Ad Server
What is an Ad Server?
An Ad Server is a web based tool used by websites which want to display ads and are also called “publishers”, Ad networks and advertisers to help with ad management, campaign management and ad trafficking. An ad server also provides reporting on ads served on the website. Finally, an ad server serves the creative side: this means that the ad server or ad serving company also delivers the ad to each user’s browser.
An ad server stores information about ads and delivers them to one or more web sites for display to visitors. Ad servers also track ad displays, clicks on ads, and generate statistical reports. Ad servers can also selectively display ads to site visitors based on predefined criteria.
Ad server platforms are broadly of two types, hosted versions that are run and maintained on an ad server company’s site, and self-hosted versions that you install and maintain on your own server.
What are the other names for an ad server?
Ad Servers are also called Ad Management Platforms, Campaign Management Platforms, Ad Serving Systems, Ad Platforms, Ad Tracking Systems, Advertiser management systems, Mobile Ad Servers, Video Ad servers, Click Tracking Systems, Ad Network Optimization Systems, Yield Management Platforms, Affiliate Tracking Systems and Click Trackers.
How is an Ad Server different from an Ad Network?
An Ad Network sells advertising for a group of publishers or sites. An ad network may sell ads for specific sites such as travel sites, or it may sell ads for many different types of websites. An ad network sells advertising, but an ad server is used by both publishers and advertisers. Ad networks also use an ad server. Sometimes a company that runs an ad network may also sell ad serving solutions to publishers.
I hear a lot about Video Ad Servers. What is that all about?
Video Ad Server is an ad server designed to help premium publishers serve ads inside flash video players. Serving ads inside flash is difficult. Serving ads inside video players is more difficult. This is a growth pat of the market and selling pre-roll video ads is very profitable. If you have videos on your site then you may need this. Be careful as some ad server try to charge 10 or 50 times more for video ads- but others include video ad serving at the standard price.
The Role of Secure Live Streaming in Ad Serving
With the increasing demand for digital content, secure live streaming has emerged as a vital component of modern ad servers. Secure live streaming ensures that the content delivered to viewers is protected from unauthorized access and potential piracy. By integrating secure live streaming into their ad serving strategies, publishers can not only enhance the user experience but also safeguard their advertising revenue.
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Upcoming Webinar
How AI is Going to Revolutionize Video Delivery
As media libraries expand and viewer demands accelerate, traditional media management methods are struggling to keep pace. In this webinar, we’ll dive into how AI — both today’s practical solutions and tomorrow’s transformative innovations — is going to reshape the way streaming platforms, broadcasters, and enterprises manage, organize, and distribute content across Digital Asset Management (DAM) and Media Asset Management (MAM) systems. This session will give you a clear roadmap for harnessing AI — both current tools and emerging frontiers — to transform your media operations into a faster, smarter, and future-ready ecosystem.
We will also introduce you to Alie – Muvi’s exclusive AI engine that can help streamline your streaming journey across our website and apps.
Things the webinar would cover:
- AI-driven content workflows: Automate captioning, audio-to-text conversion, subtitle translation, and multi-language transcription
- Smart content discovery: Unlock scene-level video search, automated chaptering, and AI-generated metadata
- AI-native content creation: Instantly generate training videos, marketing clips, or explainers directly from documents, URLs, or text prompts
- Agentic AI for media: Explore how autonomous AI agents can manage content ingestion, quality checks, compliance editing, and metadata enrichment
- Next-gen video editing: Use simple prompts to mute, blur, annotate, or clip scenes
- Personalization and localization at scale: Automate dubbing, voice cloning, localized metadata tagging, and audio translation
- Intelligent recommendations: From dynamic playlist curation and personalized ad insertions to predictive analytics
- Next-gen distribution intelligence: Learn how AI optimizes encoding ladders, predicts CDN traffic patterns, suggests smarter storage strategies, and enables dynamic playout based on device and bandwidth conditions.
May 29
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