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Waiting For Your Big Break? 3 Ways to be in Position For it.

CMMA Blog

Jennifer Garner thought she was going to be a stage actor and only took her first TV role because she was flat broke. She also slept on a futon in some woman’s kitchen for 9 months while she was waiting (and working her tail off!) to hit her stride. She now has an IMDB page a mile long. You never know what will be your life’s best stepping stone. What you can do is be in position to take advantage of the breaks that come your way.

If you feel like you need a change or you’re looking for a career pivot, read on. Even if your current role isn’t everything you want it to be, it’s time to think differently about where you are now. It could be a stepping stone for where you want to be next. 

Three Ways to be in Position For Your Big Break:

1. See every role as a chance to sharpen your skills or try on different roles.

Jennifer Garner didn’t expect to become a screen actress, but taking a small TV role led her down the path that landed her in every American’s living room. Whether you’re just starting out and finding your way or you’re well established, but feeling a little stale, stay open minded.

Take each role you accept as a chance to get paid to figure out what you’re interested in and get some experience while you’re at it. As you go, you’ll find your lane. Then you can either keep running in that lane or take those finely-tuned skills to your next full-time job. Highly-skilled, well-rounded workers have a leg up on the competition.

2. Think of every role as a paid audition.

Even if you don’t land your dream job right away, anything that gets your foot in the door could end up being the story you tell of how you got your big break. If you love a business’s culture or brand, be open to a less desirable role and just see where it leads. You get to learn what you like with companies and people you enjoy and then have a built-in connection for future opportunities. If you do well enough on your “audition,” you’ll be in position for more work in the future. From there, it’s up to you to decide whether you want to accept an opportunity or keep working for yourself. The power is in your hands.

3. Make connections. 

Once you’ve shown yourself as a reliable, positive teammate, the world opens up. People talk about you and you organically build a robust network that includes both decision makers and people in related fields.

The Bottom Line

Many factors determine what career path is the right fit for your life. It’s rare you’ll start out in a dream role, but a not-so-great role may be exactly the thing that allows you to live the life you want to live. For others, one role might be the right thing, but only for a season. After a brief walk down one road, you may take all your experience and do a complete u-turn. Whether your current role is a stepping stone to your dream position or the long-term career path you didn’t even know you wanted, the best time to go for it is right now. 

The post Waiting For Your Big Break? 3 Ways to be in Position For it. appeared first on PayReel .

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Monetizing Your Media through a Video Ad Marketplace

CMMA Blog

The opportunity to monetize with an AVOD model has never been greater. In 2022 alone, the growth of AVOD viewers was higher than subscription OTT and free premium video streaming combined (Insider Intelligence ). Furthermore, traditional pay TV is steadily declining and expected to account for roughly a third of households by 2027.
Yet, anyone who’s spent time in the media industry knows that implementing an AVOD service is easier said than done. In fact, Caretta Research described this process as “fiendishly complicated,” noting that many companies simply ignore this route altogether.
While AVOD can, indeed, be challenging, there’s another option for media companies who want a low-risk entry point: video ad marketplaces.
What Is a Video Ad Marketplace?
In its simplest form, a video ad marketplace is an online advertising platform that allows advertisers to buy video ads and publishers to monetize content.
For advertisers, ad marketplaces provide an efficient way to reach their target audience through placements alongside high quality content. For publishers, they provide a convenient way to sell inventory (in-stream ads within their videos) to advertisers. For both, ad marketplaces serve as an intermediary, using a single platform to manage, optimize, and facilitate programmatic video ads.
Publishers generate revenue through a programmatic advertising system, which eliminates the time-consuming process of finding individual advertisers and includes features like real-time bidding and unified auctions. Most leading ad services now have integrated supply-side platforms (SSPs), giving publishers the opportunity to quickly set up and control their revenue streams. By tracking and analyzing users, web traffic, costs, and reporting metrics like CPM (cost per thousand impressions), publishers can optimize their approach to maximize potential earnings.
There are three key elements to ad monetization solutions.

