Middle-Mile Resiliency and Delivering Live Streams at Scale

As the last mile of streaming becomes increasingly predictable, according to CacheFly CTO and Founder Matt Levine, the focus of streaming professionals working to enhance reliability in live event delivery shifts to the middle mile. Levine and YouTube Head of OTT Live Engineering Sean McCarthy explore what workflow and architecture elements constitute the middle mile and what it takes to navigate middle-mile variability most effectively origin-to-edge and designing workflows that scale in this conversation with SVTA Subject Matter Expert Bhavesh Upadhyaya at Streaming Media Connect 2026.

Key Contextual Data Points for Targeted and Brand-Safe CTV Advertising

Matching ads to programming context and audience interests is theoretically what CTV and OTT can do better than traditional linear television, but it requires gathering data and leveraging it effectively to make sound contextual calls. Philo Head of Advertising Partnerships Aulden Kaye Yi and Roku Head of Supply Side Ad Platform Charlie Goodman discuss what works on their platforms and how their teams approach contextual advertising in this conversation with SVTA Subject Matter Expert Bhavesh Upadhyaya at Streaming Media Connect 2026.

How the NBA Keeps Younger Viewers Engaged

Even as live sports remains arguably the only consistently reliable appointment viewing genre in TV, younger viewers are notoriously appointment viewing-averse. Yet NBA attention from younger fans is growing, according to NBA VP of Global Media Insights Michelle Auguste; it just shows up in different places, and requires following different metrics to make sense of and deploying different strategies and cultural touchpoints to cultivate the 24/7 fandom model that makes younger fans feel like they're part of the league.

Inside the CTV Contextual Advertising Toolset

CTV contextual advertising, like many things in life, is all about making good decisions, and making informed decisions based on a wealth of data means leveraging the right tools—often AI-driven—to gather and distill and interpret that data. Sometimes developing sound contextual media plans involves working with in-house tech and other times it means working with third-party tools, as Team Whistle (a DAZN company) president Joe Caporoso and Intersection CEO Chris Grosso explain in this discussion with SVTA subject matter expert Bhavesh Upadhyaya in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2026.

Provisioning for Live Streaming Scale in Real Time at Al Jazeera and YouTube

How do large-volume streamers anticipate, provision for, and capacity-plan for real-time traffic bursts during tentpole and breaking news events? Al Jazeera Senior Streaming Media Architect Dilip Bharadwaj and YouTube Head of Live OTT Engineering Sean McCarthy discuss real-world challenges and preparation and remediation strategies in this discussion with SVTA Subject Matter Expert Bhavesh Upadhyaya at Streaming Media Connect 2026.

Shoppable Content Meets Cloud Gaming on CTV

As cloud gaming and the living room converge and shoppable opportunities on CTV continue to multiply, how real and how near are opportunities to merge the two and incorporate interactive shopping into the intensely lean-forward gaming world? Fuse Media CRO Karl Meyer and Spaceback co-founder and CPO Joe Hall discuss opportunities and implementations of shoppable CTV with the hyper-engaged gamer audience in this discussion with Chris Pfaff, CEO of Chris Pfaff Tech Media, at Streaming Media Connect 2026.

Programming vs. Promotion Decisions in CTV Content Monetization Strategy

When it comes to curating and monetizing CTV content, do programming and promotion decisions go hand in hand or does one necessarily drive the other? Head of Fubo Studios Pamela Duckworth offers a look inside Fubo Sports Network's approach to testing and promotion, from pop-up FAST channels to tentpole events and evergreen content and breakthrough sports like bare-knuckle boxing in this discussion with Integration Therapy's Rebecca Avery at Streaming Media Connect 2026.

How Audience Insights Drive NBA Media Decision-Making

How do "actionable insights" translate into concrete actions when it comes to media deals, partnerships, and brand growth in major sports leagues? In this clip, NBA VP, Global Media Insights Michelle Auguste explains how audience insights have informed the NBA's new 11-year media deal as well as the league's impending Euro League international expansion recently announced by NBA commissioner Adam Silver.

Applying a Second Encryption Layer to Enhance Stream Security

As long as publishers deliver premium streams, pirates will devise ever more ingenious methods to steal and restream that content. When DRM keys get hacked, what steps can content owners take to protect their streams? One method EZDRM COO/Co-Founder Olga Kornienko says her company has been looking at is adding a second encryption layer to make their clients' live content as bulletproof as possible, as she describes and explains how in this discussion with Integration Therapy's Rebecca Avery at Streaming Media Connect.

How to Deliver Low-Latency Multiview Sports Streams to Global Audiences

With all of the inherent difficulties of delivering low-latency live streams at scale, and the growing interest in providing sports viewers with state-of-the-art multiview experiences, what additional technical challenges does multiview delivery create in streaming's fraught middle mile, and how do top-tier global broadcasters like Globo meet those challenges? Globo Head of Streaming and CDN Platform Marcos Petry discusses how Globo maintains and tunes streaming latency for multiview sports streams in this conversation with streaming consultant Bhavesh Upadhyaya at Streaming Media Connect in December.

