Three Emerging Forces That Will Reshape the Content Delivery Space

The content delivery world is getting more complex. The traditional CDN model has splintered, the need for vendor diversity is rising, and user expectations keep inching upward. But it's not all friction. Several emerging technologies and standards are poised to meaningfully improve Quality of Experience (QoE)—not just in a piecemeal way, but across the entire delivery path. Here's a closer look at three forces that will reshape the future of content delivery.

Securing Sports Streams: How End-to-End Video Platforms Are Combating Piracy

The financial stakes of illegal streaming are enormous, as illegitimate viewership jeopardizes revenue from subscriptions and advertising, threatening the sports ecosystem. With over $60 billion invested annually in global sports media rights, broadcasters and content owners cannot afford to lose audiences to unauthorized platforms. Video service providers must prioritize anti-piracy initiatives to safeguard premium sports streaming content and protect their revenue.

Why SRT Is Powering the Next Generation of Streaming Workflows

Designed to transmit encrypted, low-latency video over the public internet, SRT enables broadcasters to replace legacy distribution models with more cost-effective and flexible IP workflows. Whether deployed in contribution, remote production or distribution, SRT is increasingly at the heart of how live media is delivered.

Streaming Platforms and CDNs: Time for Disruption

CDNs are clearly strategic partners for content streamers, yet content delivery is often viewed as a commodity service. This has resulted in massive turmoil within the CDN industry. Several CDNs have already collapsed under the pressure or simply left the market. Other CDNs, to remain viable, have diversified into areas such as security and edge computing. That might be a great business strategy for the CDNs—but it means they're no longer solely focused on the needs of streaming video platforms.

Beyond Broadcast: How Streaming is Reinventing the Live Sports Experience

Success today isn't defined by simple reliability. It's about delivering live sports at broadcast-level speed, enhancing it with personalized viewing options, and orchestrating a broader digital ecosystem that keeps fans connected before, during, and after the game. Streaming isn't a replacement for TV - it's a complete redefinition of what sports media can be.

Beyond One-Size-Fits-All: The Rise of Hybrid Streaming Architectures

As the demand for high-quality, scalable and cost-efficient video streaming services continues to grow, the industry is undergoing a fundamental shift in video workflow architectures. The notion of a "one-size-fits-all" streaming solution no longer holds up against the pressures of rising audience expectations, live event peaks and a rapidly evolving ecosystem. A hybrid streaming approach—combining on-premises and cloud infrastructure strategies—is the most flexible and future-ready path forward.

Pause to Progress: Sports Innovation Five Years After COVID

The COVID-19 pandemic marked a turning point in how sports are produced, distributed, and experienced. From remote production to virtual competitions and direct-to-consumer (D2C) streaming, many of the solutions quickly put in place during lockdowns have become core components of a new, more interactive and fan-focused era of sports.

Why CTV Is a Bright Spot for Sports Advertising

If the past six months have shown us anything, it's that streaming isn't just a major player in sports—it's rewriting the playbook. Netflix broadcast NFL Christmas games for the first time, Amazon retained Thursday Night Football, and the NBA inked an unprecedented 11-year media rights agreement with streaming giants Disney and ESPN+, NBC and Peacock, and Amazon Prime Video, leaving behind its long-standing linear partner TNT. The message is clear: Connected TV (CTV) is no longer just an alternative for sports viewing—it's becoming the primary stage.

Powering the New Streaming Superstore in the Age of Subscriber Choice

The age of unprecedented subscriber growth in streaming is morphing into a new phase. Today, the video subscription market is more mature, complex, and nuanced than it ever has been, with providers increasingly focusing on strategic partnerships alongside pure direct-to-consumer growth. While content exclusivity remains the most compelling hook for any premium service, Vijay Sajja, CEO and Founder of Evergent, writes that a flurry of aggregation and bundling activity means that the biggest services will live and die by their ability to offer superior experiences and value-added personalization.

Three CDN Strategies To Lower Live Streaming Latency

Akhil Ramachandran addresses some key challenges he faced when he added low latency streaming support for MediaStore, leveraging the state-of-the-art Chunked Transfer Encoding, and the strategies adopted to solve them.

