In late November 2011, 26 companies met to discuss the future of ad-supported video on demand. The Collaborative Alliance Think Tank (see Committee list below) invited the key stakeholders in the realm to outline barriers, both real and misperceived, that have stultified the acceptance of ad-supported VOD and worked towards advancing its value proposition to the media community. Issues discussed included dynamic ad insertion (DAI), C3 and C7+, transparency, program and commercial viewing, metrics (i.e., demographics), program naming by operators for missed impression calculations, workflow (e.g., proposals, contracts, billing, trafficking and posting) and general marketplace awareness.

The gathering ended with an agreement amongst collaborators to create an agnostic “work-in-progress” directory of ad-supported video on demand channels to be made available to the media community (e.g., planners, buyers, marketers, researchers and content providers) for the purpose of generating a single source reference to help build awareness of the vast array of participating programmers and opportunities for marketers.

Future iterations of the work-in-progress directory will include content provider contact information, more robust descriptions of the channel listings and, hopefully, transactional data.

As previously mentioned, this directory is being made available to the media community as a resource. Download your copy of Ad-Supported Video on Demand Directory. The Directory is also available from the MediaOcean and Rentrak Web sites.

The Collaborative Alliance Ad Supported VOD Think Tank Committee*

David Ernst (Discovery Communications)
Michael Greco (A&E Networks)
Mitch Oscar (MPG)
Jackie Romano (Music Choice)
Peter Sedlarcik (MPG)
Tom Ziangas (Rainbow Media)

The 4A’s thanks National TV/Radio Committee member, Mitch Oscar of MPG, for overseeing the compilation of this Directory.