Ad marketplace. The ad marketplace matches buyer and seller preferences via SSPs and DSPs (demand-side platforms) to deliver meaningful impressions for all parties.
Ad server. The ad server distributes the ads, facilitates the management of the campaigns, and tracks performance. For advertisers, it offers tools and analytics to help manage and optimize the campaign. This includes quantitative data (video views, clicks, and impressions) as well as qualitative data (information about the audiences engaging with the ads). For publishers, it instantaneously determines which ads to serve with which video, and delivers that ad as a seamless part of the experience.
Video player. A high quality player allows publishers to offer a variety of video ad strategies, including floating players, picture-in-picture ads, and header bidding.

What Are the Benefits for Publishers?
One of the key benefits for publishers on video ad marketplaces is the stable and reliable income they can generate. They offer a fixed payment per click, view, or impression whether or not the ad directly contributes to a sale. This can take a lot of the guesswork out of how much the publisher will be paid. For many publishers, it’s simply a matter of creating great content and leveraging the marketplace’s ability to acquire advertisers that want to fill vacant advertising spots with relevant, high-quality ads.
Ad marketplaces can also offset the cost of producing content with the revenue generated from offering advertising opportunities. By opening up these additional streams of revenue, content creators can focus more on creating compelling content and less on finding and negotiating with advertisers.
Finally, ad marketplaces give creators peace of mind knowing they are getting the best possible rate for their ads through the automated bidding system. Advertisers tend to prefer this approach as well. According to eMarketer, more than 82% of digital video ad spending is transacted programmatically in the UK, Canada, U.S., Germany, and France. Ad marketplaces assure them that they’re paying the best available market price while getting a high-quality ad delivered on a premium video player to highly targeted audiences.
How Do You Know If You’re Ready to Monetize Your Content?
Every video ad marketplace has different requirements for publishers, but they primarily involve two aspects of the publishers’ business.

Content Library. Publishers must have an established content library. Advertisers expect their ads to reach the audiences they’re targeting, so having a well-curated library allows marketplaces to serve up ads on the most relevant content.
Monthly Viewership. Publishers must also meet the demand for views and impressions. Beyond relevance, advertisers expect their ads to perform efficiently, reaching as much of the right audience as possible.

What Should You Look for in a Video Ad Marketplace?
Every publisher should also have requirements for video ad marketplaces. Features and options can vary dramatically, but the following examples from Brightcove’s Ad Monetization service illustrate what an industry-leading media platform prioritizes.
Bidding Options
Unsold inventory is a common challenge for media companies, typically due to technical issues, pricing issues, or to avoid the same user seeing the same ad too many times. But as a publisher, your goal is to sell as much of your inventory as possible at the best rate possible. Ad servers do this by bidding out your inventory to advertisers in several different ways.
To maximize revenue, a good ad marketplace should include the following options.

Fallback bidding. This approach allows bids to be made against unsold inventory, with the highest paying bidder winning that impression.
Header or player bidding. This approach allows the player to conduct the auction and pass the winning bid back to your ad server without latency. The highest bidding marketplace will get the inventory, maximizing the revenue potential from your content.

Ad Insertion
Ad insertion is how your ads are inserted into the video stream through your video player. There are two primary methods for inserting ads.

Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI). SSAI inserts ads directly into the content at the server end of the streaming delivery chain. It typically provides the best viewing experience, as the transitions between content and ads are much smoother with less buffering. The tradeoff is that SSAI tends to require more technical expertise to implement, and the overall ad experience isn’t very flexible. It’s also important to note that since SSAI is an integrated part of your content, this method ensures the ads are delivered instead of being blocked by ad blockers.
Client-Side Ad Insertion (CSAI). CSAI inserts ads directly into the video player on the user’s device. It offers a more flexible ad experience, as ads can be personalized based on user data like browsing history and inserted at any point in the video. However, since playback is dependent on the user’s device and internet connection, it’s more susceptible to buffering and ad blockers. While the overall viewing experience may not be seamless, the ad experience can be enhanced with other options like the ability to skip, click, or close an ad.

