Roku Direct Publisher

[Baradanikto]

I've got the following adBreaks defined for a Movie (documentary ~95 minutes):

"adBreaks": [
          "00:00:00",
          "00:20:00",
          "00:40:00",
          "01:00:00",
          "01:20:00"
        ]

I'm not seeing any ad breaks.  How can I earn my piddly pittance if the ads don't show?  In fact, I've recently noticed that other ad breaks may not be showing for other videos also.  Is anyone else having the same sort of problems?  Is it just a matter that Roku does not have ads to fill those slots?  I would ask them, but, Roku support is pretty non existent as evidenced by their lack of presence on this forum.

[donp88]

Is this channel live on Roku?  Something maybe I can watch and see if ads show up for me.

[Baradanikto]

Yes, the channel has been live since June of last year.  Search for 'Rowing' in the Channel store to load it.  The video is under "documentary" and is called "The Drive".

Thanks for any help you provide.

[donp88]

So,  here is what I seen from watching the documentary.

First ad break to play was at 00:20:00 and 3 ads played.  Next ad break to play at 01:00:00. Again, 3 ads played.  

That was about it. Nothing for the other ad breaks.

[Baradanikto]

Thanks for the extra pair of eyes. I'm very concerned that the adBreaks do not work consistently as advertised. Can someone from Roku please comment?

[37mediagroup]

I think just because you 'have' an ad break, doesn't mean its necessarily going to fire. Reason being Roku can only bill their advertisers so much. For instance a company like Febreeze or Charmin might offer to pay (purely hypothetical) $.01 per ad shown.  However, they might not want to spend more than $1000/day with Roku. So the RAF can only air so many billable spots before the advertiser is unwilling to pay.

So with thousands & thousands of channels airing commercials, only so much is willing to be spent by the advertisers. Thereby leaving adbreaks unfilled. Just my thoughts on it, but in the big picture way of looking at it I would surmise this to be the case, if some adbreaks are filling, just not all.

[Baradanikto]

That's somewhat my impression of how RAF works given the inconsistencies. What's even more troubling, beyond Roku not mentioning that's how RAF worked, is that means there's less opportunity to get any kind of ad revenue. Especially given the fact that they reset your ad counts on a yearly basis. It seems like we're playing a game in which the outcome is already decided. In their favor.

[RokuNB]

"Baradanikto" wrote:
That's somewhat my impression of how RAF works given the inconsistencies.  What's even more troubling, beyond Roku not mentioning that's how RAF worked, is that means there's less opportunity to get any kind of ad revenue. Especially given the fact that they reset your ad counts on a yearly basis. It seems like we're playing a game in which the outcome is already decided.  In their favor.

This is not how RAF works. RAF is a client-side library for delivering ads. What's desribed above is how ad server works - there are frequency caps and other limits that may affect availability of ads. RAF calls for ads the server, if it does not return an ad (for whatever reason), then there is nothing to show.

It may be an issue of using RAN (Roku Advertisement Network, our in-house ad inventory) in the case of profit-sharing setup. i know there was shortage of ad supply in January (ad industry apparently is very seasonal) but i cannot speak competently to this, you should contact us the official route (partnerSuccess at roku.com) to discuss.