All media companies are exploring new ways to maximize the value of their live and on-demand content. In a complex landscape where broadcasters, sports, entertainment and technology players compete for market share, capturing and retaining global and hyperlocal audiences across multiple platforms is a vital challenge. Leveraging the right ad strategies to monetize content of all flavors is mission-critical for business growth.

The New Broadcast Advertising Landscape
Before connected TV devices, smartphones and the streaming media revolution, the linear television world relied on traditional broadcast advertising strategies targeting wide audiences across shared household TVs. In the absence of more targeted advertising capabilities, brands leveraged broader demographic data and panel-based audience measurement to determine whether ads would reach the right audiences. We’ve come a long way from the days when measurement was hard to come by and return on investment difficult to quantify.

The digital world has changed everything. Consumers can watch their preferred content anytime, anywhere and on any platform. Brands and digital advertisers have a whole host of advertising strategies at their disposal to target specific consumers based on their content consumption patterns—and they can shape their ad-buying decisions accordingly.

The value of traditional broadcast advertising is being questioned, with WARC research finding that 39% of marketers plan to reduce spending on linear channels. Consumers are increasingly favoring event-based viewing and on-demand streaming content experiences instead of traditional linear TV consumption, contributing to significant declines in pay-TV revenue, which will sink to $15 billion annually by 2027, according to PwC. Media consumption is changing and the linear methodologies many people are accustomed to simply don’t translate in the digital advertising arena. New thinking is needed to bridge diverse broadcast and digital environments.

Increase ROI With Strategic Targeting
Media organizations are looking to expand their reach by delivering market-relevant and localized content that resonates with viewers and boosts engagement. This opens the door for brands and advertisers to explore new ways to tap into these audiences in a more targeted and precise way—and make the most of their investment.

Digital advertising is driven by data that sheds light on consumers and their viewing habits. Brands and digital advertisers now have the consumer insights they need to make informed decisions about their advertising real estate.

This is particularly useful for brands that target narrow audiences with hyper-targeted regionalization, tailored messaging and coordination to increase their chances of getting their messages to resonate with target buyers. Although this type of strategic targeting comes with a premium price tag, it should be seen as a worthwhile investment.

A Digital Mindset for Linear Channels
Media companies can uplevel their broadcast advertising strategies by adopting a digital advertising mindset for their linear channels. Customization and hyperlocalization can be critical competitive advantages that enable broadcast advertising to transition to the digital world and bring back much-needed investment. Content distributors with the infrastructure in place to support digital ad sales can apply their digital framework to their linear channels, creating compelling offerings that deliver similar value to digital ad packages.

This mindset requires a shift in approach from selling air time to impressions, which is commonplace in digital advertising. By seamlessly implementing impression-based broadcast advertising and digital models within the same hybrid ecosystem, they can offer brands and advertisers ad packages across digital and linear channels — optimizing content monetization and streamlining siloed ad processes.

Hitting Linear and Digital Advertising Targets
Today, media organizations are finding ways to grow their digital businesses while protecting and maximizing ROI on high-value linear channels and live events. Broadcasters with hybrid digital and linear offerings need to maximize the value of their content libraries by increasing reach and monetization potential. Innovation in IP video distribution and content versioning enables media organizations to produce highly regionalized content that targets multiple linear and digital markets simultaneously — without heavy costs or additional resources.

By intelligently creating and inserting multiple versions of SCTE-35 markers, it’s also easier than ever for media companies to enrich the downstream ad experience for any region, audience, or platform.

Broadcast advertising is not going anywhere — it is evolving. By harnessing the targeting capabilities typically associated with on-demand streaming, new broadcast advertising models can increase ROI and drive growth for broadcasters. As the volume of high-value content produced, delivered, and consumed through the event-based model increases, the new phase of digitally-inspired broadcast advertising will begin to deliver measurable results.

NEW YORK—The NBA said it will launch several new features for the NBA App for the 2024-25 season, including AI-powered insights and multiviewer capabilities allowing fans to watch four games simultaneously on “NBA League Pass,” its out-of-market subscription package.

NBA League Pass subscribers worldwide will also be able to customize their viewing experience. With the upgrade, fans can smart-rewind games from any point, with key plays highlighted; download full games for offline viewing; and access a range of game recaps including “All Possessions,” “10-Minute Condensed,” “Key Highlights” and more. Additionally, the app will offer interactive synced stats and analytics, ensuring its users experience the game as if it is live no matter when they are watching.

