Sony backs PARALLEL ADS for live sports event production

Sony has announced full compatibility with PARALLEL ADS, a solution by AGS AG (Switzerland), enabling broadcasters of sporting events to simultaneously share tailored advertising content to different audiences around the globe. 

The solution is based on DYNAMIC CONTENT MULITPLICATION technology that can also provide the same benefits for music and other live events. The DCM technology enables rights holders to broadcast up to four simultaneous feeds for event-based LED advertising from a single camera, helping them unlock new revenue streams by tailoring these advertisements to different markets.

This also improves the customer experience by providing relevant content to different audiences. The new technology is part of an ambition from Sony to respond directly to broadcasters’ needs, address new industry challenges and drive efficiencies.  

PARALLEL ADS shows its full potential exclusively in conjunction with live system cameras from Sony, including the HDC-5500, which has the world’s first native 3x UHD CMOS sensors and incorporates Global Shutter technology, a key feature in enabling PARALLEL ADS. The technology allows broadcasters to share, in real-time, unique advertising content for different markets.

For example, on the same perimeter LED screen a viewer watching a broadcast stream in Japan will see advertisements for Japanese products while a viewer of the same stream in France will see French advertisements. In total, four different unique streams can be broadcast simultaneously. The human eye will only be able to detect the venue feed, so the in-person experience is unchanged.   

The technology works by playing all feeds on the LED system in real time. No additional hardware is required, instead synchronisation is simply done by configuring the camera settings and equipment with the OB. Once a camera is synchronised to PARALLEL ADS, the multiple feeds are directly available in the vision mixer.  

As opposed to a virtual overlay, which creates a new advertisement in post-processing, PARALLEL ADS is capable of directly emitting multiple feeds simultaneously from one camera. Because no post-processing, tracking or other pre/post setup is required, broadcasters can reap the benefits of the new revenue streams without the need for additional staff and with minimal disruption to current workflows.