21 ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE AWS
like experience when streams switch between ad and primary content. The ABR-encoded streams and the manifest with ad markers are published to AWS Elemental MediaPackage, a just-in- time packaging and origination service that prepares video for delivery over the internet. AWS Elemental MediaPackage creates a templated manifest for the personalisation and monetisation service, AWS Elemental MediaTailor. These templated manifests include discontinuity tags at the start of ad breaks to identify start and duration of the potential insertion. AWS Elemental MediaTailor is then brought into the workflow as the origin point for the personalised manifests, receiving targeted information from a client device at each ad break, which it uses to make a request to an ADS. The ADS responds with the ad selection for that particular viewer at that time, as well as information tracking how impressions will be measured and reported for that ad insertion. The ADS response includes a reference to a high-quality mezzanine version of the ad that MediaTailor can use as a source to transcode to ABR segments that match the format, resolution and bit rate of the viewer’s primary content. This ensures audiences don’t see any jarring transitions in quality or aspect ratio when switching to and from ad content. Pointers to the compressed ad content are stitched into the final manifest file. Even though the ad segments are not originated from AWS Elemental MediaPackage, like the primary content stream, they are delivered using the same CDN host names. MediaTailor ensures the manifest contains both content and ad video references that are structured in the same way and play back without buffering discontinuities. Reporting ad impressions is a vital part of monetisation. AWS Elemental MediaTailor offers server-side ad impression reporting by default, using Amazon CloudWatch logs and Amazon
THEMORE DETAIL THAT CAN BE COLLECTED ON THE VIEWING PROFILE OF A GIVEN ADVERT, THEMOREPOTENTIAL VALUE THE IMPRESSIONWILL COMMAND
metrics to determine impressions. An API enables clients to determine where ad breaks occur and supports client- side reporting, as well as any advanced playback features, such as ad timer countdowns or disabling scrubbing for ads with on-demand content. SCALING UP With its cloud-based video-streaming platform, powered by AWS and AWS Elemental, Amazon Prime Video streamed 11 NFL games to a total of 18.4 million football fans in 224 countries and territories across the globe during the 2017 NFL regular season. Fans watched the games via the Amazon Prime Video app on more than 600 types of TVs, mobile devices, game consoles, set-top boxes and connected devices. The average-minute audience (AMA) watching games for at least 30 seconds was more than 310,000, with those viewers watching an average of 63 minutes per game. Amazon Prime Video offered its own live commentary in three languages and streamed live commentary from the broadcaster in US English Amazon Prime Video used MediaTailor to insert ads in real time, based on which region viewers were in. Amazon Video also used Amazon Kinesis as part of its infrastructure to collect quality-
After a successful experience streaming NFL games, Amazon Prime Video streamed the inaugural Next Generation ATP Finals in November 2017 and recently launched CBS All Access, which gives Amazon Prime Video subscribers access to hundreds of live local channels across the US. BA Winston, global head of digital video playback and delivery for Amazon Video says: “We have a lot of confidence in the AWS Cloud and AWS Elemental, and we look forward to using these technologies to broaden our reach in the future.” Targeted advertising offers huge benefits over static advertising with a cost per thousand impressions valued many times greater than static advertisement. CSAI and SSAI have been deployed
successfully, but the potential for SSAI to
improve QoE and mitigate blocking issues makes it an attractive alternative to prior technologies.
of-service metrics from devices worldwide. MediaTailor surfaced ad-viewing data to Amazon Video systems, which then reported the data to advertising partners.
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