Here at thePlatform, we are extremely proud to serve as the online video management system for most of the largest cable TV service providers in United States, including: Cablevision, Cox, Comcast, and Time Warner Cable. We’re also excited to announce that we’re working with Rogers, Canada’s leading provider, on an online video initiative and look forward to sharing more details when we can.

We’re equally proud of the fact that, in just the past 2 months alone, more than 20 individual programming networks have turned to thePlatform. These include, many regional networks within Fox Sports Networks; E!; G4; Style; several regional networks within Comcast Sports Group; Travel Channel Media; Big Ten Network; and others yet to be named.

In recent weeks, there has also been a great deal of discussion about “TV Everywhere,” the effort to extend paid TV subscription content to the Web. And, we’re pleased to be involved with the back-end of Comcast’s On Demand Online trial. To date, however, most of the discussion about “TV Everywhere” has centered on the initiatives of TV service providers. But we’re broadening that today.

We’ve introduced a new set of new features for programming networks and content owners to provide “TV Everywhere” capabilities on their own Web sites, while preserving their financial and content rights arrangements with TV service providers. The new features provide solutions like an authentication adapter, authorization of video playback, adaptive content discovery and monetization, and much more. You can read the full details in our press release.

If you would like to learn more about these services, please give us a call.

Marty Roberts
VP of Marketing

Here at thePlatform, we’re proud to have been selected as the centralized back-end video management system for the web sites of FSN’s regional networks. In addition, these programming networks will use our video player technology to create custom viewing experiences for their online audiences. It’s a winning combination all around.

Whether you need an online video business that’s supported by advertising, subscription services, downloads, or some combination of each, thePlatform is here to help you “get your game on.”

Running an Internet video site isn’t the same as running an Internet video business. Now, more than ever, content companies need the versatility to monetize video in multiple ways. At thePlatform, our job is to give you the tools to expand your business in a way that’s right for you. Whether you need advertising options, a subscription service, pay-per-view, or some combination, thePlatform has proven solutions in the market today.

Advertising

Today, most of the billions of online video views that we manage for customers are monetized through advertising. With our system, you can easily set ad positions, formats, patterns, and delivery policies. You can also set primary and secondary ad servers or networks to ensure a continuous flow of ads to your video player’s content. In addition, thePlatform can help you easily syndicate to a wide variety of destination sites to extend your reach.

thePlatform also provides a vast partner plug-in ecosystem for our video players by integrating with most of the major online video advertising servers and networks. Our integrations include:

• Adap.tv
• Auditude
• BlackArrow
• BrightRoll
• DoubleClick
• EyeWonder
• Google AdSense for Video
• Lightningcast
• LiveRail
• Panache
• ScanScout
• Tremor Media
• YuMe
• and more…

Subscriptions

In addition to advertising tools, thePlatform also enables subscription revenue streams for your content. Create your own subscription business with end user accounts, payment gateway integrations, and shopping cart tools. We have numerous examples of customers with successful subscription businesses, including new customer Big Ten Network.

You can also partner with a TV Service Provider as they roll out TV Everywhere sites and services to their existing subscribers. thePlatform simplifies the integration between your and your partner’s systems, enabling the playback of premium or entitled content to authorized consumers on your web site.

If subscriptions make sense to you, we’re ready to help.

Pay-per-view or purchase

Finally, thePlatform provides tools for powering a media business based on pay-per-view or content purchases. In addition to end user accounts, payment gateways, and shopping cart integrations to handle the actual transactions, we also provide tools for delivering and securing that content on the end users’ devices: We support both encrypted streaming delivery, and the download and storage of content that’s protected by digital rights management (DRM) software. We do this today for iN Demand Networks and others, and we can do it for you.

To learn more about thePlatform’s monetization options for your video business, contact your Account Manager. To learn more about our partner networks’ advertising, commerce, and digital rights solutions, visit our partner pages.

Give viewers the power to manage bitrates

If your video has multiple bitrate versions available, our new bandwidth selector control provides a visual cue for the version being shown. For FMS 3.5 servers, by default we’ll automatically detect the optimal bandwidth, and the indicator will show the current state as the bandwidth shifts. Viewers can also click the control and manually switch bitrates in real time.

New plug-ins for reporting and advertising

We’ve added plug-ins for the following partner solutions:

• comScore: Track user activity with comScore’s Video Metrix online audience reporting in order to provide high quality, third-party validated measurement.
• Google’s In-Stream Flash component: Access both DoubleClick In-Stream ads and Google AdSense for Video ads. Using this plug-in allows allocation of the best ad from either system, or to use one as a failover for the other.
• Generic server-side ad wrapping: Wrap content clips in ad server URLs that then get passed to other ad plug-ins for processing. You’ll never need to worry about wrapper playlists again.

More flexible category lists

Finally, we’ve opened up the category list control to enable additional ‘virtual’ categories within the list. These virtual categories can include multiple feeds in a single list, and they can be specified in any order or at any level of the list display.

