Dolby OptiView adds Ad Engine and personalized fan moments at Sports Summit

Giles Baker, Dolby's SVP of Cloud Solutions, led the "Fan Experience Reimagined" panel at NAB's Sports Summit on April 21, introducing new capabilities in Dolby OptiView — the company's live sports streaming platform. The additions include an Ad Engine designed for smoother live ad playback, hybrid dynamic ad insertion combining server-side and guided ad insertion (SSAI/SGAI), and a Sports Intelligence layer that surfaces personalized fan moments during live events.

IBM and AWS participated in the panel alongside Dolby, with the session framing personalization — not just picture quality — as the central battleground for sports streaming platforms. Dolby's Paul Boustead had presented a related session Monday on building personalized fan experiences, giving the OptiView roadmap two sessions of visibility across the two-day Sports Summit program.

The ad insertion capabilities are notable given the ongoing shift of live sports rights toward streaming platforms, where ad-supported models need to perform under the same latency and reliability constraints as linear broadcast. Hybrid SSAI/SGAI approaches attempt to reduce the buffering and slate-duration problems that have historically made live ad insertion a weaker experience on streaming than on broadcast.