Broadsign Control Release Highlights

Broadsign Control 14.4 — 7 Jan 2022

64-bit Windows Architectures

Broadsign Control Administrator now supports 64-bit Windows architectures.

Broadsign Control 14.2 — 20 Sept 2021

Note: The documentation for Broadsign Control 14.2 was archived on December 8, 2021. See Broadsign Control v14.2 Documentation (Archived).

Share of Loop in Milliseconds

You can specify shares of loop using milliseconds as well as percentages. Whatever the length of your loop, it is now much easier to specify shares with the precision that meets your business model. Users of Broadsign Direct will appreciate the added precision. Since Broadsign Direct only “sees” primary shares, secondary shares in Broadsign Control are commonly used to “block” a specific number of slots per loop so they cannot be booked in Broadsign Direct. For example, for a loop of 60 seconds, specifying a secondary share of 10 seconds preserves this time for content booked outside of Broadsign Direct.

Cookies Support in Monitor Sync

You can now control the session between a remote server and Broadsign Control Player when using Monitor Sync. This is useful for customers who configure their Broadsign Control Players to retrieve files from external third-party HTTP servers. For example, lotto winners, weather feeds, etc., can all be retrieved externally. These sometimes make use of cookies to preserve information between calls. This feature will allow customers using external third-party HTTP servers to take advantage of a standard feature of HTTP. For example, a session ID could be preserved across calls.

Events in Loop Snapshot Report

Inform your advertisers when their events messages will play! With Events in the Loop Snapshot Report, you can validate your Event schedule and let your advertisers know when their Event will appear on the screen(s) of interest.

In addition, the Loop Snapshot itself is generally speaking more accurate, since it now includes Events.

Advanced Search Improvements

Advanced search makes it easy to find resources -- such as Ad Copies, Display Units, etc. -- within your network. In previous releases, users found the advanced search functionality returned too many results. For example, if your search string for a “starts with” search was “ab”, advanced search would return resources named “ab 123” and “def abc”. This was because the advanced search algorithm treated resources with spaces (and some other separation characters) as having two separate strings to be parsed. Now, resources are treated as a single string, returning more intuitive results.

Deprecation of Archaic Terminology

Experience a more inclusive user experience. Like other progressive technology leaders, Broadsign has deprecated the terms “master” and “slave” from Broadsign Control. Throughout the UI and documentation, these have been replaced with the terms “leader” and “follower”. For example, when you configure one display unit to trigger the ad copy played on another, the first DU is now called the “leader” while the second DU is called the “follower”. The follower takes its cues from the leader.

Broadsign Control 14.1 — 21 May 2021

Note: The documentation for Broadsign Control 14.1 was archived on September 20, 2021. See Broadsign Control v14.1 Documentation (Archived).

Updates to Campaign Performance Report

Issuing month-by-month invoices shouldn’t require any manual work. That's why we’ve added filters to our Campaign Performance Report set-up wizards. It's now much simpler for operators to search delivered plays or impressions when it comes to longer-term campaigns.

Related link: Campaign Performance Report

Generate campaign performance metrics by date range

Simply enter the subset of dates needed and the system will automatically generate the campaign performance report.

Generate campaign performance metrics by week

Are you looking for Monday to Sunday campaign metrics? We’ve added the option to view campaign metrics per week, including options to pick which day starts your week.

Add Display Unit Addresses to your Campaign Performance Reports

We understand that granular details are important when it comes to a campaign’s performance. Display Unit addresses have now been added to Campaign Performance Reports, allowing you to get a good understanding of where a campaign has run, at a glance.

Broadsign Control 14.0 — 23 Mar 2021

Note: The documentation for Broadsign Control 14.0 was archived on May 21, 2021. See Broadsign Control v14.0 Documentation (Archived).

We’re excited to announce that Broadsign Control 14.0 has arrived! It’s packed with a ton of new functionalities giving you even more power to create, manage and deliver all types of campaigns - no matter how complex, in a more streamlined and efficient way.