The app is adding “NBA Insights,” an AI-powered tool that leverages the power of Microsoft Azure and AI to identify key narratives, player performances and notable milestones. Insights will provide fans with a continuous feed of text-based updates beyond the box score to better contextualize the on-court action.

The NBA App will also use generative AI to localize content, offering game recaps in French, Portuguese and Spanish, as well as translations for select original programming.

Select NBA League Pass games this season will be produced and presented via cutting-edge immersive technology.

Fans in Los Angeles and Dallas can watch immersive 8K games at Cosm’s new “shared reality” venues beginning on Oct. 22 for Kia NBA Tip-Off 2024. The Cosm game schedule can be found here. As part of the league’s partnership with Meta, 52 live game broadcasts will be streamed in immersive VR in NBA Arena in Meta Horizon Worlds and Xtadium on Meta Quest, which is the official mixed reality headset of the NBA, NBA G League and WNBA.

Xtadium will also allow NBA League Pass subscribers to watch every live 2D game nightly in mixed reality, complete with real-time stats. More information, including the full 2024-25 NBA game schedule for Meta Quest, can be found here.

In addition, the league continues to expand the technological capabilities of its “Next Gen integrated digital platform,” which is now powering four team-specific direct-to-consumer streaming services in the NBA App: BlazerVision (Portland Trail Blazers), ClipperVision (Los Angeles Clippers), Jazz+ (Utah Jazz) and Suns Live (Phoenix Suns). The platform, which is the technology backbone for the NBA App, also enables direct-to-consumer service Spectrum SportsNet+ (Los Angeles Lakers).

The app will feature more original content this season. Content on the NBA App throughout the season will incorporate “Dunk Score,” an AI-calculated grade for in-game dunks in real-time based on such factors as the player’s jumping distance, style and force at the rim, as well as defensive efforts from the opposing team.

New original content tips off with a special, “Pass the Rock: Rookie Year Edition.” This episode will follow San Antonio Spurs center Victor Wembanyama’s transition to the NBA, culminating in him being named the Kia NBA Rookie of the Year. On Sunday, Oct. 20, the NBA will launch “Raising 18,” a nine-part docuseries narrated by five-time NBA All-Star Al Horford, spotlighting the Boston Celtics’ journey to winning the 2024 NBA Finals.

In addition, popular features within the NBA App have been enhanced to increase personalization. Those enhancements include the new ‘Following’ tab, which combines the latest content from favorite teams and players into an algorithmic feed, as well as the revamped “Game Stories,” now with pregame analysis, highlights and interactive polls.

“Moments”—the popular vertical social media-style feed feature—has been upgraded to include multilanguage support and can now be accessed on Roku TV for quick content consumption on larger screens.

On NBA League Pass, fans will have access to more than 800 live out-of-market games and a variety of alternate telecast options, including in-language streams (Spanish, Portuguese and Korean), the return of the popular “NBA Strategy Stream,” providing fans with a unique viewing option breaking down in-game tactics, and “NBA HooperVision” featuring NBA legend Quentin Richardson. Additional alternate stream options will be announced throughout the season.

NBA League Pass will also be the primary destination for NBA games every weekend in November, with all games scheduled to stream on the platform (with no national blackouts). Subscribers can access up to 15 games per day on weekends throughout the month, with members of NBA ID—the league’s global membership program—receiving complimentary access to League Pass during the first Member Days of the season on Nov. 16-17. NBA ID members in the U.S. and Canada can also participate in a series of challenges in the NBA App and NBA.com between Oct. 20-27 to win a trip to the Emirates NBA Cup in Las Vegas.

For more information on the “NBA ID Challenge: Your Season Debut”, click here.

NBA League Pass premium commercial-free packages are available on NBA.com and in the NBA App for $159.99 a season (or $24.99 a month) or $109.99 (or $16.99 a month) for a standard package. The NBA App—a product of NBA Digital, the league’s joint venture with TNT Sports—is powered by Microsoft Azure.

It works in gaming, it works in retail. Heck, it even works when it comes to M&Ms.

Study after study proves that a major key to success in 2018 is customization.

Yet for one European news media service, an inflexible legacy distribution system was blocking the way to such customization.

