DRMetrix will be upgrading its database today to improve system performance & responsiveness. During this process, AdSphere will be offline for an estimated 30 minutes or so which should begin sometime after 3pm PDT / 6pm EDT. If any unplanned technical issues arise, updates will be posted here.

A technical issue has caused an unexpected back log on report generation inside of AdSphere. Our team is working on a solution to get the system caught back up. In the interim, many will experience reports stuck at 0% without any obvious progress. We’re hoping to get this resolved soon and we will post updates here.

11:49AM PST Update – Progress is being made. Many reports run today have already been processed. Reports that were stuck yesterday were removed and our team is investigating resubmitting these. If a particular report is urgent, you may re-run at this time. More details to follow…

1:50PM PST Update – All reports from 1/8 and 1/9 have been processed and all reports appear to be generating fine now. Thank you to everyone for your patience!

Speeding Up Reports

Our technical teams have been busy these past weeks optimizing the AdSphere platform under Amazon Web Services (AWS). Yesterday, enhancements were made to improve the time that it takes to create excel/cvs reports.

Airing Level Videos

As mentioned previously, airing level videos now include the complete ad break. Using the slider on the video playback timeline, one can scroll backwards or forward to view any part of the ad break in order to see all commercials that ran inside of the break including star and end of the ad break where network icons are typically displayed. Now everyone will have visual confirmation of the network and entire ad break for each commercial airing. The new enhanced airing level videos take between 5-7 hours to become available after air time. Going forward, the team hopes to reduce the delivery timeframe for airing level videos to within 3-4 hours. Infomercial airing level videos are available on SD networks but airing level videos on HD networks for long form are still a work in progress. That said, airing level thumbnail images are available for long form across all networks so one can still confirm that the correct infomercial ran, confirm 800 number, etc.

Daily and Weekly Reports

There have also been recent improvements made that should help to speed the delivery of daily and weekly reports each week.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope everyone has an amazing Thanksgiving this coming week!

Hope everyone had a great Halloween! There have been some breakthroughs from the past day. Network mismatch on video play from ranking system is fixed. Airings count at the bottom of the network detail pages are fixed as of this early morning. Infomercial airings are also getting back to normal. The team is now looking into fixing weekly legacy ASONTV retail reporting. Tracking & Alert emails are also starting to come back online. Airing level videos under the new unified platform are still a work in progress and currently sample videos are playing in the system instead. As things further stabilize, if you experience any issues with the system, please email support@drmetrix.com

This morning issues with crons were discovered that process weekly reports. The data is showing in Adsphere and these same reports can be manually run and exported as an interim solution. If anyone needs help to manually generate a critical report, please email support@drmetrix.com for assistance.

These cron issues should be resolved soon and automated delivery will resume and missing reports will be resent in the next day or two. There are a few other issues in AdSphere this morning which are being looked at on priority for resolution. One is that network airing totals at the bottom of network detail pages are inaccurate and don’t match the total airings shown at the top of page. There is a backend process that has been identified as the culprit and it will be resolved soon. Airing level videos are still a work in progress and there is a network mismatch error on video playback in ranking system (which is a minor issue not impacting video playback). A more serious issue is 28.5m long form reporting which is delayed from last week and is not caught up at this hour. These are some of the areas that our team will be focusing on this week for resolution. We apologize for these issues and we’ll be working hard to resolve them as quickly as possible.

Dear Valued Customers,

Two years ago, iSpot.tv acquired DRMetrix and we began working toward a unified platform so that we could bring additional networks and features to both AdSphere and AVS. Not only will DRMetrix be able to offer more comprehensive coverage of both Angelo and Hispanic networks, but we will also be able to offer broadcast monitoring of ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX affiliates in the top 40 markets! Under the unified platform, DRMetrix will also benefit from iSpot’s HD monitoring capability while enhancing our core automated content recognition (ACR) technology.

We will switch over to the new unified platform starting this weekend, midnight on 10/21. AdSphere will still be accessible during this time but there will be no new airing occurrences reported between 10/21 at 12A EST and 10/23 12A EST, although services may be restored sooner. We expect the overnight reports for Friday 10/20 data to run normally.

Note: No occurrences / airings will be lost. There will just be a delay in reporting. The goal is to have all of the data caught up by early Monday AM in time for weekly reports.

The changes happening behind the scenes are rather significant and include moving all of our systems and databases completely to the cloud via Amazon Web Services. These types of transitions are never easy and unexpected challenges can arise so we humbly ask our valued clients for their patience and understanding as we make this critical transition. Please continue to check this post for additional updates which will be provided in the coming days.

Warmest Regards,

The DRMetrix Team

Update 10/23/23 at 3:21AM EDT – Our team has been working all weekend and we have switched over to the new unified platform. Our systems are currently in catch up mode processing airings, videos, and thumbnails from over the weekend. No data was lost but there may be a delay with weekend and current airings until the system fully catches up. System performance may be also be impacted while the system is playing catch up which our team is currently working on. We’ll post another update in the next few hours.

Update 10/23/23 at 10:00AM EDT – System is still processing airings from this weekend and playing catchup so we didn’t achieve our stated goal of having all the data caught up by early Monday AM in time for weekly reports. Please accept our humble apologies. There seems to be an unexpected issue with slow processing of videos and image thumbnails that appears to be the root cause of the system struggling to catch up on processing. With the new unified system, these assets are now being created from HD video, rather than the old SD video, and also the backend processes are different. This will be a main point of focus for the team to resolve today. Once resolved, the entire system will run a lot faster allowing the airing detections to get caught up and return to normal. We apologize for these teething pains but once the system is caught up, we believe it will run considerably faster under the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform.

