Canwest Case Study

Canwest needed a scalable online video solution for a network of television stations and newspaper assets, including 18 specialty channels and GlobalTV, their largest broadcasting property. Because GlobalTV is their “bread and butter,” providing 90% of their video impressions, they focused product development efforts on improving the GlobalTV user experience in a way that could be applied to their other properties.

GlobalTV’s goal was to target two general types of viewers: Those who visited the site regularly for favorite shows, and those who weren’t familiar with GlobalTV online and needed a visually compelling presentation with content discovery tools to draw them in. To reach both audiences, Canwest needed a way to let viewers share content and be site evangelists.

Their Content

  • Canwest’s long-form content mostly comprises full episodes of popular TV shows. Their news sites run primarily short-form content, with some 30-minute to 1-hour newscasts.

Challenges

  • Canwest had a month to deploy a new system on numerous sites whose players varied in style and usability.
  • Their previous vendor’s platform lacked the flexibility to build a solution specific to their properties, was processor intense, and provided unsatisfactory customer support.
  • With their previous vendor, they had to rely on out-of-the-box players, “a big box of flash” that was unreliable and slow to load.
  • Targeted advertising was virtually impossible with the previous solution, reducing Canwest’s ability to properly monetize high-quality television shows.

Solution

Players

  • Canwest used thePlatform’s Player Development Kit (PDK) to develop the video center on foodnetwork.ca as a use case for future video site development projects. They spent time thinking about branding, consumer behavior, and PDK functionality to develop front-end script.
  • When thePlatform released PDK 4.1.1, Canwest began implementing the PDK across more sites, beginning with GlobalTV.
  • With the PDK, Canwest inserts pre- and mid-roll ads at the break points.
  • Because the non-player regions are in JavaScript, they load quickly; response times are much faster than the previous vendor’s solution.

Feeds

  • GlobalTV uses our Feeds Service to fill flyout episode descriptions. Users stay at top of page without scrolling, maintaining the user experience.
  • When users start typing text in the search box, the player immediately begins returning items directly from the Feeds Service.
  • They use several PDK plug-ins: DoubleClick InStream for advertising, and Omniture and comScore Video Metrix for analytics.
  • Users can embed and share select content on Facebook and Google.

Account structure

  • There is one major subaccount for broadcast entertainment, and one for broadcast news. Every newspaper has a subaccount.
  • They manage news account rights to ensure that only they can modify their own content.

Ingest

  • Since April, 2010, GlobalTV has benefited from the PDK’s built-in adaptive streaming capabilities, ingesting all content in multiple-bitrate HD, the highest being 2.5mb.
  • Content is ingested into the Canwest accounts through a variety of methods: Using our Ingest Service Watch Folders to trigger autopublishing for some content, MRSS feed adapters and groovy adapters for third-party content, and manual content ingest through the UI for other content.
  • Their workflow system manages metadata, transcoding, and delivery to Watch Folders.

Results

Canwest is poised to take advantage of any new format that thePlatform supports. As Jouari Santiago, Director, Broadband Video says, “It’s a system that doesn’t require us to rewire everything when a new format becomes the norm.” With this kind of flexibility, they’re prepared to increase the number of hit television shows they show online, and can further broaden their content offering with movies and web exclusives.

The site metrics prove GlobalTV.com’s continued rise in popularity with its audience, putting it well ahead of the competition:

  • #1 in accumulated video views, with 57 million in Fall 2009, up by a staggering 572% vs. Fall 2008, and 68% higher than the closest competitor.
  • #1 in minutes per viewer, with an average of 100 minutes, up 136% vs. Fall 2008, and 5 times greater than the closest competitor.
  • #1 in videos per viewer, with an average of 33 videos, up 163% vs. Fall 2008, and 3 times greater than the closest competitor.

In addition, GlobalTV.com continues to be the fastest-growing conventional web site, up by triple-digit percent increases for all key comScore Video Metrix year over year. thePlatform congratulates Canwest and GlobalTV on their success, and is pleased that our services are helping them meet their online video business goals.

*Source: comScore Inc. Video Metrix comparing all conventional broadcast sites. Fall is represented by September to December. Video views are summed while other metrics represent monthly averages.