In Broadcast - July 2017 - 34

34

www.inbroadcast.com | Vol: 7 - Issue 6

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The Next Wave of Streaming Video
The average viewing session across
all devices falls, on average, by 77%
when viewers experienced a significant
reduction in video quality. If OTT video
service providers are able to overcome
quality-of-experience issues, viewers
would watch as much as 80% more
than they do today.3
Eliminating all of the viewing
problems not only makes for
happier viewers, but also for happier
operators. Ad-supported services
would see an increase in ad revenue of
25% by providing the highest-quality
viewing experiences. Subscription VOD
providers would also see a drop in
churn of 10% or more.3
Smarter Advertising: One to one
session management can enable
personalised programming channels
based on viewer insights; it also uses
these insights to build a personalised
ad playlist. This allows broadcasters
to segment and manage their OTT
streaming audience to sell targeted
ad spots online, which are far more
valuable to advertisers because
they enable better targeting and
accountability. Targeted ads are also
more likely to be watched by online
viewers, since they speak more directly
to their interests. This is how smarter
advertising leverages the true power
of one to one session management.
In addition to better targeting,
there is one other important aspect
to smarter advertising. Over a quarter
of U.S. internet users employ an ad
blocker, and this is set to reach almost
a third in 2017.4 Ad blockers can be
devastating to an OTT video service
provider relying on ads for revenue.
Smartplay by Verizon, Verizon Digital
Media Services' one to one session
management platform technology,
employs server-side ad insertion,
which cannot be blocked by the
majority of current ad blockers.
Smarter Discovery: What do viewers
want most from an online video
service? To get to the content they
want as fast as possible. Leveraging
consumer preference information to
make content discovery more efficient
is critical. Neil Hunt, Chief Product
Officer at Netflix, calls the time it
takes to find that piece of content "the
moment of truth", and summarises the
challenge like this:
"The moment of truth is when
someone sits down in front of the
television. The research I have done
suggests we have between 30 and 60
seconds, maybe 90, to capture your

interests. One or two screens worth
of possibilities, possibly two or four
in-depth (screens), and then you're
going to make a choice. That's a
hard problem to whittle down
the thousands of possibilities
into 20 choices that you can
put on a screen that will
capture your interest."5
Shorter
times
spent
browsing
content
and
longer
times
spent
watching
keep
viewers
on a video website longer,
and ensures they return
frequently. One to one session
management can log customer
viewing history and interface with a
recommendation engine to surface
better recommendations and improve
discovery.
Broadcaster/OTT Video
Service Provider Benefits
Smarter Insights: The next wave
of OTT streaming services is built on
insights derived from big data and
analytics, with one to one session
management providing much more.
It gives broadcasters comprehensive
information on OTT viewing sessions
for every viewer. This data is typically
spread out across multiple platforms
and systems, which has made its
collection difficult in the past.
Verizon Digital Media Services is
unique because it combines both
the online video platform content
workflow with a global content
delivery network (CDN) into one endto-end platform. As a cloud-based
provider, Verizon can centralise
data from ingest to playout across
millions of concurrent users. This data,
combined with the CRM, billing and
account information where available,
can be used to build actionable
information that allows for deeper
engagement with viewers beyond
simple recommendations and toward
programmatic content curation, such
as a virtual linear TV channel for each
and every viewer.
Smarter Programming: As with
traditional TV broadcasting, online
delivery allows broadcasters to
reach millions of viewers with
linear channels. However, viewers
are increasingly watching on their
personal devices rather than their big
screens at home. They are looking
for a more customised experience,
and that is where one to one session
management technology comes in.

Consumer engagement

This technology allows broadcasters
to uniquely tailor the linear experience
to an audience of one, while
simultaneously scaling to millions of
concurrent viewers.
The original broadcast channel
can be delivered with some, or all, of
the ads replaced with targeted ads
based on each viewer's preference. If
a football game is blacked out online,
it can be replaced seamlessly with
another game or show to ensure that
the viewer is never left with a black
slate or screen. The broadcaster can
even construct a completely custom
channel targeted at each individual
viewer, just like Pandora creates
personalised playlists.
With
one
to
one
session
management, broadcasters can now
leverage their direct relationship
with viewers. The session helps
combine real-time usage data, viewer
preference information and other
external data to build a comprehensive
picture of the audience at an individual
level. This multifaceted data is critical
to making smart decisions about
what content to provide and where to
provide it. We have seen how popular
social media services have used their
insights to launch highly successful
video services.
Facebook is the second most popular
online video website after YouTube,
attracting more than 81 million
monthly unique visitors in the U.S.
alone.6 According to Matthew Corbin,
Global Product Marketing at Facebook,
the company's uniquely personal view
of its users allows it to target people,
rather than demographics. And that
delivers a lot of value to both its
viewers, and its advertisers.

cont'd...

Smarter Protection: The threat of
piracy in the online world of video
delivery is very real. The most
popular programming will attract
unwanted (non-paying) eyes. For
example, The Wars to Come
episode of Game of Thrones
was downloaded 13 million
times from torrent sites.7
Premium content must be
protected from the moment
it is ingested into the OTT
streaming platform, to the
moment the viewer watches
it.
Verizon Digital Media Services'
Uplynk Video Streaming service
protects premium content from the
moment it leaves a broadcast facility
in several ways. The Uplynk Video
Streaming service encrypts each video
segment as it is uploaded from the
Slicer, a software element, to Verizon's
cloud encoding infrastructure. On
the playback side, the Uplynk Video
Streaming service uses tokenisation,
DRM or some combination of the
two, to express digital rights and
playback authorisation. Combined
with one to one session management,
broadcasters can control content
playback down to the IP address
level. The Uplynk Video Streaming
service further protects content across
devices by using the widely accepted
HLS or MPEG-DASH video format
wrapped in industry-standard, studioapproved content protection.
The Elements of Smartplay
Having a direct connection to
viewers and the ability to personalise
content and experiences will benefit
broadcasters, the service provider and
viewers. This is essential as we move
into the next wave of streaming video
services where viewers expect both
technical aptitude and experiences
tailored
to
their
preferences.
Smartplay by Verizon, Verizon Digital
Media Services' one to one session
management technology, is integrated
with many parts of our award-winning
digital media platform.
The Brains of Smartplay: The
session manager acts as the
centralised engine that combines
multifaceted insights and feedback
from the user and implements the
decisions made by other components
of the Smartplay ecosystem.
When
viewers
press
"play,"
the Smartplay session manager
establishes a direct connection with
http://www.inbroadcast.com https://www.verizondigitalmedia.com/solutions/broadcast-ott-solution/
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