Sneak Preview: FAST Forward - How FAST Platform and Infrastructure Providers Can Better Serve the Market
On Thursday, February 27, leading industry consultant Brian Ring will moderate the Streaming Media Connect panel "FAST Forward: How FAST Platform and Infrastructure Providers Can Better Serve the Market." As with any other type of streaming delivery, FAST needs to "just work" to support publishers' monetization goals, but that's nowhere as simple as it sounds.
This panel examines essential infrastructure challenges and key emerging strategies for better FAST delivery. Join us to learn about manifest manipulation vs. encoded playout; optimizing and maximizing "Be Right Back" slots as in-house inventory; using GenAI to program the channel; solving the context/genre madness with LLMs and captions; advanced graphics for background, tune-in, and monetization; QR code execution, a must-have skillset; and how to execute picture-in-picture content programming.
Confirmed panelists include:
Brian Ring is Principal Analyst at Ring Digital LLC, a consultancy that leverages video tech expertise, proprietary TV surveys & twenty years of industry experience to help clients navigate the future of TV across all business models, geographies, genres, and platforms.
"Be Right Back slates are widespread - and widely misunderstood," Ring says. "They’re heavily under-appreciated as a strategic lever for channel branding, let alone monetization. This panel will get to brass tacks - and brass knuckles if needed - on how channels and platforms can innovate the viewing experience in FAST."
Todd Hay is VP of Revenue & Engagement for global streaming media company Plex. He oversees ad sales, ad ops, growth marketing, content ops, data science, analytics, and product quality. His team drives data-driven business decisions leveraging machine learning, data analysis, and deep user understanding to bring positive outcomes to Plex users, content partners, and advertisers.
"The market has seen explosive growth in new inventory coming into Streaming and FAST as more major players enter the space," Hay says. "The downward pressure on CPMs can only be offset by more specialized and innovative ad formats and better, more personalized user experiences. However, the nature of SSAI today limits the ability to implement these new technologies, given the need for more client-side integrations and the ability to scale multiple independent feeds per user. All of this is compounded for aggregators like Plex that need the support of a broad collection of SSAI partners. The good news is that a ton of experimentation is happening right now, such as overlays and squeezebacks on the stream or new technologies like SGAI (Server Guided Ad Insertion). I see this as the FAST marketplace's biggest opportunity in 2025 and beyond."
From a young age, Alia J. Daniels recognized the power of representation in media. Noticing the scarcity of women who looked like her in entertainment, business, and politics, Alia became determined to make a difference. She pursued bachelor's degrees in Music and Communications Studies with a Mass Media emphasis from Albion College, followed by a Juris Doctorate from Loyola Law School, with the goal of changing the face of media. Today, Alia thrives at the intersection of entrepreneurship, entertainment, and social impact as Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer of Revry, a global queer streaming TV network. An advocate for inclusion across all underrepresented communities, Alia's personal mission is to create pathways for authentic representation in media and business.
"In 2025, FAST delivery strategies will increasingly focus on verticalized content, driving deeper engagement by catering to specific communities and identities," Daniels says. "As a platform dedicated to LGBTQ+ storytelling, Revry has seen firsthand how curated, purpose-driven programming creates stronger audience loyalty and more valuable opportunities for advertisers. With first-party-data-powered personalization and improved discoverability, niche-focused FAST channels will lead the way in delivering both meaningful content and sustainable growth."
Laura Florence brings nearly 20 years of experience in the entertainment industry to her current position as SVP, Global Channels at Fremantle. In this role, Laura oversees the Fremantle flagship U.S. game show network BUZZR, in addition to all channel offerings across major streaming platforms globally featuring classic Fremantle series such as The Price Is Right, Family Feud, Baywatch, Jamie Oliver and more.
In an interview with Evan Shapiro at Streaming Media NYC last year, Laura Florence addressed the challenges of "injecting tech and a tech backbone" to FAST operations at a content-centric company like Fremantle that is not tech-focused. "How do you make really smart decisions with content and catalog and also make sure it can still play out quickly, efficiently, and accurately? With everything [in FAST] being an ad server, it needs to programmatically deliver." Florence said. "The interesting thing for us has been educating on the programmatic tech and playout delivery needs for this space. You need to have a MAM, you need to have metadata, you need to have artwork. As a production company, you don't necessarily always inherently have all those things. And so as the world globalizes and feels smaller but moves faster, tech is a huge part of what we do. It opens up a lot of opportunities for efficiency for a company like Fremantle, but it is a lot of education. It requires focus on process, and focus on building those systems quickly and efficiently without a lot of fuss, which is hard."
Abhishek Neralla works on setting video strategy across all of A+E Networks' consumer facing AVOD and SVOD sites and apps. He manages the end to end delivery of video content, from source mezzanines, going through encoding and delivery to clients on a variety of devices.
Register now for Streaming Media Connect 2025!
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