Clearcast’s new Standard Sponsorship Identifier brings less admin, fewer errors and easier delivery.
In April, we’re launching the Standard Sponsorship Identifier (SSI) – a major step forward in modernising how sponsorship idents (“bumpers”) are created, managed and delivered across the UK and Ireland broadcasting ecosystem.
As the central hub connecting advertisers, agencies and our shareholder broadcasters, we’re uniquely positioned to introduce a unified standard that reduces friction, improves accuracy and brings long-needed consistency to a process that has historically relied on disparate ID formats.
Today, sponsorship material is handled like commercial content, but without a shared ID structure. The result: duplicated work, avoidable errors, upstream delays, and downstream challenges for scheduling, compliance and attribution.
The new SSI format, generated via The Clearcast Library and incorporated into Caria®, will provide a single, industry-aligned structure for sponsorship IDs – ensuring accuracy, uniqueness and seamless compatibility across the supply chain.
The SSI will be based on Clearcast’s current commercial format, utilising the agency prefix, to ensure uniqueness.
Example: SABC/XXXX001/10
S = Defines the material as sponsorship
ABC = Your agency prefix
XXXX = Your defined four characters, eg Advertiser/Product or Programme/Sponsor
10 = Duration of material
Benefits for agencies
- Less admin: No more juggling multiple broadcaster-specific ID formats.
- Self-service: Generate unique sponsorship IDs directly in the Clearcast Library.
- Fewer errors: Correct tagging prevents transmission issues and last-minute fixes.
- Simplified delivery: Just like regular commercials; delivery through the Clearcast Library, or your preferred supplier.
We’ll begin with our shareholder broadcasters – Channel 4, ITV and Sky, with more publishers expected to adopt the standard over time.
A more consistent, efficient sponsorship ecosystem is on the way, and we’re excited to help lead the change.