Best Practices for Seamless Live Streaming Failover

When a CDN fails during high-stakes, large-scale live streams, is seamless failover to an alternate CDN the standard expectation in 2026? Are there no excuses left for anything but blip-free CDN switches in the current streaming climate? BT Group's Ian Parr, TATA's Corey Smith, DAZN's James Pearce, and MTech Sport's Matt Stagg weigh in on the current state of play for live CDN switching and how to ensure failover success in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2026.

Overlay Ads and the Streaming Ad Tech State of Play

IAB Tech Lab's Jill Wittkopp reviews the state of streaming ad tech innovation and emerging ad formats and discusses evolving definitions and standards for squeezebacks, side-by-sides, double boxes, and other types of overlay ads in this discussion with Ring Digital, LLC's Brian Ring at Streaming Media Connect 2026.

How to Monitor Live Streams for Optimal Ad Server Performance

From an observability standpoint and eyes on glass, what are the key metrics to watch to determine if ad insertion is going smoothly during a live stream? Altitude TV's Dave Zur, Sargeway LLC's Sarge Sargent, Qualabs' David Hassoun, and FanServ's C.J. Leonard discuss challenges and best practices for monitoring live streaming ad performance in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2026.

AI-Enriched Metadata Drives Better CTV Content Discovery

Why are streaming services, channels, and platforms across the CTV and OTT ecosystems turning to AI/ML-enhanced metadata to remove the friction from CTV content discovery and improve user experiences? Cineverse's Tony Huidor and SUMM8's Jamie Mackinlay discuss how AI-enriched metadata and natural language interfaces are enhancing and transforming discovery and bringing users closer to the content they want to watch in this discussion with Integration Therapy's Rebecca Avery at Streaming Media Connect 2026.

Leveraging SGAI for Longtail Live Sport

With sports that aren't orchestrated for built-in TV ad breaks and a traditional broadcast run of show, SGAI provides critical advantages for monetising sport content without pulling fans out of the action and causing them to miss key moments in the game. FloSports Product Manager, Ad Tech Adair Lyden explains these and other reasons why FloSports is embracing server-guided ad insertion (SGAI) as a good fit for their content and programming model and provides an early look at how it's working for them in this conversation with RingDigital's Brian Ring at Streaming Media Connect 2026.

Why to invest in lowering sport streaming latency in 2026

The knock against streaming for live sport has always been higher latency than broadcast, and the agony of hearing your cable-watching neighbor cheer a goal before it happens on your screen. One could argue that live-streamed sport isn't really live in this scenario. But given the costs and challenges of lowering latency, is it really worth the investment, or should sport streamers be prioritising other engineering challenges or elements of the fan experience? MTech Sport's Matt Stagg, DAZN's James Pearce, BT Group's Ian Parr, and TATA Communications' Corey Smith discuss the current business case for lowering sport streaming latency at Streaming Media Connect 2026.

How to Achieve Seamless Shoppable CTV

What strategic and technological innovations are in the pipeline to facilitate more seamless shoppable CTV experiences? Fuse Media's Karl Meyer, Disney's Lexi Swift, Spaceback's Joe Hall, and LG's Chester Goodson address future prospects for enhanced shoppability in this discussion with moderator Chris Pfaff from Streaming Media Connect 2026.

Has Resilience Replaced Scale as Live Sport Streaming’s Chief Concern?

When it comes to withstanding traffic spikes and other factors that stress-test live streams, "your infrastructure is only as strong as the weakest part of the chain," notes DAZN EVP James Pearce in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2026. So has the resiliency of streaming architecture become a greater factor in livestream success than insufficient scalability or CDN capacity? MTech Sport's Matt Stagg, TATA Communications' Corey Smith, and BT Group's Ian Parr join the debate over where streams are most likely to break down today and whether CDN capacity problems have indeed been solved in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2026.

Provisioning for Live Streaming Scale in Real Time at Al Jazeera and YouTube

How do large-volume streamers anticipate, provision for, and capacity-plan for real-time traffic bursts during tentpole and breaking news events? Al Jazeera Senior Streaming Media Architect Dilip Bharadwaj and YouTube Head of Live OTT Engineering Sean McCarthy discuss real-world challenges and preparation and remediation strategies in this discussion with SVTA Subject Matter Expert Bhavesh Upadhyaya at Streaming Media Connect 2026.

Middle-Mile Resiliency and Delivering Live Streams at Scale

As the last mile of streaming becomes increasingly predictable, according to CacheFly CTO and Founder Matt Levine, the focus of streaming professionals working to enhance reliability in live event delivery shifts to the middle mile. Levine and YouTube Head of OTT Live Engineering Sean McCarthy explore what workflow and architecture elements constitute the middle mile and what it takes to navigate middle-mile variability most effectively origin-to-edge and designing workflows that scale in this conversation with SVTA Subject Matter Expert Bhavesh Upadhyaya at Streaming Media Connect 2026.

