Like many streaming services these days, Paramount’s Pluto TV has both AVOD titles and FAST channels. But based on my binge sesh this week, the ad experiences on Pluto differ drastically between these two viewing options.
Pluto’s on-demand streaming is rife with ad repetition and poorly timed ad breaks, whereas I found the FAST ad experience to be much cleaner – and much less annoying. So, what gives?
The difference lies in server-side ad insertion (SSAI). Often heralded as a technological innovation that improves speed by calling ads in advance, it turns out SSAI can create some gnarly frequency problems when it’s used for on-demand viewing.
Paramount confirmed that it uses SSAI for its entire streaming footprint. But whereas Pluto’s ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) service suffers from a serious frequency problem, its free ad-supported TV (FAST) channels felt much more enjoyable to watch.
Server, please
With SSAI, ads are stitched into a video stream before it’s viewed by the consumer, rather than individual ad calls occurring from a consumer’s device whenever an ad break hits.
Right off the bat, SSAI makes for a pretty frustrating on-demand viewing experience. The ads are a package deal within the content, so there’s no telling when an ad break is about to occur. Plus, if I had to rewind an episode to catch something I missed, I also had to repeat the ad breaks (and the same ones at that).
SSAI has its advantages, though. Because SSAI makes ads unskippable, it’s a popular choice for publishers that want to get around ad blockers. But in this case, SSAI seems to have set Pluto up for a pretty massive frequency problem.
Back to back
Pluto has a client roster of major national brands, including Instacart, Chime, Chase, McDonald’s, P&G, T-Mobile, Coca-Cola and Capital One.
But the variety of Pluto advertisers is lost in Pluto’s frequency problem, which is different from most other streaming services I observed.
While I dinged them for repeating ads in back-to-back episodes, Pluto’s frequency crime was even worse. It showed me the same ads pod after pod within the same episode.
As if overfrequency in connected TV wasn’t already bad enough.
I checked out Pluto’s library of (very) dated crime shows and, in a 50-minute on-demand episode of “48 Hours,” I saw a pharma ad for eczema from Cibinqo four times and the same Sleep Number ad three times. I had the same experience with on-demand episodes of “16 and Pregnant.” (Please excuse my love for reality TV.) I saw the same ads for the mobile game Slotomania and a clothes delivery app called Stitch Fix four times. At its worst, I saw eHarmony ads no fewer than six times in one 50-minute episode (albeit two different creatives).
Pluto’s frequency problem isn’t limited to ancient cable episodes, either. I watched a few episodes of the latest season of “Blue Bloods” and noticed an entire ad pod repeated itself.
But frequency isn’t nearly as big of a problem on Pluto’s FAST channels.
FAST decisions
Unlike most on-demand viewing, ads travel together with content in the land of linear TV. This makes SSAI a more suitable fit for FAST channels, which resemble linear.
Even though FAST typically abides by the one-to-one ad delivery streaming is known for (as opposed to the one-to-many approach of linear TV), FAST plays on a program schedule, so Pluto’s servers can much more easily prepare ads for FAST content because the viewing environment is much more structured and predictable. In a FAST environment, Pluto knows what’s playing – it just has to determine who’s watching.
When it comes to on-demand, though, the system doesn’t know who a viewers is, or what content is being watched, until the person hits “play.” Untethered from a program guide, on-demand viewers can pick from hundreds of titles at any time, and Pluto’s ad servers have seconds to juggle multiple unknowns to try stitching suitable ads into an entire video stream.
Rather than dynamic ad calls triggered by the ad breaks on a consumer’s device, SSAI stitches together the entire video stream with ads before the consumer sees it, so there’s pretty much no ad-serving flexibility throughout an on-demand stream. Pluto has to make do with whatever ad requests come in while a viewer loads a stream, which likely explains why entire ad pods repeat themselves within Pluto’s on-demand titles.
Even though Pluto also uses SSAI for its FAST channels, the ad-podding process is smoother sailing because it resembles linear. With SSAI, podding for linear video streams is done much further in advance than the milliseconds while an on-demand stream loads, according to the IAB Tech Lab.
Pluto’s ad breaks are also less interruptive on its FAST channels. Ad breaks only happen where there are clear cues (think of the classic “We’ll be back after the break” outros).
But for on-demand titles that can support a higher ad load because they’re not tied to a schedule – or titles that lack those cable-like cues altogether – Pluto seems to have trouble using SSAI to time ad breaks without the obvious hints. On AVOD, Pluto often cut to ad breaks in the middle of heated character dialogue (a cardinal CTV sin).
Plus, unlike on FAST, viewers watching AVOD often rewind, which is a total hassle with SSAI.
These core differences between AVOD and FAST could be why SSAI is better suited for program guides than on-demand content.
What I want to know is: Are AVOD and FAST fundamentally too different to share the same ad tech?
Let me know what you think. Hit me up at [email protected].
