Dynamic Ad Insertion (Like banner ads, but for audio)

[Dailysonic_Adam]

So a few months ago, we thought... what if we could insert ads in to our podcast dynamically. For each download, the content would be the same, but the ads would be different.

Thats much fairer to small companies who can't afford to reach our entire audience... and much better for our listeners... who won't have to hear the same 4 ads over and over. (Assuming one day, we'll have loads of listeners and advertisers)

We don't have many real - paying - advertisers yet. But we've got the dynamic ad insertion technology all figured out.

Check out the show, download the same episode twice and you'll hear different ads. http://www.dailysonic.com/

What do you think?

PS, we'll put podcast promos in to the ad cycle for free. Email me your 30-60 second promo and a 180x150 banner for the website.

-Adam

[chuckmagnum]

very cool

[camilian]

Adam,

Very cool! You don't need to give away your secrets, just curious if you are actually encoding the mp3 serverside or just pulling a different .mp3 each time from a database?

[Keeme]

Ain't it cool to be a freaking pioneer!

AWESOME!

[InformerandSnitch]

if(!function_exists('file_put_contents')) {
function file_put_contents($filename, $data, $file_append = false) {
$fp = fopen($filename, (!$file_append ? 'w+' : 'a+'));
if(!$fp) {
trigger_error('file_put_contents cannot write in file.',
E_USER_ERROR);
return;
}
fputs($fp, $data);
fclose($fp);
}
}

$bar = file_get_contents("2.mp3");
file_put_contents("1.mp3", $bar, true);


This will join two mp3's so i figure its somewhere along these lines.[/code]

[camilian]

Thanks for the code... that has to put a heck of a strain on the server... no?

[Dailysonic_Adam]

Hey,

Well I thought I posted a reply, but I guess it got eaten by the internet. So yeah... the ad insertion is truly dynamic: The episodes are glued together server side. If a new audio spot is added to the ad pool, it will automatically get inserted not only in current episodes, but also in archived episodes. No two downloads are alike. Etc.

Our servers were feeling strain a little while back, but we're refined the code and everything seems to be running ultra-smoothly... even with multiple downloads going simultaneously.

We're using not much more than PHP and MySQL to do this... Our code is a *few* more lines than what informerandsnitch posted, but that a good start ;)

Rock on,
Adam