A couple of cameo mentions for server-guided ad insertion (SGAI) snuck into presentations at ACM Mile High Video 2025—a sign that the nascent hybrid technology is gaining the attention of important technical R&D decisionmakers in the video streaming ecosystem. One of those is Alex Giladi, a Comcast Fellow, who described SGAI as “my favorite new tool.” The context of this kudos was buried inside a deeper presentation on lowering the impact of low-latency streaming of large-scale events—a topic of great interest to Comcast and its various streaming properties across the US and Europe. Here, SGAI is emerging as a hybrid tool to reduce the strain caused by simultaneous ad requests during live events, combining the best of both worlds from…