This article describes the technical specification of over-the-air (OTA) inventory on the Triton Digital exchange and focuses on how it differs from streaming radio inventory.
Creative approval
As Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensees, radio broadcasters are responsible for selecting the broadcast material that airs on their stations, including advertisements.
Stations are prohibited from broadcasting material that promotes certain lotteries; advertises cigarettes, little cigars or smokeless tobacco products; or perpetuates a fraud. Some advertisements also may violate regulations that fall under the jurisdiction of other federal agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Additionally, federal laws prohibit or limit obscene, indecent, or profane language. Obscene broadcasts are prohibited at all times, while indecent or profane broadcasts are prohibited during certain hours. Finally, the FCC administers political programming rules that address whether equal opportunities for political opponents are warranted, candidate access issues, what candidates can be charged for political advertising, and sponsorship identification.
As a result, all advertisements targeting OTA inventory have to be reviewed and approved by the publisher (unlike ads for digital inventory).
Triton Digital is working with the IAB Tech Lab to enhance the Ad Management API in order to support publisher-specific approval. This will then become the preferred method for submitting creatives for OTA (the future API process is shown in a grey box on the diagram at the bottom of this page).
In the meantime, creatives will need to be provided directly between buyers and sellers (e.g., via email).
Impression multiplier
Similar to digital out-of-home (DOOH), each OTA ad, or spot, reaches many users at once and it is therefore not tied to a specific user. Each spot is sold and bought as a batch of impressions that is indivisible.
Unlike DOOH, the spot is not delivered on a single device, so device specification cannot be provided.
This impacts OpenRTB bid requests in the following ways:
- Site or App object is replaced with the Ota distribution channel (which contains similar attributes: id, name, cat, domain,…). This ensures bidders are aware they are not buying digital inventory (i.e., just one impression).
Note: this is similar to the Dooh object that was recently added to the OpenRTB spec (see here).
Example:
{
"id": "2e0fd98e-326a-4e8d-94ef-1c92c87e2250",
"at": 2,
"cur": ["USD"],
...
"ota": {
"id": "31133",
"name": "KSADFM",
"publisher": {
"id": "2193",
"name": "Blork Broadcasting"
},
"content": {
"context": 3,
"prodq": 1
}
},
...
}- a Qty object is sent, which includes the multiplier (i.e., the number of impressions) with details on how this was obtained/measured. Floors and bids are still expressed as a CPM, this means the media cost that is invoiced when an OTA ad is delivered is:
multiplier * (bid/1,000)
Note: the Qty object was recently added to the OpenRTB spec by the DOOH group (see here).
Example:
{
...
"imp": {
...
"qty": {
"multiplier": "12500",
"vendor": "civisanalytics.com",
"sourcetype": 1
}
},
...
}- Stripped Device object: there is no IP address, no User-Agent, no IFA. The object is only used to send a Geo object to indicate the DMA where the device is located (this is the DMA where the radio station’s broadcast coverage)
- Stripped User objects: there is no cookie ID, no YOB, no gender. The object is only used to send segment data for PMPs to allow buyers to make an informed decision. See section below for details.
Data segments - PG vs PMP/Open Auction
The standard unit to measure “current listeners” in the broadcast industry is called Average Quarter Hour persons or AQH. This is defined as the average number of persons listening to a particular station for at least five minutes during a 15-minute period. Additionally, in most countries, only listeners 12 or 13 years old and above are considered. This is referred later in this document as “P12+” (“persons 12 and up”).
Depending on the publisher, Triton may have access to audience segments modeled from digital streaming sessions (used as training data that is applied to the broadcast measurement). Depending on how each segment indexes over the entire listenership of the station for any point in time, we can provide specific AQH values for each segment. In that case, a specific “audience AQH” is calculated for each segment; it is a subset of the “P12+ AQH” based on the segment indexes over the entire listenership of the station during a specific daypart.
Depending on the transaction type, the AQHs are shared differently:
- In the case of a Programmatic Guaranteeddeal, the publisher creates a campaign in Triton’s broadcast ad server (“RadioSpot” in the diagram below).
- That PG campaign would then target the audience the buyer wants to reach (the buyer is able to review the campaign plan before it is booked).
- All bid requests for that campaign have the target audience AQH sent as the multiplier (sent in the Qty object). This means that even if there are 12,500 listeners in total currently tuned to the station (AKA “P12+” or “persons 12 and up”), the multiplier sent in the Bid Request may indicate a subset of listeners, let’s say 7,800.
- When running auctions (PMP deals or Open Auctions), the P12+ AQH is sent as the multiplier(i.e., the total number of listeners currently tuned in, or 12,500 in the previous example).
- In order for buyers to make an informed decision, we can share, separately from the multiplier, various audiences AQHs.
- These are sent as an indication to allow buyers to evaluate the opportunity. Since this inventory is offered to multiple buyers participating in an auction, the winner is not know when sending the bid request. Therefore, regardless of which AQH is used on the buy-side, Triton always invoices using the qty.multiplier attribute.
- The audiences AQHs can be shared via offline data transfer (as described below) - other methods are also being considered for future development.
Audience AQHs in offline files
Triton can set up batch transfers of audience files with demand partners in order to send large amounts of segment data.
The audience AQH for a station and daypart is provided in various files, one for each segment (the format of the audience files are described here). The station and daypart is identified using a “Content ID” which is provided in the bid request in the ota.content.id attribute.
Example:
{
...
"imp": {
...
"qty": {
"multiplier": "12500",
"vendor": "civisanalytics.com",
"sourcetype": 1
},
...
},
"ota": {
"id": "789943",
"name": "KJLW-FM",
"domain": "kjlw.publisher.com",
"publisher": {
"id": "152043",
"name": "Publisher Media Group"
},
"content": {
"id": S0lJUy1GTSxNbyAxMGEtM3AK,
"prodq": 1,
"context": 3,
"language": "en"
}
},
...
}Planning vs. Execution vs. Delivery
The campaign preparation (deal negotiations and creative reviews) needs to take place well in advance of the campaign execution, specifically for PG. At the minimum, one or two weeks are needed, but inventory could be scarce so additional lead time is recommended.
Each piece of inventory (i.e., spot) is scheduled by the station within a daypart granularity (for instance from 6am to 10am). It is not possible to book spots in a PG with a more specific air time.
The exact time when the spot will be played is only locked in the night before when the automation system at the radio station loads and finalizes the next day’s schedule. Unfortunately this information doesn’t propagate back to the campaign, so RadioSpot (Triton’s ad server) needs to trigger an auction for the spot before the start of the daypart where it is scheduled. Ads are kept up to 30 minutes, then discarded and renewed (new auction). In PG, the DSP would expect to bid every time but it gives a chance to swap the creative each time and renew impression/quartile trackers.
Note: this behavior is actually similar to how mid-roll inventory is handled with digital.
The sequence diagram below describes the two main phases separated by two lines:
- preparation
- execution
