The AdicTV project ends with the validation of two approaches for targeted advertising on French DTT

The project started in August 2015 has demonstrated convincing results in terms of targeted and geolocated advertising on Digital Terrestrial Television in France.

The consortium AdicTV has announced the end of the project started on August 1, 2015 and has demonstrated convincing results refering to targeted advertising on Digital Terrestrial Television in France.

Consortium members developed two approaches and successfully tested on the TDF network, the DTT operator in France.

The first “networked” approach consists of replace an advertisement on a national television service with a local advertisement in the different DTT transmission locations. Viewers will see a different ad based on their location, even when watching the same national channel. The implemented system enables perfectly synchronized and deterministic ad substitution, allowing a group of broadcast sites operating as a single frequency network to maintain SFN operation during ad substitution. The main advantage of this first implementation approach is that it is compatible with any standard commercial television receiver, without the need to install an application on the television or set-top box. It has been demonstrated several times with great success in France, where several studies are being carried out on the future of the DTT platform and the evolution of television advertising regulation.

The second approach allows a more precise ad personalization, with the replacement of advertisements on the television receiver, taking into account the viewer's profile stored in the receiver. This approach downloads the advertisements to the receiver, through the DTT channel itself, as a background flow of the main service. Once stored in the receiver, these advertisements are shown instead of those of national services, taking into account the viewer's profile. The timing of this replacement is precisely determined by timing markers distributed in the mainstream. Once again, the ad replacement is perfect for the television viewer. This system works with commercial television receivers that meet the requirements of the HbbTV 2.0 specification currently under development. These receivers can be televisions or STBs.

The two approaches have been developed ready for use in production and the consortium players now offer commercial solutions available for immediate delivery. Enensys Technologies has recently announced a major contract for the deployment of its AdsEdge product on a national network in Europe. AdsEdge allows for “on-network” ad replacement. This contract of over two million euros will give the operator the possibility of regionalizing advertising in national services depending on the location of the audience. The benefit for service providers will be to significantly expand the base of advertisers in their DTT services. In parallel, Quadrille is deploying its Quadrifast product for the insertion of non-linear advertisements in STBs in European markets.

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