Media
Streaming, content and ad technology engineering, plus the data and product talent to run it.
MBE certified (Minority Business Enterprise)
Overview
Technology in Media
Media companies compete on product quality now. Playback has to start fast, recommendations have to fit, ads have to perform and content has to be findable inside its rights windows.
Desmata builds streaming and content platform components, ad tech integrations and audience data pipelines. We also staff the engineers, analysts and product people who keep them improving.
Where a service reaches children, privacy rules such as COPPA shape design from day one. We plan for them early so launches do not stall in review.
Start with a conversation
Tell us what you are working on. A member of the Desmata team will reply by email or phone.
Call us on +1 (214) 407-8089Challenges
What technology leaders here are dealing with
Challenge 1: Streaming quality and delivery cost
Start-up time, buffering and CDN spend decide both churn and margin. Teams need playback observability, a multi-CDN plan and control over encoding cost.
Challenge 2: A complex ad stack with fewer identifiers
Server-side ad insertion, header bidding and measurement vendors add latency and failure points, while third-party identifiers fade. First-party data and clean measurement now decide ad revenue.
Challenge 3: Rights and metadata scattered across systems
Windows, territories, talent and music rights often live in different tools. Wrong metadata means content goes live in the wrong region or cannot be found.
Challenge 4: Privacy rules for viewers and children
The amended COPPA Rule, the Video Privacy Protection Act and state privacy laws all touch subscriber and viewing data. Consent and retention have to be built into the product.
Challenge 5: Audience data in silos
Subscription, ad and engagement data sit in separate systems, so it is hard to see what drives retention or which campaigns truly add reach.
How we help
Where Desmata fits in
Build streaming and content platforms
Apps for web, mobile and connected TV, playback features, entitlement and subscriber management, and publishing workflows.
Run media workloads on elastic cloud
Cloud architecture for encoding, packaging and delivery that scales for live events and premieres and shrinks the bill afterward.
Audience analytics and measurement
Pipelines that join viewing, subscription and ad data, with dashboards for programming, marketing and ad sales teams.
Protect accounts and content
Defenses against credential stuffing and account sharing abuse, secure DRM integration and monitored access to unreleased assets.
Use AI on catalog and audience problems
Metadata enrichment, recommendations and search relevance, scoped as small measurable pilots before wider rollout.
Staff your media technology team
Streaming, ad tech, front-end and data roles on contract, contract-to-hire or direct hire. Or a managed team for a defined product area.
Use cases
What we deliver in this sector
Streaming apps and playback features
Player work, offline downloads, profiles and parental controls across web, mobile and connected TV.
Ad insertion and ad server integration
Server-side ad insertion, VAST and OpenRTB integrations, and reporting that reconciles impressions with what advertisers see.
Content metadata and rights management
Systems that tie titles, identifiers, territories and windows together, so catalog data is right before it reaches the player.
Audience analytics and measurement
Retention, engagement and incrementality reporting built on first-party data and privacy-safe collaboration with partners.
Subscriber lifecycle and billing
Sign-up, trials, entitlements, payments and churn analysis, wired to the CRM and the data warehouse.
Publishing and CMS platforms
Headless content management, editorial workflows and fast front ends for news and magazine properties.
Talent
Roles we staff
- Streaming media engineer
- Video playback engineer
- Ad tech engineer
- Connected TV app developer
- iOS and Android developer
- Front-end developer
- CMS developer
- Data engineer, audience analytics
- Data analyst, advertising
- Metadata and rights systems analyst
- Site reliability engineer
- Product manager, streaming
Regulations and standards
Standards we design for
The rules that shape technology work in this sector, and that we build and staff around.
COPPA
The FTC's COPPA Rule governs data collected from children under 13, and its 2025 amendments added consent, retention and security duties. We design for it when a service is directed to children, and we staff engineers who have built consent flows.
Video Privacy Protection Act
This federal law limits sharing of personally identifiable viewing history. It affects analytics and ad integrations on video services, and we account for it in data-sharing designs.
CCPA and state privacy laws
State laws give viewers rights over their data, including opt-outs from sale and sharing for targeted advertising. We build preference handling into consent and ad systems.
IAB Tech Lab specifications
VAST, OpenRTB and ads.txt are the working standards for ad serving and inventory authorization. We build integrations against them.
FCC captioning rules and WCAG
Captioning and accessibility duties apply to many video services. We build caption, audio description and keyboard support into players and apps.
These are the regulations and standards that shape work in this sector. We design and staff for them. They are not certifications held by Desmata.
Technology
Platforms and technologies in this sector
- HLS and MPEG-DASH
- AWS Elemental
- Akamai, Fastly and Cloudflare
- Widevine, FairPlay and PlayReady
- FFmpeg
- Google Ad Manager
- Prebid
- EIDR and DDEX
- Apache Kafka
- Snowflake
- Databricks
- React and React Native
- Kubernetes
Services
Services that support this work
Technology
Digital Product Engineering
Custom software architecture, full-stack and mobile development, API-first microservices and legacy modernization. Home of RetailGeo Insights.
Technology
Cloud & Infrastructure Modernization
Cloud-native design, infrastructure as code, DevSecOps and CI/CD, secure data platforms and cost-optimized hybrid and multi-cloud architecture.
Technology
AI & Advanced Analytics
Predictive modeling, NLP and machine learning, and real-time stream processing with Kafka, Spark and Flink.
Advisory
AI Strategy & Consulting
IT strategy and planning, plus AI readiness assessment, workflow automation, data strategy and responsible AI governance.
Talent
IT Staffing & Strategic Resourcing
Specialized recruitment for IT, data, cybersecurity and product roles, with proprietary candidate-matching intelligence and recruiters who have focused on IT since 2012.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Can you build a streaming app from scratch or only extend ours?
Both. We can build apps and back-end services for a new service, or add features and fix performance on a platform you already run. We start with a short assessment so the plan matches your catalog and audience.
Do you work with ad tech vendors we already use?
Yes. We integrate ad servers, SSAI providers and measurement tools you have chosen, and we can compare options if you are still deciding. We do not claim vendor partnerships.
How do you approach COPPA for kids' content?
Your counsel decides how the rule applies to your service. We design age gating, parental consent, data minimization and retention into the product, and we document how each piece works so counsel can review it.
Can you supply engineers for a launch with a fixed date?
Yes. Share the skills, team size and date and we will confirm what is realistic. Contract staffing suits a launch, and contract-to-hire works if you want to keep people afterward.
Scope your streaming or ad tech project
Tell us about the platform, the audience and the deadline. We will propose a plan and the team to deliver it.
MBE certified (Minority Business Enterprise)