Tou.tv Case Study

Radio-Canada wanted an on-demand video portal for broadcast TV, film clips, and webisodes from numerous Canadian and global content producers. They had 2000+ hours of audio and video to organize and manage for properties French language Radio-Canada.ca.

Their goals included increasing their web audience, creating a unified look and feel, and aggregating French language content for their new site, TOU.TV.

Their Content

TOU.TV content comprises broadcast TV, short films, animated clips and original web series from content providers in Canada, France, Switzerland, and Belgium.

Challenges

  • Find a robust solution that could get them quickly to market
  • Gain a sustainable roadmap for future growth and changes
  • Manage content with a flexible mix of metadata
  • Generate revenue from content after its TV broadcast run
  • Derive usage data for reporting

Solution

Players

  • The Player Dev Kit gives TOU.TV’s viewers thorough information on available content and makes video easy to find and filter. Viewers can:
    • Sort episodes chronological or reverse order:
    • Find out about upcoming shows and series as well as content which will soon be retired:
    • See credits for each episode
    • Easily advance to the next episode in a series:
    • Search for video and filter results by country

Social media

  • Viewers can share videos on Facebook and Twitter:
  • A “J’aime” button makes it easy for viewers to show that they like the video, and it also tallies the clicks:

Account structure and ingest

  • TOU.TV uses subaccounts for content syndication.
  • They work on their media on a shared, offline system, and then upload the content via thePlatform’s API. Web producers and editors then manage their work in thePlatform’s console.

Advertising

The new site gives Radio-Canada a new outlet for revenue streams through the SMART AdServer, which thePlatform’s system calls to insert pre-roll, mid-roll, companion, and overlay ads.

Reporting

TOU.TV uses Webtrends Video Analytics to measure and analyze audience behavior for video content served by thePlatform’s video management system. They have access to data that shows which videos are most popular, which are shared, and how long viewers watch.

Results and Benefits

Radio-Canada set up an account for TOU.TV, added their content, and developed and launched a beta video portal in only three months. Within a matter of weeks the site became a household name in their market of 7 million and grew a Facebook fan base of 62 thousand.

“The adoption of TOU.TV by the audience has been overwhelming,” says Martin Delisle, Director, Production and Operations at Radio-Canada. In particular, TOU.TV was happy to see that their exclusive and original content, such as “En audition avec Simon” (In Audition with Simon) was among the most watched, proving that their content need not originate on broadcast TV to gain an audience.

TOU.TV’s next online video project using thePlatform’s systems will focus on mobile, interactive, and social features.