AMSTERDAM—Ceeblue, a Dutch-based provider of ultra-low-latency video streaming technology and Australian media technology company Layercake, today announced the expansion of their partnership with the full production rollout of an advanced Digital Rights Management (DRM) framework alongside revolutionary Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI).
Building directly upon the integration of Ceeblue’s sub-second WebRTS streaming with Layercake’s orchestration and workflow management platform, Streamcake, the two companies now support studio-grade content protection in live production on sub-second streams.
The upgraded feature set supports both major industry encryption schemes, CENC and CBCS, which unlocks full coverage across the Widevine, PlayReady, and FairPlay DRM ecosystems over DASH, HLS/CMAF, Low-Latency HLS, and WebRTS delivery channels.
Engineered for efficiency and extreme security, the DRM architecture introduces three strategically vital innovations:
- Encrypt Once at Ingest: Encryption metadata is computed and persisted at the origin, eliminating redundant processing and ensuring content is encrypted only once rather than per-output;
- Passthrough at the Edge: Edge and relay nodes forward protected streams without ever holding decryption keys, drastically lowering edge compute costs while materially reducing the key-exposure attack surface, and
- Open Integration Architecture: Built-in trigger hooks allow seamless interoperability with self-managed or third-party KMS/DRM backends, currently supporting Google Secret Manager.
This production capability directly addresses contractual content-protection requirements, unblocking deals for premium tier-1 live sports and entertainment streaming that were previously relegated to much higher latencies by the limitations of HLS/DASH streaming.
Alongside robust content protection, the expanded integration delivers Server-Side Ad Insertion (SSAI). Until now, operators had to choose between latency and monetization. But now, the combination of sub-second delivery, full-fledged DRM, and seamless SSAI running on standard CDNs gives sports and live broadcast operators a huge incentive to go ultra-low latency.
By coupling Streamcake’s automated cloud control plane, which makes management and scaling intuitive and reliable, with Ceeblue’s WebRTS origins, the combined solution delivers targeted value across core verticals:
- OTT Sports & Betting: Eliminates the "spoiler effect" by aligning digital delivery precisely with live play. Feeds delivered under one second expand live-betting windows, combat courtsiding, and protect high-value rights with DRM;
- iGaming & Live Auctions: Provides real-time interactivity to thousands of global users at the same time, allowing hybrid on-site and remote play / bidding. The immediacy of real-time interactivity maximizes Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR) and engagement, and ensures auction integrity, and
- Corporate Comms & Live Commerce: Drives interactive corporate town halls over HTTP, which easily traverses strict enterprise firewalls, while empowering live commerce platforms to handle massive viral traffic surges with automatic edge scaling.
The production DRM framework capabilities are available immediately across the integrated Ceeblue and Streamcake deployment options. Customers can deploy the unified solution across major CDNs, including Akamai, Orange CDN, Fastly, and many more.
Visitors to the 2026 IBC Show can see demos at Ceeblue (5.C43) and Layercake Partner Pod on the Grass Valley Stand (9.A01).
