Foxtel AdEase
AdEase provides a smoother viewing experience across Foxtel Go and Play’s on-demand services.
The Client
Foxtel is the leading Pay TV service provider in Australia, with over 2.8 million subscription customers. Over the past few years, Foxtel has been developing and delivering an elaborate OTT strategy making mobile platforms a priority.
A key focus is to continuously enhance their mobile delivery through a more seamless viewing experience across their on-demand Foxtel Go and Foxtel Play services.
The Challenge
With the advent of easily adoptable ad blocking technologies across a growing number of digital formats, broadcasters and publishers seeking to preserve valuable video advertising revenue streams are turning to server side technologies to defeat ad blockers and deliver buffer free experiences to viewers.
Foxtel required a CMS platform-agnostic, highly configurable dynamic server-side ad insertion solution to replace its existing client side solution across both of Foxtel’s on-demand services, Go and Play. The aim was to provide their audience a more seamless viewing experience between advertisement and programming play out across smartphones and tablets.
“The switch to AdEase was the logical step to further enhance Foxtel’s services. With its capacity to create seamless viewing experience between advertisement and programming play out, AdEase allows Foxtel to continue providing the high quality viewing experience the public has come to expect from Foxtel”
Christopher Stenhouse
CEO Switch Media
Switch Media’s Role
Switch Media’s role was to replace Foxtel’s client side ad insertion solution with our AdEase server-side ad insertion across both of Foxtel’s on-demand services, Foxtel Go and Foxtel Play.
Through stitching ads directly into program content, AdEase enables Foxtel to eliminate buffering in between ads to provide their audience a more seamless viewing experience on smartphones and tablets.
By side-stepping ad blocking technologies, AdEase also allows Foxtel to maximise their monetisation, as well as provide a highly interactive user experience, audience demographic targeting capabilities, and advanced user-behaviour analytics.
All of this was done without having to re-ingest their full video library into the Switch Media Manager, as AdEase integrates easily into any pre-existing video management system.
Project Summary
Switch Media Delivered:
- Seamless server-side ad insertion for Foxtel’s on-demand services, Foxtel Go and Foxtel Play
- A solution that was fully integrated into Foxtel’s existing CMS platform, the Media Manager, with no need to re-ingest or duplicate archive
- Achieved seamless playback with no buffering
- Integration into Foxtel’s 3rd party ad server accounts
- Delivered to Foxtel via a simple CPM based pricing model
- Achieved more reliable playout of completed impressions
- Superior viewer targeting capability (dynamic/VAST)
Project Outcomes & ROI
The launch of AdEase at Foxtel has been highly successful. The project is continually evolving, launching first on iOS and Android with the intent to roll out the service across all device types over the coming months.
Switch Media are continuing the development of the service to deliver improvements and added functionality such as VAST4 compliance and ongoing improvements to player feedback and beaconing.
“AdEase is yet another innovation from Switch that helps us to deliver a world class viewing experience to our subscribers.”
