Comcast Technology Solutions Certified Partners Program
Video standards and customer expectations are constantly evolving and new technology solutions are required to stay competitive. There are more than a dozen platforms on which consumers watch video, each with support for varying video streaming, caption, and digital rights management (DRM) formats, not to mention application development APIs and platform capabilities. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are profoundly changing our understanding of not only user behavior and your business’s health, but the content itself. Monetizing your video content requires ever greater sophistication, not only by providing different business models (AVOD, TVOD, SVOD, XVOD), but also optimizing customer acquisition and retention (CRM, paid and organic search, social). Distribution must be scaled, and measured to ensure timely delivery, no buffering, and fast time to first frame.
Video is hard to do right, and the consistent quality of every video experience is foundational to a healthy consumer lifetime value. Choosing the right mix of vendors and partners to launch a video solution is critical to commercial success. Comcast Technology Solutions is fortunate to partner with leading technology providers across the industry, and around the globe, to deliver best-in-class experiences to our customers, and our customers’ customers. To that end, we’re excited to announce the launch of the Comcast Technology Solutions Certified Partner Program to address these complexities.
CERTIFIED PARTNER BENEFITS
We work closely with our Certified Partners across a broad ecosystem of specialties to ensure the most consistently reliable, trusted, and cost-effective integrations with Comcast Technology Solutions’ portfolio of products and services. Together with our Certified Partners, we continually assess, improve, and evolve our joint offerings to ensure our customers benefit from rapid time-to-market, and our combined, emerging roadmap updates.
When our customers select a Certified Partner, they are assured that the partner’s product integration into Comcast Technology Solutions’ technology stack is well-scoped, follows our best practices, and has passed rigorous technical validation.
Certified partners receive training and support on our technologies, as well as guidance on each project from initial product integration all the way through to customer delivery.
Partner integrations are evaluated and certified for technical compliance, as well as for transparency and alignment across our sales, marketing, product, and delivery teams.
All Certified Partners build their integrations against the same set of Comcast Technology Solutions specifications, which ensures a level playing field where partner product solutions can predictably interoperate, differentiate and shine.
INITIAL LAUNCH
Our initial launch of Certified Partners includes industry leading partners in the Audience Insights & Analytics and UX & Application space.
Jump TVS, Streamhub, and Wicket Labs each offer unique solutions to enable audience measurement and rich insights, as well as the overall health of the business.
Accedo and Diagnal are experts in video application development, offering a variety of products and solutions that will grow with every business.
We are proud to welcome them to the program. Comcast Technology Solutions and our Certified Partners across the ecosystem enable customers to put more focus on their business, and less on their technology stack. Because Certified Partners’ solutions are well scoped and vetted, our customers know what they are getting, and when they are going to get it. By deploying Certified Partners’ solutions, Comcast Technology Solutions customers realize faster time-to-market and thus time-to-value.
If you’re a current customer looking for a well-integrated partner solution, take a look at our current roster of Certified Partners here.
If you’re a partner or vendor who is interested in bringing your solution closer together with Comcast Technology Solutions’ products and services through our Certification program, contact us!
COMCAST TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS CERTIFIED PARTNERS PROGRAM
Comcast Technology Solutions
2018-11-23
2018-11-23
Blog
https://www.comcasttechnologysolutions.com/sites/default/files/2016-09/CTS_Final.jpg
Video standards and customer expectations are constantly evolving and new technology solutions are required to stay competitive. There are more than a dozen platforms on which consumers watch video, each with support for varying video streaming, caption, and digital rights management (DRM) formats, not to mention application development APIs and platform capabilities. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are profoundly changing our understanding of not only user behavior and your business’s health, but the content itself. Monetizing your video content requires ever greater sophistication, not only by providing different business models (AVOD, TVOD, SVOD, XVOD), but also optimizing customer acquisition and retention (CRM, paid and organic search, social). Distribution must be scaled, and measured to ensure timely delivery, no buffering, and fast time to first frame. Video is hard to do right, and the consistent quality of every video experience is foundational to a healthy consumer lifetime value. Choosing the right mix of vendors and partners to launch a video solution is critical to commercial success. Comcast Technology Solutions is fortunate to partner with leading technology providers across the industry, and around the globe, to deliver best-in-class experiences to our customers, and our customers’ customers. To that end, we’re excited to announce the launch of the Comcast Technology Solutions Certified Partner Program to address these complexities. CERTIFIED PARTNER BENEFITS We work closely with our Certified Partners across a broad ecosystem of specialties to ensure the most consistently reliable, trusted, and cost-effective integrations with Comcast Technology Solutions’ portfolio of products and services. Together with our Certified Partners, we continually assess, improve, and evolve our joint offerings to ensure our customers benefit from rapid time-to-market, and our combined, emerging roadmap updates. • When our customers select a Certified Partner, they are assured that the partner’s product integration into Comcast Technology Solutions’ technology stack is well-scoped, follows our best practices, and has passed rigorous technical validation. • Certified partners receive training and support on our technologies, as well as guidance on each project from initial product integration all the way through to customer delivery. • Partner integrations are evaluated and certified for technical compliance, as well as for transparency and alignment across our sales, marketing, product, and delivery teams. • All Certified Partners build their integrations against the same set of Comcast Technology Solutions specifications, which ensures a level playing field where partner product solutions can predictably interoperate, differentiate and shine. INITIAL LAUNCH Our initial launch of Certified Partners includes industry leading partners in the Audience Insights & Analytics and UX & Application space. Jump TVS, Streamhub, and Wicket Labs each offer unique solutions to enable audience measurement and rich insights, as well as the overall health of the business. Accedo and Diagnal are experts in video application development, offering a variety of products and solutions that will grow with every business. We are proud to welcome them to the program. Comcast Technology Solutions and our Certified Partners across the ecosystem enable customers to put more focus on their business, and less on their technology stack. Because Certified Partners’ solutions are well scoped and vetted, our customers know what they are getting, and when they are going to get it. By deploying Certified Partners’ solutions, Comcast Technology Solutions customers realize faster time-to-market and thus time-to-value. • If you’re a current customer looking for a well-integrated partner solution, take a look at our current roster of Certified Partners here. • If you’re a partner or vendor who is interested in bringing your solution closer together with Comcast Technology Solutions’ products and services through our Certification program, contact us! .
