Using Geo-blocking in Live Streams
One of the features that we offer at Stream Monkey is something called geo-blocking. I’d love to share how it works, and particular cases where you might want to use it in streaming.
Geo-blocking is a feature that allows you to block or allow certain areas to view your stream. You can choose to “only allow” residents in the Chicago area to view your stream, for instance. You can also choose to “block” people in Milwaukee. In Stream Monkey’s platform, you can choose the areas being blocked or allowed by country, state, city, or IP address.
Larger companies such as Amazon and Netflix use geo-blocking to restrict viewers from watching their content in areas where they do not own the licenses to stream particular content. Live sporting events may be blocked in certain areas where an event is being held, because the event is already being broadcast locally by a television station.
The most common reason our users utilize this feature is when they are producing a live stream for an event where their priority is to get people in the door. One church, for example, held a special event in which the impact would be much greater if people were actually attending. However, they did not want to exclude viewers in other states who could not physically attend the event to miss out. They decided to block viewers who were located in the city where the event was being held from viewing the stream. That way, people who were reasonably nearby had more incentive to show up in person.
Another user had an issue where one particular IP address was eating up a lot of their data. It appeared that this viewer was not actually watching the stream, but something from their computer was loading and reloading their content and causing their data and their analytics numbers to be incorrect. In this case, they were able to block that IP address from viewing their stream.
There are are many ways to use geo-blocking to control your streaming content. I hope this has helped give you some examples of how this feature can be useful. If you’re interested in using geo-blocking, and you’re a Stream Monkey user, it may already be included in your plan. All Premium users have access to geo blocking under your security tab. If you’re interested in adding this feature to a Pro or Pro+ plan, reach out to one of our team members and ask them about the Security package add on.
Stream Monkey is an online video company focused on simplifying the way users share, connect, and engage with their audience.
