This time, we will continue from the previous Multicast+ article to introduce ramp’s solution, “OmniCache™”. OmniCache™ is a different eCDN solution from the previous Multicast+, and it is necessary to build a cache server with OmniCache™ installed in the company’s network.
Everyday, we enable live events and 24/7 linear channels for our global customers. We’ve learned a lot about what it means not only to deliver live at scale but to monetize live at scale. For Live, monetization is now an achievable and often necessary requirement, but success means thinking about the end-to-end workflow, from content origination to content consumption.
This post will focus on the use of advertising, the most common monetization approach for our customers. However, these best practices can still be useful in the context of transactional and subscription models.
People often use the umbrella term, dynamic ad insertion (“DAI”), to describe the ability to present in-stream ads with video content. From a technical standpoint, DAI can be implemented by two different approaches: client-side ad insertion (“CSAI”) and server-side ad insertion (“SSAI”). It’s important to distinguish the between CSAI and SSAI to understand how monetization works best with live content.
CSAI is very common and the “de facto” standard for VOD. If we look at the workflow for CSAI:
What happens is that ad requests – and all the subsequent ad wrapper or ad waterfall requests – require time. Latency increases, and the chance of an error or timeout for any step in that chain increases. The ad creative may not be available in a compatible format (e.g., FLV on iOS). Even if the format is compatible, it may not be optimal:
When any of these occur, the quality of the ad – and overall content – experience suffers, as does the value to the viewer, the content distributor, and the advertiser.
SSAI handles the manipulation of live program content and targeted advertising behind the scenes. As a result, media companies can deliver live content to the viewer with the same seamless quality as traditional broadcast. The insertion of ads is frame accurate, the ad experience is the same quality as content, and since this approach doesn’t rely on sophisticated logic to manage client behavior using client-side SDKs, the live stream – content and ads – can be played on any device that supports the base format, often HLS or DASH.
The benefits of SSAI extend across the content ecosystem:
One of the benefits of SSAI is the ability to support targeting per user, per session, and per ad break. This is a very powerful and valuable capability. No longer is measurement and attribution conducted at a household level. We can now target per viewer not just per DMA or RON. But this means those ad partners must have the capability to scale to hundreds of thousands of requests during an ad break.
To understand what this means from a systems perspective, let’s do some quick math for a live stream that reaches 1MM concurrent viewers (a common request from our customers) using HLS content encoded using six second segments.
If we look more closely at the last point, for a 120 second ad break, if the ad server responds with four 30 second ads for every request, that ad break results in ~20MM impressions in that span of 30 seconds. But if the ad server responds with eight 15 second ads for every request, it’s now ~40MM impressions in that span of 30 seconds.
Monetization requires close coordination with ad partners. And just as public cloud infrastructure is not created equally across the globe, your ad partners are likely utilizing similar infrastructure and need to analyze their regional capabilities.
During a high profile sports events, a customer reported lower than expected ad fill. To diagnose the issue post-event, this required aggregating and correlating multiple sets of data, matching time zones, session information, and eliminating “natural” or expected errors. We looked at:
All the data seemed within reasonable ranges, but we eventually discovered that the 3rd parties receiving the ad beacons were unable to handle the spike in impressions, resulting in timeouts or errors due to the volume of legitimate requests made in the short amounts of time.
As a result, this means thinking about how to distribute both ad requests and beacons to lower the peak throughput while delivering the effective number of requests without compromising timing. As a result, we’ve learned that we need to tune our systems to “scale down” to the capabilities of the customers’ ad partners. This means evaluating the approaches for both pre-fetching ads (i.e., making ad requests before an explicit known ad break) and distributing impressions over a longer timeframe to reduce the peak throughput.
We are proponents of public cloud infrastructure; it has been a cost-effective and time-efficient method to enable a global architecture while maintaining regional optimization. However, the challenge is that not all public cloud infrastructure regions are equal in performance and cost. As a result, you need to balance the compute, storage, and delivery capabilities of a region with demand, and you may need to overflow to other regions to maximize performance or minimize cost.
