5 Ways to Prepare Your Video Service for the Holidays

The holiday season brings more than just festive cheer: it brings a significant spike in streaming viewership, as families gather to enjoy their favourite shows, movies, and seasonal specials. With viewers spending more time at home and streaming expectations at an all-time high, it's crucial to ensure video services are fully prepared. Yoann Hinard, Chief Operations Officer at Witbe, has created a checklist to help streaming service providers deliver an exceptional viewing experience this peak season.

CTV Ad Buyers Think They Want Show Title Data, But They Don’t

Brands are clamoring for one signal above all else: show title data. CTV represents the merging of digital-era granular targeting and TV programming's deep engagement. It's no surprise that ad buyers would want to mimic the TV advertising practice of going after specific programs that draw big audiences. Yet, when it comes to CTV, show-title data isn't the answer that advertisers want it to be. 

Content Piracy in 2025: Emerging Threats and Strategic Responses

Modern content pirates are smart. They have a deep understanding of the technology used by their victims and of the anti-piracy and cybersecurity solutions built to stop content theft. As we approach 2025, content piracy continues to evolve at an unprecedented pace, with pirates leveraging increasingly sophisticated technologies and distribution methods. Robin Boldon of Friend MTS writes that the most effective way to combat it is to anticipate, adapt, and scale techniques to keep pace with the shifting pirate landscape and predict and match pirates' talent for reinvention.

The Cloud-Based Security Shift

Security measures have come a long way since the days when security meant simply signing in and out of the facility and keeping valuable content in a locked room. As technology has advanced and the broadcast industry has adopted new ways of working, security systems have naturally become much more sophisticated. Take cloud security tools - they provide a formidable level of security that, contrary to popular belief, is actually difficult to match on-site. Data is only as secure as the systems and procedures around it; and the security systems safeguarding data in the cloud will likely be more advanced and superior to measures you can implement on-site.

Challenges of New Encoding Scenarios: Reflections on Measuring Perceived Quality

While VMAF has been a valuable tool for assessing video quality, its limitations highlight the need for complementary metrics or the development of new assessment methods. These new metrics should address VMAF's shortcomings, especially in the context of modern video encoding scenarios that incorporate AI and other advanced techniques. For the best outcomes, a combination of VMAF and other metrics, both full-reference and no-reference, might be necessary to achieve a comprehensive and accurate assessment of video quality in various applications.

Wegovy for the Cable Industry: From Fat to Skinny Bundles

Philip Inghelbrecht, CEO and founder of Tatari, has closely watched the carriage deals in the cable space and the disruption that streaming continues to cause. Despite the momentum for so-called "skinny bundles," which may placate streaming subscribers and stop the loss of cable subscribers, he discusses why advertisers need to track this evolution and carefully adjust their strategies.

Boosting Ad Fill Rates with Advanced Ad Prefetching: A Solution Overview

In the fast-paced world of digital advertising, optimizing the delivery of ads is critical to maintaining user engagement and maximizing revenue. When dealing with high-traffic volumes, the risk of missed ad insertions due to server overload or request throttling becomes a real challenge. Enter advanced Ad prefetching, a proactive approach designed to streamline ad insertion and improve ad fill rates during live streaming.

CTV Conversations from Advertising Week 2024

CTV ad spending continues to soar, and it was clear at this year's Advertising Week New York that CTV is no longer just a growing channel, it's a critical part of the advertising ecosystem. With cord-cutting on the rise and average daily CTV viewership for U.S. adults expected to exceed two hours in 2024, the industry's focus on CTV is well-justified. But beyond the numbers, the conversations during the event reflected key challenges and opportunities for brands as they navigate this fast-evolving space.

Want to Assemble an Advanced TV Tech Stack? Keep it Independent

Suvadip Choudhury, Director, Platform and TV Development at Alliant, looks at the three critical pieces that advertisers need for diving into the world of CTV: data, media, and measurement. For each of these, advertisers should look to work with specialists, rather than one company that provides all of them. The reason is that it doesn't make sense for the media and data providers to grade their own homework with measurement.

