In the hubbub of NABShow last week, Comcast Technology Solutions made several announcements, including one for a new product called AdStor, which caught my attention. AdStor is a cloud-based platform that hosts ads in a centralized library. Josh Arensberg, VP/GM at CTS told me in a briefing that the main goal of AdStor is to streamline how ad buyers and sellers interact, to accelerate ad delivery across multiple platforms. The result is reduced operating expenses and new revenue opportunities.

Josh said that AdStor has been in development for 2 years and has focused initially on working with a small group of TV networks to have them share ads into the AdStor library. Josh noted that the typical manual process for a linear ad to be transcoded and delivered in VOD and digital outlets can range from 24 to 72 hours.

With AdStor, ad ops teams have been able to reduce this workflow to just a few minutes by finding the assets they need and having them transcoded into the proper format for delivery. AdStor is agnostic about decisioning systems it can work with including Comcast’s FreeWheel and Google’s DFP.

Josh said the biggest win for TV networks using AdStor so far has been using it to source ads for the C3 window and in remnant VOD inventory for near real-time insertion. Networks are able to respond to spikes in viewership and accept lucrative last-minute ad buys that in the past would not have been able to be fulfilled. Josh also envisions AdStor as helping support both addressable and programmatic advertising in OTT, both of which require extremely flexible fulfillment.

AdStor has a number of TV networks on board as customers, though Josh wasn’t able to name any of them just yet. With this momentum, CTS is going to expand its roster of networks as well as pursue agencies and brands to have them push ads into AdStor.

With viewership fragmenting over multiple platforms and devices, and advertising remaining a critical business model for the vast majority of TV networks, AdStor looks like a valuable new technology. Delivering both opex savings and new revenue opportunities makes it a compelling value proposition.

(Note: Comcast Technology Solutions is a VideoNuze sponsor)