Case Study: How Aaj Tak (India Today Group) Delivers Seamless Ads on Live News with SSAI

StreamKit implemented a full server-side ad insertion (SSAI) pipeline for Aaj Tak, part of India Today Group — the result was higher ad fill rates and zero playback disruption on live news streaming.

The Client

Aaj Tak, part of TV Today Network under the India Today Group, is one of India's largest and most trusted Hindi news networks — a live news operation reaching millions of viewers every single day across TV and digital streaming.

The Challenge

Live news has a stricter tolerance threshold than almost any other streaming content. Breaking news doesn't wait for an ad break, and viewers who hit a stutter or a stall the moment an ad starts will simply switch away. The brief was a server-side ad insertion (SSAI) implementation that could deliver strong ad monetisation on a 24x7 live news stream without ever introducing a visible disruption to playback — no rebuffering, no ad-blocker losses, no dropped breaks.

The Solution

The implementation combined SCTE-35 cue signaling for accurate, frame-level ad break triggering on the live stream, with VAST-based ad decisioning routed through Magnite and SpringServe, stitched server-side using Broadpeak.io's SSAI platform, and delivered through an AWS Media Services pipeline. Because the ad is stitched into the same manifest as the live content — rather than requested separately by the player — the viewer's stream never has to pause, switch, or re-buffer to show an ad.

"Higher ad fill rates, no ad-blocker losses, zero disruption to the live viewing experience. On live news, that last part matters most — breaking news doesn't wait for an ad break, and viewers won't tolerate a stutter." — Sunil Kumar, on the Aaj Tak SSAI rollout

The Result

• Higher ad fill rates compared to the previous client-side approach, without any change to the underlying ad campaigns.
• No ad-blocker losses — because the ad is part of the single stitched stream, client-side ad blockers have nothing separate to block.
• Zero disruption to the live viewing experience — ads are stitched in seamlessly enough that, as intended, viewers don't notice the transition at all.

The rollout was a cross-team effort with the Broadpeak.io team on the stitching side, and the collaboration was described by Broadpeak's own team as smooth and effective — a good sign for teams considering a similar SSAI migration on a live, high-traffic news channel.

Why This Matters Beyond Aaj Tak

The pattern here isn't specific to one broadcaster. Any live news or 24x7 linear channel moving to IP delivery faces the same trade-off between ad monetisation and playback continuity. The technical building blocks — SCTE-35 cue processing, an SSAI stitcher, and a properly integrated ad decision server — are the same ones covered in more depth in SSAI vs CSAI for Live News & Broadcast and Fix Buffering & Ad Revenue with SCTE-35 + MediaTailor.

Source: Original LinkedIn post by Sunil Kumar.