Interactive Ads: Reshaping Fan Engagement in Live Sports on CTV

This year's NewFronts signaled a paradigm shift in CTV advertising, focusing on interactive experiences. This holds particular promise for live sports, where viewer engagement is paramount. Gijsbert Pols, Ph.D., director of connected TV and new channels at Adjust, discusses the specific applications of hyper-contextualization in live sports advertising, and he explores potential challenges and solutions to jump into the exciting future of sports fan engagement within the ever-evolving CTV landscape.

Residential Proxies for Streaming Platforms and the Role of IP Address Intelligence

The streaming industry in Europe is poised to flourish in the coming years with a forecasted growth rate of 20.36% from 2022 through 2027, highlighting a continued trend of rapid expansion within the industry according to data from Technavio. While growth is projected to be strong, profits and ad revenue could face a hurdle, as the streaming industry faces potentially one of its biggest threats: residential proxies.

What the 2024 'Summer of Sports' Teaches Us About the Future of Streaming

The summer of 2024 has presented sports programming that rivals any other year in history, including the Copa America finals, Tour de France, NBA finals, two golf majors, ICC World T20, Wimbledon, U.S. Open, an array of F1 Grand Prix's, or the recently finished Paris Olympics and Paralympics. Matt Shapiro, Senior Director of Business Development, Qwilt, discusses the challenges of maintaining a superior QoE across video-on-demand and OTT services and the new formats arising to meet them.

Post-Production Efficiencies Hold Key to Video ROI

Cloudinary explores some of the findings from its first global Video Survey of Web developers, marketers, and business leaders from 15 countries.

Why the 2024 Olympics Are a Bigger Opportunity for Advertisers Than Ever

The Olympic Games represent the absolute pinnacle of advertising events. Exciting, triumphant, and inspiring, there's simply no other shared TV experience quite like it. Adam Shapiro of New York Interconnect explains why, in 2024, particularly for U.S. advertisers, the opportunities have never been richer.

The Quest for Greater Efficiency in Video Processing

Viewer demand for high-quality 4K video content has skyrocketed, and there is an expectation that 8K video will also surge in the coming years. However, with increased resolution comes much larger file sizes, which is challenging for media providers because of the increased storage and processing power needed. Naturally, media companies are seeking ways to process video more efficiently. Frank Schönberger of MainConcept explores how content providers and video services leverage technological developments in video compression and AI to improve efficiency at every stage of the broadcast workflow, from the point of capture to delivery to the end user.

The Era of AVOD: Which Metrics Matter Most?

In the era of AVOD, Jeffrey Johnson, Senior Director, Supply and Demand at Verve Group, breaks down which types of metrics matter most, categorizing them by engagement, visibility, and performance.

The Future of CTV Will Be Powered by Commerce Media Data

Victor Yakovlev, Associate Director, Product Marketing, PubMatic, discusses how there are two rising superpowers in the digital marketing space right now, and they're not competing. They're converging, and he outlines why that's fantastic news for marketers.

The French Connection: A New Era of Olympic Broadcasting

Much like the essence and scale of the Olympic Games constantly evolve, how we engage with such a global event is transforming. More than ever, audiences crave vast quantities of high-quality, engaging and fast-paced stories across multiple platforms and languages. For content creators, this translates to a need for quicker content acquisition, production, processing and distribution. This shift is largely fueled by advancements in technology, enabling a more immersive, accessible and engaging viewing experience. As we look forward to the 2024 Games in Paris, it's clear that technology will play an even more pivotal role in reshaping the Olympics as we know them.

Considerations for Providers Shifting from QAM to IP Video Delivery Networks

Traditional, controlled broadcast environments are being replaced by dynamic, complex ecosystems where multiple applications and services must coexist harmoniously. The challenge is to maintain the quality of a provider's main service, like linear TV with dynamically inserted ads, while accommodating the diverse requirements for and potential interference from third-party applications. Yoann Hinard of Witbe discusses the challenges faced throughout this process, including remote monitoring, dynamic ad insertion, and QC testing across devices.

Streaming Wars: End-to-End Quality Assurance and Video Analysis Gives Streaming Service Providers the Upper Hand

The battle for audience retention continues to intensify in the highly competitive streaming realm. Anupama Anantharaman of Interra Systems highlights the critical role that end-to-end quality assurance, media QC monitoring, and in-depth video analysis play in meeting the escalating demands of today's video consumers and why the role of these processes is becoming more crucial than ever.