The process is streamlined to ensure your viewers experience a smooth, uninterrupted streaming experience that smartly incorporates ads relevant to their interests and geographical location. This step will guide you through the integration flow of RapidStream and explain its pivotal role in mediating between the SSAI and the ad server.

Integration Flow:

Starting Point – The Player Request

The viewer’s player requests the HLS manifest from the SSAI service. This request includes important parameters such as the application name and the viewer’s country, critical for determining the ad insertion rules later on.

SSAI Fetching Content

The SSAI service retrieves the video content manifest from the origin source, which includes SCTE-35 markers. These markers indicate where ads can be inserted within the stream.

Triggering Ad Requests

When the SSAI encounters a SCTE-35 marker within the stream, it triggers a request to the ad server for advertisements.

Ad Response and Stitching

The ad server responds with a VAST document containing the ads, which SSAI seamlessly stitches into the video manifest.

The Final Stream to Player

The player receives a seamless video stream that includes the original content with ads inserted at designated points, ensuring a fluid viewer experience.

Role of RapidStream – The Mediator:

RapidStream plays a crucial role in the integration process, acting as a mediator between the SSAI and the ad server. Its functionalities include:

• Inventory Sharing and Ad Server Waterfall: Allows for distribution of ad slots across multiple ad servers, maximizing inventory utilization.

• Flatten VAST Response: Streamlines the ad selection process by filtering out empty ad responses, ensuring that every ad slot is filled.

• Deduplication and Frequency Capping: Prevents the same ad from being shown repeatedly to the same viewer within a defined period, enhancing viewer experience.

• EPG Catalog Context Enrichment: Adds contextual data to the ad serving process, such as Electronic Program Guide (EPG) information, to serve more relevant ads.

• On the Roadmap – Prefetch for High Volume: RapidStream is developing a feature to prefetch ads for scenarios with a large number of concurrent viewers (e.g., 1 million or more), ensuring scalability and responsiveness.

Conclusion:

The integration of RapidStream into your FAST channel streamlines the process of ad insertion, making it efficient, dynamic, and viewer-friendly. Its role as a mediator ensures that the ad serving process is optimized, leveraging both inventory management and viewer experience enhancements. This system is built to handle demand, anticipate viewer preferences, and ensure a seamless integration of content and advertising, setting the foundation for a successful FAST channel.