Synamedia Iris customers receive orders on behalf of advertisers and their associated brands. For direct sold and some programmatic orders, Campaigns (and their connected Line Items) must be associated with an Advertiser and a Brand when they are created.
Synamedia Iris supports a parent-child concept of Advertisers and their Brands. The specific usage will vary depending on customer’s needs and their Advertisers. For example, an automotive Advertiser may consider each model within their range as an independent Brand, whereas a supermarket Advertiser may consider product categories as Brands (for example, household goods, groceries, or beverages).
Customers may use these features in any way that is applicable to their market, but it is recommended that a consistent approach to the application of Brands is developed to prevent unintended restrictions being applied by the system. An Advertiser may have one or many Brands associated with it. The same Brand name may be used for multiple Advertisers.
A Campaign and the associated Line Items in Synamedia Iris belongs to a single Advertiser, but the individual Line Items may be assigned to any Brand from that Advertiser (for example, a different Brand may apply to each creative that is running as part of the Campaign). Brands follow the same inheritance rules as other Campaign elements and may be set at the Campaign level and adjusted on a Line Item where applicable.
The setting of Advertiser and Brand is important for campaign management and reporting purposes and enables Synamedia Iris customers to use Clash Management.
An Advertiser is mandatory for Direct Sold campaigns. While a Brand is not mandatory, where it is not specified on a Line Item, Synamedia Iris will only Clash with Clash Groups that contain the Advertiser and no brand. It is recommended that a Brand is used. An Advertiser and Brand can also be added to some programmatic deals. For example, a Preferred Deal is usually set up for a specific Advertiser and Brand(s) and so they can be added as required.
It is important to ensure that the same Advertiser and Brand is correctly named wherever it is used in the system. For example, if the Advertiser was named ‘Orange Drink Company’ then other Campaigns for the same Advertiser must be assigned to the same spelling of the Advertiser: ‘Orange Drink Company’. The Advertiser ‘Orange-Drink Company’ (with a hyphen added) would be considered a different Advertiser. This same naming rule also applies to Brands.
Many Advertisers and Brands that purchase advertising space do not want their competitors - or advertisements for similar products - to appear adjacent or near their own creatives. The ability to prevent Advertiser’s creatives from appearing alongside similar advertisements is called a clash within Synamedia Iris but you may also be familiar with the terms ‘competitive separation’ or ‘competitive protection’ which refers to the same concept. For Clash Management to function there are three requirements.
Synamedia Iris must have the ability to identify a viewer, household, or device so that Clash Management can be applied to their viewing experience.
A Clash Window must be specified (see below for details about Clash Window); otherwise, a default Clash Window of 10 minutes is applied.
Clash Groups must be set up (see below for details on how to set up Clash Groups). If no Clash Groups are set up, then Clash Management will not be applied.
Once configured, Clash Management is applied to all inventory against which ad decisions are made. Clash Management uses the Advertisers and Brands associated with Campaigns and Line Items to restrict which other advertisements can appear within the Clash Window for the same viewer. For any programmatic deal where an Advertiser and Brand(s) is not added, then Clash Management cannot be applied to those Campaigns and it is possible that competitive advertising will appear.
A Clash Window is a period of time that the Clash Management rules must be enforced for an Advertiser or Brand that has been selected by the Synamedia Iris’ decision service. For example, if an automotive creative is chosen to be played, and if a Clash Group has been set-up for automotive brands, then no other automotive brands will be selected to be shown in the Clash Window for the viewer. Another Advertiser, if eligible, will be selected instead.
Once the Clash Window time has passed, then any other automotive creatives will be eligible to be served to the viewer. The Clash Window is set at the tenant level and applies to all Clash Groups that are configured. The default Clash Window is 10 minutes.
Using the automotive example, once Synamedia Iris has selected an automotive advertiser, then no other automotive advertisers or brands will be selected for the same viewer within the 10-minute window. You can contact Synamedia to change the default Clash Window duration.
Synamedia Iris must know which Advertisers and Brands are competitive to enforce the Clash separation. To define a list of competitors, a Clash Group must be created. Any Advertiser and Brand in a Clash Group will be considered competitive with the others in the same group and competitive advertisements will not be shown within the Clash Window.
The example in the image below shows the possible behaviour of Synamedia Iris for a Clash Window where more than one automotive advertisement is eligible. In the first example, no Clash Group for Automotive is configured and two automotive ads are shown within the Clash Window. In the second example, an Automotive Clash Group is configured that prevents Synamedia Iris from selecting the second automotive ad and so an alternative, eligible, creative is selected (in this example, Vacations).
An Advertiser and Brand may appear in more than one Clash Group. For example, a Clash Group may be created for household cleaning products and another Clash Group may be created for Supermarkets. The supermarket’s household goods brand may appear in the ‘Household Cleaning’ Clash Group and it may also appear in the “Supermarket’ Clash Group.
In this way, advertisements for the supermarket’s cleaning products will not appear near other cleaning products and will not appear near advertisements for other supermarkets. The Clash Group name must be unique and consist of only alpha-numeric, underscore, and hyphen characters. As the Clash Management feature is developed, the Clash Group name will be displayed in multiple places in the Synamedia Iris interface. It is recommended that you use a name that is descriptive and can be understood by other system users who did not create the group (for example, “Soft-Drinks” is a better name than “Clash Group 1”).
When adding new Campaigns, it is important to evaluate if the Advertiser should be a member of any existing or new Clash Groups and update the Clash Groups before the Advertiser starts delivering advertisements. Clash Management is a powerful tool to prevent competitive Advertisers appearing too close together; however, customers should be cautious using the Clash Groups functionality to ensure that only relevant competitors are included and that there are sufficient non-competitive Line Items available to Synamedia Iris.
If, within the Clash Window, Synamedia Iris cannot find an eligible non-Clash Line Item, then no advertisement will be selected, and this could impact the system’s ability to meet Campaign goals if it is over-used.
Where a Brand has not been specified on a Line Item, only Clash Groups that contain the Advertiser and no brand will Clash. Therefore, it is recommended that Brand is used on every line item or that the ‘All Brands’ Brand is applied to relevant Clash Groups.
By default, if an Advertiser or Brand is selected to be served, no competing Advertisers or Brands can be served within the Clash Window. This includes the Advertiser or Brand that was initially selected.
Some Advertisers wish to show more than one advertisement for their products within the Clash Window. Synamedia Iris allows customers to state that an Advertiser does not Clash with itself so that a second (or more) creative from the same Advertiser can be shown. This is known as Same Advertiser exception and must be flagged within the Clash Group. The Same Advertiser exception applies to the Advertiser within a single Clash Group. If an advertiser has several brands in the Clash Group, the exception will be applied for all brands of this Advertiser. If different Brands from the same Advertiser appear in other Clash Groups, then it is possible for two advertisements from the Advertiser to appear within the Clash Window.
The Programmatic clash features will be available when the programmatic functionality is released in Synamedia Iris.
Synamedia Iris does not support clash for third-party video VAST tags, which rotate creatives for different advertisers or brands (for example, from an ad network). This is because the system is unable to read the contents of the VAST file that is retuned for a third-party creative.
