AWS direct-to-consumer & streaming Partner showcase at IBC 2023

At IBC 2023 in Amsterdam, Amazon Web Services (AWS) Partners showcased cloud solutions that are transforming the media and entertainment (M&E) industry. With over 40,000 attendees from 170+ countries, IBC provided an opportunity for AWS Partners to demonstrate how they help M&E companies reinvent workloads in the cloud to a large in-person audience.

The breadth of solutions on display at IBC illustrates how media companies of all sizes can leverage AWS and AWS Partner expertise to deliver premium viewing experiences. Following are highlights from AWS M&E Partner demonstrations at the show that address the direct-to-consumer cycle.

Accedo showcased three solutions for media and sports organizations to create new revenue streams.

• Accedo One is a premium no-code OTT platform that enables video service providers to experiment with depth in their business model, including vendor flexibility, model configuration and user flows— featuring Brightcove and Cleeng partner solutions and powered by Amazon Cloudfront.
• Accedo Stadium Immersive experience, in partnership with Ateme, delivers a solution for sports bodies to augment the in-seat experience using 5G connectivity courtesy of AWS Wavelength. The solution gives fans real-time access to stats, multiple viewing angles, immersive sponsorship overlays, and other services available in the stadium.
• Accedo Smarter Personalise combines a recommendation engine with Amazon Bedrock, plugged into an app management system to take OTT personalization and the editorial experiences to the next level.

Ateme showcased two solutions: Enhanced Stadium Experience (ESE), an end-to-end low latency, cost-effective, pristine video quality solution for fan engagement, and advanced monetization tools for SSAI and FAST channels using AI to detect ad breaks and insert SCTE-35 markers accordingly. ESE is a monetization platform for sports and entertainment, leveraging AWS Wavelength to deploy video delivery services at the edge. Ateme solutions are fully cloud-native and integrate with ad tech partners to offer audience segmentation, contextual targeting, and ad break control functionality. They leverage multiple AWS components such as Amazon EC2, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), Amazon S3, Amazon CloudFront, and more, depending on customer requirements. Ateme’s solutions are available on the AWS Marketplace and can be purchased a Software-as-a-Service with Ateme+.

Bitmovin demonstrated its live and VOD encoding optimized for cost-efficient video delivery to any device. Bitmovin Player provides exceptional viewing experiences on all devices and platforms. Bitmovin Analytics delivers deep, actionable insights to increase viewer engagement and retention. Bitmovin customers leverage Amazon S3 for storage or video origin, AWS Elemental MediaTailor to monetize streaming video, and Amazon CloudFront to distribute content globally. Bitmovin’s live encoding and VOD encoding are also available in AWS Marketplace.

Broadpeak.io demonstrated its Content Replacement application for linear OTT streams. broadpeak.io is the Broadpeak SaaS, leveraging years of OTT streaming expertise, offering video service providers solutions to personalize and contextualize their streams (SSAI, Virtual Channel, next-generation FAST). broadpeak.io participates in the AWS SaaS factory program and relies on multiple AWS components such as Amazon EC2, Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC), Amazon RDS, and Amazon CloudFront, all deployed jointly with Broadpeak products, like Manifest Manipulator, Transcoder, Packager, or Analytics.

Cleeng is a multi-tenant SaaS platform that specializes in Subscriber Retention Management (SRM) to boost video e-commerce ROI. Supported by recent features like Seasonal Subscriptions and continuous improvement of its churn prediction algorithm, Cleeng provides 92% churn prediction accuracy. Cleeng uses many key AWS services such as Amazon RDS, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, Amazon Key Management Services (AWS KMS), AWS Lambda functions, Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), Amazon Kinesis Data Streams, and more to maintain 99.99% platform uptime. Cleeng recently showcased some of its newest client logos, including The Weather Channel, NHK and TOD.TV, plus some recent client successes: the NFL launching the second season on NFL+ and Optus Sport’s broadcasting the Women’s World Cup.

Datazoom hosted three demos at IBC 2023 with AWS. The first demo showed real-time data collection for comparison of CSAI and SSAI ad-tech implementations with client event tracking from Datazoom. Datazoom recently expanded its client SDK capability to include SSAI tracking events for AWS Elemental MediaTailor-based workflows. The second demo showcased the company’s partnership with New Relic to combine video player, media requests, and CDN log files into a tracing visualization for advanced QoE Observability in New Relic. The third demo showed two video analytics solutions built with Datazoom and AWS: one showcased Ad Tracking & Monetization in Quicksight and the other QoE in managed Grafana.

