TVer Insources a Massive TV Streaming Service Backend and Creates a Stream-Linked Ad Delivery System

TVer Inc., operator of the TVer commercial TV streaming service, decided to insource backend systems for greater agility in development and operation when overhauling the service. Alongside the launch of real-time delivery, it also uses an online video platform developed with AWS Media Services to deftly insert ads.

Launched in 2015, TVer Inc. provides an on-demand video platform for viewers to watch programs anytime, anywhere, on any device, within seven days of broadcast. The platform now streams more than 600 programs from over 100 commercial broadcasters. Over 18 million active users watch 250 million videos per month as of March 2022, and the TVer app for smartphones, tablets, and smart TVs reached 50 million downloads in July.

The company overhauled the service in April 2022, launching real-time streams of Japan’s five main commercial broadcasters and the TVer ID login function. In addition to time shifting features for real-time streams, the new service allows users to log in with their TVer ID, add their favorite programs to watchlists, and resume watching on different devices.

As part of the overhaul, TVer adopted Amazon Web Services (AWS) for integrated management of multiple accounts for different purposes. The company also revamped its service’s backend system and began insourcing infrastructure. “We previously relied on external vendors to build and operate backend systems, add instances, and change server settings,” says Keisuke Utsumi of Product, Services Business Division. “However, external vendors can’t provide the speed and flexibility the continual growth of streaming services requires. We therefore chose to insource the control of our system.”

TVer began developing its backend system in April 2021. The company switched its operating environment from Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (EC2) to AWS Fargate and used containers for a serverless framework. Adopting AWS managed services reduced operational workloads. “Using Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Aurora, and Amazon ElastiCache for our databases ensures that we can scale based on user numbers,” says Utsumi.

TVer also achieved proactive monitoring functions using metrics and log analysis. According to Takashi Kaga from its Services Business Division’s, it wanted “truly usable monitoring functions, so we released a small-start monitoring environment, read documents to reach a mutual agreement as a team, and discussed the necessary metrics and logs.”

TVer rehearsed the switch to the new environment over 20 times and suspended its system for under 10 hours for the actual migration. “We migrated the TVer backend system, which supports 18 million monthly users, without any trouble,” says Utsumi. “AWS supported and guided us on large-scale databases and Amazon OpenSearch Service, where we lacked in-house knowledge.”

Insourced infrastructure enables TVer to respond flexibly to unexpected situations and switch to a suitable capacity instantly. “In the past, we faced a time lag of several minutes when asking an external vendor for monitoring or additional servers for a big sports or music event, making sudden incidents difficult to deal with,” says Utsumi. “After insourcing, we can easily add servers from a management screen.”

Overhauling the app delivered a huge expansion of functions, a broader program lineup, and more app downloads while keeping infrastructure costs the same. According to Kaga, “When we moved to regular operation about one month after the overhaul, AWS advised us on optimizing servers with reserved instances and serverless technology, enabling us to operate at a satisfactory cost.”

Launching the TVer real-time streaming service came with the challenge of server-side ad insertion (SSAI). To deliver the same viewing experience as terrestrial broadcasting, video streaming providers must smoothly place ads in reserved commercial slots. To do so, TVer adopted Streaks by Play Inc., a SaaS online-video platform built with AWS Elemental MediaTailor. 

Yuta Mukouhara of the TVer Services Business Division explains, “The number one factor was Play’s technical expertise. Streaks fulfilled many of our requirements, including SSAI functionality, support for real-time streaming and time shifting, and per-program viewer counts. Developing SSAI functions from scratch wasn't realistic; we needed a SaaS-based system to support millions of viewers.”

Takahisa Sakaguchi, Head of the Platform Integration Department of Play, describes the company’s use of AWS Elemental MediaTailor, the platform for Streaks, its provision as a managed service, use for multiple live services, and the AWS support system below. “We adopted AWS Elemental MediaTailor primarily for its ability to loosely couple with ad servers via APIs. Implementing intricate business logic meant linking our system with the systems of multiple broadcasters and wrapping AWS Elemental MediaTailor to meet our distinct conditions. 

Viewer numbers for simulcast streams vary greatly from program to program. And because SSAI inserts different ads on each viewing device, caching functions used with general live streams aren’t available. Load-based scale-out mechanisms can’t manage the differing viewer numbers per program or the sudden loads of ad insertion windows, so our system monitors concurrent viewer numbers per channel in real time to scale out subsystems running on AWS Fargate as appropriate.”

“We haven’t encountered any problems with Streaks since launching real-time streaming,” adds Mukouhara. “It’s helping maintain the quality of TVer services.”

Users love TVer’s new service, praising the superior viewing experience due to lighter loads and the ability to start a program while commuting and resuming on a TV at home. According to Utsumi, the company will continue to expand and enhance its feature set and aims to improve program discoverability via recommendation functions using AWS AI/ML solutions. TVer is also planning to upgrade the security of its backend system with AWS. “We’re examining a range of security enhancements, including CDN-based anti-DDoS measures, log-based security checks, AWS WAF, Amazon GuardDuty, and AWS Security Hub,” says Kaga. “We’re looking forward to receiving security-related information from AWS.”

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