Here’s a preview of what 14.0 has to offer:

More efficiently create or edit campaigns and criteria sets from one location.
New search audit logs functionality to view recent activity - from within Broadsign Control.
Streamline workflows between operations and sales with an enhanced Broadsign Direct integration.
Save time with a smoother and more efficient file transfer process.

We’ve also made major changes to the player. You'll find an improved rendering and presentation engine with better hardware compatibility that enables more timely Chromium updates. This is a major leap forward that supports increasingly rich and complex campaigns that run across your network.

Broadsign Control Administrator

New Broadsign Control Administrator features include:

Major Features

Advanced Ad Copy Criteria
Broadsign Control In-Product Audit Trail
Display Unit Grouping Criteria

Interoperability with our Broadsign Direct sales tool

Search Broadsign Direct Proposal Details

Edge Server enhancements

Synchronized Emergency Messages
Added Edge Server Rotation

General UX improvements

Faster and more Efficient Transfer Manager
Automatic Ad Copy Matching in Bundles
Universal Typeahead for Pick LISTS

The following features are deprecated and no longer available in Broadsign Control:

Adobe Flash
Internet Explorer HTML rendering
Windows Media Player video output
Direct3D video output
Xvideo video output
Gilbarco integration
DI-API integration
Native Digital TV integration (i.e video capture cards) - still available via application ad copies (see Best Practices for Video Capture Content)
Star Wipe Transition type
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS support

Advanced Ad Copy Criteria

Introducing a brand-new workspace that enables users to manage or edit schedules, update ad copies and assign to display units - all from one single location in Broadsign Control Administrator. When combined with Criteria Sets, this can be a huge time saver to manage creatives - especially when a large amount of Ad Copy Criteria is required.

Related links: Schedules | Criteria Set | The Settings Section

Broadsign Control In-Product Audit Trail

Broadsign Control has always logged all user API activity. But for an added layer of visibility on campaign changes, we’re now giving you the ability to search audit logs for user activity that is logged by the Broadsign Server. This includes: operation type, operation performed, user ID and a timestamp for all changes made. And the great news is the audit logs can be searched from directly within the product!

Display Unit Grouping Criteria

As your network grows, so does your need to manage, target and troubleshoot your inventory. Your sales model might evolve and repetitive tasks that were previously easy to manage can quickly become time-consuming when you have a larger network.

Enter a newly added criteria called “Group”, which streamlines operations for larger networks, simplifies your workflow and reduces error-prone repetitive tasks.

Is your sales team using Broadsign Direct? If so, sales reps can save time by removing a few (often repeated) steps when creating a proposal by simply selecting the grouped screens to add to their proposal.

Related links: Criteria Types | The Settings Section (Display Units Properties)

Interoperability with Broadsign Direct

Search Broadsign Direct Proposal Details

Searching contract details for a campaign originally scheduled in Broadsign Direct? Look no further than Broadsign Control.

We’ve improved the interoperability between Broadsign Direct and Broadsign Control so you can quickly search for Contract IDs, Proposal IDs, and Proposal Line Item IDs associated with Proposal Line Items right from Broadsign Control.

And bonus: Contract IDs will now also appear in a select group of reports generated by Broadsign Control!

Edge Server Enhancements

Synchronized Emergency Messages

Eliminate message delays by synchronizing emergency messages playing on multiple screens . You can now easily configure your players to poll the Edge Server at the exact same time so all screens display the message within a mere seconds of each other.

Added Edge Server Rotation

For more reliable content delivery when it comes to players in transit (think trains or subways), 14.0 now enables players to acquire content from two Edge Servers, instead of one. This especially comes in handy when a subway train goes underground and an Edge Server experiences intermittent connectivity.

General User Experience Improvements

Faster and more Efficient Transfer Manager

It’s time to say good-bye to only working on a single upload at a time in our transfer manager. 14.0 gives you more control over what gets uploaded and provides faster restarts for when an upload fails - simply right-click on the item right from the transfer manager to restart!

Automatic Ad Copy Matching in Bundles

Our improved ad copy matching now eliminates the need to manually match ad copies to screens with different resolutions. Players will automatically match based on screen resolution - that means no more tagging display units and ad copies with dimension criteria.

