9 ms·

It's interesting that they have "monetization" in one of the panels in their process diagram. Does that mean Cloudflare is getting into the advertising game?

ddorian43 9y ago
Probably connecting with third-party like every other video platform.
_eht 9y ago
Very likely. Advertising is a proven and resilient industry.
- convery 9y ago
  From Jan 30 about advertising: https://blog.cloudflare.com/firebolt/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/firebolt/
sbarre 9y ago
I am curious if this means they will enable access controls on streams somehow. One of the challenges with video delivery and where sites like YouTube can't work is if your business relies on providing videos to paid or logged-in members only. Patreon creators get around this in a kludgy way by using unlisted YT videos (which can still be shared by rogue patrons) but that's not ideal. But if you want to control access to a stream based on some custom business logic in your application, you're currently stuck serving your own video or using one of the existing combination of encoder/server/player that their post alludes to.
- jgrahamc 9y ago
  We already do that for other types of content. Won't be different for video.
  - sbarre 9y ago
    That's great to hear! I'm not familiar with all your services so I didn't know you already did this..
- bowersbros 9y ago
  This is commonly solved using Amazon S3 and single-access tokens I think? Pretty hefty work involved in getting it reliable, would be nice for a "drop in" solution.
  - jgrahamc 9y ago
    Cloudflare provides that already: https://blog.cloudflare.com/token-authentication-for-cached-private-content-and-apis/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/token-authentication-for-cached-...
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    Cloudfront supports private content [1]. Its good to see video encoding/storage/delivery maturing; the more players in the space, the more options one has to choose from if a provider prefers to not host your content (whether that's because of a ToS violation, or because the company CEO just doesn't want to host your content). "Drop in" solutions give your provider a great deal of control over your fate, which is okay, until its not. With Patreon raising a large round ($60MM) of financing [2], I'd expect them to build out their own streaming system based on S3, an encoding engine, and a CDN, versus be under the control of a turnkey provider (a la Reddit having to move off of Imgur). [1] http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/PrivateContent.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/Developer... [2] https://patreonhq.com/new-round-funding-816d5a592477 https://patreonhq.com/new-round-funding-816d5a592477
    - sbarre 9y ago
      (serious question) why would Patreon build out their own video hosting system? Unless I misunderstand their business model, that's not really part of their core business. I feel like video hosting/streaming is part of their Patron's businesses, not theirs. They just manage the subscriptions. If I was an investor in Patreon, I would not want them spending my money building out a proprietary video hosting platform.
      - zimpenfish 9y ago
always_good 9y ago
CloudFlare is in an incredible position for advertising since they are a proxy. Imagine just dropping a tag like this onto your page: <display-ad width="300" height="250"> And CloudFlare scans your page to figure out the genre of ad to display, does the live auction, and replaces it with a real ad. Now imagine that for non-display ads like injected content. Meanwhile even Google has to crawl your Adsense pages to know what sort of content to serve. And they have to worry about things like websites serving different content to GoogleBot. Some interesting possibilities when you're proxying all of a website's traffic. Even if Adsense let you render ads server-side by proxying user info to them, that's a lot more work for every website owner compared to what CloudFlare could enable since it already is the proxy. Or imagine CloudFlare encoding live-auctioned ads directly into your videos on demand as part of the video stream itself.
- usrusr 9y ago
  And you did not even mention the biggest difference to the conventional model: those ads would be indistinguishable from regular content on the network level. Good luck trying to get an ad blocker to remove your personalized "message from our sponsors" from the picture of a kitten you wanted to see when it is watermarked right into the JPEG.
- shimon_e 9y ago
  If I owned Cloudflare this is the direction I'd go. Ads without the MBs of bloat that existing ad networks add. As a cloudflare customer and an everyday internet I am thankful cloudflare hasn't gone in this direction.
  - dx034 9y ago
    On the other hand, ads that load as simple images would be a big step forward compared to the current situation where rendering ads can max out a CPU.
- dbbk 9y ago
  I believe this is exactly the sort of thing they're pursuing with CloudFlare Apps.

ddorian43 9y ago

Probably connecting with third-party like every other video platform.

