Advertising and Live Video Streaming

Ads with live video streams work very much like ads for on-demand videos. You don't have to do anything special to configure your live streams for ads, just use it as a normal video in the Advertising module. Ad policies set in the Advertising module, including time based ad policies, work the same for live streams as for regular videos.

There are a few differences in the way the video will work.

• The icon for a live stream in the Advertising module will have a live video overlay instead of a thumbnail image:

• There is no fixed duration for a live stream.

The timing of events and insertion points are defined in terms of the viewer experience:

Ad insertion points

Advertisement insertion points are calculated based on slightly different criteria:

• Onload ad requests occur at player load time, as always.
• Pre-roll ad requests occur when the viewer connects to the live stream, regardless of whether the live event has started or how long it has been going on.
• Cue points created with the Advertising module to invoke mid-roll ads are measured from the time the viewer connected to the stream and not from the time the live stream began, even if the viewer joined part way through.
• Post-rolls occur when the viewer loses the connection to the stream, whether due to the end of the event, or a network interruption.

Cue points

When you use the Advertising module to edit mid-roll cue points for a live streaming video, the cue point editor will display a notional 4 hour timeline in which to insert the cue points, since the length of the live event is unknown in advance. In order to set mid-roll cue points, there is nothing special to do when you set up your live stream. As described in Delivering Live Video, set the duration of the Video to '-1' upon creation. Cue points at times greater than 4 hours cannot be set in the Advertising module, but you can still set them using the Player API. This notional 4 hour timeline does not affect the display of the video, which could be longer or shorter, nor is this 4 hour timeline stored with the video in any way. It is just a display trick in the Advertising module that allows selection of mid-roll cue points.

Ad formats for live streams

Video Ad pre-rolls or post-rolls are recommended. Overlays are the recommended format to use as mid-rolls in live streams, since the insertion point will depend on when the viewer joins the stream. Alternatively, video ads could be embedded when the stream is created and sent out as part of the stream.

Time based ad policies

For the purposes of time based ad policies, the start of the video is when the viewer connects to the stream, and viewing time is counted from that point. 

Examples of ad delivery for live streams

• If  a live event has a time based policy of showing 1 ad for each 5 minutes of viewing, a viewer who joins a live event 10 minutes in, will see the first ad at 15 minutes.
• A viewer logs onto a live stream of a webinar 15 minutes early before the presenter starts broadcasting. This viewer sees the pre-roll ad while he is waiting for the presentation to begin, and does not see it again when the  presentation starts. If the live stream has a mid-roll ad set at 20 minutes, this same viewer will see the mid-roll after the presenter has been speaking for 5 minutes.
• A second viewer logs into the same webinar 5 minutes late and sees the pre-roll ad during the 5th minute of the seminar. This viewer then sees the 20 minute mid-roll when the speaker has been speaking for 25 minutes.
• A viewer loses contact with the network segment that his live stream is coming from, but still has internet access. This viewer will see a post-roll ad.
• A viewer stays logged on after the webinar is over, and the live stream CDN shuts down the stream. This viewer will see a post-roll ad.
• A viewer stays logged on after the webinar is over, and the live stream CDN keeps the stream up for reuse later. This viewer will not see a post-roll ad.