Universal Typeahead for Pick LISTS

We’ve introduced a universal typeahead to allow you to filter for exactly what you need without needing to scroll through an enormous list. No more wasted minutes on searching through hundreds or even thousands of assets to find what you need.

Broadsign Control Player

Advertisers need to evolve their creative strategies in order to stay relevant. So do media owners. With 15 years of development experience and over 185,000 players in the field, the Broadsign Control Player is one of the most widely deployed and field-tested platforms on the market. It continues to push the creative envelope with its latest performance enhancements. That means better visuals, better interactivity, and better performance for you and your customers.

Don’t be limited by your hardware. Extend the life of your current Broadsign Control Players with 14.0. In this latest release, we’ve strengthened the player foundation with significant improvements to make the best of your hardware, old and new.

You'll find an improved rendering and presentation engine with better hardware compatibility that enables more timely Chromium updates. This is a major leap forward that will continue to support increasingly rich and complex campaigns that run across your network.

New Broadsign Control Player features include:

Better Video Decoding Performance
Smoother Transitions
Simplified Transition Configurations
Added support for Chromium 80

Better Video Decoding Performance

Our latest Broadsign Control Player brings better video decoding performance, which means higher quality video content, like 4K, will run smoother and better on older hardware while providing ultra-clear visuals.

Smoother Transitions

You can rely on smoother transitions, resulting in a more polished playback experience.

Simplified Transition Configurations

Users can now reference one single page for all configurations when it comes to transition types, making it easier and more efficient with less room for error.

Extend the power of Broadsign to your entire digital signage network

We get it, sometimes you just need to run another player. That’s why we created Broadsign Air, so you can connect Broadsign Control to any digital signage player on your network using our intelligent cloud-based ad server. Say goodbye to multiple content management systems and hello to one centralized operations hub.

Push campaigns and operate from within one content management system
Add programmatic support transparently to third-party players
Leverage Broadsign’s powerful tech stack to optimize your OOH business
Reduce operational overhead and quickly scale your business

Related links: About Broadsign Air| Broadsign Air API

Broadsign Control 13.2 — 16 Dec 2019

Improved SmartFeed

Our SmartFeed has gotten even smarter, and can now store any type of historical data and automatically trigger content based on any changes made to that stored data. This can allow you to manage complex campaigns with much less manual work. For example, if you need to run a campaign where different creatives are triggered based on changes to the live score of a hockey game.

Custom Proof-of-Play

We’re making it easier for advertisers to calculate their return on investment by enabling you to add custom lines in your proof-of-play report. Extra fields can be added both after a PoP report has been generated and in real time, helping you to fine-tune the transparency of your network and deliver more of the information your buyers want.

Improved Programmatic Functionality

We’re also deepening the programmatic support within Broadsign Control to make it easier to optimize buys made on your network.

Just in Time bidding

With just-in-time bidding, the auction process for programmatic slots is only triggered 30 seconds before an ad starts playing. This helps to minimize the risk of timeouts and revenue loss, and lets buyers enjoy a reduced wait time.

Related links: Broadsign Reach | Broadsign Reach Content

Real-time audience API

Bid requests can now be made using real-time audience data. This will allow bidders to target their campaigns using metrics pulled mere seconds before the ad slot, increasing the likely and perceived value of the buy.

Related links: The Audience Tab | Audience Source

General Performance & Security Enhancements

As always, we’re taking steps to improve the security and performance of our software to better serve the networks we power.

Linux Hardware Acceleration

By offloading video decoding and rendering from CPUs to specialized hardware, we’ve improved overall performance of video transitions on Linux systems. This will help to smooth animations for heavy 4k video transitions.

Monitor sync via HTTPS

Broadsign Control users can now use HTTPS to transfer files and folders to the player. This is a more modern protocol, and provides greater security to you and your network. Note that FTP transfer will continue to be supported as well.

Enhanced security audit trail for AWS

Our recent migration to AWS has opened the door to improved authentication auditing through Amazon’s Security Trail Audit (SQS) tool. Now, you can have all login-in attempts and API calls delivered to you in real-time for enhanced transparency and security.

