Platform Report: How To Stand Out From The Adtech Crowd

It is over a hundred years since the Philadelphia retailer John Wanamaker famously said: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” Recently, the ISBA published a report that claimed 15% of programmatic advertiser spend was lost to an “unknown delta”, demonstrating that the measurement, trust and attribution issues that Wanamaker identified all those years ago are still with us. Meanwhile, commentators are predicting a rocky road ahead for the advertising industry. According to MarketingWeek, UK digital ad spend will decline for the first time ever this year.

If you’re an adtech vendor it’s not easy to stand out from the crowd: for instance, visitors to DMEXCO’s digital event will see scores of companies with very similar looking solutions. And yet it’s not all doom and gloom: technology has the potential to provide increased profitability and at the same time meet Wanamaker’s transparency issues head-on.

So, if you’re a vendor in the adtech space, your challenge is to demonstrate to customers and industry commentators how your solutions can help buck the decline in ad spend and address the long-standing transparency concerns.

This report looks at the best way to meet these challenges and help adtech vendors stand out from the crowd.

We talked to some of the most influential media, analyst and vendor players in the industry to understand the most significant communications challenges that adtech companies face today, including:

  • Creating meaningful differentiators
  • Presenting complex products in the simplest way
  • Being seen as a recognised and trusted voice
  • Addressing common misconceptions and getting key messages across
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Platform Survey: The New World Of Tech Communications

On February 12 2020, the GSMA announced the cancellation of Mobile World Congress 2020 following weeks of speculation about the viability of the event amidst the Covid-19 crisis, and some high profile withdrawals from firms such as Amazon, Ericsson, LG and Sony.

IBC recently joined a list of cancelled and postponed events that already included the NAB Show, SXSW, E3, Google I/O and The Farnborough International Airshow. Everything has changed.

Trade shows and conferences are the drumbeat of the technology industry’s communications calendar, driving news, product development cycles and customer engagement. As the major events that were once galvanizing forces for whole industries disappeared, the accepted wisdom on market and audience priorities has been turned on its head. Carefully laid plans for every aspect of communications have had to be rapidly re-assessed.

As the world tentatively looks to the future, there’s a natural re-alignment of priorities and an emphasis on working out what the “new normal” might be. In that spirit, we asked leading technology journalists and analysts for their views on how technology companies have been communicating during the Covid-19 pandemic and what they want more/less of in future. The results reveal important insights that will help technology communicators plan their next steps.

The research identifies:

  • How well technology companies have dealt with communications during the pandemic
  • Trends in the volume and perceived quality of news
  • If leading influencers are getting the content they want
  • How virtual events can better serve the needs of media and analysts
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Platform Communications Case Study: Grass Valley – shifting gear in unprecedented times

Maintaining customer visibility without major trade shows

Grass Valley needed an impactful communications campaign to maintain its usual headline-grabbing industry presence despite the cancellation of NAB Show – normally a critical event for it to engage with customers.

The objective was to ensure Grass Valley maintained its leading share of voice in the media.

What we did

Shifted from traditional event communications tactics to develop a programme that could deliver the same impact on an entirely virtual stage.

Dynamic media relations were central to ensuring that a broad spectrum of global press and analysts were engaged with Grass Valley’s news.

  • Set-up a virtual press conference, securing 36 media and analyst attendees from across the globe to learn about Grass Valley’s news
  • Tightly planned drumbeat of 17 press releases to drive messages across a wide variety of solutions including remote production, cloud-based production, esports, IP and playout
  • Leveraged media coverage to promote “NAB replacement” virtual event – Grass Valley Live – which was attended by nearly 2,000 people
  • Navigated communication of Black Dragon’s acquisition of Grass Valley to ensure the narrative was positively received, controlled and in-keeping with the company’s key messaging

Key outcomes

  • Secured 432 pieces of coverage over a three-month period
  • Achieved no.1 position in competitor share of voice (tracking against 11 companies)
  • Ensured that Grass Valley customers knew about the company’s latest innovations and thought leadership

David Cohen, Vice President, Marketing Communications, Grass Valley

“Grass Valley puts enormous time and resource into making industry trade shows a success for our business. Without them we needed a new way to communicate our key company updates and messages to customers, industry peers, and media and analysts alike. As soon as the NAB Show cancellation was confirmed, the Platform team was ready and quick to develop a dynamic strategy to effectively communicate our latest insights, demonstrations and announcements with the rest of the industry. Additionally, because of this unprecedented situation, our plans were quite fluid, and we were delighted with how they were able to continually shift their approach as our global communications plans shifted. We succeeded in maintaining our visibility and communicating key messages despite all the disruption to our original strategy, and we thank the Platform team for their flexibility, diligence and commitment in helping us effectively tell our stories to the market.”

For more information, please contact Gay Bell at gay@platformcomms.com.

Platform Communications Case Study: No NAB – No Problem!

Creating and delivering MediaKind’s ‘Spring Kind’ events program during lockdown

Platform helped MediaKind to create and deliver an impactful and ambitious timeline of PR and Marcomms activity to showcase its latest technologies, innovations and thought leadership during the opening months of the global lockdown.

This project was critical following the last-minute cancellation of NAB Show – a major fixture on MediaKind’s global calendar of annual broadcast and digital media trade shows, which traditionally plays a fundamental role in achieving its strategic and business objectives.

The goal was to implement a range of alternative communications strategies for MediaKind that would engage target audiences, particularly at a time when no annual trade show activity could take place.

What we did

Created an end-to end integrated communications campaign, titled ‘Spring Kind’, with a timeline of activities running throughout April, May and June, across a mixture of owned and paid activities.

