Cloud-Based SaaS Technology Leader Celebrates a Decade of Building a Comprehensive Suite of Cloud Solutions, From Playout to Monetization, to Transform Broadcast Operations
Amagi, the global leader in cloud-based SaaS technology for broadcast and connected TV, announced that it will be celebrating 10 years of pioneering and shaping cloud adoption in the broadcast and streaming industry at the 2023 NAB Show in Las Vegas, April 16-19. Combining a decade of experience in driving technology transformation in Media & Entertainment, Amagi will demonstrate an array of best-in-class, safe, reliable, and sustainable solutions for the TV and OTT ecosystem.
Amagi Selected for Strategic Partnerships as Industry Accelerates Move to the Cloud
Amagi has announced strategic partnerships with Encompass Digital Media and Imagine Communications that are designed to facilitate cloud transformation and value realization for customers.
Amagi’s strategic partnership with Imagine Communications, a global leader in advertising and media software and solutions, provides significant benefits to TV networks and broadcasters, including a better-managed path for cloud migration, hybrid operations and orchestration, improved monetization through advertising, and extensive reach into free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) and CTV platforms. More information is available here.
Amagi’s partnership with global media services company Encompass Digital Media combines the strengths of both companies — Encompass Digital Media’s expertise in managed broadcast services and Amagi’s leadership in cloud-native playout and content monetization — to provide customers with the ability to upgrade legacy workflows and scale faster through cloud-based solutions. More information is available here.
Sessions on FAST Opportunities and Enterprise Transformation
Srinivasan KA, co-founder and chief revenue officer of Amagi, will join Meredith McGinn, NBCUniversal Local’s executive vice president of Diginets & Original Production, for a special Streaming Summit session on Monday, April 17 at 1:30 p.m. in West Hall Meeting Rooms W223-W225. In “How Traditional Broadcast Networks Can Become Major Players with FAST Services,” Srinivasan and McGinn will explore the potential for large traditional broadcast networks to become major players in FAST, the business motivations for launching FAST channels, and the mindset change required for broadcast networks to adapt to the FAST world.
During the NAB Show conference, Srinivasan will speak on a panel concerning the trends that have evolved and proliferated the use of FAST. In “Monetizing Content Through FAST,” hosted Monday, April 17 at 10 a.m. in the West Hall Meeting Rooms W213-W215, Srinivasan and other experts will discuss how traditional broadcast organizations can utilize FAST to maximize reach, create incremental revenue streams, and offer improved user experiences.
In a main stage session for the Devoncroft Executive Summit, Srividhya Srinivasan, co-founder and chief customer success officer at Amagi, will speak with four companies that have transformed their enterprises through Amagi’s cloud services. Representatives from TelevisaUnivision, Sinclair Broadcast Group, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited, and Sky will share their stories in “Transformation Part-2: Enterprise Transformation” on Saturday, April 15 at 3:15 p.m.
Amagi Announces Playout Certification Program at 2023 NAB Show
Amagi’s inaugural CLOUDPORT Practitioner course — a new certification program offered through its flagship, broadcast-grade channel playout platform — will be available free-of-charge on a first-come, first-served basis at NAB. Designed primarily for schedulers and operators, the course modules cover the fundamentals of broadcast and streaming TV workflows while exploring key features like media ingest, scheduling, playout and more.
“Amagi has put together an incredible resource to make the process of building a channel more streamlined and efficient,” said Matt Celement, MRC Media. “Once the course is completed, you will have the in-depth knowledge required to lead your team to success utilizing Amagi CLOUDPORT.”
Orchestrate and Manage Linear and On-Demand Delivery in Amagi NOW
Amagi’s new unified self-service portal, Amagi NOW, delivers comprehensive, channel management, and monetization to help media companies increase operational efficiencies and optimize content performance for linear and video on demand (VOD) platforms. With competition in the streaming ecosystem growing even higher, the modular SaaS solution provides content owners and platforms with a vital advantage, improving time-to-market and achieving faster revenue realization by automating processes that increase operational efficiencies.
At NAB, Amagi will demonstrate how NOW helps content partners benefit from automated content workflows in one place, integrated scheduling and monetization, a hands-on approach with a consistent user experience, and pre-integration of platforms for linear and VOD delivery. Key highlights include:
- Comprehensive workflow functionality – reduces the complexity of creating and managing channels, orchestrating ingest to publishing within minutes.
- Greater process automation – allows content management, scheduling, distribution, and monetization to happen in a unified, intuitive and automated way.
