Prefetching advertisements for streaming delivery

An automated process, comprising:

• transmitting, from an edge server and to a client device, a master manifest for an advertisement, wherein the master manifest identifies a plurality of child manifests for the advertisement;
• receiving, by the edge server and from the client device, a request for a child manifest identified in the master manifest, wherein the child manifest corresponds to a selected bitrate of the advertisement identified in the master manifest;
• checking, by the edge server, a cache for ad segments identified in the child manifest at the selected bitrate;
• fetching, by the edge server and for storage in the cache, the ad segments identified in the child manifest in response to the ad segments being absent from the cache;
• transmitting, by the edge server, a first ad segment identified in the child manifest at the selected bitrate from the cache to the client device;
• and
• transmitting, by the edge server, a second ad segment identified in the child manifest from the cache to the client device, wherein the second ad segment is transmitted during playback of the first ad segment.

A content delivery system comprising a processor in communication with a non-transitory storage medium configured to store instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the content delivery system to perform operations, the operations comprising:

• transmitting, from an edge server and to a client device, a master manifest for an advertisement, wherein the master manifest identifies a plurality of child manifests for the advertisement;
• receiving, by the edge server and from the client device, a request for a child manifest identified in the master manifest, wherein the child manifest corresponds to a selected bitrate of the advertisement identified in the master manifest;
• checking, by the edge server, a cache for ad segments identified in the child manifest at the selected bitrate;
• fetching, by the edge server and for storage in the cache, the ad segments identified in the child manifest in response to the ad segments being absent from the cache;
• transmitting, by the edge server, a first ad segment identified in the child manifest at the selected bitrate from the cache to the client device;
• and
• transmitting, by the edge server, a second ad segment identified in the child manifest from the cache to the client device, wherein the second ad segment is transmitted during playback of the first ad segment.