Plug-ins for thePlatform PDK

Completely documented and fully customizable, thePlatform’s Player Development Kit (PDK) supports a plug-in development model that enables our customers to choose from over thirty partners’ products to round out their overall online video solution. Whether you want to integrate your player with advertising, reporting and analytics, recommendations, or any other playback-enhancing solution, chances are we have several partners for you to consider. And if you are already using or considering another vendor’s solution that you wish was integrated with your player, we have a great on-boarding program for new partners. Developing a PDK plug-in can take as little as one week, and adding any partner plug-in to a player simply requires a one-line initialization script to be added to the player’s HTML code.

Online video advertising solutions that are client-supported can be integrated with the PDK through custom Flash plug-ins. The plug-ins contain custom logic to communicate with the ad provider’s network, parse their proprietary ad data formats, and insert the video ads, overlays, and banners as needed.

The PDK comes with the following advertising plug-ins.

  • Ad insertion
  • Doubleclick InStream
  • Google AdSense for Video
  • Google In-Stream Flash
  • HTML banner ads
  • Lightningcast
  • LiveRail
  • MSN
  • Tremor
  • VAST

Other PDK advertising plug-ins developed, supported, and that can be provided by partners include:

  • Adap.tv
  • Auditude
  • EyeWonder
  • FreeWheel
  • Panache
  • ScanScout
  • YuMe

For reporting and analytics, the PDK includes three plug-in components (Omniture SiteCatalyst, Google Analytics, and comScore Video Metrix) that can be used to provide usage tracking for your media content. Other partners who have developed plug-ins for thePlatform’s PDK that track player-side activity include:

  • Conviva
  • GlanceGuide
  • Truviso
  • TubeMogul
  • Visible Measures
  • Webtrends

PDK Plug-in Development

The PDK provides code samples for creating six different types of plug-ins.

  • Advertising
  • Clip info metadata
  • Player control rack
  • Player overlay
  • Search
  • URL rewriting

Here’s a snapshot of thePlatform’s PDK API:

Some other great features of the PDK that relate to third-party plug-ins include:

  • Custom PDK plug-ins can be developed using the debugging features of Adobe Flex Builder 3 and Adobe Flash CS4. Developers can create custom plug-ins for the player control rack (custom buttons, for example).
  • The Search component of the PDK accepts custom plug-ins that can be used to direct the search to a different provider.
  • Canvas designers can specify the z-order (layering order) of overlay plug-ins.
  • The ad insertion plug-in supports multiple URLs to insert pre-, mid-, and post-roll ads.
  • The metadata URL plug-in enables the modification of release URLs.
  • Player plug-ins can use the component’s internal SMIL parser to convert their SMIL files into Playlist objects.
  • You can instruct the player to display your plug-ins over the control rack within the player area.
  • Plug-ins can make their own feed requests and have the PDK parse the result for them.
  • Player plug-ins (advertising, control, overlay, and URL) can monitor the state of and obtain information about the active Flash NetStream.
  • The PDK provides an ActionScript 3 API with which Flash developers can create custom elements that integrate with the PDK’s built-in components.

This blog has more information on thePlatform’s open API.

To learn more about adding 3rd-party plug-ins to your PDK player, contact your account manager at thePlatform. If you’re not using the PDK yet, send us a note to learn more today.

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