Ad Experience
Selling ad inventory will only generate revenue if the ad experience is exceptional. This means your video ad marketplace needs to be able to serve ads to your video content regardless of what format it is.
For example, while most of your content may be video on demand (VOD) or over the top (OTT), you may still want to monetize a special live event you’re broadcasting. The key is having the flexibility so that you’re able to get the most out of your video content in any format.
Furthermore, your video player should offer viewability metrics, so you can track the effectiveness of your ad experience. Advertisers don’t just want impressions anymore; they expect publishers to prove that viewers are actually seeing the ads.
Taking Advantage of Video Advertising Opportunities
Video ad marketplaces offer publishers a variety of ways to monetize their content in an increasingly competitive landscape. Understanding how video ad marketplaces work can help you reach your goals and position you to seize the opportunities this significant growth market offers.
With Brightcove, taking advantage of this opportunity has never been easier. Not only do we offer a full-service ad marketplace solution, we offer industry-leading ad metrics like ad sensitivity. Getting started with AVOD can be hard, but Brightcove Ad Monetization makes it easy to get the most revenue from your media.

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If You Have Anyone on Payroll, You Cannot Afford to Ignore This

CMMA Blog

Anytime you’re dealing with payroll, there is risk involved. Workers understandably care a lot about it because their livelihoods are involved and the government cares because they have rules and regulations in place both to get the taxes they are due and also to protect workers. The two most important factors of a successful payroll program are accurate/on-time payments and compliance with federal, state, and local regulations. 

What Makes Compliance Challenging?

States and localities are constantly introducing new legislation, and with each change, payroll procedures change, too. Mistakes in income tax withholding rates, unemployment tax rates, minimum wage and labor laws can lead to costly penalties. The more states a business operates in, the more risky the compliance aspect becomes because the rules vary from place to place.

As the employment landscape has changed and many workers have shifted to more of a hybrid or remote situation, it has only complicated the matter further. If an employer doesn’t have an established entity to pay employees appropriately in a given state, they aren’t in position to have employees there at all. 

What Can Employers do to Prevent Problems?

We all know that prevention is the best policy, but some companies are quick to start auditing their process and procedures only after they see a problem. The businesses with the smoothest processes have proactive auditing measures in place to stay on top of changes, identify and solve gaps in their processes, etc. 

Manually managing all of these complex details is impossible. Businesses should take compliance very seriously to reduce their risks. If their internal team doesn’t have the bandwidth or tools to manage it accurately, they should engage a partner with the tools, methods and processes to help. They should also be in position to address the concerns that come up when employees have questions about their paychecks. If you’re wondering if a partner would help with your situation, let’s chat . This is our speciality. 

The post If You Have Anyone on Payroll, You Cannot Afford to Ignore This appeared first on PayReel .

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Engaging Audiences with Metadata-Driven Interactive Video

CMMA Blog

For years, the primary goal of publishers and platforms has been viewer acquisition. But with today’s viewers becoming overwhelmed with options, engagement has taken center stage in the battle for more viewers, more loyal viewers, and increased revenue . No longer can publishers live by the maxim “build it and they will come.” Rather, it’s about delivering viewing experiences that are transformed from passive to active, broad to localized, and generic to contextual.
It’s against this backdrop that interactivity becomes a true competitive differentiator. And metadata has emerged as the key ingredient that drives it.
What Is Video Metadata?
Before we can understand the potential metadata holds for engaging your audiences, let’s start by understanding what it is. In its simplest form, video metadata is the descriptive information that is embedded within a video file. Essentially, it is data about data. It answers content questions such as:

What was created?
When was it made?
Where was it created?
Who made the content?
How should the content be shown?
Which platforms should the content be shown on?
Why was the content made?