The core of the campaign was built around key technology and trend topics. Each topic was supported by webinars, and deeper dive content such as strategic application papers, whitepapers, research papers, social influence, blogs and relevant news flow announcements.

In addition, Platform Communications managed the seamless transition of PR activities from real world to virtual, including analyst industry roundtables and larger press events; press/analyst briefings; product and whitepaper launches; speaker panels and presentations.

  • 11 blogs published alongside ongoing social media activity. This helped to draw wider attention to the Spring Kind campaign among key and relevant audiences.
  • Created content for and supported the launch of MediaKind’s ‘Virtual Experience’ – a unique digital portal that enables visitors to explore its complete media services offering.
  • Five strong news announcements distributed over two months, enabling steady and highly impactful news flow. Delivered consistent pipeline of activity during a period where 59% of international tech journalists and analysts found they were receiving less news compared to this time last year (‘The New World of Tech Communications’, Platform Comms Research).

Key Outcomes

  • News pipeline and media placements generated audience reach of over 25 million throughout April and May.
  • Delivered 202 media hits, positioning MediaKind in front of targeted audiences across the US, EMEA and APAC regions. 26 leading trade media journalists and analysts attended highly engaging Press Event.
  • 2,572 sign-ups across six webinars, each grouped with strategic application papers, whitepapers, research papers and news flow This helped to generate heightened interest and engagement from media, analysts, customers and leads, and showcased MediaKind’s expertise across key areas of its portfolio.
  • Outstanding results from the Spring Kind campaign has driven momentum towards a second phase of program activity. The new campaign will see virtual activity continue, forming the cornerstone of MediaKind’s marketing efforts for the rest of 2020.

Lisa Aussieker, VP and Head of Marketing and Communications, MediaKind, said: “The lockdown period was the first time we have been unable to physically bring MediaKind’s offerings in front of customers, partners, and industry friends – and this scenario required a unique and highly integrated approach! Throughout the online Spring Kind campaign, Platform found creative and dynamic means for us to share our latest insights, demonstrations and announcements with the industry, helping us to showcase how we are continuing to enable the delivery of media experiences to audiences all over the world. Platform delivered an outstanding communications campaign that drove participation and ignited lively discussions across all our webinars and online channels. Above all else, they helped us to continue engaging with all of our customers and prospects in an effective and seamless way.”

For more information, please contact Gay Bell at gay@platformcomms.com.

In Conversation with Accedo and Jump

In this IABM TV Panel, Luke Gaydon (Head of Business Development for Sports, Accedo) & Jerónimo Macanás (CEO & Co-founder, JUMP) discuss the recent news that the Accedo One™ cloud platform will be using JUMP’s data-driven technology as the engine behind high-quality recommendations delivered via the Accedo One Marketplace.

Q1. Why is data-driven design important for video services providers?
Q2. How can data-driven design help video service providers better understand their audiences?
Q3. What are the most important considerations relating to this approach?
Q4. How does data-driven design improve the experience for the end consumer?
Q5. What are the technical barriers for video providers?
Q6. How does the combination of Accedo One and Jump Deep Recommender overcome these challenges?

Current Applications of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in M&E

While the impact of ML and AI have been discussed and debated for years, practical applications are fast accelerating across the media supply chain. The pace of innovation is moving quickly and with the cloud wars in full force, there are new services becoming available all the time that offer novel ways to automate tasks with ML and AI. Already, the big three cloud providers — AWS, Azure, and Google — have rolled out powerful capabilities that help with essential tasks including captioning, transcription, and even object/facial recognition to bolster compliance edits and to augment metadata. For media organizations, the implications of these solutions are vast, and we’ve already begun to see their power. With things moving so fast, though, it’s challenging to keep up and important to have the right architecture and structure in place to take advantage of these innovations.

Automated clipping and editing

In a past article, Signiant’s chief strategy officer Rick Clarkson laid out a few examples of how media might achieve synthesis with AI. Take live sports for instance. Highlight clips play a large role in stoking audience excitement, keeping their attention, and helping them stay up to the minute on the fast-paced play on the field. While traditionally a job performed by people alone, new services help automate clipping. As reported in July of 2020, FC Barcelona’s new OTT streaming service for football fans Barça TV+ has begun experimenting with this already. Per an article in SportTechie, the platform will use AI-powered sports video system Pixellot, which films the entire game, captures the whole field in a panoramic view, and detects and tags all movement. This makes it incredibly easy to create highlights and provide archival footage to streamers, advertisers, and even coaches looking to review the success of a given play.

Captioning and translation

Media organizations are already seeing a great number of solutions that offer automated captioning and translation, especially from cloud providers. This is immensely valuable, especially in the age of content globalization, where a given piece of content might need captions not just for accessibility purposes, but to reach fans speaking dozens of different languages.

Consider AI-powered captioning platform SyncWords, which makes it possible to caption a given broadcast or piece of footage in over 100 different languages. While these captions are often manually reviewed, the time saved by automating the original translation is substantial, especially for those with large global audiences. Recently, SyncWords began working with NHK International, the worldwide branch of Japan’s public media organization. Because NHK provides breaking updates on Japan and Asia to audiences around the world, they need to be able to caption and translate clips at an incredibly rapid pace, a goal which SyncWords has made it much easier to meet.

Similarly, when Catch the Fire — an organization dedicated to establishing churches around the world — needed their global conference captioned for distribution, they turned to SyncWords’ AI. In under 24 hours, AI and ML were able to provide them with accurate captions in 17 different languages.

