Audio Streaming Ad Insertion Solution

AdsWizz is a global provider of digital advertising solutions that span ad servers, exchanges, supply-side platforms, and demand-side platforms for desktop and mobile. The company serves ads through internet radio channels, music websites, streaming videos, and iPhone applications for clients including Amazon, Coca-Cola, and Dell. One of the most successful Belgian startups, AdsWizz has moved its headquarters to San Mateo, California, but maintains a worldwide presence with offices in Brussels, Paris, Berlin, and London.

Business challenge

The growing audience of online media consumers poses challenges to advertisers and digital media publishers alike. How can publishers efficiently monetize their multimedia content? How can advertisers place ads in streaming audio? AdsWizz found a solution for serving targeted digital ads to listeners – injecting ads into audio streams from major streaming servers. Due to the novelty of this solution and its performance and stability requirements, implementation was very demanding and required thorough technical and business research to prove the concept. AdsWizz partnered with Intellias to tackle this product development challenge because of our reputation and technical expertise.

Technology solution

The innovative Audio Ad Insertion solution that we designed in collaboration with our client unlocked new markets for AdsWizz. Leading digital media providers including AM/FM simulcast broadcasters and digital broadcasters now rely on AdsWizz to monetize their content through server-side injection of targeted advertising. Ad insertion solution for streaming audio, which runs on powerful media servers, has been seamlessly integrated into AdsWizz’s proprietary campaign management platform.

Intellias designed and implemented unique algorithms that detect ad breaks by listening to unmarked audio streams, performing real-time audio fingerprinting, and inserting inaudible signals to mark places to insert ads between tracks. Our team also developed plugins for third-party servers that hook and intercept their streams. Intellias ensured the robustness, stability, and performance of the Audio Ad Insertion system. We performed intensive stress testing by imitating a real-life production environment and exposing the setup to exaggerated levels of traffic streamed to tens and hundreds of thousands of listeners.

What did our client get?

Business impact

During five years of partnership, Intellias proved its expertise in every aspect of product development, from R&D activities, business analysis, development, and quality control to post-deployment and L3 support. With our support, AdsWizz made a notable leap from a Belgian AdTech startup to Silicon Valley company. Another success of their product is that Pandora, one of the most popular US music service, has bought the company. The acquisition process started in March 2018 and was successfully completed in May 2018. We’re proud of our client success and our contribution to that on early stages of their growth.

We helped AdsWizz