Imagine Communications and Amagi announce strategic partnership

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The collaboration between these two big names in the media and entertainment market signals that the key to the future of the industry lies in collaboration.

Two of AD Digital's leading partners, Imagine Communications and Amagi announced a strategic partnership aimed at delivering significant benefits to the media and entertainment ecosystem, including ease of cloud adoption, orchestration, enhanced monetization through advertising and increased reach through of CTVs and FAST platforms.

This partnership is a milestone that will accelerate the delivery of solutions considered increasingly important to its customers. Companies will address the convergence of cloud-based needs with the demands of on-premises technologies as customers balance the benefits offered in both environments. Also on the agenda in this partnership is improving the reach of advertising for streaming services.

“We want technology to be an enabler of transformation, not a blocker for our customers who are under unprecedented pressure today,” said Tom Cotney, CEO of Imagine Communications. “Speed, flexibility, predictable costs and the ability to achieve greater returns on content rights are demands that we can meet more efficiently in partnership with Amagi.”

From a technology perspective, the collaboration brings together a suite of innovative solutions — integrating Amagi CLOUDPORT with Imagine's Aviator™ suite and Imagine's SureFire™ with Amagi's THUNDERSTORM offering — to create an environment that can power contribution, playout and and smooth distribution between Imagine's on-premise solutions and Amagi's cloud solutions, impacting broadcast, FAST and CTV, also improving monetization. Amagi's CLOUDPORT will now be available within the Make category of Imagine Aviator, as part of the Plan/Make/Monetize framework. Orchestration of flows, services, assets and automation will be achieved through a new component of the Aviator suite called Aviator Orchestrator, which will be integrated with the cloud-based services offered by Amagi.

From a business evolution perspective, the strategic partnership will enable advertising to be planned, sold and executed with both linear and CTV audiences in mind, leveraging Amagi THUNDERSTORM — a dynamic ad insertion platform — the SureFire video ad server from Imagine and the Plan/Make/Monetize framework. This will meet market demand for a solution for audience reaggregation and optimization across all audience and inventory types. This is particularly critical for FAST channels, as as their business grows, sophisticated advertising management platforms become more necessary. Imagine and Amagi are perfectly positioned to help you with this challenge.

“We are combining the strengths of both companies – Imagine Communications’ expertise in on-premise and hybrid broadcast solutions and Amagi’s leadership in cloud-native content playout and monetization,” said Baskar Subramanian, CEO and co-founder of Amagi. . “This creates a converged solution that allows customers to migrate to a cloud-based SaaS platform, while making it easier for broadcasters and media companies to launch OTT, FAST and pop-up channel services and further monetize content. ”

Both companies stated that the emphasis must be on commercial and technical evolution, in response to rapid transformation driven by audience engagement and a transition of business vision towards CTV and direct-to-consumer based models. Both companies gain an expansion of their capabilities and workflow integrations, facilitating the construction of well-orchestrated cloud solutions that cover content acquisition, playout, graphics, master control, redundancy, SCTE decoration and dynamic ad insertion.

Demonstrations of the integrated solutions will be featured during the 2023 NAB Show in Las Vegas at both the Amagi booth (W1401) and the Imagine Communications booth (W2775).

ABOUT AMAGI

Amagi is a new generation media technology company that offers cloud broadcast and target advertising solutions for broadcasters and streaming platforms. It allows content owners to launch, distribute and monetize live linear channels on free advertising-supported TV and video service platforms. Amagi also offers 24x7 cloud-managed services, bringing simplicity, advanced automation and transparency to all broadcast operations. Overall, Amagi supports over 400 channels on its platform for creating, distributing, and monetizing linear channels, with deployments in over 40 countries. It has offices in New York, Los Angeles and London, broadcast operations in New Delhi and an innovation center in Bangalore.

ABOUT IMAGINE COMMUNICATIONS

Imagine Communications supports the media and entertainment industry through transformative innovation. Broadcasters, communications groups, video service providers and enterprises around the world rely on its optimized multi-screen video and revenue-generating solutions. Today, almost half of the world's video channels rely on Imagine Communications' product line. Through continuous innovation, the company delivers the industry's most advanced IP and cloud-enabled software-defined networking and workflow solutions.