The new and improved Amagi THUNDERSTORM delivers highest render rates in the industry

The third generation, industry's only, built-for-FAST dynamic ad insertion solution from Amagi offers content owners and platforms higher revenue opportunities

LONDON, Sept. 1, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Amagi, a global leader in cloud-based SaaS technology for broadcast and connected TV, today announced the latest version of its flagship ad insertion product, Amagi THUNDERSTORM. The new version offers a wide range of benefits for modern-day broadcasters and media content owners, enabling them to achieve ad revenue growth at scale on OTT and Free Ad-supported Streaming TV (FAST) platforms. 

The third generation of Amagi THUNDERSTORM has been built to specifically optimize the FAST ad experience and provide best-in-class ad render rates (number of ads inserted divided by the number of ads available). Amagi THUNDERSTORM provides a differentiated and optimized monetization solution for media companies in the streaming ecosystem. By enabling advanced ad formats and contextually relevant ads, while offering flexible ad sourcing options and adaptability to a wide range of media devices and platforms, Amagi THUNDERSTORM delivers increased revenue and enhanced relevance.

"The FAST ecosystem is growing at a rapid pace. As the leader in FAST, we want to enable our content partners to monetize every single ad opportunity. With ad dollars rapidly shifting to CTV, a robust server-side ad insertion (SSAI) solution can help improve efficiencies and enable better targeting. Based on our learnings over the past five years in the FAST industry, we have reimagined our entire SSAI stack. We now have a solution that is built and optimized exclusively for FAST and are seeing benefits of significantly improved render rates across our customers with this new offering," said Srinivasan KA, co-founder, Amagi.

Amagi THUNDERSTORM enhances streaming TV sessions with personalized, relevant, and non-intrusive ad-supported streams. It operates at scale, processing 50B+ ad opportunities and 1.8Bn+ viewership hours per year across 2100+ channels on various streaming platforms.

As a FAST-focused solution, Amagi THUNDERSTORM provides the widest support for FAST platforms. Amagi THUNDERSTORM's deep integration with all major global FAST platforms and their ad stack provides rapid onboarding of channels.

Product highlights include -

Increased Render Rates: The new Amagi THUNDERSTORM version enables a double-digit increase in render rate significantly increasing monetization, driven by lower latencies on ad requests, ad request optimization based on playlist requests, better caching of ads, configurable delay adjustments for each demand, and better user ad request management.

Availability on customer's cloud: The new Amagi THUNDERSTORM version is available as a SaaS-hosted offering as well as an API-driven module in the customer's own cloud, enabling customers to manage their investments effectively.

Increased revenue opportunities with non-linear ads: Amagi THUNDERSTORM now offers support for advanced ad formats including overlays, L-Bands, and lower-thirds as well as dynamic brand insertion, providing new revenue opportunities without disrupting viewer engagement, in collaboration with partners like TripleLift.

Improved CPMs with contextual targeting: Amagi THUNDERSTORM natively supports contextual targeting with partners like IRIS TV allowing better monetization of ads and improved targeting for advertisers.

Higher Reliability: Amagi THUNDERSTORM's real-time alerting framework will detect anomalous drops and spikes in metrics to enable fast corrections and reduce faults. If there is any issue such as a fall in ad render rates, or ad response rates, the real-time alerting framework will automatically alert Amagi's NOC team to identify and help fix the underlying issues.

Amagi provides a complete suite of solutions for channel creation, distribution and monetization. Amagi clients include ABS-CBN, A+E Networks UK, beIN Sports, Curiosity Stream, Cinedigm, Warner Bros. Discovery, Fox Networks, Fremantle, Gannett, NBCUniversal, Tastemade, Tegna, and Vice Media among others.

Amagi will be showcasing its innovative products at IBC2022 in Amsterdam. For more information about Amagi and its streaming TV solutions, visit www.amagi.com.

About Amagi

Amagi is a next-generation media technology company that provides cloud broadcast and targeted advertising solutions to broadcast TV and streaming TV platforms. Amagi enables content owners to launch, distribute and monetize live linear channels on Free Ad-supported Streaming TV and video services platforms. Amagi also offers 24x7 cloud-managed services bringing simplicity, advanced automation, and transparency to the entire broadcast operations. Overall, Amagi supports 700+ content brands, 800+ playout chains, and over 2100 channel deliveries on its platform in over 40 countries. Amagi has a presence in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, London, Paris, Melbourne, Seoul, Singapore, and broadcast operations in New Delhi, and an innovation center in Bangalore.