TECHNICAL FIELD

This disclosure relates to linear advertising for adaptive bitrate splicing.

BACKGROUND

Traditional linear advertisement sales utilize a T&B system (Traffic and Billing) that generates CCMS (cable computerized management system) files as schedules to fill advertisement spots into each advertisement break window into each network channel that is defined by zones. Today, advertisement back office products consume these advertisement schedules and control XMS video servers and video splicers to generate transport streams that are delivered over QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) to set top boxes in each region.

This market is being disrupted by ABR (adaptive bitrate) video delivered over IP (Internet protocol) to HTTP streaming clients. In this case, a manifest controller (e.g., manifest delivery controller (MDC)) product can perform dynamic target advertising that makes unique decisions for each streaming client as placement opportunities are discovered. These dynamic decisions have a different workflow from the scheduled linear advertisements described above.

These systems may be merged together to build a single advertising and delivery solution that can support traditional linear delivery over QAM, linear delivery over IP, or both. The ABR and HTTP streaming outputs from a manifest controller may be delivered as a linear channel over QAM. This creates unique challenges for advertising because the T&B systems are not designed to support the ABR workflow for advertisement preparation or for HTTP delivery. Therefore, a need exists for improved methods and systems for identifying advertisement spots, providing tracking for billing purposes, and identifying channels.

