Session Rules Scenarios

Modified on Wed, 26 Jul, 2023 at 12:30 PM

This article provides a list of scenarios representing different uses of session rules in Revma.com.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Geofence the stream
Station Imaging as prompt
Geofence the stream and serve the station imaging as media prompt to the correct audience
Vast ads as prerolls
Vast ads as midrolls
Schedule a rule
Apply rule to parts of the audience
Apply vast ads from multiple content providers

Geofence the stream

Steps to be taken to make a stream only available to a specific country. Example Country: United States of America

On the account level, go to ‘Session Rules’
Go to ‘Actions’ and ‘Add Actions’
Create a ‘Drop’ action
Go to ‘Rules’ and ‘Add Rule’
Set ‘Source Type’ as ‘Geo’ and select ‘United States of America’
Click on the ‘Negate Source’ checkbox
At ‘Target Type’, select ‘Single Stream’
Fill in the station’s name under ‘Stream Filter’ or the station’s stream name under ‘Stream’
Under ‘Action’ select the ‘Drop’ action you previously created.
Click ‘Save Changes’

With the above setup, listeners coming from outside of the United States of America, will not be allowed to access the given stream.

If the ‘Negate Source’ checkbox was not checked, listeners coming from the United States of America would not be allowed to access the given stream and listeners outside of the United States of America would be allowed to access the stream.

Station Imaging as prompt

Steps to be taken to serve a station imaging media prompt to all listeners upon accessing the stream.

On the account level, go to ‘Session Rules’
Go to ‘Actions’ and ‘Add Actions’
Create a ‘Continue’ action
1. Upload a static media file.
Go to ‘Rules’ and ‘Add Rule’
Set ‘Source Type’ as ‘Any Source’
At ‘Target Type’, select ‘Single Stream’
Fill in the station’s name under ‘Stream Filter’ or the station’s stream name under ‘Stream’
Under ‘Action’ select the ‘Continue’ action you previously created.
Click ‘Save Changes’

With the above setup, all listeners trying to connect to the given stream, will at first audition the uploaded media prompt and then will connect to the stream

Geofence the stream and serve the station imaging as media prompt to the correct audience

Geofence the stream

On the account level, go to ‘Session Rules’
Go to ‘Actions’ and ‘Add Actions’
Create a ‘Drop’ action
1. You could optionally upload a static media file. Listeners who will not have access to the stream will be served that file and then the connection will be dropped.
Go to ‘Rules’ and ‘Add Rule’
Set the priority to 0.
Set ‘Source Type’ as ‘Geo’ and select ‘United States of America’
Click on the ‘Negate Source’ checkbox
At ‘Target Type’, select ‘Single Stream’
Fill in the station’s name under ‘Stream Filter’ or the station’s stream name under ‘Stream’
Under ‘Action’ select the ‘Drop’ action you previously created.
Click ‘Save Changes’

With the above setup, listeners coming from outside of the United States of America, will not be allowed to access the given stream.

Station Imaging as prompt

On the account level, go to ‘Session Rules’
Go to ‘Actions’ and ‘Add Actions’
Create a ‘Continue’ action
1. Upload a static media file.
Go to ‘Rules’ and ‘Add Rule’
Set the priority to 5.
Set ‘Source Type’ as ‘Any Source’
At ‘Target Type’, select ‘Single Stream’
Fill in the station’s name under ‘Stream Filter’ or the station’s stream name under ‘Stream’
Under ‘Action’ select the ‘Continue’ action you previously created.
Click ‘Save Changes’

With the above setup, all listeners (i.e. all listeners from within the United States of America, as all listeners from outside of the United States of America have been dropped) trying to connect to the given stream, will at first audition the uploaded media prompt and then will connect to the stream.

In scenarios where multiple rules exist, all of the rules must have a proper ‘Priority’ value set in the ‘Rules’ setup page. 0 is the highest priority. If there are two rules with the same priority value, only one of them will randomly apply.

Vast ads as prerolls

Steps to be taken to serve vast ads as prerolls.

On the account level, go to ‘Session Rules’
Go to ‘Content Providers’ and click on ‘Add Provider’
Fill in the provider’s name and the URL corresponding to the broadcaster's account in the provider.
1. Make sure to check ‘Append Listener Id’ and ‘Delay Report’
Go to ‘Actions’ and ‘Add Actions’
Create a ‘Vast’ action
1. Select the Provider and fill in the provider params where it is required.
2. Check the "Enable preRoll" checkbox
Go to ‘Rules’ and ‘Add Rule’
Set ‘Source Type’ as ‘Any Source’
At ‘Target Type’, select ‘Single Stream’
Fill in the station’s name under ‘Stream Filter’ or the station’s stream name under ‘Stream’
Under ‘Action’ select the ‘Vast’ action you previously created.
Click ‘Save Changes’

Vast ads as midrolls

Steps to be taken to serve vast ads as midrolls.

On the account level, go to ‘Session Rules’
Go to ‘Content Providers’ and click on ‘Add Provider’
Fill in the provider’s name and the midroll URL corresponding to the broadcaster's account in the provider.
1. Make sure to check ‘Append Listener Id’ and ‘Delay Report’
Go to ‘Actions’ and ‘Add Actions’
Create a ‘Vast’ action
1. Select the Provider and fill in the provider params where it is required.
2. Check the "Enable preRoll" option
Go to ‘Rules’ and ‘Add Rule’
Set ‘Source Type’ as ‘Any Source’
At ‘Target Type’, select ‘Single Stream’
Fill in the station’s name under ‘Stream Filter’ or the station’s stream name under ‘Stream’
Under ‘Action’ select the ‘Vast’ action you previously created.
Click ‘Save Changes’

For a midroll to be triggered in a ‘Streaming only/ No Playout’ type of station, Revma will need to receive a relevant trigger from the broadcaster's end (either via the encoder of the playout system)

Schedule a rule

Once a rule is created a rule is scheduled to apply always.

