LONDON — Irish public broadcaster RTÉ is readying to build the next generation of its multi-platform digital player brand, hoping summer-time tests of dynamic ad insertion can lead it to new riches in ad sales for live digital programming.
RTÉ Player, a catch-up VOD service, first launched on desktop in 2010, later coming to mobile systems, cable and games consoles. Now the build of an upcoming revamp is the top priority, according to RTÉ digital media sales commercial director Conor Mullen.
“We’re developing the next generation of our player,” he tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “That’s rolling out beyond catch-up so that we’ll be able to deliver as an IPTV service.”
“We’ve been looking at dynamic ad insertion … we’ve started an internal trial on that this summer with the view that, if it works, we’ll roll it out, probably a pilot this year with commercial full load next year.”
Mullen is pegging dynamic ad insertion (DAI), the practice through which targeted ads are delivered are delivered in digital linear streams to unique users, as the biggest opportunity for RTÉ.
Like many public broadcasters across Europe, it is under pressure from rival commercial broadcasters, funding squeeze and digital competition from big online beasts.
Despite deploying RTÉ Player on a connected TV platform, Mullen says mobile is where all the consumption is. That means enabling DAI for mobile video is a key goal. Mullen says RTÉ uses FreeWheel for its video ads, and envisages continuing in to the future.
This video was produced in London as part of our Addressable & Advanced TV Summit hosted by Sky Media and presented by FreeWheel and Invidi. Please visit this page for additional segments from the event.