Published: TV Technology magazine Issue: 15 June 1998 Adpath Targets Cable Market by Joe Fedele MIAMI Every year small cable TV operators around the country lose tens of millions of dollars in potential ad revenue due to their inability to take advantage of local advertising insertions on some of their biggest feeds. Like all the major broadcast networks, cable programming services such as CNN and ESPN provide timeslots for local ads spots (avails) to be inserted by cable TV companies. These avails are sold to local advertisers and inserted into the program feed, providing an added revenue stream to the cable TV operator. But the cost to insert these avails often exceeds the revenue that would be produced because of equipment and man-power expenses. Small cable outfits have traditionally been squeezed out of the local avail market because of these high costs. This may change early this summer when Adpath, a new advertising network, swings into operation. "This is a wonderful opportunity to offer a new and valuable service to a variety of underserved markets," said Calvin Smiley, president of Communicast, one of the three groups partnering to form Adpath. "Cable operators, rep firms and advertisers will now have a vehicle to reach previously untapped markets." Using some newly developed equipment and software provided by Channelmatic/LIMT (CML), a worldwide supplier of ad insertion and automation systems, Adpath will go where few ad sales firms have gone before - into the smallest of cable markets. And by taking advantage of the latest automation technology, Adpath says it will do it cheaper and more efficiently than any previous system. The Adpath approach consists of distributing spots to cable headends in less-than-real-time via Ku-band satellite, storing the inventory on small local video servers and playing the ads to air at the appropriate time. Currently, Adpath plans to offer four channels of program ad insertion to CNN, ESPN, USA Network and TNT. ON THE SPOT Spot distribution over satellite is nothing new to broadcasters. Typically such video feeds are sent in real- time like standard analog programming over a wideband channel or in some compressed form, like MPEG- 2, at a lower bit-rate of less than 10 Mbps. Adpath takes MPEG-2 compressed video spots and treats them like large computer disk files, sending them over satellite in less than real-time at bit-rates as low as 256 Kbps. For comparison, a file that would normally be sent out at 5 Mbps could take 20 times longer to arrive at its destination if it were sent at the slower bit-rate. Although it takes longer for such files to arrive at a cable headend when delivered over satellite, the reduced bit-rate is more economical to distribute than the high data rates that normally require either a full satellite channel or a relatively large chunk of bandwidth to accommodate real-time transmissions. The Adpath network is also automated, allowing bandwidth to be purchased during the overnight hours when rates are at their cheapest. On the cable headend side of the system, a small 1.2-meter Ku dish downlinks the signal while a computer equipped with a DVB (digital video broadcast) receive card acts as the IRD (integrated receiver decoder). Spots are then saved on a video server where they are triggered to air by standard automation cuetones inserted by each of the individual cable operators. Included in the datastream is scheduling information that is also stored on the local server and is used to ensure that the correct spot runs at the appropriate time. The local servers will each be capable of storing up to 200 thirty-second spots. A San Diego-based Network Operations Center (NOC), built and operated by CML for Communicast and Anderson-Pacific (the other two partners in the Adpath network), will manage the spots and distribute them to an outsourced uplink provider, as well as traffic inventory and bill for clients. The NOC is also the main control point where the customized traffic system automatically dials out to each of the headends via standard 33.6 Kbps modems to retrieve as-run logs for commercial playback verification. By becoming an Adpath affiliate, cable TV operators will finally be able to reap ad revenue from airtime that they were previously unable to sell. "The bottom line is everybody wins," said John Fagan, senior vice president of Affiliate Relations for Adpath. "Adpath will be able to deliver more DMA-specific subscribers to the national rep firms" and "get more of the media buyers' money" than ever before, he predicted. Adpath began beta-testing at 25 headends in June. The network is expected to grow to more than 400 sites by the end of 1998, but was designed by CML to accommodate up to 2,000 cable headends, the company said.