There’s been an awful lot of talk about the threat of ad blockers over the past twelve months, with estimates that they could cost advertisers $27bn before the decade is out.

Yospace was first to market with server-side ad insertion back in 2011 and haven’t been exposed to the threat of ad blockers in the way that many other ad insertion technologies have. The reason for our approach was not to avoid ad blockers, though. If you want ad insertion for live simulcast, with the best possible user experience, then you have to go with SSAI. The buffering and unreliability of client-side means it is unpractical for live, and, as we’ve seen since, providing an excellent user experience has a positive impact on ad views.

This has been proved out as some of our broadcast customers are reporting view-through rates in the region of 98.7%.Following the success of our server-side ad insertion platform for live, many broadcasters are revisiting their VOD workflows and looking to apply SSAI there, too. One of the motives for doing so is to address the threat of ad blockers, but more than that the improvement to user experience and ability to apply a single, multi-platform workflow make server-side a logical step.