Ad Pods for MediaTailor Channel Assembly

There are two separate functions included in the AWS MediaTailor Service, Creating a playout channel from stored and live sources (Channel Assembly) and Service Side Ad Insertion (SSAI). The Ad Server is what decides which ads are to be displayed.

When working with Channel Assembly, you can schedule SCTE-35 markers for ad breaks that will be used by the SSAI function. Channel Assembly does not decide the ads that are inserted. The SSAI function will trigger on the SCTE-35 markers and contact an Ad Server (ADS) to provide the ads that need to be inserted.

When the ADS provides multiple ads for a specific ad break, the MediaTailor SSAI will attempt to insert ads up to the break duration time. If the sum of the ad times will be longer than the break duration, MediaTailor will not play the last ad and default back to the underlying content. In this case that is the ad slate inserted by Channel Assembly. Also, if the ads do not arrive in time to be displayed, MediaTailor will again default back to the ad slate.

Also, the MediaTailor SSAI function transcodes ads to match the current renditions and bitrates used by the content. When an ad is displayed for the first time, its transcoding may not be complete and again the ad slate will be shown.