Many factors can affect the success of instream monetisation. Many of these factors are strategy and market related and often they are outside of your direct control. That's why it is so important to get the ad triggers and associated behaviours right. Here are two best practice tips to ensure your metadata used to trigger programmatic ads is up to scratch and ready for monetisation.


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Ensure metadata triggers match ad configuration

During onboarding, our support agent will have taken your station's preferences on how you want mid-roll ad breaks to be configured. To trigger your breaks you'll need to send a metadata trigger (as "song" metadata) matching a specified string. Depending on the injection method chosen, you will likely have either an insertion trigger or a replacement trigger. 


Typical replacement triggers


At the start of the ad break window:

AD_START_XX

The start trigger tells the ads server when to start programmatic ads.


The XX sent with the ad trigger denotes the desired break length in seconds. If your configuration dictates mid-rolls should have a fixed length, this number should match the dictated length.
I.e. AD_START_30


At the end of the window:

AD_STOP

The stop trigger tells the ads server where you want programmatic ads to end and it will drop listeners back in at this point. It should roughly align with the break length


The encoder log on the Streams page in Portal should read something like this: 

[2023-06-29  13:02:07] INFO admin/command_metadata Metadata song on /rimbardradio.mp3 set to "AD_START_30"
[2023-06-29  13:02:07] INFO admin/command_metadata Metadata title on /rimbardradio.mp3 changed to "AD_START_30"
[2023-06-29  13:02:37] INFO admin/command_metadata Metadata song on /rimbardradio.mp3 set to "AD_STOP"
[2023-06-29  13:02:37] INFO admin/command_metadata Metadata title on /rimbardradio.mp3 changed to "AD_STOP"

Typical insertion trigger


As insertion doesn't require an end trigger to dictate the length of the window you just need to send one trigger at the beginning of the break:

AD_START_XX


If you have an older setup with us, your start trigger format may be different. It may not require a number or require this value in milliseconds. Ad triggers must match the configuration exactly to function correctly so if you have any doubts about your trigger format, feel free to contact our support team.


Send metadata updates for filler ads

If you are using replacements for mid-rolls, the ad server may occasionally not be able to gather a sufficient number of ads to fill the desired break length. To prepare for this scenario, we recommend sending metadata alongside the filler ads or creatives you play out during the break. This exploits an ad server feature called "fallback on nearest metadata", which effectively makes use of any metadata string during the ad break window as a "stop" trigger, allowing the session to pick up at a natural point in your filler ad break.


Consult our support team to make sure the "fallback on nearest metadata" feature is enabled in your configuration.


For each of the filler ads, you can send a piece of metadata as the "title" of the ad, passed as "song metadata". If the break cannot be filled (i.e. you request 90 seconds of ads but only 60 seconds are available) then the ads server will still insert those 60 seconds but instead of using a stop trigger to mark the end of the break it will use the nearest metadata point it can find to 60 seconds after AD_START as a "jumping in point" to maintain a good listener experience without pushing the listener too far out of sync from live.

Unlike ad triggers, the content of this metadata string is arbitrary.


Here's an example. Let's say you want to insert a 60-second break:
[2023-06-29 13:15:28] INFO admin/command_metadata Metadata song on /rimbardradio.mp3 set to "AD_START_60" 
[2023-06-29 13:15:28] INFO admin/command_metadata Metadata title on /rimbardradio.mp3 changed to "AD_START_60" 
[2023-06-29 13:15:29] INFO admin/command_metadata Metadata song on /rimbardradio.mp3 set to "You are listening to Rimbard Radio" 
[2023-06-29 13:15:29] INFO admin/command_metadata Metadata title on /rimbardradio.mp3 changed to "You are listening to Rimbard Radio" 
[2023-06-29 13:15:58] INFO admin/command_metadata Metadata song on /rimbardradio.mp3 set to "You are listening to Rimbard Radio" 
[2023-06-29 13:15:58] INFO admin/command_metadata Metadata title on /rimbardradio.mp3 changed to "You are listening to Rimbard Radio" 
[2023-06-29 13:16:28] INFO admin/command_metadata Metadata song on /rimbardradio.mp3 set to "AD_STOP" 
[2023-06-29 13:16:28] INFO admin/command_metadata Metadata title on /rimbardradio.mp3 changed to "AD_STOP"
If the ads server can only gather 30-seconds worth of ad creatives to replace for a particular session, it would, in this scenario, mean that the listener would hear 30 seconds of programmatic ads and the second filler ad in this break. 

Utilising this feature is the best way to maximise impressions while maintaining a good listener experience.