As we utilize CDNs as a critical part of our workflow to enable global delivery of content and ads, we need to keep an eye on our CDN partners to ensure they are performing consistently at scale. For both everyday operational measurement and post-event troubleshooting, significant effort is focused on identifying and monitoring those situations that were formerly edge cases but are now commonplace situations to determine if there are issues specific not only to a specific CDN partner but to CDN POPs, subnets, and even individual edge servers.
We’re excited to see live streaming continue to play a significant role in how companies grow revenue, increase engagement, and build audience.
There’s a reason video continues to rise as one of the most powerful mediums we have — it connects us on a human level, it’s moving and engaging. With video, you can take something intangible, like B2B analytics software, and bring it to life. Three minutes of video has the potential to be far more powerful at conveying the value of a business than any white paper or email ever could.
To put it simply: Video works. But just creating video content is not enough. Making a video and driving return on investment from it are two completely different things. Too often, we miss the mark on the implementation side of our video strategy, leaving real business value on the table.
Here are five key ways to make sure your video campaign is successful.
Like all digital marketing, video is measurable. But many companies miss the simple act of connecting it to real business results. We spend a lot of time putting together email campaigns, driving white paper downloads, and increasing traffic to our blogs. We set up beautiful nurture and personalized campaigns based on what users click on and download. So why are we operating video in a silo, separate from the rest of our marketing stack?
The ability to measure video impact is no longer about view counts; it’s about who is viewing your video. Instead of focusing on clicks, we need to build out profiles of individual viewers and communicate with them based on their needs and interests.
This is what takes video campaigns to the next level and allows us to serve consumers the most relevant content
Video works, but it doesn’t have to work at the expense of your other content. Embedding a large player box to watch a single video means sacrificing valuable real estate as well as decreased engagement with other parts of the page.
A better way is to think about video outside the context of the player by making it a key piece of your user experience strategy.
When it comes to user experience, brands are beginning to bring interactivity into the equation with powerful results — videos with interactive elements have a much higher click-through rate compared to linear video. Interactivity doesn’t have to be complex. It comes in all shapes and sizes from gamification to quizzes, chaptering to hotspots and calls to action. It transforms a video from a one-way conversation into a two-way dialogue.
Not only does interactivity help increase completion rate, time on sight, click-throughs, and engagement, but it can also play an important role in strategy development. Every click and action is measurable, providing greater insights into your audience.
In a world increasingly defined by customer-centricity and user experience, it should come as no surprise that personalization in video really works.
Most brands and companies still deliver a single video message to all of their users, but we’re learning that it’s important to take it a step further.
At Brightcove we practice what we preach, so we’ve embraced a video-first account-based marketing (ABM) strategy. We use personalized videos for demand gen as well as land and expand targets. By creating bespoke videos for various accounts, we can immediately engage customers and create a personal connection. Integrating this into account-based advertising campaigns means videos are delivered to the right audience across social channels and email.
And the results have been outstanding.
Emails have a 224 percent open rate. Yes, people liked the outreach so much, they were forwarding it to colleagues. And across account managers, we have an 80 percent engagement rate on video.
Unlike the 1960s or even the early 2000s, we can no longer expect our audience to gather together to watch TV. Today, our campaigns must reach the audience where they are and deliver content that matches consumption habits across multiple screens and different social channels.
And while you have to think about content length and context for each channel, you do not need to create a whole new video for each medium. You can take the same video and cut it down to different lengths depending on the platform.
Why is this important? Almost half of people on social watch branded videos, and more than half make a purchase after watching.
But we can’t stop there. Connected TVs (CTV) are shaping up to be another critical distribution channel. According to the IAB Australia, Connected TV streams grew by 351 percent over a 15 month period alone (January 2016 – March 2017). And with over 2.9 billion ad opportunities served across Australia’s main four free to air broadcasters via Connected TV streams, CTV is becoming a medium to consider for your next campaign.
It’s about time brands catch on.