For more details on the release and instructions on implementing these features, see the release notes in our Technical Resource Center, or contact us today.

With mpsConnect, we take care of all aspects of content distribution including ingest, transcoding, metadata management, and policy management. mpsConnect distributes media through feeds, players, and Connectors. Our dynamic feeds service subscribes to content categories and automatically updates the available content. It supports the XML, JSON, RSS, and MRSS feed formats. Our players can be embedded in a single URL with multiple sharing tools. And our Connectors will publish your content directly to sites with unique content delivery.

Web support

With our embeddable video players, feeds, and Connectors, you can distribute content over the Internet to personal computers. Connector web outlets include:

• YouTube
• MSN Video
• Yahoo! Video
• Fancast
• iTunes
• MySpace
• TubeMogul
• Metacafe
• AOL video
• Veoh
• Blinkx

Mobile support

You can also use our distribution tools to send content to mobile devices such as iPhones and Windows Mobile phones. Our mobile outlets include:

• AT&T
• Verizon
• Helio
• Mobitv
• Sprint
• GoTV Networks

TV support

In order to deliver content to IP TV platforms, we format and send content depending on the requirements of each set-top-box network. As with mobile and PC platforms, we’ve distributed content to IP TV outlets that accept media in standard formats (such as MRSS). In addition, we’ve worked with customers to build Connector applications for set-top-boxes that require unique or specific content formats. If there is a particular set-top-box that you’re trying to reach, or for more information on which platforms we’ve integrated with, contact us.

To learn more about mpsConnect and how it can help distribute your content, visit our mpsConnect page or contact your account manager.

Our customers asked for it and we delivered. One of our most popular new products, the Ingest Service, now supports Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) for Watch Folders. This means that Watch Folders can now be deployed in even more places for our customers, including within secure networks that are behind corporate firewalls.

About the Ingest Service

The Ingest Service offers a faster, easier, and more flexible method for ingesting content into thePlatform’s system. You can use one of two methods with the Ingest Service:

• The Feed Reader, which connects to your content feed and ingests content automatically, along with all its corresponding metadata.
• Watch Folders, FTP locations into which you place files for automatic ingest into mps, along with a file that contains all the corresponding metadata to be applied to the content in the folder. Files can be in nearly any format including XML, XLS, and MRSS.

Adapting to Your Workflow

The Ingest Service can be used for ingesting new content or updating existing content in your system. It is a highly scalable service for which we build Adapters that will map to customers’ metadata schemas. With its error checking and bulk uploading features, it provides added peace of mind for the ingest process. And now that Watch Folders supports SFTP, it is deployable in even more scenarios.

Contact your Account Manager if you would like more information about the Ingest Service.

If presenting video content to your online audience is the core of your business model, then chances are you are using a traditional web content management system (CMS) and a video management solution (VMS) in tandem. Both systems are highly specialized for what they do, but until recently they haven’t been well integrated, leading to overly manual processes, sub-optimal workflow, and degraded consumer experience.

Typically, the CMS is not even aware of the video content that is managed in the VMS. The CMS stores and manages articles and images while the VMS manages video, and never the twain shall meet. This situation results in problems for both content editors and the audience.

From a content editor’s perspective, lack of communication between the CMS and VMS creates a more complex workflow:

• When a content editor adds video through a VMS that is entirely disconnected from the web CMS, they can’t access individual video objects for integration into article-based content. Although the published videos will appear in the embedded players, content editors must copy and paste the VMS embed code into the article WYSIWYG editor.
• Content categories are crucial to managing online video content. Using unintegrated systems, content editors might not have the option to add, edit, or delete categories via the CMS interface and have those changes reflected in the VMS as well.
• Content editors need the ability to easily append a video to a story or blog, whereby the video is placed in a sidebar adjacent to the text without needing to copy and paste embed code. Unintegrated systems might not allow for this.

Apart from being clumsy and time consuming for content editors, lack of integration also poses an issue for the visitors. Because the video content does not live in the CMS, it’s generally unavailable via site search and requires a video-specific search tool in the player itself. Wouldn’t your audience prefer to discover related textual and video content in a single, all-site search function?

A fully integrated CMS-plus-VMS lets editors ingest video content through either system’s interface. References to the video objects are placed into the CMS database so that the videos could be attached and formatted automatically into article-based content. Given the presence of the references in the CMS database, the videos could be indexed for search. The integration streamlines the workflow for the content editor, removes the requirement for a federated search mechanism, and enhances the experience for visitors.

The convergence of web CMS and VMS is still in its infancy, but with the increasing need for immediacy in web publishing, you’ll want to ensure that your tools play well together so that all of your content (text, images, and videos) can be seamlessly managed by your team and consumed by your audience.

To find out more about how Platformic has integrated their CMS with thePlatform’s online video solutions, see the Platformic partner page on thePlatform’s web site.

