ARD: Building a digital-first public broadcasting service with Google Cloud
About ARD
Founded in 1950, the mission of public service broadcast organization ARD (Association of Public Broadcasting Corporations in the Federal Republic of Germany) is to inform, educate, advise, and entertain. With a budget of €6.9 billion and more than 22,000 employees, the ARD network consists of nine regional broadcasters and the international state-funded broadcaster Deutsche Welle.
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Contact usSince migrating to Google Kubernetes Engine on Google Cloud and taking an API-centered approach, ARD has transformed its development process and doubled the number of viewers using ARD Mediathek.
Google Cloud results
- Increases views from 50 million to 100 million annually since migrating to Google Kubernetes Engine on Google Cloud
- Reduces time to market for updates, with a new release into production every day instead of every year
- Supports a more agile way of working with distributed teams, transforming the mindset from monolithic to microservices
- Scales easily to meet user traffic peaks, so developers can focus on value-driven product improvement
- Enables a more tailored user experience across devices with an API-centered infrastructure managed using Apigee
Delivers better user experience to double video views
When it comes to breaking news, are you more likely to learn about it from a newspaper headline, or by receiving a notification on your phone? As in many countries, German citizens are spending less time every day consuming traditional media such as TV and radio, and an average of four hours on their laptops and phones. Part of the mission of ARD, the world’s largest public-service broadcaster network, which represents nine self-governing regional broadcasters across 16 federal states in Germany, is to help its users navigate this increasingly complex media landscape.
“Because we’re publicly funded, we have a responsibility to provide content for everyone that is distinctive and entertaining, but also reliable,” explains Malte Blumberg, CTO at ARD Online. The ultimate purpose is to support the functioning of democracy by making sure everyone can access credible, legitimate information.”
“When I joined ARD, the gap between the market and our offering was increasing. We didn’t have the technology or the digital-first mindset to catch up. We’ve rebuilt on Google Cloud to create better content, a better user experience, and a better service overall.”
—Malte Blumberg, CTO, ARD OnlineAcross its network, ARD is responsible for approximately 250 hours of television and 1,500 hours of radio programming daily. But over the past few years, keeping up with changes in how users consume content has been a challenge. In 2018, it decided to change the monolithic infrastructure for its video delivery platform, in order to improve the user experience, no matter how users were watching or listening. After a European-wide tender, it chose to build its new platform on Google Cloud, because of its range of tools and services to cover all touchpoints, supporting a truly digital-first strategy. In partnership with Google Cloud, ARD is building a best-in-class European video-on-demand platform and user experience on a global scale.
“When I joined ARD, the gap between the market and our offering was increasing,” says Malte. “We didn’t have the technology or the digital-first mindset to catch up. We’ve rebuilt on Google Cloud to create better content, a better user experience, and a better service overall.”
“Sunday evenings are the most popular time for our video platform. With Google Kubernetes Engine, we can scale to meet these peaks, and save money by scaling down when traffic subsides. That enables us to focus on more value-driven development.”
—Malte Blumberg, CTO, ARD OnlineBuilding a cloud-native infrastructure
A cloud-native approach can transform not only a company’s infrastructure, but also its internal culture. ARD’s previous hosted data center infrastructure was 10 years old, and because of its monolithic architecture, the development turnaround cycle was three months. Video content was distributed without being tailored to particular devices. In order to improve its service and reduce time to market, ARD decided to build a new infrastructure for its media platform, called Mediathek, using Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).
Its choice of Google Cloud was informed by its previous experiences, such as working together on the online-only network “funk,” aimed at a youth audience. “We’ve worked with numerous cloud providers, but in terms of managed services, Google Cloud is ahead,” says Malte. “It offers great solutions for data and infrastructure, and last but not least, it encourages the right mindset of focusing on product development, by giving us the confidence to delegate as much operational burden as possible to managed services.” Initially, ARD spent three months developing a new infrastructure, but it didn’t go far enough in terms of flexibility. “We were still in a monolithic mindset, building services on top of one another, and ended up with services that worked, but that were too tightly coupled,” says Malte. “It didn’t really provide the scalability we had hoped for.”