Evergent showcased how to enhance customer experiences specifically around customer acquisition and churn deflection through AI and machine learning. Given the overwhelming choices of plans and promotions presented to consumers today, customer acquisition and retention is very challenging. Offering the right plan hyper-personalized to the customer’s interests is key to a long-term relationship with the subscriber. In collaboration with AWS through the use of AWS SageMaker, the Evergent solution delivers a prompt-based chatbot-like interface for streamlined, personalized offers relevant to the consumer. Additionally, Evergent demonstrated a collaboration with AWS SageMaker AI models to process large data sets related to transactions, payments and video performance scores. The AI modeling helps determine churn percentages based on this scoring, triggering the proper Evergent product and promotion response that proactively works to reduce churn.

Frequency introduced Studio 5 with an array of ground-breaking features and services for enhancing linear channel creation, management, distribution, and monetization experience for users. Studio is significantly extended to provide new tools and services, including content ingestion automation, scheduling automation, low-latency live channel switching, advanced content filtering, and comprehensive functionality for streamlining the management and scheduling of episodic programming. The appeal of Frequency Studio is underscored by its robust partnership with Amazon. The Studio platform is powered by AWS, Amazon Studios’ channels rely on Frequency, and Frequency is responsible for delivering channels to Amazon’s distribution platforms.

Harmonic demonstrated its VOS360 Ad SaaS on AWS for content monetization solutions. VOS360 Ad SaaS empowers broadcasters, service providers, and content creators to maximize ad revenue potential by delivering personalized ad experiences in live, linear, and video-on-demand content through dynamic ad insertion to engage viewers worldwide. The VOS360 platform uses Amazon EC2, Amazon EKS, Amazon S3, Amazon EBS, Elastic Load Balancing, Amazon Route 53, AWS CloudTrail, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Direct Connect, and AWS Lambda.

Mux showcased its video quality of experience (QoE) and analytics platform, Mux Data,  which is used by top streaming services around the world to measure performance of live and VOD streams across devices, geographies, ASNs and CDNs. Mux Data relies on Amazon EC2 to dynamically scale to support the world’s largest streaming events. Mux works uses Amazon CloudFront to identify specific streaming issues as they happen using the CMCD standard. It uses Amazon Kinesis to process real-time data and stream that data with Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose to partners such as New Relic for end-to-end observability and Evergent for subscriber retention and health metrics.

NAGRA showcased its content protection, service aggregation, and anti-piracy solutions, including forensic watermarking, which enable operators to respond effectively to changing industry dynamics and evolve their business models. These include anti-piracy intelligence solutions that deliver unprecedented holistic views and actionable business insights to drive down piracy; OpenTV Video Platform to monetize service aggregation, address new business models, and deliver customer experiences underpinned by AI and behavior-based analytics; and NAGRA Scout to safeguard consumers from smart home cyber threats and give them the power to shape their internet experience. NAGRA solutions use a number of AWS services, including Amazon EC2, Amazon Redshift, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon EKS.

NativeWaves demonstrated its synced multiview (multi-camera) and second screen experience for mobile devices, web devices and smart TVs. NativeWaves EXP enables broadcasters,mediaconver streaming services, and content rights holders to deliver personalized next-level experiences to their audiences. NativeWaves leverages Amazon S3 and Amazon CloudFront for worldwide content delivery at large scale and interfaces with AWS Elemental MediaLive and AWS Elemental MediaPackage for smooth integration.

New Relic demonstrated end-to-end observability of a VOD reference architecture consisting of AWS Elemental MediaConvert, AWS Elemental MediaPackage, Amazon CloudFront, AWS Step Functions, AWS Lambda, Amazon S3, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon SQS, and Amazon SNS via New Relic’s AWS integrations. In addition, the entire customer journey is monitored by New Relic Browser, APM, and Synthetics, providing a complete picture of the user experience and service performance. Additionally, New Relic demonstrated its integration with Datazoom, natively displaying Datazoom’s player, request, and CDN data at both the aggregate and trace levels.

