What use cloud? How Cloud adoption in broadcast is rapidly evolving

TV no longer enjoys an exclusive relationship with its audience. As per Google’s multiscreen study, 77 percent of the time when people watch TV today, they are also accessing at least one other device.

The audience preference for custom content on personal devices has never been this high.

In the 2016 Nielsen VOD survey, 66 percent of global respondents admitted that they prefer watching videos on VOD platforms due to the available personalisation options.

TV networks globally are recognising the growth of emerging digital platforms and are transforming their operations accordingly.

Today, digital transformation features at the core of TV network strategy with traditional broadcast and delivery models complementing each other – a visible departure from the past with the thrust on ‘Digital First’.

Thankfully, advancements in cloud technologies couldn’t have come at a better time.

Next-generation cloud-based broadcast platforms and solutions can drive Digital First initiatives a lot faster, offering scalability, reliability, security, and efficiencies, making TV networks future-ready.

Initially, cloud was leveraged only for point functions such as archival, in an attempt to move away from cumbersome physical storage.

But now, cloud-based solution providers are enabling different components of the workflow to transition to a secure public cloud.

Further, cloud-native solutions offer unmatched flexibility and scalability to spin new channels on the cloud almost instantly using Platform-as-a-Service models.

The elastic nature of the cloud platform is ideal to scale management of content assets, set up custom feeds on demand, and provide the required agility for TV networks to respond to changing market needs in a cost-effective manner.

Once all content assets are on the cloud, broadcasters can configure any number of feeds to non-contiguous geographies supporting market expansion and audience growth.

Cloud broadcast solutions overcome limitations of traditional delivery models, making it easy and cost-effective to personalise content and ads.

As Digital First takes full shape in the coming years, we will see TV networks serving personalised feeds to viewers across TV and OTT multiscreen devices.

Server-side ad insertion solutions are already providing real-time ad stitching capability to deliver uniquely personalised streams to every viewer for better ad monetisation.

At the next level, we will see broadcasters creating personalised content feeds by intelligently lining up library content based on viewer preferences or history, resulting in thousands of concurrent feeds being delivered to audiences worldwide on their devices on choice.

This content was first published at IBC2016

The views expressed are those of the author.