Basic Principles of SSAI

Learn more about server-side ad insertion at Streaming Media's next event.

Watch the complete presentation from Streaming Media East, DT203a. Adapting to Fast-Changing Market Conditions with Cloud Technologies, in the Streaming Media Conference Video Portal.

Read the complete transcript of this clip:

Andy Warman: What's become very popular recently is something called Server-Side Ad Insertion. Okay, the basic ideas are fairly straightforward. The idea of doing everything server-side is all of the content is delivered by the service, the CDN, Content Distribution Network, as opposed to the video player you have on your smartphones, Smart TV, happen to play the ads from that physical device.

It's a very attractive idea, because it means things like ad blockers have a very tough time working. They would actually have to know what the video content is for an ad. They'd have to analyze the ad essentially to know what video frames look like to block it. So it's very difficult for an ad blocker to eliminate advertising, so the ads actually get to the consumer. It's a good quality of experience as well, because all of those, that video stream is coming from the Content Distribution Network.

It also means that you don't have black frames or cutting into the regular video stream at the wrong time. All right, so the experience is more seamless for the consumer as well. And the players don't really change. They're getting a continuous stream even though it's personalized ads in there. Specific areas of interest that the customer is more likely to pick up and buy things from based on the advertising. All right, and so the player apps that you put on your phones and TVs, et cetera don't have to change in order to use this technology, and they don't have to be updated with new data periodically to load new ads and add new graphic elements either. Alright, makes it much more effective for the channel provider to deliver those.