Compliance

Because different international markets have different content standards, media shared globally has to be edited to fit many diverse compliance requirements, which is unsurprisingly quite time consuming. While an autonomous AI solution would present too much of a risk of missing different content issues, deploying AI designed to flag content based on certain criteria, in concert with a standard review team can expedite the process, and save personnel from having to literally go frame by frame. Technology like this has already begun to appear on social media sites that can recognize certain violent or bigoted language, and — while these tools are still being perfected — they could potentially help editors and compliance specialists save a great deal of time and sweat.

In order to save time and ensure accuracy, organizations as diverse as “The Daily Show,” Emerson College, and MLB Network have turned to AI-powered compliance platforms. That many of these solutions actually combine previously discussed features only makes them more beneficial and showcases ML and AI’s potential to consolidate and streamline workflows. Writing for TV Technology, Sima Levy explains: “A feature that has become especially useful for broadcasters is fast content turnaround for repurposing on social media, web and OTT platforms. By having a compliance platform that also performs clips editing, adding metadata, as well as automation clips options, broadcasters can replace the old legacy editing systems typically used for clips creation to save costs, increase operational efficiency and speed up their workflow.”

Intelligent Transport

In a more behind the scenes application of ML, Signiant recently introduced its patented intelligent transport architecture that uses machine learning to evaluate anonymized historical transfer information collected by its SaaS products. The transport chooses the optimal number of parallel transport streams and selects either standard TCP or Signiant’s proprietary UDP-based acceleration protocol based on a variety of inputs including current and historical network conditions, available compute, storage type and the characteristics of the data set. The new architecture is capable of multiple Gbps transfer speeds and is already deployed in Signiant’s SDCX SaaS platform and seeing remarkable results.

Although, these are just some examples of how ML and AI are being applied in media and entertainment today, with new services becoming available all the time, agility is critical. Because of this, the question becomes: how can companies put in place the right infrastructure to best take advantage of these new innovations?

How an SDCX architecture better enables ML and AI

Today’s media organizations work with huge, highly sensitive assets, and more often than not, these assets are stored across a wide variety of storage types in multiple locations. With AL and ML services being offered by a variety of providers — often delivered in the cloud — it is both impractical and unwise to move all those heavy assets each time you wish to adopt a new service.

That’s where an SDCX (Software-Defined Content Exchange) architecture can be a powerful ally in accessing these new services.

On the most basic level, an SDCX architecture is separated into control plane and data plane components. The control plane operates on information about media, controls access and can orchestrate activities such as a file transfer from one location to another. The data plane connects to any type of storage, either on-prem or in the cloud, providing fast, seamless access to media assets, anywhere. For Signiant’s file transfer solutions, this allows file movement to be orchestrated from the cloud control plane while assets are moved directly into and out of the customer’s own storage. This architecture, though, also allows for other services to act on those media assets where they reside. For example, proxies could be generated or audio tracks and metadata extracted and moved to the cloud where AI and ML services can be leveraged without having to move the heavy assets themselves. This way a company could use AWS for one application and Azure or Google for others, without moving the assets each time. As media and entertainment companies look to adopt best of breed AI and ML services, this approach will provide agility to test and deploy new services much more easily and cost effectively.

The future has begun

With all of these new technologies beginning to display their potential, M&E is at an exciting stage, ripe for innovation. However, in order to benefit from this moment, organizations need to look at their current infrastructure and adapt to the demands that go hand in hand with this new potential.

There are plenty of practical ML and AI applications in use today, and the pace of innovation is moving at a fast clip. Understandably, no business wants to be left behind. In order to ensure that doesn’t happen, you must ask yourself: is your organization prepared to take advantage of what the future holds?

For more information on machine learning and artificial intelligence in M&E, join Signiant CTO Ian Hamilton and SMPTE’s Kari Grubin for the Powering What’s Next series, during which they’ll discuss AI and ML, what can be learned from digital signal processing, and how ML adds business value today.

Azimuth Soft Case Studies: Newsroom Computer Software

THE SESSION TO GTRK «VLADIMIR» SPECIALISTS

As plans for 2019 has begun to be put into action we’re always at our customers’ premises for expert advice on all TV automation issues related.

Thank you to all specialists who attended our workshop! The session, which was specially dedicated to GTRK «Vladimir», was a simulation of a real live broadcasting environment, organized by Azimuth Soft, BRAM Technologies in partnership with VGTRK specialists to promote state-of-the-art technology in our industry.

A big thanks to our presenters for sharing their passion and insights and for making it a success!

GTRK «Gorniy Altay» makes magic with Azimuth Soft

We are pleased to announce that modernization of GTRK «Gorniy Altay» is on fast-forward. Azimuth Soft is helping broadcasters to rise to the challenge of HD production while maintaining best-quality for existing workflows.

Our Trained & Accreditated Technical Staff together with outstanding VGTRK specialists trained GTRK «Gorniy Altay» personnel.

Thanks to deep knowledge of ingest, asset management, playout, media storage and management, nonlinear editing and DTP new broadcasting complexes principals of work performance are available to our colleagues from Gorniy Altaysk.

Videoservers Azimuth, playout automation system AutoPlay and news production system NewsHouse were installed in GTRK «Gorniy Altay».

Trainees were able to deep dive into the automation TV applications with many demonstrations.

Azimuth Soft has upgraded an existing news production and playout infrastructure at GTRK «Vyatka»

GTRK «Vyatka» is one of the oldest public broadcaster, the member of All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company VGTRK in Russia.

The groundbreaking installation gives the broadcaster increased flexibility, scalability and speed for an operationally agile solution through the use of Azimuth TV broadcast software from Azimuth Soft.

