Foxtel Group boosts live event ad fill by 25% with AWS Elemental MediaTailor

Dynamic ad insertion for live sports is notoriously complex. Unlike video-on-demand (VOD), live event streams drive sustained viewer concurrency as fans tune in simultaneously, which can overwhelm the AdTech decisioning path. This impacts supply-side platform (SSP) and demand-side platform (DSP) interactions, programmatic insertions, and stitching, among other workflow aspects. Further complicating matters, ad breaks are only loosely pre-determined as the event action can lead to impromptu decisions that alter timing.

Live sports and highlight videos in the Kayo Sports app.

To sidestep these challenges for Kayo Sports (Australia’s largest sports streaming service), Foxtel Group, a dynamic technology-led streaming company in Australia, leverages the prefetch feature in Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elemental MediaTailor.

The feature empowers Foxtel Group to improve monetization outcomes, achieving more than 95 percent ad fill to maximize ad revenue for Kayo Sports. Built on AWS, the service streams up to 400 professional and amateur live events each week. On any given weekend, it may deliver 20-50 simultaneous event streams spanning Australian Football League and Rugby League to cricket, netball, Formula 1, and Supercars racing.

“Before prefetch, we overwhelmed our downstream providers. Our ad server, the DSPs, and the SSPs struggled with the massive load that we were pushing toward them,” explained Niklas Hammarstrom, Foxtel Group Director, Streaming and Advertising Technology. “After discussing challenges with the MediaTailor experts at AWS, we were able to come up with a solution that allows us to move millions of users into an ad break and have the downstream ad decisioning already done. This includes preparing the metadata and creative.”

Close collaboration

AWS initially developed the prefetch feature, now available in MediaTailor, with Foxtel Group to reduce Kayo Sports’ blank slate time, which was leading to lost revenue. Prefetch reads ahead of the live playout schedule, then retrieves and prepares a predetermined amount of ad content in anticipation of ad breaks. Once the ad break is live, MediaTailor stitches the content together.

Foxtel Group engaged a team of media-specialized support experts at AWS for a six-month project to accelerate development, with the goal of boosting the ad fill rate above 70 percent. The first iteration of prefetch went live in mid-2024 and AWS has continued to optimize the feature based on mutual input. To date, Kayo Sport’s ad fill rate has increased to more than 95 percent, significantly boosting ad revenue for the service.

“One of the biggest benefits of working so closely with AWS was the specific insight they gave us into how things work internally, including access to internal performance metrics we wouldn’t otherwise have had. This gave us a much deeper understanding of system behavior and optimization opportunities. Also, the rapid response time when we had an issue was great, which helped keep us engaged and working at a faster pace. That transparency and having access to the right people quickly helped us improve timeouts, increasing fill rate and reducing slate,” noted Rupesh Satija, Foxtel Group Head of OTT (over-the-top) and Video Architecture.

Added Hammarstrom, “Foxtel Group is engineering-driven and our requirements for MediaTailor are quite demanding, but AWS has been very open to listening to our needs. They recognize we’re aiming for the forefront of what’s technically possible, and unlike other vendors we’ve encountered, AWS is very eager to help us solve these challenges.”

Rupesh Satija (pictured left), Foxtel Group Head of OTT and Video Architecture, with Niklas Hammarstrom, Foxtel Group Director, Streaming and Advertising Technology.

Ongoing evolution

Kayo Sports has leveraged MediaTailor since the service began offering dynamic ad insertion capabilities in 2019. Beyond the sports-centric service, MediaTailor is also used for Binge entertainment streaming service.

“Once we started experimenting with MediaTailor for our streaming services, it quickly became an important revenue stream for us. We have since evolved our capabilities around ads, and we’ve done that that in close cooperation with AWS,” shared Hammarstrom. “It’s been a great success story, thanks to our incredible team of engineers and the support of AWS.”

Other key AWS Media Services that Foxtel Group uses for its OTT properties include AWS Elemental MediaPackage for origin, and Amazon CloudFront for content delivery network as part of a multi-CDN strategy.

Looking at what’s next for Kayo Sports, Hammarstrom is keen to explore how they can further monetize content during live play. This includes experimenting with interactive and engaging ad formats such as graphic overlays and squeezebacks, where the video zooms out and an ad is displayed on the main window. “All these new revenue opportunities require signaling capabilities through MediaTailor,” he noted.

Whatever path Foxtel Group follows next, Satija is confident that AWS will remain a key partner. He concluded, “The speed at which we’re able to work with AWS is a great benefit. It enables us to abstract complications so we can move faster. Also, all the services are developer-friendly and interoperate well. The AWS solution architects really know their services, so they can help us with any query.”

Learn more about AWS Media Services and dynamic ad insertion with AWS Elemental MediaTailor. Get in touch with an AWS for Media & Entertainment video expert.