Playlist Generation

Category separation ensures that ad copy bundles of the same category do not play back to back. This is key to automating playlist creation by spacing out editorial content, competitive ads, and even ads from the same advertiser.

For more information, see Use Category Separation.

In cases where not only it is required to separate competing ads but it is also desired to separate them from other items in different categories judged inappropriate to be adjacent (i.e. separate car ads, but also separate cars from alcohol ads, and both cars and alcohol ads from prescription drugs), it is possible to implement secondary levels of separation.

In these cases, the secondary-level separation works by first determining the precedence level of the secondary categories with a count, and then proceeding to swap slot positions only if primary and any preceding secondary separation are not violated.

The separation precedence is determined as follows:

• The primary separation category for all campaigns in the loop takes precedence over any secondary categories that have been assigned. Any re-ordering to accommodate secondary categories can only take place if primary category separation is not degraded.

• For the secondary separation to work, the primary separation of the campaigns must be in the other's list, either as primary or secondary separation. To determine if campaigns will be separated, Broadsign Control Administrator compares the list of separation categories in a campaign only with the primary separation categories of other campaigns.

• The relative importance of the secondary categories is dynamically determined by how many items in the loop have a particular secondary category. The more a secondary category is present in the loop, the higher the precedence of that secondary category.

Note: As with regular category separation, if a loop contains more than 50% of slots that have the same primary/secondary separation rules it will not be possible to avoid adjacent playback. The more secondary categories assigned the more likely this is to happen.

For more information, see Use Category Separation.

This transformation is designed for use with conditions. Conditions are criteria that are set on the campaign or the bundle that must be met in order for the associated content to play. This transformation is responsible for removing playlist items that do not have appropriate conditions set.

The exclusive loop preprocessor transform will only insert the complete set of ad copies from the playlist once they have all been downloaded and are present on disk. This transform eliminates a partial playlist from appearing on the player.

When used as part of a loop's transformations, exclusive loop slot filler will remove all filler content from future loops when a scheduled ad copy is downloaded and on disk. When used together with Exclusive Preprocessor this strategy plays only filler content until the entire list of ad copies are downloaded and present on disk of the player.

Note: Filler content is unable to respect triggers (synchronization), e.g., Frame Synchronization. If you would like to synchronize filler content, use the same ad copies in a pre-emptible campaign, instead.

The preprocessor removes all ad copies from the loop that are not yet downloaded and on disk.

Since the preprocessor is performed after ad copies are extracted from the slots, a slot rotation that is missing one or more files on disk will lead to the slot being omitted from the loop for some iterations.

Filler slots are added to the loop based on the loop policy using the following formula:

(Loop Policy’s Loop Duration) - (Actual Duration of Loop) = Default Slot Duration

Using the same process as slot rotation, loop policy schedules are then sourced to produce content to fill those filler slots. If there are not enough unique Ad Copy Bundles to fill in all the filler slots, then Broadsign completes the loop by repeating the filler content that is available.

Since all the filler slots are of the same length (the default slot duration), the content strategy should take into account all filler ads being of the same duration.

Note: Filler content is unable to respect triggers (synchronization), e.g., Frame Synchronization. If you would like to synchronize filler content, use the same ad copies in a pre-emptible campaign, instead.

You can create a campaign that reserves multiple slots in the same loop. This is called over-saturation and is described as multiple plays per loop. You can also create a campaign that reserves partial slots where the slot can be shared by multiple campaigns. This is called under-saturation and is described as multiple loops per play.

This strategy will select ad copies at random from the default loop policy schedules present in a loop policy's properties. Any ad copy from any schedule will be selected for playback. This feature randomizes the order of filler content that is selected to be played back in a loop.

Note: Filler content is unable to respect triggers (synchronization), e.g., Frame Synchronization. If you would like to synchronize filler content, use the same ad copies in a pre-emptible campaign, instead.

Category segmentation is the complement to category separation where you can set a specific weight to all the ads in the loop. You use categories to create a playlist template, i.e. define your segments and their relative order. You then add ad copy bundles to segments by setting a segment category and you can weight the order of ads within a segment by setting a weight on the ad copy bundle.

For more information, see Use Category Segmentation.

It is possible to use the category separation and segmentation transforms together in a loop. The resulting effect will have the bundles with a category appearing in between segmented bundles for a television-like display of content.