Firstlight Media Flexes Innovation Muscle with Google Cloud Tools

Firstlight Media announced that it is collaboratively working across a suite of Google Cloud products to innovate new, cloud-native monetization, personalization and content delivery capabilities – most notably Free Ad-Supported Television (FAST) – for the next generation of OTT platforms.

As part of its expanding relationship with Google Cloud, Firstlight Media’s research and development team is driving creation of three new opportunities for the industry: the ability to bring FAST services to Google Cloud; the use of Google Cloud data and business intelligence tools to drive real-time OTT data and recommendations; and the use of Google Cloud’s Media CDN to support the high-quality, low latency video delivery demanded by consumers.

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“There are tremendous opportunities for the OTT industry within the massive library of Google Cloud tools,” said Juan Martin, CTO and Co-Founder of Firstlight Media. “Working in concert with Google Cloud and other cloud-native partners, we’re consolidating the best media tools that Google Cloud has to offer to drive user engagement and monetization in OTT streaming.”

Designed to accelerate the industry’s shift to cloud-native platforms, the collaboration encompasses multiple areas of work that directly align with Firstlight Media’s Video Pipeline, Video CMS, and User Experience core product areas. Among them:

• Enabling video stitching for virtual, ad-supported channels, using manifest manipulation for server side ad insertion and Google Ad Manager;
• Using BigQuery, Looker, Spanner and other Google Cloud data tools to support a real-time data pipeline and working with Google AI to pilot a media-specific recommendation engine that drives personalization and engagement; and
• Using select technical access to Google Cloud’s high performance Media CDN to perform in-market tests to improve VOD performance and develop new live capabilities, including low latency streaming.

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“Google Cloud is committed to collaborating with customers and partners to help them build cloud solutions that advance their efficiency, performance, and scalability practices,” said Anil Jain, Managing Director, Media & Entertainment Industry Solutions. “We’re pleased to work alongside partners such as Firstlight Media to develop these solutions and help customers across the entire OTT industry move forward in their cloud journeys.”

Firstlight Media’s OTT platform is designed to build and run scalable applications in the cloud using cloud-native technologies, including containers, microservices, a service mesh, APIs, and immutable infrastructure. The OTT technology stack provides significantly better performance, a modular approach for feature expansion, continuous delivery for rapid iteration, and built-in scalability, observability and security. Forward-looking OTT providers such as Arha Media & Broadcasting Private Limited’s aha 2.0 in India, PLDT’s Smart in the Philippines and others are using the Firstlight Media platform to deliver services with the flexibility and the agility of the cloud, while equaling or exceeding the reliability and high performance of broadcast.

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