For the final iteration, ARD therefore took an API-first approach and developed an event-driven architecture that offers better data integration. In addition to GKE and operations tools for monitoring, ARD makes the most of Google Cloud managed services, running managed MongoDB clusters and using Memorystore for managed Redis. For its content delivery, Apigee provides API management, enabling easy distribution across its network, while Firebase offers user management functionality.
Now, ARD can easily scale its services up and down according to demand. “Sunday evenings are the most popular time for our video platform,” says Malte. “With Google Kubernetes Engine, we can scale to meet these peaks, and save money by scaling down when traffic subsides. That enables us to focus on more value-driven development.”
“Since migrating, we have doubled the amount of views annually on the flagship ARD Mediathek platform from 50 million to 100 million. The average time spent using the Mediathek has also increased, from 20 minutes to 50 minutes per session. That’s a real measure of the platform’s success.”
—Malte Blumberg, CTO, ARD OnlineDoubling the number of annual views on ARD Mediathek
As part of its restructure, ARD consolidated its services, moving 150 products into five key platforms: ARD Mediathek for video content, ARD Audiothek for sound, Tagesschau for current affairs, Sportschau for sport, and KiKA for children’s programming. Following the successful hosting of ARD Mediathek, in 2020 the company plans to also have ARD Audiothek fully hosted on Google Cloud. Through its API-driven approach, it is now able to provide the best user experience on all user touch points.
“That means the app works differently on a smartphone than on a voice-enabled device, and the website is different to a TV application,” says Malte. “We came from a one-size-fits-all approach and can now better tailor content.” For example, users of ARD’s Android app now receive personalized recommendations and are able to resume watching a program from where they left off on a different device. They have control over how their data is used and are able to delete their data history if they wish.
The result of all these improvements is an increase in user engagement, which is a key measure of success for a publicly funding organization such as ARD. “Since migrating, we have doubled the amount of views annually on the flagship ARD Mediathek platform from 50 million to 100 million,” says Malte “The average time spent using the Mediathek has also increased, from 20 minutes to 50 minutes per session. That’s a real measure of the platform’s success.”
Speeding up delivery with a new mindset
ARD has also achieved its goal of speeding up delivery. “We’re now able to test new ideas and launch updates much faster,” says Malte. “We have now moved from our previous three-month development turnaround cycles to a new release into production every day, and are working towards automatic testing with a CI pipeline that will enable 50 daily releases.” Malte also feels the team is more comfortable trying out new innovations, as it is easier to roll back and improve things that don’t work.
ARD’s distributed teams are able to work in an agile way, working on different microservices and different API clients for various touchpoints. “The way to change people is to get them to ask better questions,” says Malte. “By creating a cloud-native solution on Google Cloud, we have developed more trust among our developers. That mindset helps to set us apart.”
Unifying the user experience and scaling up for the future
Malte is now focusing on further optimizing the way ARD’s development teams work together. “By consolidating the number of products across our network, we have been able to move developers around and have tripled the development power behind ARD Mediathek.” He expects further expansion of the development team in the coming months and is also opening up the ARD API for other developers to use. “We want to empower the open source community to build better services,” says Malte. “For that we need more talent and will be recruiting more developers in the year ahead.”
The ARD team is also scaling up its data infrastructure, implementing Dataflow for its Apache Beam stream and batch pipelines and switching to BigQuery for data analytics. “Our vision is to unify the experience across our five platforms, offering even more integrated services for our users,” explains Malte. “That means better notifications, better recommendations, and an improved experience across touchpoints.”
“As a public service provider, we reach 94% of the German population, with 80% using services daily,” says Malte. “TV usage may be declining, but with the support of Google Cloud, we have developed an integrated identity that will continue to contribute to a diverse and trustworthy media landscape in Germany.”
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About ARD
Founded in 1950, the mission of public service broadcast organization ARD (Association of Public Broadcasting Corporations in the Federal Republic of Germany) is to inform, educate, advise, and entertain. With a budget of €6.9 billion and more than 22,000 employees, the ARD network consists of nine regional broadcasters and the international state-funded broadcaster Deutsche Welle.