Doing Server-Side Ad Insertion on Live Sports for 25.3M Concurrent Users
summary
Hotstar describes how they built server-side ad insertion (SSAI) to handle live cricket streams that peaked at 25.3M concurrent users across 10 platforms and variable networks (2G–4G and broadband). The talk explains why client‑side ad insertion fails for cricket’s unpredictable ad breaks, how a cohort‑based SSAI design lets ads scale without adding live latency, and how a real‑time feedback system and automation were used to meet complex targeting (age, gender, location, language) and deliver billions of impressions.
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chapters (15)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:22Swhoami
- 0:46Hotstar at Peak
- 1:22Live Streaming in India
- 2:30Cricket - India's Baseball
- 4:15Server Side - Static Ad Insertion
- 5:46Server Side - Personalised Ad Insertion
- 6:56Client Side - Personalised Ad Insertion
- 8:51Virtual Streams
- 10:18Workflow
- 11:17Architecture Overview
- 13:02Stitching Service
- 14:55Scale - A lot of caching
- 17:43Challenges we went through
- 18:45Future of Dynamic Ad Insertion
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