Comcast Technology Solutions
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Broadcast Quality? It's Still a Thing.
What has a stronger impact on an audience’s perception – a great experience or a singularly awful one? In a world where every viewer is also a social media publisher in their own right, we could certainly point out the consequences of poor video performance (like we did in our March eBook). As consumers, we really don’t need to look much further than our own behavior. If something’s not loading quickly, or playing without interruption, it’s not getting played.
The hunt for consistent broadcast quality across device types is the foundation of any long-term viewer relationship. Today, content can not only be viewed across devices, but also across devices via different platforms. For example, your living room smart TV can play the same piece of content through its own built-in platform, through your cable provider, through a game console, or some other connected device. Where folks choose to gorge themselves on video is an experiential thing, and more often than not it’s an experience that’s inexorably tied to other experiences. No matter where these experiences occur, broadcast quality is increasingly the standard.
Technology leaders weigh in . . .
We asked over 200 technology managers in our industry to share their perspectives on where we are at in the quest for broadcast quality and what keeps them up at night. We’ve published the results in a whitepaper called Survive and Thrive: The Changing Environment for Content Services and Video Services. In this paper, the quality question offers some interesting online/broadcast comparison: Over-the-air broadcast and pay TV linear channels are an important part of the respondents’ distribution strategy (with 44 percent and 34 percent of respondents, respectively),
When asked the question “when will online video meet / exceed TV quality and reliability,” the results showed pretty significant split between the respondents who think “we’re already there” and the ones who view parity as a next-decade thing :
Regardless of where they felt we were in the process, consumers are certainly happy with the across-the-board improvements to resolution, color, and overall playback quality: Ericsson ConsumerLab reports an 84% satisfaction rate with online video from their own study[1].
Exceeding (and shaping) tomorrow’s consumer expectations
With the accelerating commercial adoption of 4K / UHD / HDR screens, and the eventual arrival of consumer devices that can take advantage of the ATSC 3.0 broadcast standard, we are of course seeing a massive increase in available 4K programming across the entire provider ecosystem. While clearly a significant improvement in picture quality, the sheer size of ultra-high definition video files bring new challenges of their own. As consumers acquire more of a taste for (and an ability to play) “the good stuff,” every touchpoint in the delivery workflow is more heavily taxed by having to store, transcode, and deliver files that are up to four times bigger than standard. It’s a lot of change that needs to be managed all at once, especially when the premium prices for premium content create premium expectations. It’s no wonder that 92% of our respondents said that meeting or exceeding broadcast quality and reliability is still important.
To learn more about how our respondents feel about a wide range of topics, including the use of cloud technology and artificial intelligence, download the whitepaper here.
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The Changing Video Distribution Services Environment for Content Providers
We recently partnered with Broadcasting & Cable and TV Technology to sponsor a new research paper called “Survive and Thrive: The Changing Environment for Content and Video Providers.” For this paper, the survey targeted technology managers who are responsible for the implementation of video distribution services. Participants were asked to rank the importance of ten of their most pressing business challenges. Discoverability topped the survey as the number one challenge, with 71 percent of participants rating it higher than maximizing lifetime value or controlling operational costs. With over 200 premium video services in the market, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for brands to get noticed; but consumers have to find the front door before any other performance metric matters.
The attached infographic illuminates some more findings from the research:
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So, where are content and video providers placing their focus?
Personalized Experiences
The subscriber-based service model clearly works, but what’s the secret ingredient that keeps members paying – and actively using – a service? The answer is probably unique to each provider’s audience, but the end result is the same: a media experience that learns how to remain relevant to paying customers by showcasing the right content, using member insights to guide decisions, and delivering trusted, high-quality viewing.
Cost-Effective Technology
Multi-platform video delivery is complicated and expensive. It behooves companies to quickly capitalize on partnerships and efficiencies that can free up resources for content creation and curation. The results of this survey might indicate that the promise of the cloud is still viewed with caution, but with rising content costs and more direct-to-customer offerings on the horizon, time to market is a critical success factor that cloud solutions can greatly improve.
“Hybridized” Monetization
It’s increasingly common to see an ad when watching something that’s part of a subscription that you’ve already paid for. Providers are getting smarter about how to organize and monetize their experiences, not just to maximize the value of each asset, but also to make purchase decisions easier. Tiered memberships, targeted incentives, and promotions that incentivize new viewers are all part of a mature monetization strategy.
Want to know more? Download the research paper, “Survive and Thrive: The Changing Environment for Content and Video Providers,” here.
