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Why is the advertising industry interested in SMPTE standards?

October 21, 2014
This is a question that has plagued me for the past 7 years, since I attended my first SMPTE meeting at Turner in Atlanta.  I can still recall the look from one member when the Chair asked if anyone present was attending a SMPTE meeting for the first time, and if so to stand up and introduce themselves. I received a look of utter bewilderment, which turned into concern, when I said I was attending as a representative of the American Association of Advertising Agencies.  Later, that same member approached me and asked what my interest was in attending the meeting. (Judging from the look on his face, what I believe he really wanted to ask me was "What evil things is someone from the advertising industry going to do with the information you find out about standards efforts?”.) I explained that one of the projects I was working on is this website called Ad-ID.  I went on to describe how Ad-ID stores some basic information about ads and my belief that it would be useful to a variety of vendors in the media and communications business, including media outlets.  That was when I saw his scowl turn into a smile, and he said, "You mean metadata. Well that is important! And if it is important to advertisers and agencies, then we should capitalize on the opportunity to work together to get the maximum value out of this Ad-ID thing."  He proceeded to assemble a group of the smartest people I have ever met, and we met for dinner that night at Ted's Montana grill.  They proceeded to not only help me understand the value of this metadata, but how it could be used by the supply chain. The SMPTE member who approached me was Clyde Smith, and one of the people around the table at Ted's Montana Grill that night was Chris Lennon.  Both have since become friends, mentors, and co-conspirators in the quest to propagate standardized advertising metadata throughout the media and entertainment supply chain. Chris has been my co author on 6 white papers on the topic of Advertising interoperability for SMPTE and NAB, two of which have been published in the SMPTE journal. A Pipe Dream No More: Advertising Workflows Have Come of Age (2013) The Pipe Dream Becomes Real: Advertising Workflows Come of Age (2012) The Life of a Commercial (2012) Smooth Asset Workflows, Bigfoot, and UFOs (2011) Are Fully Digital Workflows A Pipe Dream? (2009) The Elephant in the Room: a look at content identification (2009) Clyde coined a phrase that has become my personal mantra, “If you can’t identify it, you can’t operationalize or measure it; if you can’t measure it you can’t monetize it.”, and has been a huge supporter and confidant over the years. The toolkit for advertising interoperability that Clyde, Chris and I set out to develop 7 years ago is expected to be passed by the end of 2014 with 3 SMPTE Recommended practice documents: Using Ad-ID and EIDR as Alternate Identifiers in SMPTE (Published) Advertising Digital Identifier (Ad-ID) Representations (In Progress) Ad-ID Digital Ad Slate for MXF (In progress) In addition, the Joint Task Force on File Formats and Media Interoperability has identified metadata as one of the most challenging issues facing media and entertainment, and SMPTE is collaborating with CIMM on a project to standardize a common open binding mechanism. At last, it is time to move from conversations in the standards community to real world implementations.  Chris, Clyde and I will be presenting two papers together at the SMPTE 2014 Annual Technical Conference & Exhibition October 20-23rd, in Hollywood: Wednesday October 22nd at 8:30am - Addressing Issues in File Based Workflows: the Joint Task Force on File Formats and Media Interoperability Thursday October 23rd @ 11am How Do We Measure Up? An overview of the problems, solutions, and work necessary to leverage unique advertising asset Identification I urge you to join us and become an advocate of advertising supply chain excellence. Harold S Geller is Chief Growth Officer of Ad-ID LLC, a joint venture the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Association of National Advertisers, the registration Authority for advertising assets across all media platforms in the United States, used by over 1,700 advertisers, and is now required for all audio and video ads that feature actors that are members of SAG-AFTRA.
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SMPTE Staff

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