The new solution for playout automation and news operations enables GTRK «Vyatka» to put content on air faster, easier and to meet its audience’s needs for news content.

Azimuth Soft and BRAM Technologies To Help Change TV Industry

In response to digital broadcast transformation and the need of media companies to maintain their existing assets while planning their move to a software-centric, HD future, Azimuth Soft is working with BRAM Technologies to offer innovative solutions which will enable the customers’ workflows perform better and grow. Azimuth Soft has upgraded an existing news, production and playout infrastructure at GTRK «Adygeia». This cost-effective and operationally agile solution puts the broadcaster on course for a long future of technical security and flexibility.

GTRK «Kurgan» Automates Playout with Azimuth Soft

Azimuth Soft has supplied a playout and news production system to GTRK «Kurgan», which is part of All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company VGTRK.

The channel, which first went on air in 1963, delivers news, entertainment and other content. To improve productivity and reliability, the channel needed to deploy an automated playout that would be simple to maintain and develop. The broadcaster turned to Azimuth Soft, which implemented a simple and secure design based on Azimuth Soft software running on Azimuth hardware from BRAM Technologies.

The new, automated workflow is supported by AutoPlay integrated playout solution and NewsHouse news production system.

We could manage to implement a powerful and stable system and made it installed and running without impeding existing daily work of all GTRK «Kurgan» staff. Azimuth Soft offered not just a powerful solution, but also a trainee session with minimum disruption to operations.

Azimuth Soft and BRAM Technologies Upgrades GTRK «Ivteleradio» with Software-Defined Technology

Azimuth Soft was chosen as the preferred technology provider for the acquisition, storage, editing and media management operations of audience breaking events by All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company VGTRK and it’s branch GTRK «Ivteleradio».

The move to Azimuth Soft NewsHouse will enhance the station’s news reporting. It’s all about giving the audience what they want!

The new GTRK «Ivteleradio» infrastructure incorporates Azimuth Soft’ AutoPlay running on Azimuth servers, together with news production NewsHouse. The result is a more powerful automation platform, allowing for the quick movement of content as well as greater flexibility in associating channels with outputs. The move to hardware provides GTRK «Ivteleradio» a future-proofed infrastructure that readies their mission-critical installation for growth in both channels and features as the need arises, keeping them at the forefront of technology and providing their viewers with the best viewing experience.

Azimuth Soft and BRAM Technologies Assist GTRK «Oka» with a new state-of-the-art technology foundation that will seamlessly evolve to meet the future of TV

BRAM Technologies experts were on hand at GTRK «Oka» to implement the latest practical solutions to key issues including playout and news production from Azimuth Soft and made training sessions.

Our proven solutions will allow the broadcaster to move forward without compromising existing investments.

“Proven in many implementations in All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company VGTRK subsidiaries in Russia and worldwide our TV Broadcast Solutions provide a full range of professional services to maximize the value of the customers’ business. We have got vast experience in automation workflows and tailoring software solutions to broadcasters’ specific requirements,” Alexander Socha, the Senior Technical Support Expert, who had made training sessions in GTRK «Oka» said.

GTRK «Orenburg» takes step toward future with Azimuth Soft TV Broadcast Solutions

Azimuth Soft has delivered an advanced, scalable playout and news production systems for GTRK «Orenburg».

Looking to modernize its operations to transform broadcast principles, VGTRK and GTRK «Orenburg» decided to turn to Azimuth Soft.

GTRK «Orenburg»’s new playout and news production facilities have been designed and implemented by Azimuth Soft. Entirely software-based, the new playout platform runs on Azimuth hardware.

The platform currently delivers ten HD custom configurable channels with additional channels reserved for disaster recovery. The software approach ensures a much higher density of channels than a traditional installation, and future expansion can be easily accomplished. Full redundancy ensures a high level of playout security.

The news production system NewsHouse also runs on Azimuth videoservers. This end-to-end newsroom platform designed to cope with all the challenges that modern newsroom workflows face.

This groundbreaking solution allows journalists, editors, and producers to collaboratively plan, create and deliver news. It is suitable for all newsroom types and sizes. NewsHouse provides several advanced tools for planning, ingest, scripting, editing, production, playout, analysis and archive.

Azimuth Soft ACCELERATES playout automation and news production for GTRK «Tambov»

Azimuth Soft experts were on help to all GTRK «Tambov» trainees in order to deep dive into the automation TV and news operations applications with many demonstrations.

Our innovative, agile and adaptable solutions for Playout Automation, NRC & News Operations are available for the broadcaster.

GTRK «Tambov» staff appeared to be anxious for knowledge and showed a great desire to innovations.

Azimuth Soft helps GTRK «Magadan» meet the challenges of TV Broadcast

Azimuth Soft became the playout automation and news operations software provider by the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company VGTRK and GTRK «Magadan».

The new GTRK «Magadan» infrastructure incorporates Azimuth Soft’ AutoPlay and NewsHouse running on Azimuth videoservers. The result is a more powerful automation platform, allowing for the quick movement of content as well as greater flexibility in associating channels with outputs.

The training was designed to get the customers quickly up to speed on how to operate, maintain and fully leverage the capabilities of Azimuth Soft and BRAM Technologies TV Broadcast Solutions.

HOW AZIMUTH SOFT’s WORKFLOW PLATFORM NEWSHOUSE is at the HEART of VGTRK PRODUCTION

Today we would like to talk about GTRK «Kursk» a member All-Russian Broadcasting Company VGTRK.