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Your Player: How Fast to First Frame?
Did you “like” or “dislike” a video this week?
Watching video is an emotional experience. Sure, most programming is supposed to be – your favorite program, a riveting news piece, or even a lousy movie will all elicit a specific feeling, but even the most straightforward and not-very-interesting piece of content is still elevated when delivered by video as opposed to straight text. Why? Simply put, video is essentially an amalgam of every other communication medium. With your brain engaged by text, pictures, and sound, stories become more memorable and knowledge is transmitted and retained more completely. With a plurality of our senses working in concert, we’re not only more inclined to make purchase decisions, we’re also more likely to abandon a video that isn’t getting the job done:
Video is such an effective sales tool that according to recent research from Hubspot, 81% of polled businesses are using it – that’s up from 63% just last year. [1]
Over 85% of online viewers who stop watching a video left because the loading time was too long. [2]
67% of viewers say that quality is the most important factor when watching live streamed programming [3]
The long and short of it is this: whether someone is clicking “Play” or the video is set to start with a page load, every second between the intended start and the actual start brings you closer to viewer abandonment. No matter if your goals are to inform, inspire, elicit, or entertain, playback quality really, really matters. To add more complexity to the mix, our multi-screen consumption habits require that your video performs well no matter if it’s being viewed in a living room, at a desktop, on a phone, or anything else in your life that has a screen on it. Meeting consumers on their terms only works if their expectations are being met or exceeded.
PDK6: OPTIMIZED PLAYBACK PERFORMANCE
Both speed and quality drove the innovations contained in the newly-released sixth version of our Player Development Kit (PDK6). Built from the ground up for the most up-to-date browser standards for playback, UI rendering, and autoplay requirements, PDK6 is optimized to be the fastest to first frame, with playback at lightning-fast speeds in most cases. PDK6 brings a host of improvements to the consumer experience, as well as to operational efficiency:
Better advertising: PDK6 loads faster, renders ads natively, and supports both client and server-side ad insertion out-of-the-box and integrates with ad-serving platforms.
Unmatched flexibility: The streamlined and mobile-friendly UI building make PDK6 easy to implement and customize, while also providing a consistent player experience across browser platforms and device types.
Broad industry support: PDK6 is pre-integrated with third-party analytics vendors, and provides support for analytics solutions from providers such as comScore, Nielsen, Google, NPAW, and much more.
To learn more about the capabilities of PDK6, download the technical one-sheet here.
[1] “The State of Video Marketing in 2018,” Hubspot, January 24, 2018.
[2] “2017 Video Streaming Perceptions Report.” Mux, April 13, 2017.
[3] “What Audiences Expect from Live Video,” New York Magazine and Livestream, infographic, 2017
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Digital Rights Management - a Multi-Platform Checklist
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is, at its core, a way to protect the long-term value of intellectual property in a content-driven economy (for those interested in the history of DRM, Vice.com’s Motherboard published a fantastic article last year on the subject). Content access has to be managed across a dizzying combination of device types and streaming formats, not to mention mobile devices that can travel in and out of different programming areas. No matter where someone is, what device he/she is using, or what platform is running, your technology stack must be capable of understanding and granting consumer requests instantaneously.
A primary driver of DRM complexity is simply that there’s no single “right answer” to enable DRM – every destination uses a rights management approach to meet their needs. There are several components in a complete service that you should look for so you can:
Establish licensing
Negotiate handshakes between the consumer’s player and the right DRM provider for the viewer’s interaction
Streamline the entitlements process to make it a seamless and unobtrusive part of a consumer’s experience
JITP/E for Content Prep and Encryption
Storage is an issue that gets more challenging as consumers demand higher and higher quality video. Better quality means bigger files, and each one of those files needs an iteration that’s formatted for consumption by all the browsers, mobile apps, set-top boxes and other TV-connected devices you’re working to reach. Just-In-Time Packaging and Encryption (JITP/E) creates format-specific video on request, reducing redundant file storage. JITP/E also enables the multitude of adaptive bit rate (ABR) packaging format+encryption schemes on the fly so that it’s unnoticed by the consumer. Once a video is encrypted, it also needs to be decrypted for playback based on the end-user’s device / platform requirements such as:
HLS / Fairplay for iOS and OSX devices
DASH / Widevine for Android and Chrome devices
DASH / PlayReady for Microsoft devices and set-top boxes (STBs)
Key Management Service
Key management processes are unique for each DRM method and not something where you can just “flip a switch.” Whether it’s configuration and testing, encryption, user authentication, or playback, you’ll need to maintain relationships with every key management company required to reach a device-diverse audience. Here at Comcast Technology Solutions we let clients dictate just how much of those functions they want to control, or we can manage the entire DRM relationship / process ecosystem.
License Management
License management, token authentication, and decryption key transmissions are all parts of your DRM process that need to provide a solid pathway from user request to content delivery. Once a video is packaged and DRM-protected for the platform and device of a specific playback request, it’s ready for the user to receive it from a server within your content delivery network (CDN) – provided that the user is authenticated and a license to unlock the content for playback is granted and provided.
Entitlement Setup and Modification
Entitlements establish the conditions that a user needs to meet in order to be entitled to watch a program. This conditional access is really complicated in a multi-platform environment and must be assessed for each request. Just some of the factors that your entitlements process must solve for:
Users might have entitlements on multiple devices
There might be specific limitations, such as a cap on monthly usage, tiered access to specific files or higher-definition video, or limitations created by the device itself
Off-line viewing might have unique requirements of its own
It can sometimes be easy to confuse license delivery with entitlements, yet each brings a unique set of capabilities to the overall DRM solution.