Inside the CTV Contextual Advertising Toolset

CTV contextual advertising, like many things in life, is all about making good decisions, and making informed decisions based on a wealth of data means leveraging the right tools—often AI-driven—to gather and distill and interpret that data. Sometimes developing sound contextual media plans involves working with in-house tech and other times it means working with third-party tools, as Team Whistle (a DAZN company) president Joe Caporoso and Intersection CEO Chris Grosso explain in this discussion with SVTA subject matter expert Bhavesh Upadhyaya in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2026.

Key Contextual Data Points for Targeted and Brand-Safe CTV Advertising

Matching ads to programming context and audience interests is theoretically what CTV and OTT can do better than traditional linear television, but it requires gathering data and leveraging it effectively to make sound contextual calls. Philo Head of Advertising Partnerships Aulden Kaye Yi and Roku Head of Supply Side Ad Platform Charlie Goodman discuss what works on their platforms and how their teams approach contextual advertising in this conversation with SVTA Subject Matter Expert Bhavesh Upadhyaya at Streaming Media Connect 2026.

How Audience Insights Drive NBA Media Decision-Making

How do "actionable insights" translate into concrete actions when it comes to media deals, partnerships, and brand growth in major sports leagues? In this clip, NBA VP, Global Media Insights Michelle Auguste explains how audience insights have informed the NBA's new 11-year media deal as well as the league's impending Euro League international expansion recently announced by NBA commissioner Adam Silver.

Sneak Preview: Best Content Bets: Programming Decisions That Maximize Fill, Yield, & Scale

On Thursday, February 26, Rebecca Avery, owner and principal of Integration Therapy, will moderate the Streaming Media Connect panel "Best Content Bets: Programming Decisions That Maximise Fill, Yield, & Scale." Curating the right content mix is the foundation of scalable streaming channel monetisation. This session breaks down the art and science of building a content library that draws and engages viewers and shows how data-driven programming decisions impact ad fill rates and cultivate sustainable growth across platforms.

Optimising Dubbing for Streaming Dialogue and Singing in the AI Era

Generative AI has transformed the technology, the workflow, and arguably the ethics of dubbing dialogue for TV and movies in recent years, with the costly and time-consuming traditional approach of a voice actor, director, and technical crew gathering in a studio for live audio replacement very much a thing of the past. The perception now is that generative AI can easily (and some would say dangerously) produce or replicate virtually any voice, but Dubformer's Anton Dvorkovich and Google's Nick Manoochehri insist that generating the desired voice and refining it toward emotional precision and perfection remain challenging and as much art as science—for dialogue and especially for singing—as they explain in this conversation with DigitalGlue's Philip Grossman and PADEM Media Group's Allan McLennan at Streaming Media 2025.

How to Deliver Low-Latency Multiview Sport Streams to Global Audiences

With all of the inherent difficulties of delivering low-latency live streams at scale, and the growing interest in providing sport viewers with state-of-the-art multiview experiences, what additional technical challenges does multiview delivery create in streaming's fraught middle mile, and how do top-tier global broadcasters like Globo meet those challenges? Globo Head of Streaming and CDN Platform Marcos Petry discusses how Globo maintains and tunes streaming latency for multiview sport streams in this conversation with streaming consultant Bhavesh Upadhyaya at Streaming Media Connect in December.

Sports Leagues and Broadcasters Must Tailor Engagement Strategies for Gen Z

Free Live Sports president Cathy Rasenberger argues that sports leagues and broadcasters need to adapt to the ways Gen Z viewers consume content—short-form, social, athlete-centric storylines—if they want to engage and retain younger audiences in this discussion with MTech Sport, Media & Entertainment consultant Matt Stagg, Play Anywhere CSO Pete Scott, and Hub Entertainment Research principal Jon Giegengack from Streaming Media Connect 2025.

How Meta Deploys AV1 on Facebook From Reels to Stories to Messenger

As video has taken center stage on Facebook in recent years with the proliferation of Reels and Stories, AV1 deployment has become increasingly central to Meta's video strategy, reports Meta technical program manager Hassene Tmar in this conversation with Streaming Learning Center owner Jan Ozer from Streaming Media Connect 2025. Tmar explains why AV1 now accounts for 70% of video delivered on Facebook, whether VOD or live on Messenger, and why his team has been pushing it for several years now.

Why Streaming Demands a Different End-to-End Workflow From Broadcast

When pre-existing live broadcast operations add streaming for the same events or content, there's a temptation to "bolt on" streaming to the existing workflow and treat it as just another output or destination, but Warner Bros. Discovery distinguished video platform engineer Neal Roberts insists that doing so means sacrificing the streaming end-user experience in this conversation with Alchemy Creations founder and principal Andy Beach at Streaming Media Connect 2025. He says that also means duplicating operator requirements and goes on to discuss comms between streaming and broadcast teams and other best practices for optimising experiences for all viewers regardless of platform.

Where Do Cloud and Remote Production Reduce and Increase Streaming Costs?

The now-familiar narrative of livestreaming in the pandemic tells us that when social distancing compelled streamers to migrate from on-prem to remote production and the cloud, massive cost savings were our reward. But cloud-based streaming also carries hidden costs. NBCU's Paul Kirchberg, Live X's Corey Benkhe, and Sargeway's Sarge Sargent discuss the true costs and savings of cloud and REMI operations and how to avoid the pitfalls in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2025.