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PROOF OF PLAY

SIGNAGE STUDIO COMPONENTS

In this Chapter we will talk proof of Play. Proof of play is a type of report that the system will generate for you so you can export the data out of the signage studio and provide this report to your advertisers so they can see when their ads actually played. The way you configure Proof of play is that you simply enable any resource or component on the timeline with the proof of play feature. You can even enable proof of play on specific Catalog items or Collection items. Another neat feature of Proof of Play is the ability to create local Ad packages. For example, if you have an advertiser, let’s say Pepsi, and you want to have different ads that are going to be associated with Pepsi, you can simply create a group name or package name called Pepsi and associate the different resources in your Timeline with the Ad Package Pepsi. Also you can crate Start and End dates for the group. So if you have a particular Ad Group that you want to expire on a specific date, the local Ad package will allow you to do that. Finally with Rate Tables you can associate different rates for different hour of the week. This means that once the information is exported in excel, you can inject additional information that will provide you all the necessary calculations so you know what to charge your customers or advertisers. Let’s see how we can configure Proof of Play.

The first thing you must do is enable Proof of Play on your Enterprise account and enable the Ad Local, Ad Rate and Ad Analytic.

Back in the Signage Studio, make sure you enable the Local Ads and Ad Analytics.

We will create a new Campaign, call it our Demo Campaign, and add a resource to a channel. If you look into the properties area of that resource, you will see a Proof of Play tab.

If we enable the checkbox, it means that we are requesting information about this particular resource anytime it plays. And you can see that we have a label and you can use to label the resource, and also a package or group name.

Remember that a package is a collection where you can associate multiple ads or components under a single Ad package. Next we will click on the + sign to add a new ad package.

Now we created a new package directly from the timeline component and this new package we will call Coffee Ads.

Next we will add a new resource to a different channel in the same timeline. We will also enable the Proof of Play for it. But now, we don’t want to add a new package, we want to add the selected resource to our existing package.

Then we can jump back into our Local Ads and confirm that both resources are added.

These can be pretty much any component or resource. Now, notice that on the right side, we have some options. If the Always play is enabled, the resources associated will always play. If the Play between dates feature is enabled, the ads will play only on the specified dates.

We recommend that you use the channel repeat to fit feature so that you don’t get time when nothing is playing. Just make sure that the repeat to fit feature is enabled for the respective channel.

In this case, if a particular resource is expired, other resource or component will be able to fill the gap. So if a particular resource will expire, it will still exist on the timeline, so you still have to delete it if do not want to really take space on the timeline, but it will not be part of your regular Timeline playback, if again is part of the local ad packages that has expired.

So far we’ve ;earned that local ads are nothing more than just a group of the total sum of resources and components that you’ve set. And you can set the start and end dates for all these components so they will start playing and end playing whenever you like.

Next we will try this with a component. Instead of a resource, we will use the QR code component. You can add it to the package and rename the label.

There is also another great benefit of using Ad packages, and that is when it comes to reporting. You can have a package, and let’s rename our package into Joes Coffee Ad, where Joe is an advertiser.

So by giving this package a name that identifies all Joes ads within all the different timelines, we will be able to create a report, at the end of the month, specifically for Joe and specifically for his ads. So essentially, local add packages allows you to associate related ads together as a single group.

So far, all we done was either at the resource level or the component level. But we can actually enable proof of Play at a more detailed level. These will be the Catalog or the Collection component. Next we will add the catalog component onto a Channel and enable the Proof of Play at the component level.

However, with the catalog, you can also create the proof of Play at the specific item level. So if we switch to the Catalog area, we can add let’s say three items and enable the proof of Play individually for these items.

The same goes for the collection component. So if we switch to the Timelines and drop the Collection component, you can enable Proof of Play for the Collection as a whole but you can also enable the feature at the item level and associate the items with the ad package.

Now that we’ve built our proof of Play on our demo campaign, we should mention that the information will get sent from the players to the server every 10 minutes. So if you are going to wait for the analytics you want to give it at least 10 minutes for the information to populate on the ads analytics. Also if the player loses internet connectivity it will buffer all the information and save it locally so when the internet connection comes back online, it will go ahead and push that information to the server so we never lose any analytics and always get the proof of Play for the advertisers or customers. Now let’s see what the Player is reporting back to us. We need to switch to Ads Analytics and select a month for reporting.

So you can see all the reports back from the remote signage player.

You can also choose to show only specific data form example only the Station information.

You can also choose to group the information par a particular Ad you can see the specific packages.

You can also choose to show information related to the ads only where you can see the duration or even the size of the files.

But what’s interesting is that the Avg size info, refers to the actual size of the file in relation to the screen division it was playing into.

If we are going to run it as smaller configuration, like 1280*720 px, even if the screen was built at a larger resolution, the system will calculate the mega pixel not by the larger size but by the actual size that it ran at the location.

Also if you want to export all the information, simply select all the values that you want exported and click on Export Report.

Also if you want to delete a report, you can simply select a report and click on Delete Report.

Finally we are going to talk about the Rate Tables. With the rate stables you can create different rates for different hours of the week. This means that if for example you want to charge more for ads that ran into weekends than you do with ads that run on week days, or a different hours of the day. You can set all this up with the rate tables, and then associate these rate tables with physical signage player output in the field. Next we need to enable the Rates module.

Next we will use the + sign to add 2 new tables.

For each rate table we can set four different levels of rates. For our example we will choose the red colour to mark the weekend days and a rate of $8 / hour.

On the week days we will choose the blue colour and set a rate of $5 / hour.

For our second table, we can do something very simple, we can set $6 / hour and mark with green the whole week.

Once you set up your rate table, you need to associate it with the physical stations that are out there in the field, the signage players. For that, we will switch to Stations and select a machine. Go to the Advertising tab and select the rate table.

Now that we’ve associated the rate table with our station we can switch to Ad Analytics and look at the report we are getting back from the physical machine. Since it is a week day we can see that the hourly rate is set to $5.

One last thing is the price, that is computed on the right column, depending on how many hours or minutes the add actually ran and of course the price that we’ve set. In our example we can see that the duration of this add has is only 3 minutes and 59 seconds so the correct price will be the one on the right. If the ad played for an hour then the advertiser will have to pay $5.

So the rate tables are a flexible way for you to inject hourly rates into your reports and then calculating the price depending upon the rates that you’ve set.