Licensing: DRM and its associated license control the physical access to the video file such as how many times it can be played on a specific set of hardware and for how long before an entitlement check needs to be performed again.
Entitlements: The entitlement system controls the consumer’s access to the asset based on the business or purchase model employed (e.g. is the user currently a paying subscriber either as part of the native D2C experience or via a TV-V model, did the user just purchase rental access to an asset than only allow the asset to be viewed a certain number of times in the rental period).
Using these two access control systems in concert allows content providers to offer a wide array of flexible monetization and protection combinations. The ability to maintain dynamic control over user entitlements is more than just a crucial management function. It’s also a vital part of your monetization plan when consumers can easily add more variety into their experience. Upselling to a higher tier of access, or simply making it easy to buy individual content titles, are functions that have an impact on entitlements. Your DRM solution should give you a clear snapshot of all the entitlements granted to viewers, and the ability to easily modify those rights.
Ultimately, your end-to-end DRM solution needs to be tailored to your needs, your technology stack, and your business model. We developed our DRM approach for flexibility so that once a client’s DRM solution is customized and deployed, additions or changes to the methods used by different devices can be easily integrated to keep the entire workflow updated.
You can learn more about Comcast Technology Solutions’ Digital Rights Management capabilities here.
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Attaining Long-Term Subscriber Love
The attraction of a subscription VOD business model is a reliable revenue stream, powered by a personalized experience that evolves to remain relevant and valuable to viewers. Monetization choices are a big part of that, and have an indelible impact on the way subscribers value their services.
Planting Seeds for Organic Growth
It’s easy to see how effectively a popular show can bring a competitive destination to the attention of a larger audience. Binge-watching is a relatively new phenomena, and the increasing number of industry awards for over-the-top (OTT) movies, series, and other programming is testimony to the drive for great content that really resonates with audiences. A great show can lead to explosive growth in new subscriber sign-ups, especially when paired with the launch of new add-on options that build more value, or creative introductory offers that entice and invite deeper participation at a more attractive price. Once the allure of introductory offers and big-ticket content segues into daily use, however, media brands are learning to engage and even incentivize their members to help grow the brand organically. But what does organic growth really mean?
Simply put, it’s an emphasis on growing from the inside out. Not only through ads, search optimization, or other marketing, but also by improving the value of each relationship and cultivating a base of happy customers who will share your content with others. Just like a garden you’d tend in your back yard, organic growth starts with consistently delivering the things that keep your customers healthy – which for video includes things like a great playback experience, rich and unique content offerings, and an enduring sense of value. From there, you can provide tools for your fans to use, and incentives like gift vouchers or refer-a-friend programs that make participation rewarding and easy.
New white paper: Advanced Commerce: SVOD
Comcast Technology Solutions has just published a new paper that speaks specifically to the advanced commerce tools and techniques that SVOD destinations can employ to lengthen and strengthen subscriber relationships. Sections include:
The “Perfect Subscription VOD Model” — Your technology choices support your ability to meet each viewer on his / her terms, no matter what that means today – or what that might mean tomorrow. Subscription terms may shift based on business objectives, and offerings may evolve into a hybrid of subscription, ad-based, or transactional components to appeal to a wider range of consumers.
Making it Easy to Locate and Buy Content — Your user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design can build experiences that elevate the lifetime value of subscribers through seamless monetization opportunities and simple, effective quality of life enhancements.
Enabling Tailored Promotions and Custom Offers — Just like any other relationship, the successful SVOD business is constantly evolving along with the habits and preferences of consumers.
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The Quickening Pace of Video Delivery Workflow Convergence
Last year we kicked off 2017 by referring to it as “The Year of Converged Workflows.” And in many ways, it certainly was, with both broadcast and over-the-top (OTT) video companies learning from – and working more closely with – each other than ever before. At this year’s National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) convention in Las Vegas last month, it was clear that no matter what the video delivery vehicle is, conversations and innovations focused on merging the quality and reliable performance of broadcast with the efficiencies and multi-platform power of IP delivery. With the mid-point of the year on the horizon, here are just a couple of ways in which the world of converged workflows will continue to accelerate:
Improving communication between workflows
The landscape for 2018 and beyond is uncharted territory. In the short term, 4K programming and premium on-demand content will continue to increase the size of the average file, and the quality expectations of the average viewer. In the longer term, new forms of consumer video (VR and AR, for example), will need even more complex supporting information than a “standard” video playback. This will require a robust, intelligent video delivery superhighway that can quickly process and communicate a mountain of data. Today, the industry is laying a foundation of standards and protocols that will provide more flexibility and better machine-to-machine communication. Two highlights:
SMPTE 2110: The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers announced this suite of transport protocols last year, and as adoption increases it promises to be a big step in the right direction for a converged broadcast / IP workflow. SMPTE time-stamps the video, audio, and ancillary data of a video signal and then sends them in separate IP streams, which enables the receiving end to ensure a better playback -- or to just receive specific parts (audio only, for example) without having to accept the entire program.