Digging into CTV’s 3 Biggest Challenges in 2025

CTV advertising will dominate most brands' media plans in the next 2-3 years, yet major challenges persist. Suvadip Choudhury of Alliant talks about achieving scale, precision targeting, and the lack of overall education holding buyers back, but he also argues that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Out of Home, On the Money: Live Event Streaming is Winning Outside the Living Room

Streamers are facing intense competition over limited household wallet share, engagement time, and the rights deals that keep viewers signed up. Today, folks are looking for creative ways to expand their audience beyond the confines of direct-to-consumer and streaming platforms while slicing and dicing rights agreements in tailored ways. Immersive shared experiences, such as live sports events, that take audiences outside of their living rooms are growing in popularity - and helping engage viewers with hyper-targeted, localized experiences.

Live Sports Is Driving Innovation in Ad-Tech

If 2024 was the year of live-streaming sports, Dave Dembowski of Operative writes that 2025 is the year of live-streaming ad innovation. With massive audiences that continue to steal from traditional TV, advertisers are looking for new opportunities to reach massive live audiences digitally. Media companies are working hard to offer the TV advertising experience of the future. That future will include new forms of targeting, interactivity, creative ad formats, and much more.

Flexibility or Failure: Remaining Agile in Streaming

In direct-to-consumer (D2C) streaming, staying ahead means staying nimble. New technologies, changing customer preferences, and intense competition are driving the streaming industry toward fast-paced growth. In this environment, companies that are unable to adapt, and adapt quickly, fall behind. Flexibility is essential for long-term success. However, flexibility can be difficult to achieve for streaming organizations who often struggle with legacy systems, complex infrastructures, and bureaucratic decision-making processes that slow down the ability to pivot and innovate.

Why FAST is Media Buyers' Next Big Strategic Investment

Angelina Marmorato, Lemma's AVP of Sales and Partnerships, North America, breaks down why FAST is media buyers' next big strategic investment

Challenges of New Encoding Scenarios: Reflections on Measuring Perceived Quality

While VMAF has been a valuable tool for assessing video quality, its limitations highlight the need for complementary metrics or the development of new assessment methods. These new metrics should address VMAF's shortcomings, especially in the context of modern video encoding scenarios that incorporate AI and other advanced techniques. For the best outcomes, a combination of VMAF and other metrics, both full-reference and no-reference, might be necessary to achieve a comprehensive and accurate assessment of video quality in various applications.

The Cloud-Based Security Shift

Security measures have come a long way since the days when security meant simply signing in and out of the facility and keeping valuable content in a locked room. As technology has advanced and the broadcast industry has adopted new ways of working, security systems have naturally become much more sophisticated. Take cloud security tools - they provide a formidable level of security that, contrary to popular belief, is actually difficult to match on-site. Data is only as secure as the systems and procedures around it; and the security systems safeguarding data in the cloud will likely be more advanced and superior to measures you can implement on-site.

Why Streamers Need Rural Sports Fans — and Why Quality is Key for Keeping Them Around

Steve Miller-Jones, Vice President, Product Strategy, Netskrt Systems, discusses why streamers need rural sports fans, the reasons quality is key for reducing churn, and how streaming platforms and ISPs can beat buffering problems associated with delivering live sporting events to remote areas.

Interactive Ads: Reshaping Fan Engagement in Live Sports on CTV

This year's NewFronts signaled a paradigm shift in CTV advertising, focusing on interactive experiences. This holds particular promise for live sports, where viewer engagement is paramount. Gijsbert Pols, Ph.D., director of connected TV and new channels at Adjust, discusses the specific applications of hyper-contextualization in live sports advertising, and he explores potential challenges and solutions to jump into the exciting future of sports fan engagement within the ever-evolving CTV landscape.

What the 2024 "Summer of Sports" Teaches Us About the Future of Streaming

The summer of 2024 has presented sports programming that rivals any other year in history, including the Copa America finals, Tour de France, NBA finals, two golf majors, ICC World T20, Wimbledon, U.S. Open, an array of F1 Grand Prix's, or the recently finished Paris Olympics and Paralympics. Matt Shapiro, Senior Director of Business Development, Qwilt, discusses the challenges of maintaining a superior QoE across video-on-demand and OTT services and the new formats arising to meet them.