and ADS components of the BlackArrow solution were used to select the appropriate ad­—in the Linear Replication scenario, the same ad that aired during the original TV broadcast, and in the Linear Addressability scenario, a new addressable, dynamically inserted ad.

"Monetizing live and time-shifted television across multiple screens should not require individual silos for each platform," said Joe Matarese, CTO of BlackArrow.  "BlackArrow's new Linear Extensions, coupled with the sophisticated business rule and policy definition capabilities of our placement opportunity information service, provide multichannel video programming distributors with a single, standards-based platform for all of their multiscreen advertising needs."

About The BlackArrow Advanced Advertising System

The BlackArrow Advanced Advertising System is used by service providers such as Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Rogers Communications to manage the technological complexities and business issues associated with advanced advertising across multiplatform pay-TV environments. For pay-TV service providers, the BlackArrow Distributor Suite offers a central, open, standards-based platform for managing placement opportunities, business rules and ad policies, and for controlling real-time ad routing and return path data aggregation. The BlackArrow Campaign Suite enables ad sales and marketing organizations to define, manage and monetize multiplatform advertising campaigns. The BlackArrow SIS enables service providers to aggregate disparate sources of customer information into a single view for enabling the delivery of relevant advertising to the appropriate audience. For content providers, the BlackArrow Business Suite offers advanced tools for managing avails, or placement opportunities, as well as ad policies, ad sales rights, and asset metadata.

About BlackArrow, Inc.

BlackArrow is a leading worldwide provider of advanced advertising technology for New TV platforms. Reaching nearly 30 million homes, BlackArrow's advanced advertising software platform enables customers to increase revenues by delivering more timely and efficient sales and marketing messages, extend TV business models and affiliate partnerships to new platforms, and gain real-time reporting and measurement insights across multiple screens. BlackArrow is privately held, and backed by Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO), Comcast Ventures, Intel Capital (NASDAQ: INTC), Mayfield Fund, Motorola Mobility Ventures, Polaris Venture Partners and Time Warner Cable. The company has offices in New York City and San Jose, Calif. http://www.blackarrow.tv

SOURCE BlackArrow