Synamedia showcased the Quortex self-service and pay-as-you-use SaaS platform, including Quortex Link for B2B distribution and Quortex Play for direct-to-consumer OTT streaming. Quortex Link demonstrated the creation of a live video distribution system in minutes, through an intuitive user interface. In addition to 24/7  distribution, event-based distribution is possible through an integrated scheduler or using the Quortex public API. Quortex Play featured the capability to create an end-to-end live OTT service in just a few clicks. The platform leverages Amazon Spot Instances and includes Synamedia patented Just In Time technology, allowing slash-down of processing costs compared to traditional OTT platforms.

ThinkAnalytics unveiled its Think360 generative AI-based solutions for personalization and targeted advertising at IBC 2023, taking advantage of Amazon Bedrock and Amazon Lex. It has added voice, chatbot, and other solutions that combine generative AI, personalized recommendations, content metadata, and natural language interaction to its portfolio. ThinkAnalytics also showed how ThinkAdvertising AI models use an operator’s own first-party data that can be delivered securely through AWS Clean Rooms to create and target contextual audience segments at scale. It also highlighted the power of cross-channel marketing campaigns and personalized FAST channels to drive viewer engagement. Think360 also takes advantage of a variety of other AWS services, including Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon Personalize, Amazon RDS, AWS Lambda and Amazon CloudWatch.

TVCoins showcased its free, white-label DTC video streaming platform built on AWS on-demand infrastructure and broad set of cloud services. AWS Lambda serverless computing implements business logic in every aspect of the TVCoins platform, providing limitless scalability and a reduced time-to-market. The foundation of TVCoins’ data-lake solution is AWS Kinesis, Amazon Athena and AWS Batch, working to gather and store detailed viewer analytics. TVCoins also leverages Amazon Personalize to power personalized content recommendations (“more like this”, “because you watched”, “most popular”, “trending”). Using state-of-the-art AWS services simplifies operations for the customer and enables TVCoins’ unique revenue share business model that allows the technology to be offered at no upfront cost.

Amazon Interactive Video Service (Amazon IVS) showcased Real-Time Video Streaming, ushering in a new era for interactive and real-time experiences for direct-to-consumer platforms. This cutting-edge innovation empowers real-time live streaming for up to 12 hosts on a single stage, all while substantially reducing latency to under 300 milliseconds and creating a seamless and immediate connection between hosts and viewers to make it an ideal choice for betting, virtual events, auctions, social media, and much more. To elevate the streaming experience even further, Amazon IVS Real-Time Video also offers Simulcast, allowing for multiple variations of audio and video via native SDKs for iOS, Android, and web platforms with support for up to 10,000 viewers. Sample demos are available for iOS, Android, and web that explore support for serverless applications for real-time demonstrations. Amazon IVS Real Time is based on participant hours per hour; details are available on the simplified pricing model page.

Amazon Cloudfront showcased its real-time log feature to enable customers to identify and troubleshoot streaming using Common Media Client Data (CMCD) specification and Amazon CloudFront. The solution leverages AWS Lambda functions, Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose, Amazon Kinesis Data Analytics, Amazon Managed Grafana and Amazon Timestream. The provided code samples offer valuable Quality of Service (QoS) insights, aiding both engineering and business teams in data-driven troubleshooting of streaming problems. Amazon CloudFront offers standard log generation without additional charges, while Real-Time logs incur fees based on the volume of generated log lines.

The Clickstream Analytics on AWS solution collects, ingests, analyzes, and visualizes clickstreams from websites and mobile applications. Clickstream data is critical for online business analytics use cases, such as user behavior analysis, customer data platform, and marketing analysis. This data provides insights into the patterns of user interactions on a website or application, helping businesses understand user navigation, preferences, and engagement levels to drive product innovation and optimize marketing investments. Services leveraged are Amazon ECS, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon API Gateway, Amazon Cognito, Amazon CloudFront, Amazon QuickSight, Amazon Athena, AWS Step Functions, Amazon Redshift, Amazon EventBridge, Amazon Glue, Amazon EMR Serverless, Amazon EMR Serverless, Amazon Kinesis Data Streams. Customers can try the Clickstream Analytics workshop today and the complete solution is available free of charge.