Sky Media to use Yospace’s live ad insertion solution for Sky Go

Sky Media has chosen Yospace to provide a dynamic advertisement replacement solution for Sky Go, the leading ‘TV everywhere’ service in Europe. In addition to enabling dynamic ad serving on Sky Go Linear for the first time, Sky is now also able to reproduce the key targeting benefits of its highly successful Sky AdSmart technology across connected devices.

The expansion of dynamic ad serving is a great benefit to advertisers, who are able to overlay ads aimed at selected audiences – whether conventional broad TV demographs, or precisely targeted Sky AdSmart audiences. Viewers prefer seeing more relevant ads too, with a November 2015 press release from Sky Media reporting that channel switching in Sky AdSmart breaks has reduced by almost half.

With millions of subscribers around the UK, it was vital that the new implementation provide a seamless viewing experience for Sky Go. Yospace is able to frame-accurately splice replacement advertisements in such a way that the viewer is unable to distinguish replaced content from the underlying stream.

“The enablement of dynamic ad serving in Sky Go Linear, and the ability to extend Sky AdSmart on Sky Go marks a big leap forward for both advertisers and viewers,” said Jamie West, deputy MD of Sky Media. “We wanted to provide a seamless viewing experience, but also consider Sky Go viewers’ more personalised relationships with their TV content. With these aspirations in mind, it became clear very quickly that Yospace’s platform was the most innovative and technically robust.”

Tim Sewell, CEO of Yospace, said: “Sky is the market leader, not just in terms of audience but in innovation in services and features too, and Yospace is delighted to be adding them to our growing list of broadcast customers. Our dynamic advertisement replacement technology allows tailored adverts to be fully personalised, delivering view-through rates in excess of 98%. When applied to Sky Go, whose audience is measured in millions, we anticipate substantial benefits for both viewers and advertisers.”