Why Is Video Metadata Important?
For video, there are three crucial roles that metadata plays.
Enables Search Engine Indexing
Just as with metadata from websites and other uploaded content, video metadata tells search engines what the content is about. It helps them determine which results content should show up in based on a user’s query, and ultimately how it will rank compared to other related content. Three key parts of this metadata to consider in terms of search engines include the title, description, and tags.

Title. Make sure your title includes essential keywords that users are likely to search for. However, the title should also accurately reflect the content in the video to help ensure longer viewing times, which lead to higher rankings in the search engine.
Descriptions. Since search engines don’t “watch” your content, descriptions are needed to tell search engines what the content is about. These descriptions are often included in search engine results and can help videos rank better on some platforms.
Tags. Tags help search engines better understand what the video is about, which will also aid in search engine discoverability. They also play an important role in helping publishers organize content in logical ways that align with how users search. And finally, as your content library grows, they’ll be essential in helping you to internally organize and quickly find content.

Improves User Experience
Metadata also offers a better experience on video sites and OTT apps. On these platforms, metadata helps viewers better understand what the video is about and whether they should invest the time to watch. It also helps optimize the organization of content and increases discoverability as users browse through genres and episodic content.
Increases Audience Engagement
Perhaps the most interesting role metadata plays is its potential to increase viewer engagement. It’s the foundation for creating the interactivity today’s viewers want.
How Video Metadata Can Drive Interactivity
Keep in mind that while interactive video is highly engaging, it should not be incorporated into every piece of video content. It’s important to build the combination of the right video for the right audience and the most engaging interactive experience. That said, there are four use cases where interactive video can be particularly potent, especially when driven by metadata.
Sports
Sports is a powerful use case because of the huge amount of metadata that is generated during a typical game, match, or season. Combine this with the historical data that can be mined and utilized for both live broadcasts and video on demand (VOD) and you can start to see how it can enrich the viewing experience in a variety of ways. Common areas where it’s used include displaying player and team stats in real time, instant replays, and highlight reels.
For example, the German Football League media hub, which stores all video and metadata related to German football matches, has 11 petabytes of data within the hub—the equivalent of 2.75 billion smartphone photos. The metadata generated includes all the official match data, live logging of action types, and data driven by machine learning and artificial intelligence.
When building out an interactive framework for sports, there are several important questions to consider.

How does the metadata you have access to support the game or match?
Is the game being broadcast live, or will you only have access to VOD?
How often will the metadata be updated during the game?
How will you get this data to the content and the audience?
How will you show this data to the audience in a way that is meaningful but also doesn’t distract?

But the biggest challenge with sports is that the data and interactivity have to sync with what is happening in the game. Audiences will expect scores and points to be updated in a livestream in the same way as in a TV broadcast. Because of the numerous systems involved and gates to pass through in the workflow, this can be quite tricky.
Entertainment
Metadata can be an effective way to enrich the viewer’s experience during their favorite TV shows. Interactive features like actor bios can provide a new layer of depth and additional context that encourages engagement. It also offers publishers new revenue streams through product placements and targeted and contextual advertising that’s closely aligned with the content itself.
Implementing metadata-driven interactivity into entertainment content has its own set of considerations.

How will you ensure the metadata supports the content as well as the target audience and their interests?
How can you make the interactions seamless and meaningful by adding new layers of context and depth?
What will be your approach for ensuring the interactivity aligns with both viewer preference and the overall nature of the content?

