Streaming infrastructure company Bitmovin is teaming up with ad-insertion vendor Yospace to enable broadcasters to put commercials in live-streaming programming.
By making ad insertion in live streams more seamless at scale, programmers will be able to generate more revenue while assuring marketers an enhanced viewing and advertising experience.
“Live streaming is the apple of the consumer’s eye, and this has expanded beyond sports. What we have found is that for live streaming, quality is everything,“ Stefan Lederer, CEO and co-founder of Bitmovin, said. ”Audiences are happy with a small delay to their live stream as long as the quality is as high as possible, without any interruptions or buffering. Whilst others may chase down the lowest possible latency, at Bitmovin, we want to provide the ultimate viewing experience that delivers a high-quality video to make audiences feel a part of the action. In the new streaming era, this includes seamless advertising.”
More and more viewers are viewing live streams, particularly for sports. The record for concurrent live audiences was broken five times over the past year, capped by the Kansas City Chiefs-Miami Dolphins NFL playoff game that streamed January 13 on NBCUniversal’s Peacock.
”Live events have the power to tap into an audience's collective imagination and create water-cooler conversations that advertisers love but are struggling to find anywhere else,” Yospace CEO Tim Sewell said. “The combination of Bitmovin’s Live Encoder and Yospace’s SSAI creates a very powerful advertising proposition for broadcasters, who can tap into that unique value of live events and maximize advertising revenues at scale.”