Claudio Canive is the Chief Executive Officer of Platformic.

thePlatform wanted to make the mobile development process easier by providing something that our customers could use to get their feet wet delivering mobile content without having to build a traditional iPhone custom application themselves.

Using our Feeds Service, a little JavaScript, and the iPhone’s built-in web browser, we built a sample web application that saves our customers time and effort. Customers can use the sample code (provided by thePlatform) combined with the iPhone’s user interface Framework (iUI) to deliver a clean and customizable viewing experience. Visit our Technical Resource Center where you can download a package containing the following:

• Two separate examples to get you started building your own app. Each example uses custom JavaScript that interacts with our Feeds Services’ JSON interface and the iUI library.
• A browser-based (sample) web app. Since it is web-based, your customers do not need to download anything in order to make it work on their iPhones.
• An iPhone-like user experience that is based on the native iPhone app look and feel. To customize it further, you can change the CSS for different colors and background images.
• Template iPhone transcoding profile. The media files will be formatted and encoded specifically for iPhone viewing.

Log in to our Technical Resource Center today to learn more about our iPhone web app sample code. To see a working demo, type this URL into your iPhone browser:

http://theplatform.com/iphone/index.html#_home

• View our policies on sample code here.

business

Including video in your email can be a great way to increase audience engagement with your content. Streamed video in email enables true multi-channel digital marketing, where marketers can mix the web “pull” and the email “push” video tactics to drive more user interaction.

But adding video to email can be problematic. One particular challenge of embedding video in email is that, because many security attacks can be carried through JavaScript and Flash and harm the client, ISPs often ban video from email. To overcome this challenge, you’ll need a secure sending mechanism that works across varied ISPs and webmail providers. Goodmail Systems, a newly integrated partner of thePlatform, offers a solution that can meet that need.

Goodmail’s CertifiedVideo delivers messages with thePlatform’s Player Development Kit (PDK) players directly to the recipient’s inbox, without ISP restrictions. Your video plays when the email is opened, and just as with any other HTML email message you send, message content is completely configurable.

With thePlatform and Goodmail’s combined solution, you can use your existing CDN, ad-servers, and analytics solutions, without making any changes to thePlatform’s media publishing system.

Why video in email?

Reusing existing video assets. You’ll want the implementation to dovetail with your broader platform solution so that the existing Flash-based video assets can be used “as is” within the email properties.

Using existing infrastructure. The video-in-email solution should be interoperable with your existing CDN, ad-servers, and analytics solutions, without requiring any changes to the existing enterprise video infrastructure.

Multichannel planning flexibility. Enterprise marketing organizations who are deploying video solutions can integrate video into email as part of their workflow process.

Expanding existing monetization. Video can be a great way of monetizing email campaigns. Any existing sponsorship or advertising strategy can be easily extended into email campaigns.

To find out more about how Goodmail Systems and thePlatform can help you deliver video via email to your audience, see the Goodmail Systems partner page on thePlatform’s web site.

Gal Chanoch is the Vice President of Product Management at Goodmail Systems and has over 20 years of experience in engineering, marketing, and business development in Fortune 100 and startup companies.

partners, syndication

a) Find more revenue opportunities when ad servers are unable to fill an ad positions due to timeouts, category mismatches, or missing inventory.
b) Reduce the extra costs of integrating with multiple ad servers and ad networks, maintaining those integrations, and getting them to work within their player(s).

A complete advertising management solution

We now offer Acudeo ad policy management tools through our partnership with Tremor Media, a leading online advertising network. With the Acudeo ad policies service, we help customers increase their revenue from advertising while decreasing the headache of setting up and managing a vast ecosystem of advertising partners.

Acudeo Benefits

• The service provides tools that let you experiment with different ad servers and ad networks. To maximize the monetization potential of your content, you can even switch to different networks or set primary and failover ad sources in order to ensure uninterrupted ad delivery.
• Acudeo is pre-integrated with most of the leading ad networks and ad servers, saving you time and effort by allowing you to take immediate advantage of its benefits.
• Set ad pattern policies for pre-, mid-, and post-roll ads at the player and video level, which saves time and reduces ad playback administration. In addition to Acudeo’s standard Compatible Ad Source format, other supported ad formats include iFrame Banner Ad Tags, PointRoll’s TickerBoy, and the Digital Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) format as distributed by the IAB
• An ever-evolving list of integrations helps you future-proof your ad platform. Supported ad networks include Tremor Media, Advertising.com (LightningCast), BrightRoll Video Network, Google AdSense for Video, ScanScout, SpotXchange, ValueClick. Supported ad servers include DoubleClick DART for Publishers, Doubleclick InStream, Open AdStream (OAS), Atlas Ad Manager, Atlas Media Console, AdTech Helios IQ, and more. For a complete list, contact your account manager.

Customers have the option to easily join the Tremor Media Video Ad Network to further monetize their video inventory. Learn more about the Acudeo ad policies service on our web site, or contact your Account Manager today.

business, advertising, partners