While metadata-driven interactions are relatively straightforward on web and mobile platforms, there can be challenges when bringing this experience to living room devices—where long-form content is typically consumed. Current operating systems, app frameworks, SDKs, and ad servers may not fully support this as an optimal user experience. However, as these technologies continue to evolve, we’ll see even more engaging metadata-driven experiences on the web, on mobile, and in the home.
News and Weather
Metadata is already changing the way we consume news- and weather-related content. It provides the opportunity to personalize the viewing experience without disrupting the livestream by adding localized context to live news feeds and weather reports.
When implementing metadata-driven approaches for news and weather, you’ll want to consider the sophisticated workflows you’ll need. They should be capable of serving metadata in real time across different locations in order to deliver a personalized, immediate, and local experience.
However, this isn’t without challenges. Naturally, viewers expect their news and weather to be both accurate and timely. Given their dynamic nature, having metadata that’s rich enough to add real-time context can be particularly difficult.
Education
In an increasingly remote world, metadata offers the opportunity to transform traditional university lectures into interactive experiences for virtual students. As professors give live lectures, metadata can allow them to incorporate links and overlays into the content. Common examples could include linking to supplemental materials, related web pages for further research, or additional context to aid the comprehension of a particular lecture.
Institutions should take into consideration the detailed level of planning this can entail. Instructors will need to meticulously prepare the links and overlays and preload them into the livestream using timestamps. Otherwise, the metadata-driven interactivity you aim for can actually become counterproductive if there are unnecessary interruptions that distract students from the lecture itself.
It’s important to note that incorporating metadata will require a fair amount of technical proficiency from the lecturer or the educational institution since this isn’t a typical workflow. A workaround for this could be utilizing Brightcove’s Simulive Player and pre-recorded lectures to incorporate interactivity. This allows instructors to still benefit from the interactive elements while maintaining the real-time effect of a live session.
Setting Up Metadata-Driven Interactivity
VOD
Creating an interactive player using metadata is very straightforward with Brightcove, as long as the data is well structured and complete.

Create a data feed. This can be done using XML or JSON. You can also use WebVTT, which is used for closed captions. You’ll want to create a reusable feed so that it can be leveraged across multiple videos. A sports feed can usually be generated from sports data platforms such as Opta Sports.
Upload the feed. Add the data feed to an internet-accessible server or bucket. Alternatively, you can use Brightcove’s Media module and CMS API to ingest the feed to create cue-points within the video.
Develop a player plugin. This plugin will control the interactivity users experience. The UX would be built using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The plugin can be used to retrieve the feed from the server or bucket and pull down the data to power the UX. It can be hosted on Brightcove within the Player module.
Publish your custom player and associated videos. Now you’re ready to embed the player on your webpage.
Synchronize the player plugin and the video. During video playback, the player plugin will control the interactivity UX, metadata, and associated timestamps.

As mentioned, the plugin can read the data feed to power the UX, or cue-points can be created in Brightcove. For a more robust and complex interactive experience, it would be best to use the plugin method as you have more control over the complexity of the data sets.
Live Streams
Livestreaming is a little more complex than VOD as you need to ensure that the data is in sync with what is happening in the live broadcast.

Use an Encoder with Cue-point Support. This allows you to insert cue-points and markers into the live stream before it’s ingested. An alternative could be adding ID3 tags to the stream using Brightcove’s Live API.
Ingest the Live Stream. Using the Brightcove Live API, you can ingest the live stream. The same API allows you to add ID3 tags via a feed to the live stream.
Confirm Timed Descriptions. When adding an ID3 tag, ensure it contains a description of what occurred at a specific time. Once the tag is added, the metadata will immediately appear or display at the time specified in the tag.

Again, a plugin is built to control the interactivity UX and read the ID3 tags in the live stream. Based on what is present in the tags, the plugin will display the metadata at the right time and in sync with the content.
Metadata: The Essential Tool for Interactivity
The power of metadata can deliver new levels of interactivity and engagement that’s much needed in today’s ever-competitive content landscape. It offers the perfect marriage of engagement and personalization that’s required to build and maintain a loyal user base.
Beyond the interactivity itself, metadata can increase existing revenue by optimizing discoverability both in search engines and within platforms. It can also open new revenue opportunities through avenues like product placement and contextual ads.
From delivering rich interactive VOD experiences or enhancing a live broadcast, we’ll continue to see metadata play an increasing role in many different types of content. There’s no better time than now to start exploring the benefits it can bring to your content and your bottom line.
While the setup, particularly for live metadata-driven experiences can be complex, the experts at Brightcove Global Services have the knowledge and experience to help you achieve your content and revenue goals.

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