SCTE 224: Each video relies on a massive amount of accompanying metadata in order to be delivered accurately, to honor all policies, restrictions, and rights, and to enable robust search discoverability. The SCTE 224 standard, which we’ve written about extensively (here’s our March blog on the subject), is not ubiquitous yet; however it’s gaining traction as an effective way to bring QAM and IP delivery into alignment. On the vMVPD front, FuboTV announced their adoption of the standard in March.
Closer collaboration between OTT and pay TV
Audiences don’t see broadcast vs. digital as an either-or proposition. Over half of US homes have both pay TV and OTT services, according to a new study by Parks and Associates. Furthermore, the same study shows the value of pay TV’s presence in the home as an important platform by which digital media brands can connect with families through a premium living room viewing experience. OTT users report watching their services from their television screens at least 50% more than other platforms such as PC’s, smartphones, or tablets. Consumers are empowered by choice, but the sheer amount of choice can make it challenging for consumers to build a personalized “library of content access” that makes it easy to manage and discover content. Every destination thrives based on its ability to deliver content that resonates with audiences, but it’s not just “the next big show” that builds lasting relationships with viewers. Local programming, live sports and events, niche programming, and monetization strategies that simplify the management of subscriptions and transactions are all part of a long-lasting consumer-content relationship.
It's worth keeping in mind that collaboration is not a matter of traditional broadcast workflows being supplanted by IP delivery in its entirety. Instead, think of it as an ongoing evolution of the hybrid models that are in operation today. After all, the points of complexity within the video delivery workflow have definitely shifted. As technology innovations simplify the production and delivery of quality content, it has also created a diverse landscape of possibilities as to how video can be used and sold. The “best of both worlds” approach solves for today’s opportunities while maintaining the adaptability needed for tomorrow’s video market.
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You’re Only Live Once
The excitement of any major live event, like this year’s college basketball playoffs, aside from being responsible for countless hours of distracted coworkers, is a great time for our industry to witness the improvements to live streaming in action on a massive scale. Digital destinations are providing a better core experience to consumers, with improved framerates and cool new personalization features. When it comes to straight-up video quality and reliability, however, satellite broadcast is a great way to spearhead a big ticket, multi-platform live event, sports or otherwise. By combining both broadcast and digital into a well-planned live event, consumers get the best of both worlds.
“Best Effort” does not an SLA make
IP-based delivery is light-years ahead of where it was just a few years ago, but as more and more consumers develop an appetite for “higher- and higher-quality” video, the widening data stream continues to push the performance limits of every platform. Advertisers and investors understand the value of reaching a gargantuan audience, but they also – rightly – seek assurances that viewers are getting an experience that supports their business objectives. A best-effort IP-based delivery means that there’s no guarantee that the end result will meet any quality metrics, or that the stream will even be successful.
Dan Rayburn, streaming video analyst at Frost & Sullivan, pointed out a common problem with live streaming in a recent interview with Fast Company: there are so many potential failure points, solving for them all is an expensive proposition that most services don’t account for. “When a backup doesn’t kick in, or you don’t have it, or you haven’t planned for it, or you don’t want to spend the money for it, well, your live event’s going to go down,” said Rayburn. Accountability for streaming quality is still a challenge. It’s one thing to talk about how many people tuned in to a streaming event, and another thing entirely to talk about lag, buffering, or streams that were lost entirely.
Broadcast, on the other hand, provides the availability and reliability that consumers have relied upon since the first days of live television. It’s that straightforward, low-latency, consistent quality that digital delivery is benchmarked against. When millions of dollars (or more) are on the line, it can be an exceptionally costly corner to cut.
The satellite-forward, service-first model
The best delivery architecture is one that leverages the strengths of broadcast and digital into a seamless multi-platform workflow – piloted by expert event engineers who plan every transmission and quarterback the communication from start to finish. Look at it this way:
IP-only: lower cost, complex failsafes required, “best effort” performance
Broadcast: more expensive, rock-solid best practices, high availability and reliability
Strategic use of both: trusted, cost-effective performance that supports both linear television and cloud experiences
It’s impossible to overstate the value that an experienced team brings to a top-tier live event; not just in overall quality, but in cost savings as well. A complex live-streaming event, such as a high-profile awards show, is a great example. There are cameras everywhere: the red carpet and interview areas out front, around the audience, the main stage, backstage, etc.
A well-planned and executed event will map out all redundancy paths, but also will prioritize the use of broadcast signal. For example, the main stage cameras would be captured via broadcast to ensure quality, but ancillary feeds could be digital-only, saving costs.
Satellite and digital captures are then converged into a master control so that the complete program can be compiled, encoded, and distributed across platforms.
“Simulated” live events open up more possibilities
The hybridized broadcast / digital model is really a best-of-both worlds architecture that not only bakes in the video quality and process redundancy expected of a major live event, it also opens up opportunities to appeal to viewers in new ways. A program can be created that captures the immediacy and advertising allure of a live event, while also incorporating existing video assets into one seamless program. A live studio audience portion, for instance, could be woven into a playlist with sections of non-live material, encoded and then distributed just like a linear television feed. It’s a cost-effective way of producing a special “one night only” event, or a way for a large organization – a coast-to-coast church broadcast, for instance – to maintain a live “feel” with the dependable quality that keeps viewers engaged.
Live programming is going through the roof, with media brands of all stripes working to realize – and monetize – experiences that bring viewers closer to a true “front row experience” than ever before. That said, there are no do-overs in live video; so before the world tunes in, it’s worth the extra planning to ensure that viewers on any platform get the kind of quality that keeps them in their seats.
