TV TECHNOLOGY: What do you anticipate will be the most significant technology trend at the 2017 NAB Show?
RALF JACOB: We’re going to see more and more OTT technology that’s enabling and supporting the creation of personalized viewing experiences. Just as content has continued to trend towards personalized experiences—from skinny bundle offerings to apps exclusively featuring niche content such as sports, movies and television shows—so too, will the technological infrastructure that supports these viewing experiences head in this direction. Whether it’s more consolidation of workflows into a single platform, intuitive ad insertion technologies or robust enterprise quality of service tools, more of these technologies will be available to content creators and OTT providers. We also anticipate new ad formats to emerge, making use of AI and machine learning; we expect object recognition to play a major role.
TVT: What will be your most important product news?
JACOB: As the OTT industry continues to evolve, we’re always working to ensure that our products, solutions and services meet the ever-changing demands of content creators—the demands both of today and tomorrow. We’re always looking for ways to simplify the OTT workflow of getting content into the pipeline, monetized and then out to audiences around the world, at scale. With this in mind, we can’t wait to share more about a new, next-generation OVP solution that we’ve been working on and that will drastically impact the media and entertainment landscape.
We’re also excited to make the North American debut of two products that we launched last fall 2016: our Live Streaming Solution and our Volicon Media Intelligence service.
Our Live Streaming Solution simplifies the live event workflow and gets quality live streams onto mobile and connected devices. It boasts so many features to make the entire live streaming process easy—from the instantaneous creation of on-demand content to video clipping for content syndication to internal or third-party content management systems and apps.
Last year, we acquired Volicon, a leading provider of video capture, archival, compliance monitoring and clip creation workflow for broadcasters. After the acquisition, one of the first investments we made was integrating our Slicer application, which encodes and packages content for streaming, into the Volicon Media Intelligence service. Now, Volicon Media Intelligence service users can easily launch OTT offerings through their own existing Volicon hardware infrastructure.
TVT: How is your new product different from what’s available on the market?
JACOB: One of our biggest differentiators is that we have a digital media platform that comprises both all of the necessary tools to successfully launch an OTT service and also a global content delivery network (CDN) to ensure the secure, reliable and quality delivery of content to mobile and connected devices. There’s no need to have to go to multiple partners—one for analytics, another for monetization and yet another for a CDN. You can get everything you need all under one roof, the Verizon Digital Media Services roof.
TVT: What is it about the NAB Show that brings you back every year?
JACOB: The NAB Show is a jam-packed week, filled with informative panels, educational seminars, mind-boggling booths and critical relationship-building meetings. It’s fast-paced, hectic, a whirlwind—and, incredibly fun. Where else can you find out about the latest industry trends, see some of the coolest technological innovations, connect with old friends and meet new ones—literally all in one day? I’ve been attending for many, many years now and each time, I always find myself leaving the conference having learned something new and networking with some of the most inspiring leaders and trailblazers within the media and entertainment space.