We are getting feedback this morning of various issues which we’ll be fixing as quickly as possible. We are working to address all reported issues so if you run into an issue, please email support@drmetrix.com. We appreciate everyone’s help in identifying issues. Once we feel that the new system is stable, and running properly on all fronts, we’ll begin adding new networks and also broadcast stations! More updates will follow.

Update 10/23/23 at 10:25PM EDT – Team is still working very hard to resolve all outstanding issues. While a lot of progress was made today, the system is still pretty far behind and busy processing airings from the weekend. Our team is going to try a few tricks tomorrow to try and speed things up in hopes of getting the system caught up in the next 24 – 48 hours.

Update 10/24/23 at 9:24AM EDT – Encouraging update from the team early this morning. Changes were made to speed up the ETL which processes new airings with a 3X improvement in speed. That means the processing from this weekend should be completed within an estimated 4-6 hours and the system should be caught up within the next 20-24 hours. We appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding during this major transition. It will be exciting to experience all of the performance benefits, additional networks, and new features that will accompany our new unified platform!

Update 10/25/23 at 9:31AM EDT – Yesterday’s estimation of the system catching up in the next 20-24 hours was incorrect. Should have an update later today on the root cause of it. That said, there was progress made on that front and airings from this past weekend are now complete and the system is starting to process current week data. On the better news front, quite a few issues were resolved yesterday and AdSphere should be pretty stable today. If you notice any issues remaining, please email support@drmetrix.com

Update 10/25/23 at 1:32PM EDT – Last night’s update appears to have addressed a number of excel reporting related issues. There remains an issue with advertiser page links in both excel and tracking & alert emails not working properly. When clicked on, the system is throwing an error and crashing. We have asked the AdSphere development team to focus on this issue and fix it as soon as possible. There are also issues with video playback / network mismatch. This is being researched as well. The video playback feature has been enhanced. As before, the target video plays but now one can watch any part of the ad break by rewinding or forwarding through the entire ad break. It’s a really nice enhancement.

Update 10/26/23 at 9:31AM EDT – Root cause of advertiser page link errors has been identified and fix will be implemented in the next few hours. Issues with video playback / network mismatch will be a focus for the team today. Team created a 2nd ETL that is focusing on current day airings which will be caught up today while simultaneously catching up on prior day airings. This will allow regular daily reporting to resume tomorrow as well as access via API to daily airings on the AVS side.

Update 10/27/23 at 9:12AM EDT – Happy Friday! Suffice it to say, it’s been a tough week as this transition hasn’t gone as smoothly as we had hoped. Fortunately, the system has caught up with the processing of airings from prior days and is back to processing airings for the current day! Advertiser page link errors have been resolved. Video playback system is still being worked on and we’ll hopefully have the network mismatch issues resolved soon and the new and improved airing level videos online. We have to get the tracking & alert emails back online too which may take a few more days but progress is being made on all fronts. After we work though any and all remaining issues, our focus will turn to adding new Hispanic and Angelo national networks and to the debut of our new top 40 market broadcast monitoring solution!

There is an issue with AdSphere this morning where proper data is not showing from last week. It’s currently 6:50AM so working to contact technical resources to assess the problem. More updates to follow. Apologies to everyone for the issue. Our team has been doing a lot of things in preparation for moving our systems to Amazon Cloud and expanding our coverage of networks, including the addition of broadcast stations in the top 40 markets. With all of the infrastructure changes going on, something unexpected may have happened.

9:00AM Update. Data from last week is now properly showing in AdSphere. Weekly reports will be re-run this evening for Tuesday AM delivery. If the need is urgent, one can log into AdSphere, visit the filters dropdown, find your weekly email reports, and re-run them as needed. We apologize for the inconvenience this morning.

AdSphere is exhibiting unstable behavior when accessing data prior to 2023 broadcast year. Our team is working on a fix for this issue by rebuilding our historical database but the fix is taking longer than expected. We will post more details here when we get a firm ETA.

3:03PM PDT Update – Very sorry for the delay! We have all of 2022 back loaded and currently working on 2021 and prior years. This issue cropped up during our migration to Amazon Web Services which promises to speed up our services and allow for more scalability. Some of the data didn’t migrate over properly so we’re updating the historical data as quickly as possible!

11:41PM PDT Update – Historical database has been restored & AdSphere is back to normal. Thank you everyone for your patience!

DRMetrix is experiencing technical difficulties this morning causing our database server to be slow to respond. As soon as our West Coast staff becomes available this morning, the underlying issues should be quickly resolved. Unfortunately, our development team is on holiday tomorrow so weekly reporting will be delayed 48 hours this week. We expect these reports to run Tuesday evening for early Wednesday delivery. Also, reports currently stuck in queue should begin processing as soon as the underlying issues get resolved this AM. We apologize for the inconvenience!

Happy Valentines Day! We regret to inform that a bug was introduced with our recent QR code build that was remedied today. The issue caused AdSphere to under report airings for certain brands that may have incorporated a QR code in their creatives. With default filter settings, all airings should now be properly reflected for current and prior weeks in AdSphere. To report any discovered issues, please email support@drmetrix.com