Set to be unveiled at NAB Show in April, Tagboard’s latest software delivers the most comprehensive suite of tools ever for broadcast and in-venue production teams with Adobe and AWS integrations, dynamic graphics, and real-time analytics

Tagboard, the world’s leading audience engagement and cloud production platform used by 500 sports and media partners, announced a series of new product releases for its cloud production studio designed to create the single most efficient production workflow in the world. New features include:

• First-of-its-kind integration with Adobe Photoshop featuring a drag-and-drop workflow that eliminates duplicative work to bring graphic designs to screens.
• Automated production workflows with APIs allowing producers to create dynamic content from any data source.
• Real-time production analytics powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), providing audience engagement data across media properties.

With the new releases, Tagboard, a company known for its interactive broadcast graphics, has set its eyes on solving what it sees as the biggest hurdle for production and in-venue teams looking to deliver audience engagement: workflow efficiency.

“Not only are we turning today’s broadcast and in-venue screens into two-way communication devices that keep audiences engaged with partners across channels, – we’re drastically reducing the operating overhead for production teams to do so.” – Tagboard CEO Nathan J Peterson

“In an industry that works in milliseconds, there’s absolutely zero excuse for the inefficiencies of traditional workflows and outdated processes” said Tagboard CEO Nathan J Peterson. “Not only are we turning today’s broadcast and in-venue screens into two-way communication devices that keep audiences engaged with partners across channels, but with these new releases, we’re drastically reducing the operating overhead for production teams to do so. The phrase “That’ll take too much time” should never be spoken again.”

Tagboard, recently selected for NBA Launchpad – the NBA’s initiative to source, evaluate and pilot emerging technologies – has created a dominant media footprint with more than 500 media companies. Fox Sports, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, and Riot Games have all been early testers of the new feature-laden package that contains everything from new integrations with AWS and Adobe to graphic automation with real-time data sources, and industry-changing production analytics.

“We first partnered with Tagboard in 2018 and quickly found a teammate eager to help us increase interactivity & innovation within our productions,” said Mike Bucklin SVP of Digital, FOX Sports, “Tagboard already has the most versatility of any product we’ve utilized, but the features announced today will allow us to be far more efficient, bringing ideas to life much faster without sacrificing quality.”

First-of-its-kind integration with Adobe

With Tagboard’s first-of-its-kind integration with Adobe, producers are able to completely eliminate the duplicative work involved in bringing a graphic design to a screen. Tagboard’s graphics studio now automatically imports fully-layered files from one of the most popular design tools, Adobe Photoshop, to create a seamless handoff process from design teams to production teams – with no rebuild required.

“In most production environments, the process of building new graphics can involve multiple people handing off design files to one another and rebuilding them in separate platforms – essentially building the same thing multiple times. But today’s content demands can’t afford to be held back by yesterday’s processes,” said Peterson. “Our clients take great care in hiring the most creative teams in the industry, and with our new Adobe integration, their incredibly talented producers get to focus on bringing the world’s best stories to life instead of doing duplicative work that good technology should handle.”

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Automated workflows that display dynamic content from any source

Building on Tagboard’s award-winning workflow that brings real-time social content into broadcasts in a matter of seconds is a new API engine that can automatically import and display dynamic content from any source, populating graphic templates with complex data in a few simple clicks. With the ability to import data with vastly different levels of complexity – from basic fields to complex coded integrations – enterprises are able to utilize new levels of graphic automation for real-time storytelling while minimizing the most tedious parts of graphic production.

“Production teams are now able to import and display highly complex data sets in graphic templates and instantly refresh their content while on-air – keeping content live and accurate with one simple click,” said Christine Chalk, a three-time Emmy-winning producer and SVP of Strategy at Tagboard. “We’ve seen side-by-side comparisons for time savings, and production teams are operating 90% faster while reducing the likelihood of human error. Combining this new capability with our award-winning user experience means we aren’t just curbing manual data entry, we’re able to unlock new creative program segments that haven’t been possible before.”

Real-time production analytics

Rounding out the release is Tagboard’s third headlining feature: Production Analytics. For years social media networks have had an advertising advantage with their ability to see the rich data associated with their viewers – every click, content view, and engagement – while traditional media had limited ability to understand and monetize their viewers.

With its latest release, Tagboard media and sports partners can see real-time engagement data across their key media properties. By better understanding viewer behavior and exactly when, where, and how fans are interacting with content producers can improve editorial decision-making and monetization.

A great example is Riot Games’ use of Tagboard Analytics to measure QR Code scans by its viewers. By measuring which specific calls-to-action and other factors generated the most scans, the team at Riot was able to optimize their content, while also helping sponsorship teams improve results and reporting on brand activations.

“We’ve seen immediate value in Tagboard’s data within our productions,” said Stefan Richardson, Executive Broadcast Producer at Riot Games. “By having QR codes as a part of our production system, we’ve used Tagboard’s analytics to drive better engagement – testing different approaches with graphics and calls-to-action. We’ve been able to successfully unlock a significant amount more scans and engagement from our viewers.”

Scaling with AWS

To successfully launch its new cloud production suite, Tagboard also worked with AWS. Using AWS’s latest serverless architecture, Tagboard is able to process real-time data and provide a fast, safe, and reliable graphic interface, while supporting the demand of millions of scans per second from fans of Tagboard’s 500+ major media and sports partners.

“As Tagboard’s adoption continues to grow across the media industry, we wanted to find the right cloud solutions to help us reliably scale,” said Sergey Lvov, VP of Engineering, Tagboard. “By leveraging AWS Serverless architecture we were able to develop our products an order of magnitude faster than it would take using a traditional approach, allowing us to focus on the code rather than infrastructure deployment”.

Tagboard’s new cloud production suite, powered by AWS, has created the fastest graphic build process in the industry – bringing complex graphics on-air in a matter of seconds. Production teams can now focus more on creating new, engaging content instead of wasting time on repetitive, mundane tasks.

“By using cloud production to eliminate the tedious tasks, our clients are able to scale their storytelling with new channels, new content, and alternative streams to create more personalized, more highly-engaged stories. Not only does this create more content production than we’ve ever seen before, but it also drives a flywheel of audience engagement that activates the sponsorships more deeply as well,” said Peterson. “We’ve taken an absurdly complicated workflow of the past and turned it into the most simple process in the industry. At Tagboard we believe every story deserves to be told, and we’ll continue to eliminate anything that gets in the way.”

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