Beijing Olympics by Terra Networks

RECORD-BREAKING DIGITAL MEDIA EVENT IN LATIN AMERICA

Terra is a leading Internet company and original online content producer, owning the broadest audience in the U.S. Hispanic market.  Terra operates both as a Web portal and Internet service provider in the United States, Spain, and 16 Latin American countries. Terra has approximately 60 million unique visitors per month in Latin America, 10 million unique users per month on Terra TV with an average of 66 million streams per month, and a collection of 250 thousand videos.  Most of its content is open to the general public.  Terra TV, built by LabOne Systems, uses Media-iBox software engines to capture, manage and broadcast thousands of hours of original and third party content to its users and subscribers.     

 

BUSINESS SITUATION

Terra wanted to distribute high-quality, rich media content to millions of Latin American users in real time, without interruption or slowdown, during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. This would be a prime opportunity for Terra to improve its services, and increase its content appeal to new users by distributing content through social media services as well as through mobile networks and devices.

 

The games brought a wave of new technical requirements for Terra TV, including compatibility with Microsoft Silverlight and Adobe Flash technologies, optimization for mobile devices including the iPhone, and integration with social network APIs. This broadened content distribution strategy, reaching users outside Terra’s own sites and destinations, would lay the foundation for future customer acquisition efforts.

 

SOLUTION

The Games’ opening ceremonies broke Latin American Internet-based broadcasting records.  This record would be broken repeatedly during the Olympic Games by Terra TV broadcasts powered by LabOne. Together, Terra, LabOne, and their hardware and services partners created the largest rich media distribution network in Latin America, serving millions of video requests each hour.

 

LabOne’s Media-iBox software and services were responsible for capturing, managing, securing and distributing every content clip. Media-iBox controlled hundreds of servers distributed over several networks in different Internet backbones, encoding raw content from dozens of different sources in multiple formats.  Much of the content was originated by satellite broadcasters, in-house studios and dozens of video editing stations across the company.  All 34 categories of sports were covered down to the most intricate detail.

 

LabOne’s efforts ensured that all potential users, no matter their preferred device or social networking service, could experience Terra TV’s coverage of the Olympic Games with the best available quality. During the Olympics, Terra had collected and published over 8,000 original video segments. Terra successfully served 12.3 million visitors, streamed 15 million video sessions, and uploaded content for 51 million page views.

 

Terra, and its parent company Telefonica, have been broadcasting high-definition media over the Internet since the 2006 Soccer World Cup in Germany.  For these two pioneering companies, the record-breaking online audience of the Olympics represented a long overdue recognition of the value of rich Internet media.

CONTACT US