Egor Usanin from Technical Support Department walks GTRK «Kursk» specialists through our state-of-the-art innovations in Newsroom Computer System, Playout Automation and explains how AutoPlay and NewsHouse based on Azimuth servers empower broadcaster ’ s workflows perform better and grow, maximizing the value of their assets.

«By unifying content ingest, planning, production and distribution into an end-to-end news production tool, NewsHouse enables operations to have greater agile orchestration in the moment’ adjustments that keep all staff connected at all stages of the workflow».

Azimuth Soft Expands Partnership with VGTRK

August 2019 saw the modernization of GTRK «Saint Petersburg». The channel is dedicated to news broadcast from the studio in Saint Petersburg (the second large city in Russia, which is also known as the north capital of RF).

The news workflow is based on Playout Automation solution AutoPlay and NRCS NewsHouse.

NewsHouse manages newswires, story creation and rundowns. It provides several advanced tools for planning, ingest, scripting, editing, production, playout, analysis and archive. Meaning a customer and everything she/he does will be done using one single solution. Which means more content, easy to learn and collaborate.

Studio playout is ensured by Azimuth video servers from BRAM Technologies.

After almost 28 years on air GTRK «Saint Petersburg» had to move from a traditional broadcast base to a more IT. Now the broadcaster will benefit from this significant moving toward nonlinear content.

Hope all specialist will become big fans of the Azimuth Soft technology as there have already been many employments in other branches of VGTRK.

AZIMUTH SOFT DELIVERS PROVEN TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES FOR GTRK «YAMAL»

We keep equipping VGTRK branches and make training for customers.

As you know the way how a broadcaster’s staff is prepared and qualified to manage TV software solutions, installed, depends the quality of broadcasting, the speed of content delivery and pertinency.

We were glad to install playout solution AutoPlay, NRCS NewsHouse and videoservers Azimuth in GTRK «Yamal». Both professionals from VGTRK and Technical Support staff from BRAM Technologies and Azimuth Soft are keeping busy with training. Thank you for your choice.

And we are always on hand to assist you in your transformation.

GTRK «YUGORIA» CHOSE AZIMUTH SOFT’ s NRCS NEWSHOUSE

With its enhanced tools for planning, ingest, scripting, editing, production, playout, analysis and archive including some of the newer features to facilitate content distribution through Internet GTRK «Yugoria» turned to Azimuth Soft ’ s NRCS NewsHouse.

The professional services including installation and training are already under way. We want our customers to get to know all the features and advantages of NewsHouse to work more effectively and create more content.

WHY GTRK «MURMAN» CHOSE AZIMUTH SOFT?

GTRK «Murman» has turned to Azimuth Soft for NRCS NewsHouse recently. They identified our newsroom computer system as the ideal news production platform.

They are using it to produce local news which air each day.

This provides an update of current events in the region.

GTRK «Murman» lacked a single platform for all the staff to manage rundowns. Azimuth Soft together with it’s partner BRAM Technologies made it possible.

✨Now reporters have an opportunity to work with media content. It is very important that journalists do not work only with texts but also create media materials, which are the broadcaster’s main product.

✨This groundbreaking solution allows journalists, editors, and producers to collaboratively plan, create and deliver news.

✨NewsHouse provides several advanced tools for planning, ingest, scripting, editing, production, playout, analysis and archive.

Now GTRK «Murman» has a playout solution AutoPlay, NRCS NewsHouse and videoservers Azimuth from BRAM Technologies.

Both professionals from VGTRK and Technical Support staff are keeping busy with training.

Thank you for your choice.

And we are always on hand to assist you in your transformation.

AZIMUTH SOFT’s NEWSHOUSE POWERS NEWS PRODUCTION WORKFLOWS FOR GTRK «YAROSLAVIA»

GTRK «Yaroslavia» has chosen Azimuth Soft for their news production workflows recently. A television channel based in Russia, GTRK «Yaroslavl» provides news for the Yaroslavl region. The broadcaster lacked a single platform for all the staff to manage rundowns. Azimuth Soft together with it’s partner BRAM Technologies made it possible.

The newsroom staff is able to create all the content quickly and efficiently now within the NewsHouse platform.

The solution features:

✅ Independent rundowns for on-air mode
✅ Convenient and clear history of rundown changes
✅ Automatic Versioning
✅ Advanced Rundown Timing
✅ Story Editing Priority
✅ Embedded Graphics System TitleStation
✅ Advanced embedded Cut Editor
✅ News Agencies Support
✅ Integration with the A-MAM AutoPlay system
✅ End-to-end Rundown Management: from Planning to Archiving
✅ Customizable Workflow for a wide range of tasks
✅ Floating Licenses for Client Applications
✅ Simultaneous Work with text, video and graphics inside the Story
✅ MOS Protocol Support
✅ User-Friendly Intuitive Interface

Both professionals from VGTRK and Technical Support staff from BRAM Technologies and Azimuth Soft are keeping busy with training.

Thank you for your choice.

And we are always on hand to assist you in your transformation.

AZIMUTH SOFT’s NEWSHOUSE IS AT GTRK «NIZHNIY NOVGOROD»

A broadcaster from the town of Nizhniy Novgorod, a member of VGTRK (one of the largest media corporations, a leading broadcaster and content producer in Russia) needed a reliable and yet very flexible newsroom computer system that could be adapted to their needs. These demands drew them to our NewsHouse, a solution with a deep expertise of NRCS.

A broadcaster can benefit from:

✅ Seamless integration
✅ Unified planning
✅ One single solution for all the actions
✅ Integrated archive and asset management
✅ Editorial & approval workflows
✅ Control & monitoring

VGTRK specialists and Technical Support staff from BRAM Technologies and Azimuth Soft are keeping busy with training for GTRK «Nizhniy Novgorod» personnel involved.

