SpotX and Yospace recently hosted a breakfast event in Sydney, sharing key principles and best practices for monetising major live events at scale in 2019. Drawing from both technology companies’ wealth of experience, they outlined the complexities involved in delivering addressable, ad-supported live video at scale for major television events.
“Delivering addressable advertising at scale — while maintaining the viewer experience — is the big challenge for broadcasters and rights-holders” said Tim Sewell, CEO at Yospace.
During major live events, millions of viewers around the globe can go to an ad break at the same time — placing huge demand on the advertising ecosystem, especially when considering programmatic trading. At the event, attendees learned how a vendor like Yospace is addressing this very issue.
“Using prefetch techniques allows the ad decisioning system to cope with the unpredictable surges in viewers typically seen in live streaming while considering the programmatic requirements,” said Sewell.
The evolution of live advertising technology
“Live inventory is a growing sector of our business, and we have spent the better part of the last 12 months investing in our systems infrastructure and software and also working to educate our buy-side partners to ensure that their technology can cope with a high number of ad calls during live events,” said Kevin Schaum, VP of Advanced Solutions Group at SpotX. “We believe that the media industry needs to understand the nuances of the technology behind ad serving in live environments so that we can build out truly addressable, ad-support live video at scale for everyone to benefit.”
SpotX and Yospace rounded off the event with a panel Q&A to allow questions and discussion from the audience. This panel included Ben Campbell, director of advertising and data products at Channel 9, and Mat Yelavich, CIO at Channel 9, joining Schaum and Sewell. During this session, the panel shared their experiences and insights around the recent ad delivery and monetisation of the Australian Open Tennis.
Monetisation at scale will only work if the right delivery mechanisms are in place. You can learn more in our white paper that outlines the technical complexities involved in delivering addressable, ad supported, live video at scale.
Click here to download Go Live: Addressable, Ad-Supported, Live Video at Scale.