The current pandemic has brought the Media and Entertainment of today facing industry-wide transformation as companies start to reinvent how they create content, optimize media supply chains, and compete for audience attention across streaming, broadcast, and direct-to-consumer platforms.
Over the past two (02) years, video consumption has changed radically as people found comfort with the use of online video since the pandemic started. With different restrictions currently being eased in parts of the Asia Pacific region, the popularity of video streaming continues to grow with more than 400 million individuals now using over-the-top (OTT) video streaming services within the locality.
“In parallel, consumer demand for personalization is driving organizations such as broadcast, pay-TV, and OTT providers to look for new ways to deliver even richer interactive video experiences. Interactive live video encourages a two-way exchange with viewers and is being adopted across a range of industries — from finance, travel and hospitality, to e-commerce — as enterprises look for new ways to engage their customers,” according to Shweta Jain, head of media and entertainment business development at AWS in Asia Pacific.
Jain also noted that the consumers of today (which includes sports fans, entertainment buffs, shoppers, and gamers) demand outstanding performances on any device, quick start times, and no buffering.
“To provide an optimal user experience, live-streamed interactive video requires minimal latency, which is the time video takes to go from the camera to the viewer. Traditional video streaming required latencies of 20 to 30 seconds to accommodate for content preparation needed for high-quality viewing across multiple kinds of devices, getting the content uploaded to multiple content delivery networks, and finally making the “last-mile” connections to end users’ devices on their preferred networks,” added by Jain.
As their way of helping customers in Indonesia and the Philippines meet the demand for rich and engaging interactive live video content streaming at a lower latency, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the launch of Amazon Interactive Video Service (Amazon IVS) Points of Presence (PoPs) in Jakarta and Manila last month.
Built on the same live streaming technology that powers Twitch, Amazon IVS is a fully managed service that makes it easy to set up live, interactive video streams for a web or mobile application in just a few minutes. By receiving and delivering video streams over local edge infrastructure that is optimized for live video ingest, processing, and delivery, the new Amazon IVS PoPs in Jakarta and Manila will enable end-users to benefit from low latency — making video content seamless and more engaging for viewers.
Customers can also build interactive features into their live stream by using the Amazon IVS Software Development Kit (SDK) and APIs. Having virtual chat spaces, votes and polls, moderated question and answer sessions, and even synchronized promotional elements without impacting live video download times are now easier than before.
Traveloka Taps Interactive Promotions
Companies like Southeast Asia’s lifestyle super app Traveloka have been leveraging AWS to scale their travel platform since 2012 and have recently adopted Amazon IVS to improve engagement with its customers by adding live-streamed product promotions on its platform.
Traveloka was initially established to simplify travel from Indonesia to the world. Ten (10) years later, the company now offers more than 20 products and services, featuring more than 200 airlines, 1.8 million accommodation partners, and 111,000inventories in over 100 countries. The Traveloka app has also been downloaded more than 100 million times by customers in the region.
AWS Continues to Invest in Infrastructure
As part of AWS’ commitment to bringing cloud technologies closer to more customers, they embark on further infrastructure investments across the Asia Pacific. The cloud platform now has 84 Availability Zones (AZs) within 26 geographic regions across the globe. The Amazon IVS PoPs in Jakarta and Manila follows the recent announcement of launching ten (10) new AWS Local Zones — infrastructure deployment that places AWS compute, storage, database, and other services closer to customers — over the next two (02) years.