- Seamless playout – simplifies content scheduling in playlists and seamlessly plays out to one or more channels with rich metadata and advanced EPG support.
- Integration with Amagi THUNDERSTORM – provides advanced analytics to improve revenue-boosting insights on performance, monetization, and viewership, thereby expanding device reach, avoiding ad blockers, and delivering better-quality viewer experiences with integrated server-side ad insertion.
Utilize Advanced Ad Formats With Amagi THUNDERSTORM
The third generation of Amagi THUNDERSTORM, the company’s dynamic, server-side ad insertion (SSAI) solution, offers content owners and platforms higher revenue opportunities. The newest version of THUNDERSTORM is built to provide best-in-class ad render rates — the ratio between the number of ads inserted and the number of ads available — and provides modern-day broadcasters and media content owners with a wide range of benefits, enabling them to achieve ad revenue growth at scale on OTT and FAST platforms.
At NAB, Amagi will demonstrate how THUNDERSTORM increases ad revenue and relevance by enabling advanced ad formats, contextually relevant ads, flexible ad sourcing options, and adaptability to a wide range of media devices and platforms. Key highlights will include:
- Increased render rates: The new version of Amagi THUNDERSTORM significantly increases monetization by enabling a double-digit increase in render rate, driven by lower latencies on ad requests, ad request optimization based on playlist requests, better caching of ads, configurable delay adjustments for each demand, and better user ad request management.
- Availability on customer’s cloud: Amagi THUNDERSTORM is available both as a SaaS-hosted offering and as an API-driven module in the customer’s own cloud, enabling customers to manage their investments effectively.
- Enhanced revenue opportunities with non-linear ads: Amagi THUNDERSTORM now offers support for advanced ad formats including overlays, L-Bands, and lower-thirds as well as dynamic brand insertion, providing new revenue opportunities without disrupting viewer engagement, in collaboration with partners like TripleLift.
- Improved cost per impression (CPM) with contextual targeting: Thanks to partners like IRIS TV, Amagi THUNDERSTORM natively supports contextual targeting, allowing better monetization of ads and improved targeting for advertisers.
- Higher reliability: Amagi THUNDERSTORM’s real-time alerting framework will detect anomalous drops and spikes in metrics to enable quick corrections and reduce faults. The real-time alerting framework will detect any issue, such as a fall in ad render rates or response rates, and automatically alert Amagi’s NOC team to identify and help fix the underlying problem.
Improve Workflow Efficiencies for Live Content With Amagi CLOUDPORT
The latest version of Amagi CLOUDPORT, the company’s broadcast-grade channel playout platform, offers various features that simplify programming and streamline workflows for broadcast and CTV-led FAST. From media ingest to scheduling and playout, Amagi CLOUDPORT delivers comprehensive workflow functionality, providing greater value to content while reducing the complexity of managing it. As a high-performance solution, Amagi CLOUDPORT offers HD and UHD video quality, captions support, advanced graphics, low latency, and ad placement with a choice of redundancy levels to make sure channels never go down.
Amagi CLOUDPORT’s latest improvements allow for more efficient operations by a single user, make programming simpler and faster, and help streamline playout workflows. At NAB, Amagi will host two separate demonstrations on CLOUDPORT’s orchestration for sports and news segments.
As an enterprise-ready industry leader in cloud technologies, Amagi has helped broadcasters and content creators explore the advantages of cloud and FAST. Key customers include Fox Television, ABS-CBN, Cinedigm, Lionsgate, AccuWeather, USA Today, Samsung TV Plus, The Roku Channel, NBCUniversal, A+E Networks UK, Tastemade, Cox Media Group, DAZN, Curiosity Stream, and XUMO.
For more information about Amagi and its streaming TV solutions, visit www.amagi.com.
About Amagi
Amagi is a next-generation media technology company that provides cloud broadcast and targeted advertising solutions to broadcast TV and streaming TV platforms. Amagi enables content owners to launch, distribute and monetize live linear channels on Free Ad-supported Streaming TV and video services platforms. Amagi also offers 24×7 cloud services bringing simplicity, advanced automation, and transparency to the entire broadcast operations. Overall, Amagi supports 700+ content brands, 800+ playout chains, and over 2100 channel deliveries on its platform in over 40 countries. Amagi has a presence in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, London, Paris, Melbourne, Seoul, Singapore, and broadcast operations in New Delhi, and an innovation center in Bangalore.
