Mobile video experience has gained popularity all over the world. Video streaming allows exceptional convenience, high-quality delivery and premium access to content. Multiple factors work together to improve the overall user experience. It has been the scenario of growth in broadcasting over the last ten years.
While in the front you have 4G technology and smarter smartphones, the backend is empowered by technologies like dynamic advertising insertion. Media owners and broadcasters are leaning towards this ad insertion technology to manage streams on multiple devices at once.
Traditional challenges faced by streaming services
Managing video streams is a complicated task in a complex industry with various ways of content consumption via different sizes of devices. Other factors such as different user privacy options and Wi-Fi connection quality add more layers of difficulty.
With such interconnected factors, media owners and broadcasters face challenges when securely and smartly monetizing audiences. Due to the association with VOD and live programming, the monetization approach has moved closer to server-side for decision-making.
How SSAI resolves the issues of content delivery and monetization
When delivering advertisements along with content, the decision process can take place from the server-side or client-side or via a combined decision of both sides. The server-side dynamic ad insertion technology is beneficial for long-form streaming environments. The content delivery in VOD and live streaming requires continuous stream, which makes dynamic insertion effective from the server-side.
Server-side solutions communicate conveniently with a direct connection between advertising vendors and broadcasters. This technology reduces the requirement of development from the client-side, which traditionally requires intensive resources for high-quality playback experience.
Personalized content delivery with ABR technology
This technology understands the internet connection strength by internally communicating with a device. It is known as Adaptive Bit Rate or ABR, which constantly interact with the vendor to understand the bandwidth and connection of a device. As a result of this communication, the technology decides the video quality played on a device. It delivers content files without exceeding the bandwidth, which reduces issues like buffering and latency.
SSAI understands every consumer with internal communication
The vendors of SSAI ask ad technology partners for ads based on users’ demographics, viewing history, geographical locations, and privacy settings. All this process takes place right on the server-side.
After the return of an ad, the SSAI partner combines it with the content to make it a single stream file for a consumer. The feature of stitching ads with content on the server-side has helped streaming companies to tackle the problem of ad blocking. This saves broadcasters from ad blockers that can cost a significant ad revenue.
Another valuable benefit of server-side dynamic ad insertion is the safety against system overloading. The technology fetches the content in advance and manages the pace of an ad request.
The technology of dynamic insertion of ads from server-side has made content streaming more personalized for users. They can use any device to experience the same level of quality. So, more and more broadcasters are adopting this ad insertion technology.