Live video is growing, with audiences coming to expect some form of live coverage for major events.
This shift is reflected in the number and variety of live events we have seen in the last year. The Exploratorium recently brought us the solar eclipse, live. Sotheby’s auctions are live. We even had a customer live stream a brain surgery.
We already know that video has the unique ability to win over the hearts and minds of viewers, but going live just makes it that much more engaging.
The best companies have a video-first strategy. When you think video-first, you’re forced to come up with the full story you want to tell. And with that story, you can easily create the rest of the content that surrounds the video: the email, the landing page, the blog.
Video creation and production can be a little intimidating. But it’s crucial to your marketing strategy to use video to promote your company, product, and services. Just like booking a vacation or hitting your quarterly goals, everything becomes easier with planning and preparation.
The same goes for videos. They become easier to shoot and produce when you start the process with a well thought out video script. Putting your ideas and words to paper will help you explain your vision for the video and execute it when the camera starts rolling. Plus, you’ll avoid headaches during production and endless rounds of revisions.
You don’t need to feel the pressure to write a script like Sorkin or Scorsese. Instead, just focus on these three elements. Here’s my process for writing a killer video script every time.
Before you jump into writing your video script, host a brainstorm session with your team. This is when and where your creativity should start churning. First, identify the goal of your video. Then follow the six pillars of video storytelling to identify the plot, purpose, people, place, audience, and distribution of your video. You and your team should ask the following questions during your brainstorm:
After creating the plan, story, and setting for your video, it’s time to sit down in the writer’s room and get to work. As you are writing your video script, you’ll want to think visually. Ask yourself — which images and shots will accompany the audio of this video?
The best way to write visually is by creating a two-up script. The two-up script has one column for the audio in the video and another column detailing the visuals to accompany each line of audio. This approach, which I regularly use when script writing, allows you to envision what is going to happen in the video alongside the words.
Your two-up script can be easily transformed into a storyboard. Storyboards are not always necessary but can be very useful when you have to explain the video concept to multiple stakeholders involved in the video production process. Visuals are processed 60,000 times faster than text, which means you can describe your vision much easier with actual images. So use a storyboard to your advantage when you are collaborating with many people in your company.
On shoot days, I always use a shot list. The shot list is a document that maps out exactly what will occur and what will be used in that particular shot, or scene, of the video. It helps me stay organized and on task while recording so I capture everything as outlined by the script. I literally could not live without this.
If you don’t already use this crucial tool, download my video script shot list template here.
Through your brainstorming and planning process, you’ll identify the audience of your video. With this targeting, you also need to identify the action you want them to take after watching your video. It’s a common approach to place your call-to-action at the end of the video, like a big finale on the silver screen, but I don’t recommend this.
Instead, you should be bold at the beginning of your videos. This can be in the form of a question or with a clear statement within the first 5-10 seconds of the video. After you make that initial impact, you can transition your script to entertain and educate the viewer. Finally, you can reinforce the action of your video at the end of the video.
Write your scripts with this strategy in mind and always ask: What do you want the viewer to learn if they only watch the first 10 seconds of the video? Which action do you want them to take before they decide to keep scrolling on their feed?
Next time you sit down to write a killer video script, remember to make a plan before you put pen to paper, show what you want to say, and be bold in your delivery. Who knows — maybe you will become the next Scorsese.
Sansan has been running an initiative called “Customer Success” since 2012. For a company that operates on a subscription model, the importance of acquiring new contracts and maintaining existing contracts remains the same. Currently, around 40 staff work in the independent Customer Success Department, and they are developing support for promoting usage to existing users on a daily basis.
Mr. Yasumasa Ogawa, General Manager of the Customer Success Department of the Sansan Division, says, “In the subscription model, business continues to grow by keeping the cancellation rate down. But that’s not all. If customers are satisfied, word of mouth will spread the business. Our department is in charge of promoting use in order to support ‘customer success’.”
The Customer Success Department focuses on educational activities to introduce users to ways of using Sansan and new functions. To do this, it is important to enrich the content.