Broadsign Control 13.1 — 2 Apr 2019

Note: The documentation for Broadsign Control 13.1 was archived on December 16, 2019. See Broadsign Control v13.1 Documentation (Archived).

This release sees the launch of Enterprise Authentication login in addition to a number of features and benefits.

Enterprise Authentication Login

Customers can use the Single Sign On (SSO) approach with Broadsign Control. With a centralized user authentication, system administrators can manage their user database and instantly change or disable access to Broadsign Control. Users will no longer need to remember separate login credentials, reducing password fatigue.

Ubuntu 18.04 Support

Broadsign Control Player and Broadsign Control API now support Ubuntu Linux 18.04. This version has improved security, supports the latest hardware, and comes with 10 year vendor support.

Pre-Buffering Player API (Skip Next Action)

Benefit from a new player API that enables intelligent buffering of dynamic content specifically relying on external data. Should the external data be unavailable, the dynamic content will be skipped and the next scheduled content will play, ensuring gapless playback.

Emergency Messages in Chromium

Avoid reformatting messages and make use of better content rendering by choosing in which browser emergency messages appear. Emergency messages can now be rendered in Chromium.

Open API Enhancements

A new API call allows for a more intelligent way to retrieve key incidents, removing networking monitoring complexities and reducing bandwidth usage.

Better Integration with Broadsign Reach

Publishers who have pre-negotiated deals with programmatic buyers, can now use Deal IDs to reserve spots for private groups or individual buyers while still making use of key capabilities such as pacing and dayparting.

Programmatic buyers can now upload HTML5 packages through Broadsign Reach to more easily deploy dynamic content and benefit from responsiveness. HTML5 also allows buyers to gain time by removing the need to manually render multiple versions of the same content.

Player Monitoring Center

As screenshots are captured, the new player monitoring center gives you a visual representation of your screens, prioritizing those that are showing potential problems, such as screens that are blank, or those showing a black or blue screen. This enables you to proactively spot potential issues quickly and address them accordingly.

Related links: Player Monitoring Center | View Bar Options

Remote Screenshot Capture

With Broadsign Control Live, you can see exactly what’s playing on every screen without having to send a person on-site. Remote screenshots enable you to quickly troubleshoot and obtain visual confirmation that every campaign is playing as it should. These screenshots can also be pushed to a third-party web page such as a customer portal or screenshot proof-of-play reports.

On-Demand Player Polling

As we know, things don’t always go quite as planned. Screens might not be displaying as they should, someone may have made a simple scheduling mistake or advertisers may want to suddenly change creative, update campaign frequency or even put an immediate stop to a campaign. With Broadsign Control Live, your team can push these changes instantly without having to wait for the player to poll the server.

Related links: On-Demand Player Polling | Home Ribbon

Cloud Sync

When network security policies prevent direct connection between players, this option allows for content synchronization across the bidirectional channel. In other words, you can both send and receive synchronization messages for synced players across the same channel.

Related links: Cloud Sync | The Core Tab

Broadsign Control 13.0

SmartFeed

By updating content automatically based on external triggers, dynamic campaigns allow for more contextual content. Rather than displaying the same creative throughout the duration of the campaign, advertisers can better engage audiences by updating content as situations change.

Dynamic Content Proof-of-Play (PoP) Support

While advertisers can get more creative with dynamic campaigns, creating various versions of the creatives can require some extra resources. To be sure their efforts are paying off, your advertisers can now analyze the results of their campaign with the Broadsign Control proof-of-play (PoP) log that can now display data based on which content was displayed in HTML5-based dynamic content.

Audience API

Import third-party data from companies such as Nielsen, Route and GeoPath, directly in Broadsign Control to generate campaign audience reports in real time.

Impressions Formulas

Broadsign understands that different media owners may have different ways of calculating impressions based on audience data provided or purchased. We provide a collection of features that accommodate different methods for both Broadsign Direct and Broadsign Control.

Screenshot Request Action

The Screenshot Request action allows you to push screenshots (or screenshot bursts) to any URL. As a result, you can see what is happening on your screens in real time. Then, you can troubleshoot issues and ensure dynamic content displays correctly.

