For media companies, monetizing content effectively is crucial for sustaining their business. One key approach is advertising, where services like AWS MediaTailor enable seamless ad insertion. However, a common challenge arises: the lack of visibility into the revenue generated from these ads. Without real-time tracking and actionable insights, media companies struggle to optimize their ad strategies and maximize revenue.
This is where Datazoom and TrackIt come in. Datazoom provides an SDK that simplifies data collection from industry-leading video players and AWS MediaTailor, ensuring a seamless integration of various data sources. Meanwhile, TrackIt, with its expertise in media, cloud-native software development on AWS, and analytics, ensures that organizations can effectively track ad revenue and make informed business decisions.
Contents
Value Proposition
For any media company leveraging video monetization, accurate and real-time insights into ad performance are essential. Many streaming platforms face challenges such as:
- Ad Drop-off: Viewers skipping or abandoning ads, reducing revenue potential.
- Ad Fill Rate Issues: Insufficient ad inventory leading to missed monetization opportunities.
- Ineffective Ad Targeting: Poorly placed ads that fail to engage the audience.
- Lack of Actionable Insights: Inability to measure ad effectiveness and optimize campaigns.
By integrating AWS MediaTailor with Datazoom and TrackIt, streaming platforms gain full observability into ad performance, enabling data-driven monetization strategies.
Visualizing Ad Data with the Dashboard
To address these challenges, our solution offers a comprehensive dashboard that provides:
- Real-time Ad Performance Insights – Monitor impressions, insertions, completion rates, and revenue trends.
- Automated Data Collection & Visualization – Using AWS services to process and analyze ad-related metadata.
- Cost-Effective, Scalable Infrastructure – A fully cloud-native architecture seamlessly integrating with AWS MediaTailor.
You can also filter ad data dynamically based on:
- Device Type (e.g., Smart TV, Mobile, Desktop)
- Country (to analyze geographic ad distribution)
- OS Name (to compare ad performance across operating systems)
- App Session ID (to track a specific user session and understand individual interactions)
By leveraging these insights, media companies can refine their ad strategies, enhance user engagement, and maximize ad revenue.
For more details on the project and its implementation, visit the following GitHub repository!
How We Collect and Analyze Ad Revenue Data
1. Data Collection Using Datazoom & Kinesis Firehose
To track video content and ad performance, the solution integrates Datazoom’s SDK (Software Development Kit) with the video player. The collected metadata is then streamed via an Amazon Kinesis Firehose data stream to an Amazon S3 bucket for storage and further processing.
By enabling deep insights into both content and ads. This level of observability is critical for optimizing ad monetization.
Key Ad Metrics Tracked
- Total Time Watched of Content: Measures how long a viewer watches a video. Essential for understanding engagement.
- Average Ad Break Duration: The average length of an ad break. Helps in balancing user experience and ad revenue.
- Number of Ad Requests: The total number of ad requests made by the video player to the ADS.
- Ad Impressions: The number of times an ad starts playing. This is a key metric for advertisers.
- Ad Opportunities: Instances where an ad could have been played but may not have due to various reasons (e.g., ad fill failure).
- Ad Fill Rate: The percentage of ad opportunities that were successfully filled with an ad.
- Ad Completion Rate: The percentage of ads that were watched entirely. Indicates user engagement with ads.
- Ad Drop-Off Rate: The percentage of users who abandon an ad before it completes.
- Ad Revenue & Average CPM: Tracks the revenue generated from ads and the cost per thousand impressions (CPM), a standard advertising metric.
With real-time data capture, streaming platforms gain unparalleled visibility into ad performance, empowering them to refine monetization strategies.
2. Data Processing Using AWS Glue & Amazon Athena
- AWS Glue is used to catalog and transform the raw event data into a structured format.
- Amazon Athena enables SQL-based querying of ad performance data, allowing us to generate insightful reports.
3. Real-time Visualization in AWS Managed Grafana
Once the data is processed, it is visualized using Amazon Managed Grafana, providing:
- Concurrent viewers and ad impressions tracking.
- Average ad break duration analysis.
- Ad fill rate and completion rate insights.
- Revenue estimations based on ad CPM.
This approach ensures a seamless and scalable solution for media companies to monitor their ad revenue effectively.
Automating Observability with TrackIt & Datazoom
To simplify the deployment of a robust observability framework, TrackIt has developed an automated CloudFormation package that integrates MediaTailor, Datazoom, and AWS analytics services.
Solution Architecture
The deployment includes:
- Pre-configured AWS Services: Kinesis Firehose, S3, Glue, Athena, IAM roles, and Managed Grafana.
- Seamless Integration with AWS Elemental MediaTailor & Datazoom: Ensuring data flows smoothly from ad tracking to analytics.
- Scalable & Cost-Effective Infrastructure: Built to support high-volume streaming platforms without excessive costs.