Naotaka Yamada, Digital Customer Success Manager, Customer Success Department, Sansan Division, says, “The first thing is to get customers to listen to our explanations. What’s important when getting people to use the service is that they feel satisfied with it. If they understand how to use the different functions and what benefits they can expect from doing so, they will be more willing to use it.”
To this end, the company has prepared a website called “Sansan Utilization Tips” for existing users. Users can visit the site and view useful tips and video content introducing them. The Customer Success Department is trying to understand “which users are interested in Sansan and to what extent” based on the behavior of these users. However, there was a problem. Even if video content is uploaded to YouTube, it is not possible to know who is watching it.
“YouTube is free to use, but it doesn’t allow for nurturing. For us, we want to do everything in a data-driven way, so a system that doesn’t allow us to collect data perfectly is useless. For example, seminars are powerful content. However, they are mainly held in Tokyo. We want our customers in the regions to be able to watch them, but we were wondering how we could deliver them and figure out who was watching them” (Mr. Ogawa)
The company therefore decided to consider multiple video distribution platforms. The necessary requirements were to be able to see who was watching the videos, and to be able to link with marketing automation tools. After comparing the other detailed items and costs, they decided to adopt the Brightcove solution. They decided to introduce the online video hosting platform “Brightcove Video Cloud” and the video marketing automation tool “Brightcove Audience”.
One of the reasons they chose Brightcove was because it had a system that allowed users to watch videos without having to log in. In the case of this company, users who watch videos basically visit the website via targeted emails. Therefore, it is possible to identify who has watched the videos. By linking it to a marketing automation tool, this part was cleared, and it was possible to create a specification that allowed them to understand “who has watched” without having to go through the trouble of logging in.
The implementation was completed in just two weeks. Although there was some delay in the part that linked with the marketing automation tool, the settings were completed using internal resources alone. “When I contacted the sales department about the part that wasn’t working, I received a reply immediately and was able to use it in an instant. In effect, it was possible to use it in less than a few days” (Yamada).
Sansan is a cloud solution, and user usage rates have already been accumulated. Now that it is also possible to understand video viewing status, it has become possible to analyze usage rates and viewing status in combination.
Mr. Yamada says, “Among users with high usage rates, there may be people who are still using the old Sansan. We are adding convenient functions one after another. We want people to know about the latest Sansan and use it more deeply.” “What we want to measure through the analysis of usage rates and viewing status is the sense of distance from such users.”
The biggest achievement of this project was being able to visualize this sense of distance. Users with high usage rates, high viewing rates and high numbers of website visits can be positioned as users with low risk of defection. On the other hand, users with low usage rates in some indicator can be targeted proactively. For example, users with low usage rates but who are actively watching videos must have a reason for their low usage rates. In the past, we only knew about usage rates, but now we can provide optimal support based on the fact that “despite the fact that the person in charge knows the functions of Sansan in depth, they have not spread throughout the company”.
The Customer Success Department created a graph with usage rates on the vertical axis and viewing status on the horizontal axis. They have visualized the users who require priority support and are already taking action.
In the future, they will also start working on turning offline seminars into online seminars, which was one of their original goals. They will be delivering on-demand training for basic Sansan operations and administrator training, which until now could only be taken on-site. This will be good news for users who are too busy to find time for training and for customers in rural areas.
“The more you use our service, the more value you get out of it. And it’s evolving all the time. To gauge the distance between us and our customers and to bring that distance closer and closer, we want to continue uploading lots of video content to the Brightcove platform and supporting our customers’ success” (Yamada).
Your prospects will do tons of research on your company, service, or product before they pick up the phone, fill out a form, or start a live chat through your website. Videos in every area of your digital presence can give them an immediate peek into your brand and offerings before they reach out for more information. And seriously, who doesn’t want a shorter sales cycle, increased ROI, or better talent?