Thank you for your choice.

And we are always on hand to assist you in your digital transformation.

AZIMUTH SOFTWARE IS WELCOMED IN THE CITY OF SAMARA

We continue equipping the VGTRK subsidiaries.

We have been in the city of Samara recently.

The acceptance tests were completed. The NewsHouse and AutoPlay systems are helping GTRK «Samara» to automate playout and news production.

We were happy to cooperate and communicate with the customers there.

GTRK «DAGESTAN» BRINGS ITS NEWS PRODUCTION INTO THE FUTURE WITH AZIMUTH SOFT

Our very own NRCS & News Operations platform NewsHouse will power GTRK «Dagestan» digital transformation.

Together with Playout Automation system AutoPlay and videoservers Azimuth from #BRAM Technologies the installation will equip the broadcaster with the state-of-the-art media production workflow.

A growing number of media and text data needed to be centralized and enriched with metadata. Also the staff lacked tools to easily search, prepare and distribute the created content.

The move to NewsHouse facilitated these needs. It enabled to speed up in terms of producing content and getting breaking stories.

And we are always happy to improve our customers technology!

GTRK «URAL» INVESTS IN AZIMUTH SOFT NEWSROOM PLATFORM

Azimuth Soft announces the completion of a newsroom computer system at GTRK «Ural».

The system is running on Azimuth servers from #BRAMTechnologies and comprises a full set of available options including:

✅ A powerful module NewsPlan which covers all the newsroom needs. It enhances routine processes from planning to going On-Air and allows simultaneous work for more than hundred users.
✅ An on-Air module NewsAir. It manages various studio equipment and third party equipment: prompters, video servers and graphics
✅ TitleStaion Mix, a software module which manages and playouts graphics. It playouts up to 24 independent graphics templates.
✅ A state-of-the-art NewsBase tool to provide editing facilities. It can be installed almost on all types of PC hardware.
✅ Air24 software module which manages Azimuth video servers. It provides the independent operation of up to four (4) channels. The clients are free to use any tool to facilitate their work while on-Air. Advanced playlists architecture manages video and graphics.

We also integrated A-MAM and playout to provide an end to end solution which unites a broadcasting team.

And we are always happy to improve our customers technology!

AZIMUTH SOFT REPLACES A LEGACY NEWSROOM SYSTEM AT GTRK «KRASNOYARSK»

GTRK «Krasnoyarsk», a subsidiary of “The Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Company” (VGTRK), operates in the Krasnoyarsk region. It is one of the oldest broadcasters in the area, on air since 1957.

The broadcaster wanted to switch to HD and replace their existing newsroom system to have a workflow suitable for modern news delivery and to improve collaboration among their staff.

Now our very own NewsHouse, an end-to-end newsroom platform, designed to meet all the challenges that modern newsroom workflows face, is implemented in GTRK «Krasnoyarsk». This groundbreaking solution allows journalists, editors, and producers to collaboratively plan, create and deliver news. Suitable for all newsroom types and sizes. It provides several advanced tools for planning, ingest, scripting, editing, production, playout, analysis and archive.

Our specialist are keeping busy with the training. On the technical side it covers all the necessary topics to help complete all the operational tasks as well as to solve any inefficiencies. All the GTRK «Krasnoyarsk» staff is gaining practice and experience with NewsHouse.

And we are always happy to improve our customers technology!

GTRK «IRKUTSK» TO DELIVER REAL-TIME STORIES WITH NEWSHOUSE

Azimuth Soft, a leading manufacturer of software products for broadcasters, media companies, content producers, commercial networks, operators and government organizations, has installed a next-generation multi-platform newsroom NewHouse to GTRK «Irkutsk».

The broadcaster goes on air 11 time a day on «Rossiya 1» and «Rossiya 24» TV channels in Irkutsk region with the population of more than 2 million people.

The customer needed an agile platform that can adapt quickly to their business reality.

The digital transformation will move all production operations to the end-to-end news production system NewsHouse with its advanced news production tools, state-of-the-art automation, sophisticated NRCS and enterprise asset management. All the processes are seamlessly integrated to deliver real-time stories to the fast-paced newsroom.

And we are always happy to improve our customers technology!

LARGE-SCALE RENOVATION IN GTRK «CHUKOTKA»

GTRK «Chukotka» is a member of Federal State Unitary Enterprise “The Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Company“. It is based in the farthest part of Russia in the city of Anadyr. Recently it saw a large-scale renovation. While our specialists were busy with training it was running in Test mode. Now the broadcaster is equipped with the state-of-the-art technology.

GTRK «Chukotka» implemented a NewsHouse Newsroom system which had an immediate impact on efficiency and productivity.

This revolutionary approach will enhance delivering real-time stories to the fast-paced newsroom environment and enable to work as a team more efficiently.

From a technical perspective, it was indispensable that the new system would allow journalists, editors, and producers to collaboratively plan, create and deliver news.

All the colleagues from GTRK «Chukotka very much welcomed advanced tools for planning, ingest, scripting, editing, production, playout, analysis and archive.

The Governor of Chukotka region Roman Kopin visited GTRK «Chukotka» in person in order to experience how it all was going there, to speak with the specialists and learn more about the facilities and services.

About Azimuth Soft

We are committed to creating and implementing state-of-the art TV broadcast automation solutions to ensure our customers are empowered with smart and scalable technology. Our goal is to enable our customers perform better and grow as the industry evolves. From a business standpoint, we have a history of having the ability to identify unique customer needs and to design solutions and provide technical support which solve those needs, along with consistent excellent quality. But our vision is not simply about great products, it is more a reflection of the kind of future we all want to live and work.

