Case study

Audio Streaming Ad Insertion Solution

We unlocked new advertising markets with innovative digital audio ad insertion solution

Cloud & DevOpsData & AnalyticsTelecom & Media

Project highlights

  • Monetize content
  • Deliver targeted ads
  • Increase market presence
Industry:
Media, Advertising
Headquarters:
San Mateo, CA
Market:
US, European
Team size:
4 members
Duration:
5 years

AdsWizz is a global provider of digital advertising solutions that span ad servers, exchanges, supply-side platforms, and demand-side platforms for desktop and mobile. The company serves ads through internet radio channels, music websites, streaming videos, and iPhone applications for clients including Amazon, Coca-Cola, and Dell. One of the most successful Belgian startups, AdsWizz has moved its headquarters to San Mateo, California, but maintains a worldwide presence with offices in Brussels, Paris, Berlin, and London.

Audio Streaming Ad Insertion Solution

Business challenge

The growing audience of online media consumers poses challenges to advertisers and digital media publishers alike. How can publishers efficiently monetize their multimedia content? How can advertisers place ads in streaming audio? AdsWizz found a solution for serving targeted digital ads to listeners – injecting ads into audio streams from major streaming servers. Due to the novelty of this solution and its performance and stability requirements, implementation was very demanding and required thorough technical and business research to prove the concept. AdsWizz partnered with Intellias to tackle this product development challenge because of our reputation and technical expertise.

Technology solution

The innovative Audio Ad Insertion solution that we designed in collaboration with our client unlocked new markets for AdsWizz. Leading digital media providers including AM/FM simulcast broadcasters and digital broadcasters now rely on AdsWizz to monetize their content through server-side injection of targeted advertising. Ad insertion solution for streaming audio, which runs on powerful media servers, has been seamlessly integrated into AdsWizz’s proprietary campaign management platform.

Intellias designed and implemented unique algorithms that detect ad breaks by listening to unmarked audio streams, performing real-time audio fingerprinting, and inserting inaudible signals to mark places to insert ads between tracks. Our team also developed plugins for third-party servers that hook and intercept their streams. Intellias ensured the robustness, stability, and performance of the Audio Ad Insertion system. We performed intensive stress testing by imitating a real-life production environment and exposing the setup to exaggerated levels of traffic streamed to tens and hundreds of thousands of listeners.

What did our client get?

Extensive technical research and established development process
Four committed team members for a long-term project
Integration with popular media servers, networks, and interfaces
Support for various formats (RTMP, HLS, MP4, MP3, AAC)
An algorithm that determines a listener’s geolocation
Open source development for video and podcast online servers
The ability to intercept HTTP/TCP traffic between a server and an end user

Business impact

During five years of partnership, Intellias proved its expertise in every aspect of product development, from R&D activities, business analysis, development, and quality control to post-deployment and L3 support. With our support, AdsWizz made a notable leap from a Belgian AdTech startup to Silicon Valley company. Another success of their product is that Pandora, one of the most popular US music service, has bought the company. The acquisition process started in March 2018 and was successfully completed in May 2018. We’re proud of our client success and our contribution to that on early stages of their growth.

We helped AdsWizz

Increase their technical expertise in streaming, ad insertion, and big data analytics
Secure a prime place in the US and European digital media advertising markets
Achieve recording system stability
Deliver a fault-tolerant audio ad insertion technology
Generate a continuous revenue flow from publishers and end customers
Increase conversions with in-demand virtual features
Insert ads at 3 Gbit/s into multiple media streams on a single server
Benefit from a 400% performance advantage over competing products
Serve ads to up to 100,000 listeners
Ensure quality of software for live audio streaming over a highly stable connection

I had the pleasure of working with Intellias, and all I can say is that undoubtedly they have the most talented people I have worked with. Intellias’ team consists of passionate polyglot programmers, highly proficient in C++. They were able to build very fast with a deep understanding of the technologies needed to accomplish any project, which was actually a great contribution to the fast market success. Even now that our collaboration is over, we are still using their solutions to deal with unique technology challenges in big data, real-time streaming media, high-speed transactions and exchanges.

Mihai Ciurea, Head of Streaming at AdsWizz
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