The evolution of online video and how broadcasters adopt new strategies

Coinciding with the last World Cup, online streaming reached new highs with peak traffic rates breaking records. What has become clear is that audiences access streaming content to complement their viewing experience of sports, favorite television shows or movies and are now increasingly using this technology as their first delivery mechanism. What has caused this change in viewer behavior and how are broadcasters successfully adopting online video strategies?

In 2014, the World Cup in Brazil marked an impressive new high for online video with a peak traffic rate of 6.9Tbps recorded on the Akamai Smart Platform during the semi-final match between the Netherlands and Argentina on July 9. To put things in context, 6.9Tbps is equivalent to 6,900,000,000,000 bits of information per second. Most importantly, the peak online audience for some matches far exceeded 5 million viewers.

Akamai worked with more than 50 broadcasters and delivered live streams to more than 80 countries around the world, making this tournament the largest live sporting event ever delivered on our platform. But we expect demand to grow even more in the future.

Online video is no longer considered niche and has moved out of the early adopter space. Now, challenging traditional broadcast technology, high-quality live video streaming has become mainstream and the pace of this change has been rapid.

At the end of the Millennium

In 1999, lingerie brand Victoria's Secret held its annual fashion show online. To promote the event, it spent $1.5 million on advertising during the Super Bowl and $4 million on print media. It achieved its goal of attracting attention, but for many viewers who attempted to watch the webcast, it was a disappointment when the website went down and for those who were able to make contact, the viewing was marred by poor audio and video. The traffic volume achieved was 1 Gigabit per second (Gbps).

Unsurprisingly, Apple's Steve Jobs was a true early adopter, setting webcast records for his presentations at the annual MacWorld Expo in the late '90s.

In 2001, the 'Stevenote' webcast set Internet records for web streaming media with 250,000 people viewing various parts of his presentation and more than 35,500 viewers generating 5.3 Gbps of peak streaming traffic. At the time, this was equivalent to the size of the typical audience for a cable television show. The 2001 webcast used MPEG1, but the following year Apple broke records again by hosting the first major streaming event using MPEG-4, which quickly became the standard for delivering high-quality audio and video.

Election Day in 2004 set a new peak traffic high of 21Gbps on the Akamai platform, but by 2007 streaming was becoming more common and the focus was much more on delivering a quality experience. The introduction of the BBC iPlayer and the launch of Netflix to respond to consumer demand were partly made possible by the quality of online streaming vastly improving thanks to HVGA delivering a 'near SDTV' broadcast experience.

High quality achieves massive audiences

In 2008, the number of traditional viewers streaming content from the Internet was greater, accessing shows, movies and sporting events on their PCs and laptops, with an average engagement lasting 17 minutes. Delivering content online was quickly becoming a priority for broadcasters.

Between 2008 and 2011, simultaneous and impactful changes in both device technology and delivery standards generated ever-larger online audiences. SD was replaced by HD and MPEG-4 became the standard for streaming. Android phones were announced in 2008 and quickly followed by tablets, with the Apple iPad standing out in 2010, offering 'near-HDTV' quality at 2-4x3G speeds. These changes generated greater demand for streaming, and posed challenges to broadcasters who had to find a way to deliver to a growing number of devices.

When Prince William and Catherine Middleton married in 2011, 2.9 million concurrent streams and 1.3Tbps were generated on the Akamai Smart Platform, but this paled in comparison to the Sochi Olympics, which reached 3. 5Tbps during a men's hockey semifinal, a rate four times higher than during Usain Bolt's 100m dash at the 2012 London Summer Olympics. Total traffic delivered by Akamai for the 2014 Winter Olympics was 70 % higher than London 2012. But in just six months, the peak traffic rate doubled with the World Cup in Brazil.

Future trends

As online viewership and consumer expectations for quality grow, we need to think about the ability of current Internet streaming technologies to deliver 4K content at scale, affordably to billions of consumers. To put this in perspective, the Akamai Intelligent Platform now delivers more than 25Tbps of daily traffic globally through hundreds of thousands of servers embedded in ISP networks in more than 100 countries.

In 2015 we expect this figure to double as it has year after year for the last 15 years, but these figures pale into insignificance when compared to what the future holds – a future in which thousands of Tbps of data will be delivered. video content to billions of global viewers on billions of devices. l

The question is whether current delivery practices will be able to scale, economically and with the quality that consumers expect. Well, the answer is probably not based on current methodologies. Together, we have to develop new ways and technologies to meet the demands of the future.

No single technology alone can solve all the challenges but as an industry we can develop technologies to work together and this will offer us a very bright future for online video delivery. The opportunities are ours and we must take advantage of them.

Ian Munford

Director of Product Marketing for the EMEA Region of Akamai

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