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Multi-CDN Optimization: The Importance of Measuring Each and Every Stream
One way a CDN competes for your video delivery business is by showing you data that proves that it is faster than other CDNs. Every CDN has a handful of industry reports, third-party tests, and/or head-to-head customer bake-offs that prove that at least sometimes, under some conditions, they are fastest.
But none of that data answers the questions that really count: how well does each CDN perform for you, delivering video to your end users? And how can you combine two or three CDNs to get the best video experience for every user?
Any CDN’s overall performance is an average of how that CDN performs on millions of deliveries; across many regions; to dozens of different devices; connected to hundreds of access networks; at different times of the day and days of the week; and averaged over hundreds or thousands of customers – all under constantly changing conditions. Reducing all of those variables to a single, average statistic ignores all the complexity and volatility inherent in the real-world conditions under which end users watch video.
For example, each customer has its own line-up of CDNs, and is mapped to a particular subset of each CDN’s resources; each customer’s users are distributed differently – geographically, across access networks, and across devices; and the demand profile against each customer’s content catalog varies and is unique.
The most effective way to manage an environment this complex – and ensure the best possible results – is to measure the performance of each CDN as it delivers each and every video stream, and then use those specific, detailed measurements of your audience’s actual video experiences to assign CDNs stream-by-stream, in real time.
And the actual numbers prove it.
We looked at two customers – let’s call them Publisher 1 and Publisher 2 – each of which uses three CDNs (two of which are the same). Over a 30-day period DLVR, a Comcast Technology Solutions partner for the Comcast CDN, made over 500 million CDN decisions for these two publishers. Both publishers rely on DLVR to make CDN performance the priority, but each has very different business rules for CDN decisioning.
A comparison of the decisions DLVR made for these two customers reveals a few key data points:
CDN performance varies significantly from one publisher to the next. These two customers showed very different levels of hazard conditions, even among the same CDNs.
It’s important to measure every stream to optimize video delivery for performance in a multi-CDN workflow. CDN performance varies from moment to moment, delivery to delivery, and from customer to customer.
Predictive, performance-based multi-CDN switching is the only path to getting the most impact out of a multi-CDN workflow.
DLVR data demonstrates the difference in CDN decisioning for each publisher. Publisher 2’s business rules are set up to switch to CDN 1 as a last resort to maintain performance, whereas Publisher 1 relies on CDN 1 more often.
There’s clear value in having multiple CDNs. But a metric that averages publisher results into a blended measurement tells you very little about your specific CDN performance that is useful or actionable. Measuring every stream as it plays, and then acting on those measurements stream-by-stream to select the best CDN for each user delivers the best possible experiences across your audience.
Check out more information on how Comcast CDN and DLVR work together to provide robust multi-CDN strategies.
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The New Ad Management? Meet me in the cloud
The relationship between time-shifted viewing and advertising is shaped by the increasing power of consumer choice, and the need for processes that allow advertisers to meet customers on the customers’ timetable and device preference. For advertisers who want to reach their intended customers, the sheer variety of devices and destinations has introduced unprecedented levels of complexity. Once time-shifted viewing is added to the mix, advertisers must deliver assets in near-real time in order to fully capitalize on the VOD market. It’s a hurdle that has kept a lot of ads out of the on-demand space.
The advantage of a centralized, cloud-based advertising management model is that it removes complexity from both the buy and sell side of the delivery spectrum, creating a mid-point where every player in the video advertising ecosystem can quickly identify assets and deliver them fast enough to be viable as part of a VOD playback. Along the way, process waste and unneeded manual intervention are eliminated in favor of a streamlined machine-to-machine workflow. I’ll be presenting on this topic at this year’s NAB convention in April and wanted to share a little about how the cloud presents a transformative approach for all delivery, time-shifted or otherwise.
3 days: Not best practice anymore
The process for delivering linear video, aka “publishing for consumption according to a schedule,” might be generally understood, but every content provider has its own method for doing it. VOD workflows, mostly implemented as bolt-on processes to an existing linear workflow, add another layer of complexity.
It takes somewhere between 24 and 72 hours to tailor one spot into every iteration it needs in order to be available for play across MVPDs and other digital distributors. For a large population of time-sensitive ads out there, the wide discrepancies in processing time from iteration to iteration in a traditional VOD workflow make it a tough place for advertisers to fully capitalize on.
Once you compound the challenge across the hundreds of thousands of ads that a major content provider will handle each year, it’s easy to see why the traditional VOD workflow isn’t ideal for advertising assets with a shorter shelf life, like local ads or time-bound promotions. If there was just a way to deliver them faster, and swap them out as soon as they’ve run their course . . .
The centralized “collaborative cloud” model
Cloud advertising management is revolutionizing the entire ad delivery workflow by creating a collaborative environment that can be accessed by players across the delivery path. Benefits include:
Quality-assured mezzanine assets, ready for distribution at the press of a button
Centralized library and asset management terminal
Standards and Practices approval; seamless pass/fail functionality
End-point aware processing and distribution
End-to-end support and visibility, instant asset tracking
Ad operations teams can attain instant access to advertising spots; from there, they can automatically prepare and distribute non-linear ad content to MVPDs and other digital properties. Content providers can source content and tailor versions for all screens. Collecting ad spots together into one common cloud-accessible clearing house results in streamlined, quality assured, and timely campaign execution across any platform.