Related links: Screenshot Request Action

Dual Quividi Support

You can now capture Quividi audience data and adjust messaging accordingly on dual sided totems using a single player.

Exclusive Conditions Action

You can now set conditions using Broadsign Control Player API (such as "Emergency", "Public Service" or even a winning game) that will filter out all other content from the loop. No other content will play until the condition is removed.

Related links: Exclusive Conditions Action

Broadsign Control 12.1 — Released Nov 2017

Note: The documentation for Broadsign Control 12.1 was archived on 14 August, 2018. See Broadsign Control v12.1 Documentation (Archived).

Display Unit CSV Export

Online and DOOH have many differences which only Broadsign Reach’s SSP can truly service. We’ve enhanced inventory export tools to Broadsign Control Administrator to make deployments of Broadsign Direct and Broadsign Reach easier.

Enhanced HTML5 Support

Enhanced HTML5 support with Chromium 59 update and webgl support for smoother playback.

REST API

For developers, we have added a REST API to facilitate easier use and to faster deploy integrations. We provide a REST console, using Swagger, that is more intuitive and enjoyable to use.

3G/4G Synchronization

3G/4G network synchronization allows line-of-sight screens playback to stay synchronized.

Screen Suspend/Resume Action

With the Screen Suspend/Resume action of Broadsign Control Player API, you can allow player-side applications to suspend or resume the connected screen.

Related links: Screen Suspend/Resume Action

IP Whitelisting

Keep your network secure with an extra layer of access control with IP whitelists for both Broadsign Control Administrator and Broadsign Publish (Broadsign Creator).

Duplicate MAC Address Protection

Duplicate MAC protection prevents double-registration of players with fake MAC addresses.

5.1 Audio Support

Targeted to clients in the cinema vertical, Broadsign Control 12.1 includes support for 5.1 Audio to take advantage of the theatre’s audio capabilities.

Related links: Products Section - The Video Tab

Broadsign Control 12.0 — Released May 2017

Note: The documentation for Broadsign Control 12.0 was archived in November, 2017. See Broadsign Control v12.0 Documentation (Archived).

Broadsign Reach (formerly Broadsign Serv SSP)

We are committed to bringing clients new programmatic revenue streams. Full native support for Broadsign Reach is now available, including priority campaigns and programmatic events.

Related links: Broadsign Reach | The Reach Tab

Dynamic Pacing

Allow for more flexible ad placement over periods of time. Dynamic pacing reacts in real-time to network events and changes by increasing or decreasing the frequency of ad insertion to hit the target.

Real-Time POP API

Broadsign Control can export proof-of-play (POP) data to an external location for input into third-party analytics platforms. You can customize analytics and reporting systems with up-to-the-minute proof-of-play information.

You control the frequency at which you receive the proof-of-play logs. Caching of information protects against network outages. Broadsign will upload the data as soon as the network connection resumes, protecting your statistics’ integrity.

Related links: Real-time POP API | The POP Tab

The New Availability Report

Based on client feedback, we reorganized the Availability Report.

If issues like overbooking or missing content arise, you can see them right away. Expanding and collapsing of information in the report eases the analysis of much larger networks. You can more easily focus on areas that require attention.

Ubuntu 16.04 Support

Broadsign Control Player and Broadsign Control API now support Ubuntu Linux 16.04.

Map-Based Campaign Booking

Users of Broadsign Control Administrator can geofence display units in map view, to more easily book campaigns based on geography.

Related Links: Display Units in Map View

Bulk Criteria Import

Schedulers using criteria in Broadsign Control Administrator for fine-grained targeting can now bulk import their criteria.

Unique Ad Copy Filler

Schedulers using Broadsign Control Administrator can adjust the limit of unique filler ad copies that Broadsign Control Player adds to a loop policy.

Rather than insert filler content (stopping when the loop reaches its maximum duration), schedulers can override this setting by specifying the number of unique filler ad copies used.

Bulk Import/Export Display Unit Addresses

In Broadsign Control Administrator, clients of either Broadsign Direct or Broadsign Reach can bulk import the geolocation data of their display units.