For more information on Azimuth Soft, visit www.azimuthsoft.tv

OTT and AI: What content providers must know

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“The revolution will not be televised”

The great hook from the 1971 song by Gill Scott-Heron never felt so apt when we think of it in context to the streaming revolution that we are witnessing today. A phenomenon which was spearheaded by Netflix and Hulu about a decade ago has now gone mainstream. On-demand content has broken linear viewing schedules and led traditional broadcasters to rethink their business model around this change.

With vast improvements in internet speeds and an increase in the number of video-supporting handheld devices, consumers have shifted their focus from traditional television broadcasters to over-the-top (OTT) media services that stream over the internet.

In a time when the world is battling the coronavirus crisis, cord-cutting has accelerated and streaming entertainment services are seeing a high adoption. The desire to break away from TV schedules and have anywhere-anytime access to high-quality content has been fundamental drivers of this change.

With the change in TV viewing habits, traditional media has realized this shift and started to provide the same experience as video on demand and OTT platforms. The entry of new players like HBO Max and the recent acquisition of Pluto TV by Viacom are some examples where broadcasters are taking the direct-to-consumer (D2C) route.

It’s not only entertainment; sports broadcasters and leagues such as Bundesliga and Premier League have also recognized the surge towards OTT platforms and are planning to bring sports content directly to users by launching their own OTT platforms. Many leagues are selling their rights to produce and showcase content directly on OTT platforms. Today, broadcasters are now investing heavily in an array of shows for their new services

In this article, we will explore the trends that are most relevant to content providers concerning the OTT revolution and see how content providers can use technology to adapt to these changes.

What are the major trends visible in this space?

Over the years, OTT has established itself as a new-age content consumption platform. With constantly changing user needs and competition in the market, OTT players are evolving, and we can see a significant change in the way the content is being served.

1. First signs of market saturation for streaming giants

With the entry of Disney+ and other OTT services, there are early signs of market saturation for the US Giants. With every major broadcaster in the process of launching or acquiring streaming services, the market is competing for a share of the wallet and aiming for higher viewing hours.

OTT companies are leveraging personalization and enhancing search capability to keep audiences engaged on their platforms and prevent churn. During this time, people might choose to unsubscribe if they are not able to remain engaged with the content and might look for other options.

2. Rise of originals

Tech players are foraying into the realm of creating their content, also known as ‘originals’. Tech companies that have access to consumption and preference data of their consumers are well-poised to spend on developing original stories. These shows/movies are produced wholly in-house or in co-production with other studios with OTT channels taking over the creative control. Many examples can be cited of existing archives or old videos being repurposed to create content and becoming instant hits. The Manchester City documentary on Amazon Prime and The Last Dance on Netflix are two significant examples of old archived content released as originals. Amazon Prime itself has kept USD 6B aside for in-house or co-production projects aimed at creating more Originals.

3. Evolving interest towards international content

There is an increasing interest in the demand for international content on OTT streaming services. The popularity of shows like Money Heist, Dark, and acclaimed movies like Parasite only confirms this trend. Subtitles have succeeded in breaking the language barrier and are instrumental in driving this interest in overseas content. But these subtitles need to be highly accurate if they are to convey the right meaning and allow the emotions of the original dialogue to come through.

How content providers can leverage AI to be OTT-ready

1. Adherence to OTT compliance

Distributing a movie/TV show over a digital platform across different geographies has some challenges. Content producers and editors have to deal with multiple content formats, each with its own video specifications. These need to be processed and delivered quickly under the various compliance standards for audio and video quality, captioning, subtitles, and censor edits.

Since the target audience of OTT players typically covers a broad demographic, OTT providers need to ensure that they follow a standard format while publishing content. The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) has created the Interoperable Master Format (IMF), a standard that all media companies can follow to ensure that they adhere to regulatory compliances.

OTT players need to ensure adherence to regulatory compliances and optimum quality of the media they produce. Post-production efforts to make a piece of content comply with IMF standards involve high manual bandwidth and can be a tedious task for content owners. AI-based compliance and QC solutions can check and identify anomalies concerning audio and video, detect missing closed captions, and ensure adherence to OTT distribution, thereby boosting post-production efficiency.

To know more, read this case study on how a mass media conglomerate was able to boost its efficiency fivefold by using AI-enabled workflows.

2. International distribution requirements

The increase in demand in recent years has put a strain on traditional workflows for localization, and OTT players are looking to reduce the ‘time to market’ when it comes to international audiences. For this, subtitles of content should comply with both audio and video formats. Manually aligning subtitles to the corresponding scenes requires significant effort.
AI can be instrumental in this regard. It can auto-conform the subtitles in different languages to the corresponding scenes to automatically generate an integrated asset that complies with subtitle standards.

3. Preventing customer churns

Retaining your subscribers is one of the foremost objectives of OTT players in the current scenario. This can be achieved through a higher degree of personalisation by the use of content-based recommendation engines.

“No matter how good your content is, it doesn’t matter if it cannot be found”

Content searchability is another key area of interest that is currently being explored. But the precursor to making your content searchable is the presence of rich content metadata.

This metadata to analyse content at a deeper level can be generated by AI tagging engines, which can unlock multiple opportunities with content in terms of analytics, repurposing, and monetization. This provides a great opportunity for platforms where they can combine user metrics with deep content insights and get a 360-degree view on what is working for their content.