For content providers, advertisers, or agencies, the speed of execution makes all the difference between a successful campaign and one that under-performs. Ingest, processing, and distribution times are reduced from days to hours; bringing inventory to ready-to-air status, serving impressions faster than ever, and opening up time-shifted viewing to more forms of advertising, such as local ads that generally age too quickly to take advantage of the on-demand market.
Destination-specific rules can be managed more effectively as well. For example, specific rules around acceptable ads for a family-friendly video destination (rules such as no ads with guns, no smoking, etc.) can be managed or applied specifically in a centralized cloud environment. The content provider would need only to access a user interface (UI), locate the asset, review it, and apply rules to guide its delivery.
Less duplication, more monetization? Yes, please
The benefits of the advertising management cloud will be fully realized as more and more businesses move their processes to it, simplifying workflows and adding more options to content monetization strategies. As a “one-stop shop” for all delivery needs, the cloud makes a compelling argument for itself, but future benefits also extend into improved tracking and reduced file duplication, both of which are long-standing, interconnected issues across the workflow.
Regardless of where an ad is originated and where it needs to be played, the centralized cloud model is an elegant way to improve and streamline the advertising delivery ecosystem. The inherent process efficiencies bring increased responsiveness and visibility, and ultimately generate added value and revenue capabilities of each piece of content. This “meet me in the middle” architecture breaks down the wall between ad buyers and sellers and opens up collaboration in unprecedented ways.
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Dead Air is Not an Option
If you’re in the business of keeping eyes glued to screens, you are responsible for delivering to a lot more devices than just the living room television. That said, not every piece of content, live or otherwise, can be delivered everywhere. The rights to distribute and display a piece of content are very specific instructions on where, when, and how a program can be legally used; and those rights don’t always line up perfectly with a provider’s entire base of consumers. When one program needs to be swapped out for another in order to maintain compliance, how does a provider provide an alternative, sometimes in short order, and still maintain engagement? At this years National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) conference in Las Vegas, I’ll be talking about metadata management, the SCTE 224 metadata standard, and how we manage the complex traffic challenges of today’s delivery ecosystem.
Alternate content feeds – not just for sports anymore.
In the past, time changes were generally associated with the linear content delivery of live sports, because sports programming need the most consistent strategy to address issues such as extra innings or rain delays. Now, technology has made live programming a diverse, daily event that goes well beyond sports. Live-streamed niche industry events are more prevalent every year, and rarely finish “right on time.” News-as-entertainment channels thrive on real-time, unscripted content. And concerts? No one is going to tell the hottest band that they can’t do a third encore because the live feed ends at the top of the hour.
Live or not, a piece of content may only have rights to be delivered within certain regions or destinations – it’s what broadcasters traditionally referred to as a “blackout,” but in a multi-platform video delivery model, it doesn’t quite mean what it used to. The FCC had a different set of sports blackout rules from 1975 to 2014 that required cable and satellite operators to obey the same blackouts followed by local broadcast stations. Those rules no longer apply; today, alternate content switching stems from contractual agreements between content owners and distributors. The net result is the same: MVPDs are contractually obligated to follow the rules associated with each piece of content.
When events are delivered over IP to consumers who are on the move, the rules surrounding alternate content take on a whole new level of specificity. For instance: should content be switched to an alternate feed out based on a viewer’s billing address, or his/her physical location at that moment? What strategies provide the most engaging content experience when an alternate content event occurs?
SCTE 224: Modern metadata management
The rules around how a piece of content can be utilized are found as a subset of its metadata. In other words, metadata not only describes a program’s history and enables search discoverability, but it also describes where it can go. Providers can access this information through a web-based Event Scheduling and Notification Interface (ESNI) which provides a way for them to communicate across distribution end-points about content delivery schedules and policies. In 2015 the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) approved today’s ESNI standard with SCTE 224, which expands on previous standards and enables content distribution based on attributes that are now critical to our mobile world, such as device type and geographic location. Audience-facing electronic programming guides (EPGs) are also created with this communication in order to set accurate expectations with viewers as to what’s going to be available and when.
SCTE 224 provides a robust framework of extensible markup language (XML) messages. It details descriptions of audience characteristics, and viewing policies associated with each audience, it also allows for channels (Media) and individual events (MediaPoints) to describe start and end times (MatchTime) or in-band signaling (MatchSignal) information. Once you have the event trigger and audiences for events, you can provide the appropriate metadata for the applicable situation. Although the framework is robust, it’s a meticulous and complicated set of processes to bring all your content into one standard format, maintain visibility across a diverse delivery ecosystem, ensure that content is only being delivered where it should be, and communicate clearly to every distribution point.
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Multi-Platform Content Distribution? No Problem - How Content Providers Use Tech to Deliver Extraordinary Experiences
Binge-watching, as an audience behavior, speaks volumes about the value of content amidst unprecedented depth of viewer choice. What does this mean for multi platform content distribution? We can choose from a huge variety of devices capable of displaying video of phenomenal quality and select from a vibrant and growing ecosystem of content destinations and business models. Consider the number of devices through which you access your own video content today:
Do you have a favorite show that’s available through multiple providers, such as a broadcaster, mobile destination, or PC?
If the playback was interrupted by buffering or lag, what are the odds that you’d watch the whole thing? Would you try to play the same program through a different service?
Do you ever purchase content from one service over another, purely due to image and playback quality?