Of course, figuring out what video content to create can be a full-time job, but it doesn’t have to be. When we pulled our video production team in-house we saw a great opportunity to step back and analyze the flagship videos we needed to feature across the website. We started with our product, identified the gaps we had in our digital content, and created videos to feature product capabilities. Then we applied this process to other areas of Brightcove and now we have videos for all aspects of the company, including marketing, sales, and of course recruiting videos. It wasn’t a one-and-done project. Every quarter, we review which gaps we have in our video content and make a plan to fill them the next quarter.
We’ve found that the key to success here is simply knowing that you don’t need to produce hundreds of videos per quarter, and you don’t need to receive an Emmy to see results. You can keep the effort manageable and build it over time. We’ve compiled a list of the five types of videos you should and can produce no matter what your budget or resources.
All the videos on this list are important, but your product or service video is the must-have, especially on your website. Why? Because prospective customers can read about your product or service, but they’ll really understand its full capabilities and value when they see it.
Video viewers said they retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text. Now that’s a profound stat! So by repurposing your content into a short product or service video, your prospective customers will actually remember your company and the message you wanted to convey to them. It’s a win-win.
For our product videos we like to focus on three key value points upfront so if viewers only watch the first 30 seconds they will be left with our top messages. And for this type of video we aim to stick it in 90 seconds because we know there will always be context and content around it.
Your explainer video is the view into your company’s mission, culture, and day-to-day operations. This is a great opportunity to get your executive team and employees in front of the camera so they can talk about the heart and soul of your organization and what makes it unique.
Your company explainer video only needs to be 2-3 minutes long and can include B-roll shots or photos of your team working together in their offices, at their desks, and even out in the field. This video humanizes your brand and helps your future customers put a face to the people they will be interacting with on a daily basis. People like to work with people, so let the personality of your employees shine through.
You’re only as good as the people around you and those people can help you attract talent. The right talent. So for a recruiting video, turn the camera around and spotlight your team and workspace to show prospective employees what it’s like to work at your company. You should have at least one recruitment video on the careers page of your website and you can also share it on social media, especially LinkedIn.
I love our recruitment video. We wanted to help guide prospective employees and take them on a tour of our headquarters, which includes a look at our team and where we like to go for lunch or after-work happy hours. Through this video, they can immediately feel the corporate culture and can visualize themselves working here.
How many hours a week does your sales team spend setting up and hosting demo calls with prospective customers? You can drastically reduce the time dedicated to these prospecting activities by creating informative and entertaining demo videos for your sales team. But it shouldn’t be your standard demo video that’s simply a screen share of your product or service and a voiceover from an employee.
Instead, start the video like you are in a face-to-face meeting and show the team member who is giving the demo. You can make your demo videos more dynamic by showing a human face and other shots in between product views. With Brightcove integrations, you can add call-to-actions into your video to lead a prospective customer to learn more on your website or to set up a call with an account manager. With interactive demo videos, your sales team will be able to cut down the length of their sales pipeline and can focus on doing what they do best — building relationships with your customers (instead of sending emails back and forth to schedule that demo meeting).
According to Social Media Examiner’s 2018 Industry Report, 65% of marketers use video in their social media marketing, up from 57% in 2017 and surpassing blogging. You should definitely jump on this bandwagon if you haven’t already since video on social media has shown to increase post engagement and conversions.
Your social media videos should be treated a little differently than the other ones in your toolkit. They should be short (30 seconds or less), should have catchy imagery and text, and should get to the point of the video in the first five seconds. It’s also a good rule of thumb to make your videos in a square format so they take up more real estate on a user’s news feed. And you don’t have to spend hours creating and producing videos for social media either. You can simply grab your iPhone and start recording.
Now that you have these five videos in your toolkit, keep in mind that they don’t just have to live on your website. You can use these videos on a variety of channels, including social media, landing pages, emails, and digital advertising. You’ve put in the hard work to create these incredible videos about your team, services, product, and culture—it’s time for the world to watch them.
This is a review of the previous article, but when using a cloud-based video distribution service such as Video Cloud to distribute videos internally, the number of viewers of the video is the number of video streams.