That was the reality that Euronews was facing. A pan-European news organization with multiculturalism at the heart of its DNA, Euronews was founded nearly 25 years ago by 10 European public broadcasters looking to cover world news from a European perspective in multiple languages 24/7. But this network — seen as groundbreaking when it launched in 1993 — was being held back by an inability to adapt programming to the specific needs of individual countries.

So this pioneering broadcaster began searching for an answer to two key questions.

•How does a multilingual broadcaster better serve a segmented audience in the wildly diverse digital environment of 2018?

•How does one better reach an audience while juggling complex multilingual content production on one hand and managing intricate multiplatform distribution on the other?

In other words, how do you reach an Italian teenager surfing on her mobile phone while simultaneously connecting with a 70-year-old multilingual professor looking for over-the-air breaking news in Ukrainian?

Connecting with Audience via Customization

“We have been operating a ‘one size fits all’ policy since launch because that was the limit of the software we were using,” said Duncan Hooper, digital editor in chief for Euronews. “We found that we could no longer take our brand or product further so we [made a change] to help us break out of those limits and to create a specific identity for each channel with content customized for each audience.”

For Euronews, now the continent’s biggest news channel, that change came in the form of a new broadcast infrastructure with customization at its center.

The result: weeks after the launch, Euronews was already producing more than double the amount of television content that it did under its legacy infrastructure. Additionally, by synchronizing the production of content between its television and digital platforms, Euronews is now producing 20% more content for their digital channels and managed to grow traffic to their website by 66% since the beginning of 2018.

For Euronews, the answer came in the form of a new production and distribution platform that allowed it to transition from a single multi-language channel to 12 separate cross-platform channels that can now be individually tailored to local audiences.

After its installation in fall 2017, Euronews is now generating adapted content with enhanced graphics across TV, social media and the web. The broadcaster is able to set up a separate identity for each of its language channels and deliver pictures and graphics in different languages for audiences in 165 countries.

Journalists and other editorial and creative personnel have more individual control over their content. Under the new system, journalists can now access any video, graphic or script created by another reporter and directly customize that content on the platform. Collaboration between departments is proving to be seamless.

“Journalists can collaborate better, share content seamlessly, and transform an original story with minimal effort to adapt it for each language and audience,” said Francois Schmitt, Euronews COO.

And dependency on technicians is reduced. Using this new system, Euronews can now store all assets in a single, unified environment, which allows for a smooth, automated flow of content from ingest to output.

Now, the 500 users that work at Euronews offices in Athens, Brussels, Budapest and Lyon are connected and collaborating on a single platform. The solution — called Dalet Unified News Operations — handles production, orchestration and delivery of stories in a way that was not possible for Euronews a year ago.

Euronews is now able to adapt its output to the needs of the consumers it serves, “empowering the uniqueness of our multiculturalism,” said Michael Peters, CEO of Euronews. The new production platform is transforming Euronews into a robust, agile and innovative organization, he said.

“[We are becoming] the first glocal news brand by reinventing our approach to broadcast journalism from production to distribution,” he said.

Detractors said Euronews’ multiplex approach to news coverage lacked the ability to adapt programming to the specific needs of individual countries. That’s no longer the case. Now, Euronews is producing double the amount of television content that it did under its outdated infrastructure. By synchronizing the production of content between its TV and digital platforms, Euronews is producing 20 percent more digital platform content than before the adoption of the Unified News Operations solution.

“The most positive thing about the Dalet system for all the journalists has been their empowerment,” Hooper said. “They are no longer reliant on other people to make things happen since they can create content and publish online, on social and on TV. They then have the power to adapt the content to tell the story that they want to tell rather than having to tell the same on each platform regardless of language.”

“[This technology] has enabled us to give more individuality to our storytelling.”

Euronews’ strategic transformation project has been nominated for an Innovation Award at IBC 2018. Lauded as one of the most coveted awards in the media industry, the competition celebrates technical and creative excellence, acknowledging collaboration between organizations like Euronews and Dalet to achieve clever and innovative solutions for real business challenges.

Arnaud Elnecave is vice president of marketing for Dalet. 

Additional Resources

Euronews Customer Story— The world's first "Glocal" Media: a strategic transformation with Dalet

Dalet Unified News Operations Solution — Discover Dalet’s story-centric, integrated news production and delivery solution for TV, radio, web and social