_eht 9y ago

Very likely. Advertising is a proven and resilient industry.

convery 9y ago
From Jan 30 about advertising: https://blog.cloudflare.com/firebolt/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/firebolt/

sbarre 9y ago

I am curious if this means they will enable access controls on streams somehow. One of the challenges with video delivery and where sites like YouTube can't work is if your business relies on providing videos to paid or logged-in members only. Patreon creators get around this in a kludgy way by using unlisted YT videos (which can still be shared by rogue patrons) but that's not ideal. But if you want to control access to a stream based on some custom business logic in your application, you're currently stuck serving your own video or using one of the existing combination of encoder/server/player that their post alludes to.

jgrahamc 9y ago
We already do that for other types of content. Won't be different for video.
- sbarre 9y ago
  That's great to hear! I'm not familiar with all your services so I didn't know you already did this..
bowersbros 9y ago
This is commonly solved using Amazon S3 and single-access tokens I think? Pretty hefty work involved in getting it reliable, would be nice for a "drop in" solution.
- jgrahamc 9y ago
  Cloudflare provides that already: https://blog.cloudflare.com/token-authentication-for-cached-private-content-and-apis/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/token-authentication-for-cached-...
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Cloudfront supports private content [1]. Its good to see video encoding/storage/delivery maturing; the more players in the space, the more options one has to choose from if a provider prefers to not host your content (whether that's because of a ToS violation, or because the company CEO just doesn't want to host your content). "Drop in" solutions give your provider a great deal of control over your fate, which is okay, until its not. With Patreon raising a large round ($60MM) of financing [2], I'd expect them to build out their own streaming system based on S3, an encoding engine, and a CDN, versus be under the control of a turnkey provider (a la Reddit having to move off of Imgur). [1] http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/DeveloperGuide/PrivateContent.html http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudFront/latest/Developer... [2] https://patreonhq.com/new-round-funding-816d5a592477 https://patreonhq.com/new-round-funding-816d5a592477
  - sbarre 9y ago
    (serious question) why would Patreon build out their own video hosting system? Unless I misunderstand their business model, that's not really part of their core business. I feel like video hosting/streaming is part of their Patron's businesses, not theirs. They just manage the subscriptions. If I was an investor in Patreon, I would not want them spending my money building out a proprietary video hosting platform.
    - zimpenfish 9y ago

always_good 9y ago

CloudFlare is in an incredible position for advertising since they are a proxy. Imagine just dropping a tag like this onto your page: <display-ad width="300" height="250"> And CloudFlare scans your page to figure out the genre of ad to display, does the live auction, and replaces it with a real ad. Now imagine that for non-display ads like injected content. Meanwhile even Google has to crawl your Adsense pages to know what sort of content to serve. And they have to worry about things like websites serving different content to GoogleBot. Some interesting possibilities when you're proxying all of a website's traffic. Even if Adsense let you render ads server-side by proxying user info to them, that's a lot more work for every website owner compared to what CloudFlare could enable since it already is the proxy. Or imagine CloudFlare encoding live-auctioned ads directly into your videos on demand as part of the video stream itself.

usrusr 9y ago
And you did not even mention the biggest difference to the conventional model: those ads would be indistinguishable from regular content on the network level. Good luck trying to get an ad blocker to remove your personalized "message from our sponsors" from the picture of a kitten you wanted to see when it is watermarked right into the JPEG.
shimon_e 9y ago
If I owned Cloudflare this is the direction I'd go. Ads without the MBs of bloat that existing ad networks add. As a cloudflare customer and an everyday internet I am thankful cloudflare hasn't gone in this direction.
- dx034 9y ago
  On the other hand, ads that load as simple images would be a big step forward compared to the current situation where rendering ads can max out a CPU.
dbbk 9y ago
I believe this is exactly the sort of thing they're pursuing with CloudFlare Apps.