Net Insight – Boosting monetization with media-centric video delivery networks
Jonathan Smith, Solution Area Expert at Net Insight
With the global economic headwinds pressuring all industries, media companies are strategizing about expanding their content’s reach, tapping new audiences, and driving more revenue streams.
Delivering super high-quality live video content swiftly, reliably, and on a large scale is non-negotiable. As media companies pivot to reach audiences across markets, they need the right network backbone to remain agile. However, many media organizations still rely on generic transport workflows for their premium content, missing out on the advantages of new, software-defined transport networks explicitly tailored for media.
Innovation in software-defined transport networks that are media-centric in nature renders these networks ready to meet the stringent quality, synchronization, and reliability requirements of the media industry. When it comes to valuable live content, media companies can’t compromise for anything less.
The foundations of media-first video delivery networks
In the media industry, we often hear that the Internet wasn’t built for the primary delivery of live media content, but, at the end of our industry value chain, we have seen how powerful the consumer IP distribution role has become, making perfect use of ubiquitous global connectivity to reach audiences and devices otherwise out of reach or requiring large capital investments in satellite or terrestrial infrastructure.
It doesn’t take a lot for a cloud provider to move video signals and packets from point of origin to partner A and to platform B and beyond over an IP network. However, this is simply not good enough as generic IP networks, by design, lack the fundamental behaviors needed for live video transport. This is of special concern when transporting high-value media content where you only get one shot to deliver to that primary distribution point. Regardless of how good the content is, consumers don’t keep their eyes glued to it if the delivery quality and reliability aren’t exceptional. Media companies risk missing a trick in the monetization game if they don’t ensure their video feeds can be scaled across geographies and platforms in the right way.
While ARQ protocols solve the basic technical challenges of recovering packets over lossy transport, the next-generation software-defined networks that are built specifically for media transport combine the benefits of hardware-defined networks and the cloud by leveraging media-centric foundations:
Observability
A software-defined network delivers monitoring metrics that provide insight into the video signal delivery every step of the way. End to end provisioning and monitoring brings cohesive visibility that enables broadcasters and media service providers to control their media delivery and ensure it is efficient, high-quality, and seamless.
Protection
When it comes to protecting video signals, a generic IP delivery network can be vulnerable. Live video delivery requires 100% uptime and 24/7 robust and redundant services that are simply not available by default over generic IP networks.
A media-centric approach leverages the benefits of both ‘traditional’ broadcasting and modern cloud engineering to enhance the video feed protection and overcome reliability challenges.
Flexibility is key to managing the cost of IP network protection. With the right media-centric network, media companies can define the level of protection of different types of content on an input/output basis without having to make huge investments upfront.
Synchronization
Synchronization across contributed and distributed video signals is a critical capability ensuring that all destinations, regardless of their region, receive feeds at the same time. Synchronization is also crucial for the betting industry as any millisecond delay can have a big impact on the real-time betting experience and overall fan engagement and cause the broadcaster financial and reputational damage.
Driving monetization with a media-first approach
Smart broadcasters harness the power of media-centric delivery networks to distribute great quality video to new destinations flexibly, efficiently, and seamlessly. More importantly, they deliver video to destinations that make business sense when it makes sense.
A traditional approach to feed distribution would see media organizations investing upfront to get their tech infrastructure ready to scale to new video takers without, however, being able to scale down if needed. This means that media companies will need to make such investments regardless of whether they only want to take on new destinations for a specific live event or if it’s proved that distribution to a specific market or taker is not valuable or sustainable. The final traditional trap was to underinvest in the distribution, prioritizing cost-effective technology solutions in order to balance the perceived risk vs. reward, often at the expense of quality and reliability; when eyes are switched-away, you have failed before you have even started.
A media-centric delivery network can provide the agility and scalability that media organizations need when they need it and for as long as they need it. This means they are in control of their investment, they benefit from cost transparency, and they can experiment more with new destinations and live events. In other words, organizations can enjoy the flexibility of jumping on new market opportunities while delivering quality, but equally, the ability to ‘fail fast’ and remove themselves from markets that don’t bring business value quickly. Monetization opportunity cost has never been that simple or straightforward!
The right media network for media
IP and the cloud are revolutionizing the media industry but to truly harness their potential, media organizations need an extra layer — that of media-centric delivery networks.
IP transport networks that have been created specifically or overlayed to meet the requirements of media delivery, provide the quality, scalability, and agility industry players need to further monetize their video content, test different business models, and tap into new revenue streams.
In times when content monetization and proven ROI are pressing media companies, a media-first delivery network is an invaluable revenue-enabler to enable them to grow and drive efficiencies that make a difference.