Conclusion

OTT service providers can leverage AI across the media value chain, from content creation to distribution. Hypertagging engines which generate media relevant metadata at scale can be used for gathering deep content insights, discover specific moments and accelerate editorial workflows.

This is by no means an exhaustive list but can be taken as a primer to encourage media players to think of technology as an enabler in navigating the streaming landscape.

Customizing AI for Sports

Link to original article: https://athenasowl.tv/customizing-ai-for-sports/?&utm_source=iabm&utm_medium=referral

World cups, league tournaments, Grand Slams and Super Bowl! It’s safe to say that the buzz around sports is never-ending. However, the prevailing situation is a challenging run for sports and fans, alike. There has been a steep slump in viewership over the last couple of months. ESPN’s viewership has dropped by 50%, while the NBA has seen a 14% decline in viewership contrasted to 2019.

The current pandemic has affected many sections of the sports media due to social distancing measures and government-imposed restrictions. Nonetheless, sports fans across the world seem to be eagerly awaiting their next game. A study conducted by Forbes about sports fans showed that though there has been a lack of live games, fans are as hopeful as ever. For instance, the Green Bay Packers that compete in the NFL have a season-ticket waiting list with 137,000 people.

This brings up the inquiry – how can sporting leagues and broadcasters improvise to keep fans at the centre and what role can technology play when it comes to fan engagement?

How AI can help in maximizing the value of existing sports content archives.

Blending Sports with Storytelling

Storytelling in sports is becoming a new trend. OTT platforms are featuring documentaries, created from game content and from hours-and-hours of behind-the-scenes and locker-room footage. ESPN’s docuseries featuring Michael Jordan and the legacy of Chicago Bulls (The Last Dance) has seized audiences around the world, with over 5.6 million views since its release. Many such documentaries have released on different sports and on different OTT platforms.

This trend has made sporting leagues realize the latent potential of existing sports archives. Technology that can help to find special story-worthy moments and help in repurposing this content can provide a huge lift to fan engagement actions.

AI can help in searching for specific moments from this based on facial and emotional recognition and help discover other edit-worthy moments to fast-track the process of story creation.

Match Facts and Insights

Recently, the German Football League (DFL) announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to drive advanced analytics across its platform and broadcasting. In every match, DFL collects around 3.6 million data assets to gain a more in-depth insight into the game. These insights are then shared with national and international broadcasters so that their 500 million fans worldwide can understand the match, players’ positions, and the probability of goals more quickly.

Quick and Custom Highlights

During most sporting events, multiple live feeds capture the same match from different angles. And the content producers are left to manually analyze and extract relevant content from this bulk data. With the help of technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI), content creators and distributors can curate sports content with the utmost ease. Applications include the creation of:

  • Quick highlights: The use of AI-enabled editing workflows can minimize the turnaround of generating stresses.
  • Custom highlights: Use of AI can also create custom highlights for different user segments depending on the fanbase, interest areas, region, etc., allowing broadcasters to improve customer targeting, ratings, and revenue.

How AI gets customized for a particular sport

While techniques of tagging and analysis of sports media have been employed by various AI entities, the combined use of these techniques to create custom highlights is a novel venture. Sports media is a unique playing field for AI technology, given the abundance of information created during each event. Streamlining the analysis of this data and applying it in a financially viable manner is potentially game-changing.

“To unleash the full potential of sports archives, the content needs to be enriched with high-quality granular metadata”

Hypertagging engines that have a specialized taxonomy for a particular sport leads to higher accuracy in results. This aids in better search and retrieval of specific moments from many hours of content.

The critical thing to note here is that cookie-cutter computer vision technology does not serve the needs of sports, as every game is different.

The AI developed should be contextualized with specific elements of that sport, and then the solution should be able to deliver on the last-mile journey in production environments.

What kind of information can be extracted from sports?

Meta-tagging a key moment in a game involves collating information on five important aspects.

  • Camera angle detection: Information regarding whether the frame is shot from an aerial view, as a closeup, or at a field angle.
  • Custom location detection: Information on the primary subject of the frame is captured. In this instance, the focus is on the key players. In other cases, it could be the crowd, the ball, or the field.
  • Logo detection: The logos on the players’ jerseys or on the ground are detected depending on the camera’s angle.
  • Face recognition: Most importantly, AI can also collect information on players whenever their faces are captured at suitable angles.
  • Emotion detection: Detecting useful emotion sequences of players with editorial objectives in mind.

By integrating the detection of multiple facets of information ranging from camera angle detection to face recognition, sports content becomes ready to be edited. The final step is to intelligently assemble these moments to either create multiple highlights of a single game or curate numerous moments into a story which inspires.

To know more on how AthenasOwl helps sporting leagues and broadcasters in for fast searching and retrieval of content, explore our Smart Catalog solution.

In Conversation with HPA – episode 2

In this video, IABM CEO Peter White catches up with Seth Hallen, President of HPA to see how things have changed since they last spoke (video available here).

We hear about the mission and purpose of HPA, their “The Lost Lederhosen” project showing how a short movie could be made employing remote workflows from acquisition through post.

Peter and Seth continue with a discussion around the accelerated move toward cloud-bassed workflows in media production and which areas of the production chain have experienced an expediated move to the cloud along with the lessons learnt by media companies.

Another trend in the industry has been the focus on digital archiving to take advantage of existing assets due to a significant content shortage, Peter asks Seth whether the production and post industry can take further advantage of data to, for example, provide media companies with additional monetization opportunities.

The interview finishes with a look to the future and whether the industry will make up for the dramatic reduction of productions, how freelancers can come out of the pandemic and what we have learnt about remote working and collaboration.