Dubbing Optimization for Streaming Dialogue and Singing in the AI Era

Generative AI has transformed the technology, the workflow, and arguably the ethics of dubbing dialogue for TV and movies in recent years, with the costly and time-consuming traditional approach of a voice actor, director, and technical crew gathering in a studio for live audio replacement very much a thing of the past. The perception now is that generative AI can easily (and some would say dangerously) produce or replicate virtually any voice, but Dubformer's Anton Dvorkovich and Google's Nick Manoochehri insist that generating the desired voice and refining it toward emotional precision and perfection remain challenging and as much art as science—for dialogue and especially for singing—as they explain in this conversation with DigitalGlue's Philip Grossman and PADEM Media Group's Allan McLennan at Streaming Media 2025.

How Globo, Starz, and Paramount Sustain Streaming Experiences Across Legacy Devices

Like other premium streaming platforms, Starz maintains a "let's let everybody play" philosophy when it comes to delivering high-quality streaming experiences to all viewers on their platforms, but when it comes to supporting the broad morass of legacy devices and formats dating back to streaming's early days, challenges abound, especially in streaming's critical middle mile. Starz Executive Director of Software Development Rob Collins, Globo Head of Streaming and CDN Platform Marcos Petry, Paramount Director, Live Video Nishant Sirohi, and SVTA's Bhavesh Upadhyaha discuss strategies for meeting those challenges and where they draw the line when it comes to the most outmoded devices in this clip from Streaming Media Connect in December.

Sports Leagues and Broadcasters Must Tailor Engagement Strategies for Gen Z

Free Live Sports president Cathy Rasenberger argues that sports leagues and broadcasters need to adapt to the ways Gen Z viewers consume content—short-form, social, athlete-centric storylines—if they want to engage and retain younger audiences in this discussion with MTech Sport, Media & Entertainment consultant Matt Stagg, Play Anywhere CSO Pete Scott, and Hub Entertainment Research principal Jon Giegengack from Streaming Media Connect 2025.

How to Fight Sports Streaming Fragmentation Fatigue

The fragmentation of sports streaming rights and the proliferation of channels with some matches but not others makes it increasingly difficult for fans to track their teams' upcoming games. Free Live Sports President Cathy Rasenberger, Play Anywhere CSO Pete Scott, Hub Entertainment Research Principal Jon Giegengack, and MTech Sport's Matt Stagg discuss ongoing discoverability challenges and how Free Live Sports, Roku with its Sports Zones, Fox One, the ESPN app, and others are trying to create new sports destinations to counteract sports streaming's disaggregation crisis.

How Meta Deploys AV1 on Facebook From Reels to Stories to Messenger

As video has taken center stage on Facebook in recent years with the proliferation of Reels and Stories, AV1 deployment has become increasingly central to Meta's video strategy, reports Meta technical program manager Hassene Tmar in this conversation with Streaming Learning Center owner Jan Ozer from Streaming Media Connect 2025. Tmar explains why AV1 now accounts for 70% of video delivered on Facebook, whether VOD or live on Messenger, and why his team has been pushing it for several years now.

How HBO Max Approaches Streaming Ops as a Product Not a Service

In this clip from his Streaming Media Connect 2025 keynote, Warner Bros. Discovery distinguished video platform engineer Neal Roberts discusses what he calls "3 Up," the process of upgrading HBO Max live content from SDR to HDR, uprezzing from 1080i to 1080p, and upmixing Stereo or 5.1 audio to Dolby Atmos, as an example of how his team "productizes" streaming ops and ensures that they can have confidence in all of the audio and video experiences they deliver on HBO Max, regardless of any deficiencies in the source content or any assumptions made by platforms viewers use to watch it.

Why Streaming Demands a Different End-to-End Workflow From Broadcast

When pre-existing live broadcast operations add streaming for the same events or content, there's a temptation to "bolt on" streaming to the existing workflow and treat it as just another output or destination, but Warner Bros. Discovery distinguished video platform engineer Neal Roberts insists that doing so means sacrificing the streaming end-user experience in this conversation with Alchemy Creations founder and principal Andy Beach at Streaming Media Connect 2025. He says that also means duplicating operator requirements and goes on to discuss comms between streaming and broadcast teams and other best practices for optimizing experiences for all viewers regardless of platform.

Where Do Cloud and Remote Production Reduce and Increase Streaming Costs?

The now-familiar narrative of livestreaming in the pandemic tells us that when social distancing compelled streamers to migrate from on-prem to remote production and the cloud, massive cost savings were our reward. But cloud-based streaming also carries hidden costs. NBCU's Paul Kirchberg, Live X's Corey Benkhe, and Sargeway's Sarge Sargent discuss the true costs and savings of cloud and REMI operations and how to avoid the pitfalls in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2025.

How AI Is Transforming Localization for Live Content

AI/ML made swift subtitling de rigueur on YouTube and for videoconferencing several years ago. But now LLMs are changing the game for real-time translation and localization and language-mapped reanimation for news and other live content, as PADEM Media Group's Allan McLennan, Alchemy Creations' Andy Beach, and Dubformer's Anton Dvorkovich discuss in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2025.

How Can Streaming Publishers Predict Where Pirates Will Strike Next?

Curtailing streaming piracy can be a bit like a game of whack-a-mole, whether it's anticipating where the leaking or leeching will come from on a premium live event, or predicting which content pirates are most likely to target. EZDRM Co-Founder Olga Kornienko has helped a broad swath of clients try to get in pirates' heads and stay one or more steps ahead of their attacks, and in this discussion with Integration Therapy's Rebecca Avery from the latest Streaming Media Connect 2025, she discusses pirate strategy and psychology as she's observed it over the years and practical ways to make sense of it and use of it.