Weaver: Inserting Ads in a Live Stream
summary
A production system called Weaver stitches ad and live HLS playlists server-side at Twitch scale, serving per-user playlists so each viewer gets targeted ads without client-side requests. It uses discontinuity tags to reset decoders, accepts added latency to hide segment-duration mismatches, and infers viewership beacons on the server to report impressions. The claim: ads become indistinguishable from live segments and this has run in production for years.
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chapters (9)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:44Probleme Simple ad blocking
- 1:26Problem: Advanced ad blocking
- 2:14HLS Playlist Stitching
- 2:50Probleme Timestamps
- 3:43Problem: Encoding
- 5:00Problem: Durations
- 6:36Probleme Targeted ads
- 8:07Problem: Beaconing
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