Comcast Technology Solutions launches US linear addressable ad product

Comcast Technology Solutions has launched a US national linear addressable advertising system for its customers and technology partners. 

The Comcast Cable-owned tech outfit’s Linear Rights Metadata Management (LRM) product, part of its CTSuit, is designed to tap the SCTE 224 standard to  provide integrated workflows that enable intelligent ad decisioning for tailored household-level TV advertising, according to the company.

SCTE 224 is a standard notification interface that can potentially present richer linear metadata in a consistent way to trigger linear addressable ads. The concept is that by alleviating the complexity and inconsistency from manual data entry, from multiple sources, in multiple formats. LRM will provide the signalling and advanced metadata communication required for intelligent addressability in ad breaks.

LRM ingests and aggregates the metadata of advertising assets, normalizes it into SCTE 224 format, and stores it in the cloud. SCTE 224 data is then distributed to multiple endpoints, ad decision managers, and software adapters. In addition to ad selection, LRM helps implement and enforce advertising rules and restrictions, such as unique ad requirements for individual service or content providers, showing a specific number of ads or restricting spots over a given duration for specific products or specifying the minimum spacing between ads of a given product group.

Beyond LRM, Comcast Technology Solutions offers the Advertising Suite, which is being used by programmers to support upcoming addressable advertising deployments

“This new industry solution is helping to further drive innovation and scale in addressable advertising by reducing much of the friction that currently exists. We are removing many of the manual processes and variations around metadata that have historically hampered the progress of implementing linear addressable ads. We’re confident that LRM can help play a central role in accelerating addressable TV,” said Bart Spriester, VP and general manager of the cContent and streaming providers suite for Comcast Technology Solutions.

“At Comcast Advertising, we’re fully committed to accelerating the growth of addressable TV and making it easier for advertisers to incorporate it into their campaigns. LRM, along with Comcast Technology Solutions’ expertise in implementing SCTE 224, will provide operators, programmers, and advertisers with the backend technology needed to seamlessly drive scale and simplify the advertising workflow,” said Larry Allen, VP and general manager, data and addressable enablement, Comcast Advertising, the advertising division of Comcast Cable.

“Delivering TV ads that are more relevant for viewers, at higher premiums, is a common goal shared across the industry. For years, wide-scale addressable TV has been more of an elusive idea than a viable reality. However, recent progress in linear metadata management, back-end automation, and industry-wide collaboration should all serve to accelerate the deployment of addressable TV at scale,” said Marija Masalskis, senior principal analyst for TV, video and advertising at Omdia.