With ad prefetching, AWS Elemental MediaTailor proactively fetches ads from the ad decision server (ADS) and prepares them for upcoming ad breaks based on a pre-defined schedule. During live streams, ad request and transcoding timeouts can lead to decreased ad fill rates and missed monetization opportunities. With ad prefetching, MediaTailor works with the ADS to determine what ads to fill breaks, before they happen. This increased time between ad decisioning and ad breaks provides more time for programmatic ad trading, and reduces ad insertion latency because both ad transcoding and ADS communications run in the background.
To set up ad prefetching, you create one or more prefetch schedules on your playback configuration. A prefetch schedule tells MediaTailor how and when to retrieve and prepare ads for an upcoming ad break. Each prefetch schedule defines a single set of ads for MediaTailor to place in a single ad break. To prefetch ads for multiple ad breaks, you can create multiple prefetch schedules. When you create a prefetch schedule, you can include criteria that gives you granular control over which ad break and which playback stream MediaTailor places the prefetched ads in.
The following topics describe more about ad prefetching.
For information about ad preconditioning (transcoding ads before they are needed), see Using preconditioned ads with AWS Elemental MediaTailor.