You could optionally set the rule to apply only at certain time slots (day/time)

The steps below can be used to schedule any type of rule, regardless of the action the rule is connected with.

After having configured the prefered action, go to ‘Rules’ and fill all the fields you would in all cases. Then click on the ‘schedule’ tab at the top

On the account level, go to ‘Session Rules’
Go to ‘Actions’ and ‘Add Actions’
Create a ‘Drop’ action
1. You could optionally upload a static media file. Listeners who will not have access to the stream will be served that file and then the connection will be dropped.
Go to ‘Rules’ and ‘Add Rule’
Set ‘Source Type’ as ‘Geo’ and select ‘United States of America’
Click on the ‘Negate Source’ checkbox
At ‘Target Type’, select ‘Single Stream’
Fill in the station’s name under ‘Stream Filter’ or the station’s stream name under ‘Stream’
Under ‘Action’ select the ‘Drop’ action you previously created.
Go to ‘Schedule’ at the top.
1. Select the preferred time zone
2. Select the dates/days during with the rule should apply
Click ‘Save Changes’

With the above setup, listeners coming from outside of the United States of America, will not be allowed to access the given stream at the times the rule has been scheduled to apply. Apart from these time slots, all listeners will be able to access the stream.
The schedule feature is mostly used for events (sports’ shows, concerts etc) for which the broadcasters only have rights to broadcast within a certain country/ies
In case there is an active listener connection prior to the scheduled time slots, that connection will not be dropped.

Apply rule to parts of the audience

Steps to be taken to serve two different station imaging media prompts to all listeners upon accessing the stream (each one to 50% of the audience)

On the account level, go to ‘Session Rules’
Go to ‘Actions’ and ‘Add Actions’
Create a ‘Continue’ action (Action#1)
Upload a static media file (file#1)
Create an additional ‘Continue’ action (Action#2)
Upload a static media file (file#2)
Go to ‘Rules’ and ‘Add Rule’
Set ‘priority’ to 0
Set ‘Source Type’ as ‘Any Source’
At ‘Target Type’, select ‘Single Stream’
Fill in the station’s name under ‘Stream Filter’ or the station’s stream name under ‘Stream’
Under ‘Action’ select the ‘Continue’ action (Action#2) you previously created.
Set ‘Percentage of listeners to apply this action’ to 50.
Click on the ‘Proceed to the next available rule’ checkbox
Click ‘Save Changes’
Go to ‘Rules’ and ‘Add Rule’ to create a secondary rule
Set ‘priority’ to 5
Set ‘Source Type’ as ‘Any Source’
At ‘Target Type’, select ‘Single Stream’
Fill in the station’s name under ‘Stream Filter’ or the station’s stream name under ‘Stream’
Under ‘Action’ select the ‘Continue’ action (Action#1) you previously created.
Click ‘Save Changes’
Set ‘Percentage of listeners to apply this action’ to 100.

With the above setup, 50% of the listeners trying to connect to the given stream, will at first audition the uploaded media prompt (file#1) and then will connect to the stream and the rest of them will at first audition the uploaded media prompt (file#2) and then will connect to the stream

Apply vast ads (midrolls) from multiple content providers

Steps to take in order to have multiple content providers apply in a single midroll vast ad.

1. On the account level, go to ‘Session Rules’

2. Navigate to ‘Content Providers’

3. Create multiple content providers

4. Navigate to ‘Actions’ and ‘Add action’

5. In the new action field, add multiple providers using the ‘Add provider’ option

6. Create the respective rule for the stream and listeners that this will apply to

In such scenarios, depending on the broadcaster's request and the content served by the providers, the listeners can receive ads from multiple providers during the same midroll (i.e. 30 seconds from the first, 30 seconds from the second and 30 seconds from the third). This scenario will only apply in the case that the first provider does not serve enough content to cover the midroll request. In other words, if the first provider has enough content to cover the midroll request, the listener will not receive any content from the second or the third provider.

In essence, providers beyond the first one act as failover providers, in the case that the previous one does not have enough content to cover the request; but this "failover" mechanism can be used to achieve the scenario of a single midroll serving content from multiple providers.

For example, if there are three providers set in the action:
a. The broadcaster requests for 90 seconds of ad content. The first provider only serves 30 seconds, the second provider serves only 40 seconds and the third provider serves 20 seconds. In this case, the listener will receive content from all providers.
b. The broadcaster requests for 90 seconds of ad content. The first provider serves 90 seconds. In this case, the listener will receive content only from the first provider.

A pre-roll will always be one vast ad file; therefore, it will originate from the first provider with available content.

As mentioned, multiple providers can also be added in an action for "failover"/“backup” purposes: the general rule is that the first provider on the list will be the primary one and then the following ones will kick in, in case the previous one doesn’t serve content.

A different scenario in which multiple providers can be used for different listeners, is this: if you want 50% of the listeners to be served via provider number 1 and the other 50% by provider number 2, then the rules prioritizations should be the go-to method. Example: first rule, priority 0, action 1 with provider 1 and percentage 50%. Second rule, priority 1, action 2 with provider 2 and percentage 100% → this way half of the listeners will receive ads from one provider and the other half from the other. (See scenario#7 for more info on applying different rules to parts of the audience.)