This automated approach enables media companies to quickly deploy a robust ad revenue observability platform with minimal effort.
How MediaTailor Ad Insertion Works
- A player or a CDN, such as Amazon CloudFront, sends a request to MediaTailor for HLS or DASH content. This request includes viewer-specific parameters for ad personalization.
- MediaTailor retrieves the content manifest and ad specifications.
- It queries the ADS with viewer data. The ADS selects relevant ads and returns their URLs in a VAST or VMAP response.
- MediaTailor modifies the manifest to include the ad URLs, ensuring they match the encoding characteristics of the original content. If an ad has not been transcoded yet, MediaTailor skips inserting it and uses MediaConvert to prepare it for future requests.
- Finally, MediaTailor delivers the fully personalized manifest back to the requesting CDN or player, ensuring a seamless and optimized user experience.
VAST Format and Beacons
- VAST: An XML-based standard that defines how video ads should be served and tracked.
Example of VAST file format
- Beacons: Special tracking URLs that fire when specific ad events occur (e.g., ad start, midpoint, completion), providing insights into user engagement and ad effectiveness.
MediaTailor employs two mechanisms to insert ads :
1. Normal Ad Insertion (Just-in-Time Ad Requesting)
- The Ad Decision Server (ADS) is queried in real-time when an ad break occurs.
- Ideal for live streaming and VOD playback where instant ad decision is needed.
- Subject to latency and ADS response times.
- MediaTailor requests the ADS just before the ad break occurs during video playback.
2. Prefetch Schedule (Preloaded Ad Requests)
Prefetching allows AWS MediaTailor to request ads in advance, instead of waiting for an ad break. It helps optimize ad decision-making and ensures smoother playback:
- MediaTailor prepares ad requests ahead of time and stores responses temporarily.
- When the ad break arrives, ads are already loaded, reducing latency.
Prefetch Schedule Has Two Windows:
a. Retrieval Window
- Defines a time range where MediaTailor can request ads in advance.
- Not constrained by real-time playback like just-in-time mode.
b. Consumption Window
- Defines when the preloaded ads can be inserted into the stream.
- Ensures that ads are delivered at the right moment.
MediaTailor for FAST Channels
FAST (Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV) channels are linear streaming channels that deliver scheduled programming with commercial breaks, mimicking traditional television but distributed over the internet. These channels have rapidly gained popularity as consumers look for free, ad-supported content without subscription fees.
However, operating a FAST channel presents several challenges:
- Ad Personalization: Delivering relevant ads to different viewers while maintaining the integrity of the linear stream.
- Seamless Ad Insertion: Preventing buffering, playback interruptions, or format mismatches when transitioning between content and ads.
- Ad Inventory Optimization: Ensuring ad slots are filled dynamically with available inventory to maximize revenue.
AWS MediaTailor is designed to address these challenges by:
- Personalizing ad insertion in real time based on viewer data, ensuring a tailored advertising experience.
- Transcoding ads to match the original content format, eliminating playback disruptions.
- Optimizing ad placement and decisioning by integrating with ADS, dynamically selecting the best available ads.
By leveraging AWS MediaTailor, FAST channel operators can deliver a high-quality, TV-like experience with seamless ad insertion, increasing viewer engagement and maximizing revenue potential.
Conclusion
By integrating AWS MediaTailor with Datazoom’s real-time data collection capabilities, TrackIt has built a comprehensive ad revenue observability platform. This solution provides streaming platforms with actionable insights into ad performance, empowering them to optimize monetization strategies and enhance the viewer experience. With fully automated deployment, companies can quickly implement this solution to maximize their ad revenue potential.
About TrackIt
TrackIt is an international AWS cloud consulting, systems integration, and software development firm headquartered in Marina del Rey, CA.
We have built our reputation on helping media companies architect and implement cost-effective, reliable, and scalable Media & Entertainment workflows in the cloud. These include streaming and on-demand video solutions, media asset management, and archiving, incorporating the latest AI technology to build bespoke media solutions tailored to customer requirements.
Cloud-native software development is at the foundation of what we do. We specialize in Application Modernization, Containerization, Infrastructure as Code and event-driven serverless architectures by leveraging the latest AWS services. Along with our Managed Services offerings which provide 24/7 cloud infrastructure maintenance and support, we are able to provide complete solutions for the media industry.
About Datazoom
Datazoom is an enterprise data collection technology company. Our SaaS-based Data-as-a-Service Platform offers performant and real-time data collection, processing and delivery capabilities for highly trafficked digital experiences. We improve data quality by using multi-purpose SDKs to power data collection resulting in unified and standardized digital experience datasets that enable more insights and business value to be unlocked. Datazoom’s technology is leveraged by publishers, media platforms, measurement companies and technology vendors.