I am not a big fan of prediction pieces – those missives that seek to pull a proverbial technology rabbit out of a hat and call out a new trend as it forms. More often than not, authors are off the mark. However, it is worth noting that when these predictions fall off course, it is important to analyze why they missed. Other dependencies, market appetite and conditions, or other factors could have impacted the prognostications.
So fitting then to be at CES 2018, keeping up with the latest announcements and technologies. Voice controlled devices in the Amazon Alexa and Google Home universes appear to be generating big buzz at CES. Amazon and Google are leading the conversation, but there is also no shortage of other cool stuff. Self-driving cars from names other than Tesla are popular. I’ve seen television screens that are not only bigger and brighter than you’ve ever seen, but these new models fold up like a sleeping bag or can be made larger or smaller with easily changeable panels.
Whether or not these impressive gizmos will make their way into your work or home life may or may not play out in 2018. But here are a few things to watch for in our space this year and some reasons why they will move the needle along the way.
In 2017, we saw the NFL link up with Amazon to stream its Thursday night slate of games. The numbers (and audience) were mixed. The average audience size and time spent viewing numbers were up overall, but the total number of streaming viewers were off from the previous numbers seen when Twitter carried some games in 2016. Still, reach is the overarching goal for both the NFL and the streaming provider, case in point in 2017 was the addition of Spanish and Portuguese language tracks.
Overall, OTT audiences for the NFL on Thursday nights are just three percent of the total who watch. That’s right – broadcast audience on the three letter networks (and NFL Network) still drives the lion’s share of eyeballs. But those numbers are also a product of how the distribution is constructed today. What will 2018 hold?
Well – it appears that the NFL is moving the proverbial goalposts. What if the NFL Thursday night football experience was only available via streaming? That appears to be an option on the table. Late last year, the NFL sought proposals for both broadcast and OTT delivery of their Thursday night games for the upcoming season. Some reports are saying that if the traditional broadcast networks don’t want to pay the NFL’s rates, the NFL could take Thursday night and deliver it exclusively over the top.
What is clear is that the NFL recognizes the need to meet its newest viewers on the devices they choose to consume on. Beginning with the Twitter experiment, through Amazon and onto whatever 2018 will hold, demonstrates that it knows it must embrace OTT. The new proposals encourage delivery providers to think about additional ways to enhance the product and reduce the number of commercials. While interesting, this also presents monetization challenges. If the providers of these streams consider reducing the amount of traditional revenue they can make to offset the licensing costs (via in-stream ads/commercials), where else can they find those dollars? Amazon’s case is easier made, but this isn’t as simple for the rank and file.
Though not in the cards for 2018, it is a fairly safe bet that NFL fans will be able to go directly to the league for both broadcast and streaming packages in the next few years. In 2018 though, a streaming-exclusive Thursday night (meaning no broadcast) could be in those cards, making it an interesting night to watch for many reasons.
You may not notice it nor pay it much attention, but the data speeds available on today’s mobile networks has increased. In 2018, these speeds are expected to make a quantum leap with the rollout of 5G. For the viewer, this means video streams that (hopefully) never buffer, higher video quality, and generally speedy internet surfing and video consumption. In fact, 5G will likely replace existing cable and fiber connections to the home, reducing some of the complexity in getting video en masse to the home.
5G makes LTE look like it is moving in slow motion. Suffice it to say that on average, 5G will be as much as 100 times faster than LTE. Today, the fastest connections we can access as digital consumers lies within the home. This is mostly because your local town or city has established a franchise agreement with one or two service providers (e.g., Verizon, Spectrum, AT&T) to provide service to you. They in turn lay fiber and cable that has provided these big pipes. With 5G, the video viewer, gamer and others will no longer be tethered (literally and figuratively) to that cable or fiber line. Looked at another way, once 5G networks are rolled out where you live, internet access speed will look like the Millennium Falcon does when it hits light speed. Everything will move very fast. Unfortunately, the smartphone in your pocket (or hands) won’t automatically receive a supercharge. Why? Because service providers like AT&T and T-Mobile will need to update some of the physical parts of their network needed to reach you, and you’ll need a new antenna installed to receive these new 5G signals.
