In this blog, we share how Jet-Stream ensures that your radio station, podcast or music streaming service can achieve the utmost reach, with the highest possible ranking and the highest possible advertising revenue.

Case study

Jet-Stream provides radio streaming, video streaming and podcast hosting for regional and local broadcasters like NH Media and AT5, publishers like Mediahuis (Telegraaf and NRC among others) and commercial radio stations like TopRadio in Belgium.

These and many other broadcasters and publishers consciously choose Jet-Stream partly because of our broad experience and support of audio and radio streaming, and the reliable and efficient processing of logs and statistics. The data is shared with Triton Digital, which acts as the party that collects podcast and radio ranking data and shares lists with independent charts.

Audio is booming

You would almost forget with all these video services, but the world of Internet radio, music streaming and podcasting is buzzing like never before. And what audio is all about are two things to generate the highest possible ad revenue:

  • The greatest possible reach
  • The highest possible ranking
  • The smartest advertising techniques

Reach and ranking may seem similar, but they are two different things. Whereas reach is about making sure you have as much geographical reach as possible without technical barriers, ranking is about measuring how many actual listeners you have reached, and how you substantiate this.

Three steps to greater reach thanks to Jet-Stream:

1. Redundancy from microphone to serving

A one-second hitch and listeners are gone. Maximum reach starts with source availability: if the source stream from the studio is unavailable, the entire chain behind it can be set up so nicely, but no one can listen. For audio files, Jet-Stream automatically takes care of quadruple redundancy. For live streams, Jet-Stream offers the option of double redundancy. Jet-Stream’s infrastructure is duplicated and cross-linked from A to Z, up to and including multiple CDNs, between which can be switched in real-time, both in our cloud and in the media player. Should something go wrong somewhere in the chain, there is always a plan B, and often also a plan C, D, E and F. Because especially in radio, uptime is king. Jet-Stream’s uptime target is 99.999% for double-delivered signals, and typically it is 100%.

2. Broad technical audio support

HLS and DASH are the most common streaming techniques today. But for radio, the old Icecast protocol also holds a significant market share, sometimes up to more than 30%, and those are range numbers you can’t afford to miss. For that reason, Jet-Stream’s own CDN supports a broad spectrum of contribution protocols, serving protocols, codecs and formats, including (take a breath) at least HLS, DASH, RTMP, RTSP, Icecast, SRT, MP3, AAC and FLAC. Jet-Stream Cloud can convert incoming signals to other protocols in real-time, and meanwhile also add conversions and quality strokes for adaptive bit rate audio streaming, for example. In addition, Jet-Stream naturally supports the various surround and multi-language options. This broad spectrum of capabilities ensures that your audio service can be played back on any possible device, at the highest possible quality for the listener. An added benefit is that Jet-Stream’s built-in video player can also play all popular audio formats and protocols, as well as support for surround and multilingualism.

3. Global coverage and scale

The marketplace has become a global marketplace. Billions of people live in the world: a huge potential reach for your station, podcast or music service. However, a global CDN is not truly global. Most CDNs have high capacity in the EU and the USA, but beyond that it quickly gets tense, and that limits your reach. For that reason, Jet-Stream works with 9 CDNs. Each CDN partner has geographic optimizations, so reach at scale is also possible in South America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia, the Pacific, Africa and China. Still, nice to know that Jet-Stream is a partner that can scale distribution, and therefore reach, to the ultimate.

Three steps for reliable and high ranking thanks to Jet-Stream:

1. Measurements

Ranking your reach starts with measurement. You then want to work with guaranteed and reliable data. Client-side trackers are not a good source: they can be blocked and data can be manipulated. In many audio playback devices, you can’t even load trackers. For this reason, Jet-Stream works with access logs: they are always collected, they are always correct, cannot be blocked or manipulated by the public, and contain rich information. Jet-Stream Cloud collects all logs in real-time, regardless of the mix of CDNs, and regardless of the protocols used, and independent of players, and presents them as a unified log.

2. Analytics

Real-time statistics and reports are generated from the above data. Reported are not only the reach figures per hour, day, week month, but also the average listening time, geography, devices, qualities, and performance are displayed overall and per channel and per title.

3. Ranking

All Jet-Stream data is also available via an API and log stream for further processing. The ranking is mostly performed by third-party providers, who collect the data from all broadcasters, music services and podcast providers, aggregate the reach figures, and thus create ranking lists. These parties can use the API access in your account to start collecting the data to come up with a good ranking.

Four steps to increase your ad revenue with Jet-Stream:

1. Use visual radio and visual podcasts for higher reach!

Everyone is looking for greater reach and higher ranking. An interesting approach is to use visual radio and visual podcasts in addition to radio and podcasting. This can be a simple camera in the studio, or a video clip channel, or a cable news channel, or edited images with a podcast. This can add 10 to 30 per cent more reach in no time. Moreover, the CPM for video is usually higher than for audio: you earn more from your reach.

2. Visual to audio conversion

Conceptually, visual radio and visual podcasts are still audio and radio, but technically they are video files and video streams. The problem here is that many ranking parties in audio are unable to process video data. For that reason, Jet-Stream converts the visual radio and visual podcast data as if they were audio reach metrics, and adds them to the audio data.

3. Higher advertising revenue

Thus, visual data still counts and broadcasters, publishers and podcast providers achieve higher and actual reach figures. With that, they can convince advertisers to pay more or to advertise more.

4. Advertising with 100% inventory

Last but not least, making money with advertising is core to radio streaming and podcasting. Jet-Stream offers a free HTML5 player that plays all radio and audio formats, as well as HLS live and on-demand video. That saves working with multiple (expensive) video and audio players. The player offers full support for radio and video ads and is easily linked to all ad networks and ad brokers via the IAB VAST standard. But there’s more. The days of 3rd party cookies are over, and they are increasingly being blocked. As a result, good targeting is no longer possible, and that hurts reach and CPM value. Jet-Stream’s player therefore offers cookieless, contextual advertising. This allows targeting without the need for cookies or consent, allowing you to scale from 60% ad placement to 100% and keep your CPM high.

In short, thanks to Jet-Stream, you extend your reach, obtain higher rankings, lower your distribution and player costs, and increase your advertising revenue thanks to visual radio, visual podcasts and contextual advertising.

If you don’t make the switch soon, you’re wasting money every day. Need to make a call?

P.s.

Data protection

You are right to question whether this data can be shared just like that. After all, access logs contain personal data: the IP address of the listener. Moreover, some ranking parties are American, and there personal data are insufficiently protected. For that reason, Jet-Stream does not share IP addresses or Jet-Stream breaks down all IP addresses by setting the last three numbers to 0. For example, 123.123.123.123 becomes 123.123.123.0. By breaking the IP addresses, the approximate location, region or country of the listener can still be determined, but the individual can no longer be traced: the person identifier is removed. Thus, Jet-Stream actively contributes to protecting the privacy of listeners of music, radio and podcasts, and to increasing revenue for our customers. Contextual advertising does not share user data. Just goes to show that privacy and making money go hand in hand. 

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