Configuring Myriad To Work With An Advert Insertion Service

Modified on Fri, 22 Nov at 10:31 AM

Advert Insertion Basics

Advert Insertion is a technology for targeting advertising to individual listeners when they are hearing your radio stations stream via website and apps. Broadcast Radio and the Myriad software do not offer this directly, but there are several companies that provide ad insertion services for streaming radio stations which Myriad can be configured to work with, including DAX and AdsWizz.

These services can usually be set up work in one of 2 ways. Either they pause the stream that comes from your encoder while they play adverts, then continue the stream from that point when the ads finish (Injection). Alternatively they can mute the stream coming from your encoder and play ads over the top, so that when the ads finish, the listener will have missed the audio you played while the ads played (overlaying). The service provider will be able to advise you more on the details of how this works and which model will work best for you.

Most Advert Insertion services work in a similar way, so these instructions should help you set up Myriad to work for you chosen service, but the exact string that need to be sent will vary. Check the documentation from your provider for the exact command details. Normally you include the length you would like the break to be in the command. For example you may send something like "AdStart90" to request a break length of 90 seconds.

Configuring Myriad Playout to work with Advert Insertion

The first thing you will need to do is set up some audio items in the Media Wall that are set a Basic Media type. We do not recommend setting these as the Advert Type, as this may cause issues with them being removed accidentally if you schedule or import advert breaks to play in the Myriad log as well. The Title of these will need to be set to the exact command string that you need to send to the service provider to tell them you would like to start a break.

If you are using the advert injection method, the Media item in Myriad will want to be a short (1/4 of a second) silent item that will trigger the AdStart90 command, then Myriad will move on with the next item in the log. The listener's stream will be paused while ads play and will pick up from the same place in your stream when they finish. If you are using the overlay method, then this item could either be a short silent item followed by several local ads in the Myriad log that also take 90 seconds to play, or could be itself be a 90 second item. This 90 seconds of Myriad content will play to people listening on other broadcast feeds (such as DAB or FM) while the streaming listeners will hear the adverts from the ad service instead.

These items will have to added to any Clocks to play in the log at the time you would like the ad insertion to happen. See the Myriad Schedule documentation for more details on Clock design assignment here Myriad Schedule and Schedule Plus User Guide

Configuring Myriad OCP to work with Advert Insertion

In order to actually send the commands to the Ad Insertion service Myriad will have to be configured to use OCP to pass the Now Playing data to their streaming server. For information on configuring OCP if you do not already have it working for other outputs see the documentation here Myriad OCP User Guide

Once OCP and Myriad are connected, we need to enable Myriad to send the information to OCP when a Basic Item is playing. To do this, Open the Station Settings window in Myriad and go to the Item Types tab. Check that the Media Item type has a tick in the OCP (Current) column.

We would recommend setting up a specific output from OCP for Ad Insertion, as we will need to configure it slightly differently to existing outputs to allow it to send the Basic Media Item Title data when this type of Item is playing in the Myriad Playout log. Depending on the Ad Insertion service you are working with, the output type may need to be a File output or a connection to the Encoder application running on you streaming PC, or may be an Icecast or Shoutcast output direct to their streaming server.

Ad the new Output and set the basic details for the connection or file locations and then click on the Format Creator button to edit the format of the text that will be sent to the output. You should see a window that looks like the one below with a similar string in it. This string should work for the output we want as it will send the current item "Title by Artists" when the item is a Song and just send "Title" if it is any other type.

[(<OCP_NOW_ITEMTYPE>=Song)<OCP_NOW_ITEMTITLE> by <OCP_NOW_ARTISTNAMES>][(<OCP_NOW_ITEMTYPE>!=Song)<OCP_NOW_ITEMTITLE>]

Common Issues and Solutions

Problem	Solution
No Now Playing information is reaching the streaming server.	Ensure that the connection or file details in the OCP output are correct.
Now Playing Song information reaches the streaming server, but adverts do not fire.	Check that the Item Title matches exactly with the command that your provider is expecting to receive. The silent item may be too short to allow the AdStart command to be sent before the next item title replaces it. Try making the silent item a little longer.
The adverts fire out of sync with the rest of the streamed audio	On some of the OCP output types you can set delay on the send of the Now Playing data to allow for encoding delays. Try enabling this. You may be able to ask the provider to set a delay on the ad insertion at the server end.