How does SGAI differ from SSAI and CSAI for live streaming monetisation?
As the buzz around server-guided ad insertion (SGAI) grows in the adtech and streaming worlds, what sets it apart from the more familiar server-side ad insertion (SSAI) and client-side ad insertion (CSAI), and what specifically can it do that SSAI and CSAI can’t, particularly for live sports streams without period ad breaks? IAB Tech Lab’s Katie Stroud, Paramount’s Jarred Wilichinsky, RealEyes Media’s David Hassoun, and Google’s Sourya Roy debate the differences and the potential of SGAI to enhance ad experiences in this clip from a panel at May’s Streaming Media Connect.
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Explaining the Differences
Streaming Media Contributing Editor and Reality Software Consultant Nadine Krefetz opens the discussion as panel moderator by asking IAB Tech Lab Senior Product Manager of Ad Experiences Katie Stroud, “Katie, can you sum up what some of the options are in terms of the actual ad experience for server-guided ad insertion, like L-bars?
Stroud explains the differences among SSAI, CSAI, and SGAI by noting that SSAI is “all stitched and delivered to the player in one streaming experience.” CSAI allows for inserting ads at any place, she says, but with SGAI, “you’re pulling the content, you’re pulling the instructions for the ad, putting them together in the player.” What SGAI enables that is new is the ability to use ad formats like squeeze-backs, L-bars, nonlinear, and overlays. “You can’t really stitch those into the streaming content. So if you give that to the player to control, you can get a little bit more creative,” Stroud explains, adding that she’s currently looking deeply into SGAI and its considerations because of the process of trying to standardize those kinds of ads.
Other viewpoints
Paramount SVP of Global Digital Ad Operations Jarred Wilichinsky counters that SSAI does offer the flexibility of dynamic ad placement—squeeze-backs, PIPs (picture-in-picture ads), L-bars, etc.—at the user level. “I think it’s when you’re dealing with multiple systems—that’s where the flexibility is important,” he asserts. Wilichinsky knows of people using SSAI who transmit live and implement squeeze-backs. “So it is doable. [I]t becomes a control conversation,” he says.
Founder of RealEyes Media and SVTA Advertising Working Group Co-Chair David Hassoun builds on Wilichinsky’s point by emphasising that cost and scale play a role in the debate, especially for dynamic ad insertion (DAI) tailored to individual users: “That’s still something that needs to be considered.”
The latency conversation is key
Google Senior Product Manager Sourya Roy notes that SGAI simplifies the implementation of new ad experiences, reducing latency and interoperability issues compared to server-side methods. He shares that at Google, “we had tried to do a lot of these new experiences when we were doing server-side, and when we started to do those on scale, … you had latency at high cost.” He continues, “But as Jarred mentioned with [SGAI], it’s two separate systems and it just works so much better when you have two separate systems coming together and working.”
Hassoun agrees, calling Roy’s point about latency key. He explains that “as we keep on pushing more towards low latency, low latency, low latency, having a system that doesn’t have to do the full manifest rewrites and so forth is one less hop—one less processing step—that we can take to help us maintain and control the latency aspect of our streams while still offering [inserted] ads.”
Stroud concludes with appreciation for her fellow panelists’ expansion on her discussion points. “I meant you have to do things a little differently” with SSAI and CSAI, she says. “But if all of that was standardised and the player can manage that ad experience, I think it becomes easier.”