We are pioneers of taking ad insertion server-side, with more than a decade of in-production experience servicing the world's foremost broadcasters. There is no better solution for broadcasters to monetise VOD and live content without sacrificing quality, reliability and transparency.
While, at the heart of our platform, we leverage SSAI (server-side ad insertion) and, for compatible players, SGAI (server-guided ad insertion) to replace or insert ads seamlessly into live and VOD streams.
Our solution is more than just an “ad stitcher”. Thanks to the insight we have gained into the monetisation operations of broadcasters across the globe, our platform delivers a comprehensive solution that not only delivers reliability at scale, but gives you the tools you need to maximise your ad inventory.
Consumers expect a broadcast-like viewing experience, which delivers seamless ad insertion with total reliability. Having monetised flagship global events for more than a decade, we are trusted to deliver the operational reliability that broadcasters expect.
Deliver on your content rights commitments using our alternate content targeting. Define arbitrary user groups to be selected to receive alternate content for programming with conditional access.
We have partnered with Capella Systems and Akamai Networks to deliver automated Single Live Events as a comprehensive package including encoding, packaging, stream monitoring, origination and media delivery, combined with a real time event production tool for frame accurate cueing of ad placements and content slates.
Each online user, whatever the device, creates an individual request to your ad server, so you can track your precise audience demographics to tailor and frequency cap each ad on an individual user basis.
With integrated best-in-class ad measurement, you can rely on us to build trust with your advertisers. Lightweight client SDKs are available allowing you to deliver custom ad experiences including supporting interactive formats such as SIMID. Furthermore, you can take advantage of our built-in IAB-certified viewability through the Open Measurement SDK.
Our Orchestrator module builds ephemeral monetisable channels from a dynamic schedule of live events. Single Live Events created in this way are fully integrated into monitoring and analytics dashboards.
We support HLS+TS, HLS+CMAF and MPEG-DASH. Our solution is DRM transparent and many of our customers use a combination cbcs and common encryption supporting FairPlay, WideVine and PlayReady DRM schemes to protect their content.
In both cases, we will make a call to an ad server to determine which ads are to be inserted into the user’s content stream. In the case of Server-side Ad Insertion (“SSAI”) we will insert or replace existing content segments with the ads that have been selected. Each user receives their own tailored version of the content manifest. It has the broadest device/player compatibility.
Server-Guided Ad Insertion (“SGAI”) is, broadly speaking, a concept where the player performs the ad stitching, guided by instructions from the server. The protocol extensions needed to implement SGAI based have been established for HLS and will be ratified for MPEG-DASH sometime in 2025. There have also been some earlier proprietary implementations with some limited device support.
SGAI offers three main advantages. The first is that all users can receive a single copy of the content manifest, which means, for live streaming, a reduction in the server capacity required when compared with SSAI regardless of the size of the DVR window offered. The second advantage is that ad breaks are resolved as they are needed, resulting in the ability to dynamically resolve historic ad breaks in a large DVR window live streaming manifest, and for VOD, to allow each break to be dynamically resolved, as opposed to at stream start.
Finally, SGAI provides for better compatibility with ultra low latency live streaming.
For more information on SSAI and SGAI, you can download a copy of our whitepaper, Scaling Up: Strategies to scale addressable advertising for live events in an all-streaming world.
At the moment, there is limited support for SGAI, but throughout 2025 and into 2026 we expect to see more options. Most broadcasters will operate a blend of SSAI and SGAI, with SSAI slowly phasing out over the next 5 years or more.
Our service is designed to make this transition effortless. Customers using SSAI today can simply divert compliant players to the SGAI version of their streams with little or no change in configuration.
You will use your existing ad server and audience tracking solutions to perform the user targeting. VAST or VMAP compliant ad platforms are supported. A wide range of configuration options make integration and validation really straightforward.
Yes, our geographically distributed platform is specifically designed to support the large audiences that are associated with live sport and event television. The service is trusted by some of the world's largest sporting rights holders. It is designed to work alongside your existing single or multi-CDN strategy for the delivery of the binary video data to end users.
Ad transcoding is a core function of our solution. By normalising ad content we can not only better guarantee the user experience from a qualitative perspective (such as audio level normalisation), but it also guarantees stream integrity -- ensuring that an ad cannot "break" a user's streaming experience. Ad transcoding takes place automatically, although we have APIs to allow pre-loading of ad assets as part of the ad trafficking process by your ad operations teams.
We provide the Ad Management SDK which is optional for live streaming, but required for VOD streaming. The Ad Management SDK is available for iOS, Android, C++ and Roku as native SDKs. We also provide a TypeScript (JavaScript) SDK which is compatible with browsers and most connected TVs. The SDKs provide enhanced functionality for live streaming such as client-side ad tracking, clickthrough and overlays. We also offer built-in viewability measurement using a IAB-certified adapter to the Open Measurement SDK.
We also offer enhanced server-side measurement for live streaming for when integrating an SDK is not practical.
For source signals that don’t already have in-band SCTE-35 signalling identifying ad breaks we can offer through our partners Capella Systems encoding and packaging with a live preview tool with manual frame accurate ad insertion. You can read more about our work with Capella Systems here.
Live sports being a key driver for live ad insertion, and, having monetised major tournaments across many sports over more than last 10 years, our solution is prepared for maximising the revenue opportunities for highly dynamic ad break patterns. Unscheduled breaks, early or crashed returns into content are supported. You can read more about this work in our case study with DIRECTV, here.
We require that you have encoded your VOD catalogue in either HLS or MPEG-DASH – how you achieve that is entirely up to you. To achieve frame-accurate ad insertion, your VOD encoding should ensure that segment boundaries coincide with the known insertion points.
Yes and this is our recommended approach. We do however support single pod VAST responses in combination with a "placement template" that you define.
Yes, Pause Ads are supported through the use of our Ad Management SDK.
Let’s discuss how we can help you with yospaceCDS Advanced Streaming technology.