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 favorite 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. 

Why Do Some People Have Bad CTV Ad Experiences?

The allure of CTV is undeniable: It combines the broad reach and brand presence of traditional television with the precision of digital targeting. Yet, as advertisers venture into this new channel, many are met with a critical issue—irrelevant ads. This is not simply a symptom of the industry "allowing" poor advertising standards but rather a signal that the infrastructure to handle CTV's unique challenges is still maturing.

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.

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.

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.

Ozempic 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.

Unlocking the Future of Multichannel Advertising for SMBs by Tapping into Spanish-Speaking Audiences

Matt Robles, VP of Product at Frequence, highlights the significant opportunity for SMBs to grow by targeting the U.S. Spanish-speaking population, which boasts over 60 million individuals and a buying power exceeding $2 trillion. Successful engagement with this demographic requires more than translation—it demands an omnichannel approach that incorporates cultural nuances, offering seamless, personalized advertising across different platforms.

Biddable CTV is the New Scatter

Nick Cuniffe, Vice President of Product - CTV, OpenX, discusses why open real-time bidding is the key to unlocking the potential of CTV for buyers and publishers.

Why Pay for What You Don’t Use? The Argument for Composable Storage Solutions

Sean Lee, CEO of OpenDrives, discusses the critical ways the storage industry solutions and models must transform in order to add value for today's businesses. Today, high performance, efficiency, and scalability are required to remain competitive—all while managing ever-tightening budgets with larger monetization expectations.

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.

The Power of Subscriber Data: Why Many Companies Fail to Combat Churn Effectively

Damien Organ, VP of Product Marketing at Cleeng, outlines ways to more deeply understand the power of strategic retention policies and how to activate them to create lasting subscriber relationships.

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.

Why Streamers Need Rural Sports Fans — and Why Quality is Key for Keeping Them Around

Steve Miller-Jones, Vice President, Product Strategy, Netskrt Systems, discusses why streamers need rural sports fans, the reasons quality is key for reducing churn, and how streaming platforms and ISPs can beat buffering problems associated with delivering live sporting events to remote areas.

Empowering Every Voice: Tailored Messaging for a Diverse Electorate

Jess Ellis, Client Partner - Politics, Advocacy, Government & Non-Profits, VDX.tv, discusses multilingual video advertising in politics and the strategies advertisers can take to maximize their reach to diverse audiences.

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.

Contextual CTV Ads Improve UX, Deliver on Key KPIs

Trent Wheeler, Chief Product Officer, Gracenote, discusses contextual ad targeting on CTV, and he outlines the opportunities for brands to improve resonance, favorability, recall, and loyalty by focusing on the content that viewers watch instead of the viewers themselves.

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.