QoE and ROI
Quality of Experience (QoE) is one of the defining performance metrics of our day. Delivering on the promise consistently across devices takes concerted effort and execution across your delivery ecosystem. Important considerations include:
Is the image quality optimal for the viewer’s connection and device?
How often does buffering intrude on a program?
How easily are consumers finding your content?
How are they responding to pricing or advertising?
Multi platform monetization models rely on seamless workflow operation and playback to be measured accurately. Performance-related churn, aside from creating an experience that’s not worth repeating, also makes it really hard to know if your core business model is on the right track.
When it comes to playback quality, is it more likely that a destination will be known for its great playback, or that it’s known to crash, stutter, or lag? As much as we love to get fan mail about how great our playback was, the truth is that it’s the negative experiences that get all the press.
New eBook: Multi-Platform? No Problem. How Content Providers Use Tech to Deliver Extraordinary Experiences
Comcast Technology Solutions has published a new ebook, “Multi-Platform? No Problem — How Content Providers Use Tech to Deliver Extraordinary Experiences,” that looks into ways in which the relationship between content providers and audiences continues to drive new business models and technology innovations. Some of the insights explored:
Operating from the end: Successful multi platform content distribution is bringing the viewer’s journey to the center of operating plans, envisioning the optimal end-state and building an experience to match.
The challenge of modern metadata: In a complex ecosystem of mobile high-definition screens, and amidst countless membership and multi platform monetization models, content rights management is more complicated than ever. New technologies are helping companies to keep the right content on the right screens.
A pragmatic, repeatable framework: To address the ever-changing landscape of new media technology, delivery approaches, and multi platform monetization models, we present a new lifecycle management framework that keeps operations, technologies, and processes harmonized with an evolving audience experience.
Case study — keeping up with a massive fanbase: When a content destination racks up a series of hits, it takes a lot of agility – and network horsepower – to satisfy rapidly growing demand. We take a look at one brand that has transformed the way it manages and delivers its content so that it can keep the focus on creating the stories that keep a global audience tuned in.
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CDN Performance: The Content Delivery "Network Of Networks"
Content delivery networks (CDNs) are well-established as a necessary component of today’s digital video delivery strategy. Closing the physical distance between the server and the end-user is a great way to protect the quality of end-user playback and security of the video files themselves. With lots of CDNs out there, all with different footprints and points of presence (“POPs”), it’s becoming increasingly common for content creators to adopt a multi-CDN approach, which allows them to deploy a best-case “network of networks” to improve performance across the board.
The benefits of a multi-CDN approach go beyond simple math:
The “simple math” part: more POPs are storing content closer to more viewers, resulting in the uniformly high-quality playback experience that audiences expect.
The “even better” part: with the right tools, traffic can be optimized so that CDN performance can be strategically leveraged based on the needs of each viewing experience.
Of course, the trick is to identify the best CDN for each playback experience.
SWITCHING FOR COST AS WELL AS QUALITY
There are several reasons why a business would switch traffic between multiple CDNs.
The fundamental advantage is redundancy: if there’s an issue with one network, a “detour” that employs a different CDN provides a redundant path to get the content delivered on time. Some might be driven by specific business rules, such as diverting traffic to a different CDN once the traffic hits a certain level, or based on other criteria such as contractual usage limits or other requirements. Some CDN routing rules can be completely based on cost-effectiveness, choosing a path from origin to device primarily on price.
Whether the reasons for a multi-CDN approach are traffic-based or rules-based, the best solutions are built to respond to real-time, quality of experience, emphasizing quality measures over any other metric. Optimizing your delivery with a service that provides transparency through proactive, automated, and real-time control over your delivery decision-making protects your audience’s quality of experience and extracts the most value out of your entire delivery path.
HOW WELL IS THAT CDN REALLY PERFORMING?
Ultimately, the single best litmus test of your service’s CDN performance is the experience at the individual user level. It presents a serious measurement challenge: how does a provider really measure playback quality? Not just in theory, but in practical, “that-customer-at-that-time” terms, across devices, platforms, and geographies?
Initially, measurement approaches utilized small static test object downloads and not the actual video stream itself. The test object measurements were aggregated together to paint a generalized, high-level picture of how well a CDN was performing. In today’s age of server tuning by application, most video is played back off of dedicated video servers and not servers used for test object downloads. Consequently, the resulting CDN performance score may not directly relate to your video streaming performance. Fortunately, with advances in technology, there are more evolved approaches today that result in measurable improvements for audiences.
IMPROVEMENTS THAT VIEWERS ACTUALLY EXPERIENCE
Drilling down to individual viewer measurements is a core strength of DLVR, our new CDN optimization partner (you can read more about them here). To get there, DLVR continually measures actual video streams being delivered to end users. As a CDN moves video content through the network to intended destinations, the measurements from different streams can be aggregated into a more accurate performance snapshot. On top of that, customer experience metrics such as buffering and bit rate can now be rolled into a deeper analysis that can have a much stronger impact on quality improvement efforts. It results in a tailored switching protocol that’s informed and driven by actual viewing experiences. Because the measurements are stream-based and not tag-based, the only way a CDN can demonstrate better performance is…by demonstrating better performance. It’s better for the audience, which of course is better for content creators and providers as well.
Learn how to use Comcast CDN and DLVR together to easily enable a multi-CDN strategy and drive down costs based on business rules.
For more about multi-CDN delivery, please download our free ebook, Video To The CDNth Degree.
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