This is great news for video, those of us who help it reach the masses, and for the masses of video viewers everywhere. This isn’t to say that 5G is the end of the road and that we will be at maximum growth and innovation. Far from it. This is just another spot on the highway of innovation, but one of the more exciting mile markers to pop up in some time. 2018 will be remembered as the beginning of the ultra fast on-ramp to the internet. All hail 5G.
Until recently, most streaming content wasn’t dependent on DRM, unless it fell into the feature length studio bucket – full length movies. However, as OTT content, delivery, and consumption becomes more ingrained in our daily lives, and media intake, more broadcasters and content creators are requiring that the streams are protected by DRM, whether they are live or on-demand.
Applying DRM to both live and on-demand content has come a long way since the dawn of streaming. The packaging element adds just a bit more than a second as part of the process and secures the content from bad actors, who seek to intercept a viewer’s stream, recreate it and offer it up to other viewers for free elsewhere. And with the multitude of screens on which viewers everywhere are watching streamed content, the toolset of PlayReady, Widevine, and FairPlay has made not only the preparation sensible, but also the access, authentication and delivery. Many of our broadcast customers who would never have given DRM consideration just a few years ago are now mandating that it be incorporated into their video processing workflows. It is hard to say whether this will apply to all content in 2018, but it is a fair assessment to say that premium content from most broadcasters and programmers will require DRM in the new year.
CES never disappoints with its look at the future of gadgets we may see in our homes. Just a few years ago, it seemed attendees awkwardly talked to voice assistants. This year, that technology is built into nearly everything you see on the show floor. It is also being used to interact with video experiences as well on both the Alexa and Google Home/Chromecast platforms. Expect more of that in 2018, too. Now that I think of it, wouldn’t it be easier to say, ‘Alexa, what are the biggest video trends in 2018?’ One of these years, we will.
One of the innovations we talked about at Brightcove PLAY was an exciting feature we’ll be adding to Dynamic Delivery over the rest of 2018 — Delivery Rules. We gave you a quick preview during the keynote, but we wanted to give you a bit more insight into why we think Delivery Rules will be important and some of the wide range of options that will be enabled as we roll it out.
One of the main challenges we embarked to solve with Dynamic Delivery was fragmentation. Consumer devices have many different operating systems, firmware, and chipsets. Because of that, they support various different codecs, package formats, and DRM schemes. Dynamic Delivery allows us to simplify supporting all these devices because it can repackage content to multiple different formats, all from a single intermediate format.
But that’s only part of the equation. Some devices only support a particular version or particular features of HLS; others don’t like it when you include more than one audio track. To fully address the needs of users, we need to customize the delivery for each device. To deal with this, we’ve built intelligence into Dynamic Delivery to know about the differences between these platforms and automatically modify the content as it’s being delivered. This has been incredibly powerful as it’s allowed us to ensure that content will play back seamlessly across many different devices, despite all the fragmentation.
What we announced at PLAY is that we will be opening up many of these capabilities to our customers so you can directly modify the content being delivered based on your business goals and needs.
With Delivery Rules, you will be able to configure a set of if-then statements that control the user experience. The “ifs” are the triggers for behaviors and will include things such as device type, user location, or a signal from your application. The “thens” are the behaviors that are triggered and will include things such as the characteristics of the renditions returned and which CDN to utilize to deliver the media.
Let’s look at some examples of what Delivery Rules will enable you to do:
As you can imagine, the combinations are endless.
We’re excited to be giving you access to even more of the power in Dynamic Delivery to allow you to customize delivery behavior to meet your unique business objectives. We’ll be releasing Delivery Rules in phases over the rest of this year and can’t wait to see what you do with it. In the meantime, if you’d like to learn more, talk to your Account Manager for more details.
