Imagine Emmy for ad placement technology
Imagine Communications has been awarded an Emmy for Pioneering Optimisation of Advertising Placement in Single Channel Linear Television Programs by the Technology and Engineering Achievement Committee of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. The award was presented January 8 at a ceremony at the Bellagio Hotel during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
This is Imagine Communications’ 10th Emmy award. The company is being recognised for ad insertion technology that originated in the late 1960s but still serves as the foundational technology behind today’s advanced and fully automated advertising sales and traffic systems. The first successful application of computerized automation of business processes within a broadcast operation, this revolutionary technology remains relevant today and underpins the innovation driving the evolution of Imagine Communications’ industry-leading ad management solutions.
This recognition from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences is an acknowledgement of the pivotal role this technology played in shaping today’s ad management landscape. Thousands of television and radio stations, as well as content distributors and aggregators, are running automated business process systems that are based on the spot placement algorithm and related procedures introduced nearly five decades ago. The technology originally relied on mainframe and minicomputers, as well as keypunch card systems, to help automate and simplify what had previously been a manual and error-plagued procedure.
“It’s difficult to overstate the importance and the impact of this technology, a radical departure from the people-powered traffic systems that persisted well into the 1980s,” says Bridget Allen, vice president sales, advertising management systems, Imagine Communications. “Today’s media and entertainment industry owes a debt of gratitude to George Beattie and Jack Finlayson, the broadcasting pioneers who are chiefly responsible for this transformative technology.”