NEW YORK and LONDON— September 20, 2018 — Akamai, SpotX and Yospace have set out the key principles of monetizing major live events over OTT in a white paper entitled “Go Live: Addressable, Ad-Supported, Live Video At Scale,” which was made available at the IBC Show in Amsterdam this month.

Drawing from the technology companies’ wealth of combined experience in delivering and monetizing the largest live audiences in the world, the paper focuses on the three key pillars of major event television – monetization, scale and viewer experience – and outlines the technical complexities involved in delivering all three in an environment where viewing records are being broken on a regular basis while the demand for data-enriched advertising is increasing.

Prefetch is a central theme of the Go Live whitepaper. Yospace, the world’s foremost provider of server-side ad insertion (SSAI) technology, operates closely with the broadcast headend, allowing it to detect an upcoming ad break before it happens. Ad calls are made early to an ad server, such as SpotX, who then have more time to instruct the programmatic marketplace and generate the highest possible CPM and fill-rate for the rights-holder.

“Delivering addressable advertising at scale is the next big challenge for broadcasters and rights-holders,” said Tim Sewell, CEO at Yospace.  “During a major live event millions of viewers around the globe can go to an ad break at the same time, placing huge demand on the advertising ecosystem.  This white paper explains how the leaders in SSAI, video advertising and content delivery have addressed that.”

Monetization at such scale will only work if the right delivery mechanisms are in place. Akamai, a global leading Content Delivery Network (CDN), reliably handles peaks in audience demand to deliver video and ad content at scale, while providing a seamless, broadcast-quality viewing experience.

“Content providers understand the potential of OTT as more audiences move to consume content online,” states Campbell Foster, VP of Product Marketing at Akamai. “The challenge for live and linear content is delivering the seamless, high-quality experiences viewers are accustomed to from TV, while effectively monetizing content through one-to-one addressability at scale. This whitepaper focuses on how manage peak demand to optimize monetization of live content at scale.”

The white paper also looks at how SSAI technology and the wider ad ecosystem is adapting to the requirements of a maturing OTT world. Support for low latency streaming, at scale, and for data security mechanisms, both safeguarding the privacy of the viewer and protecting the value of the rights-holders audience, are addressed.

“Live inventory is a growing sector of our business and as audiences continue to consume content across multiple platforms like OTT, monetizing live video becomes even more important,” said Mike Shehan, co-founder and CEO at SpotX. “We believe that the media industry needs to understand the technology behind what can truly take addressable, ad-support live video to scale, and this white paper outlines all the relevant information.”

Download the white paper here

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About Akamai                                              

Akamai secures and delivers digital experiences for the world’s largest companies. Akamai’s intelligent edge platform surrounds everything, from the enterprise to the cloud, so customers and their businesses can be fast, smart, and secure. Top brands globally rely on Akamai to help them realize competitive advantage through agile solutions that extend the power of their multi-cloud architectures. Akamai keeps decisions, apps and experiences closer to users than anyone — and attacks and threats far away. Akamai’s portfolio of edge security, web and mobile performance, enterprise access and video delivery solutions is supported by unmatched customer service, analytics and 24/7/365 monitoring. Learn more at www.akamai.com.  

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About SpotX

SpotXis the leading global video advertising platform that enables media owners and publishers to monetise premium content across desktop, mobile and connected TV devices. As a modern ad server with programmatic infrastructure, data enablement, and monetisation solutions for OTT, outstream, and addressable TV, SpotX gives media owners and publishers the control, transparency, and actionable insights needed to understand buyer behaviour, manage access and pricing, and maximise revenue. SpotX also provides advertisers with a direct pipeline to premium supply and innovative solutions for optimising media efficiency, reach, and audience targeting. With best-in-class technology purpose-built for video, SpotX’s holistic, brand-safe solution is employed by some of the largest media owners and publishers in the world including fuboTV, Microsoft Casual Games, Newsy, Samba TV, Sling TV, Vudu and partners with a variety of different companies within the digital video ecosystem including comScore, DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science, JW Player, MediaMath, MOAT, Nielsen, Oracle, and more.

Headquartered in Denver, SpotX has nearly 600 employees in 24 offices worldwide including Amsterdam, Hamburg, London, Los Angeles, Milan, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Singapore, Stockholm, Sydney, and Tokyo. In October 2017, RTL Group completed its 100% acquisition of SpotX which is currently combining its business with smartclip, a sister company. Learn more atwww.spotx.tvand follow @SpotX on Twitter and LinkedIn.