What are online video platforms, OVP's?, when to choose them?, how to choose them?
Juan Pablo Morales Sarmiento*
Generally, publishers tend to make a lot of mistakes when selecting an online video management tool. What should be a long-term marriage continually becomes a costly, time-consuming, and most of the time painful change.
An Online Video Platform is a system that facilitates the management of audiovisual assets, within an environment that has tools that allow organizing, measuring, monetizing, syndicating and securing the video content that a publisher has.
These systems allow the content to be integrated into the different digital environments where they are required. Whether in OTT's, Web, Intranets, Social Networks etc.
The need for organizations to make themselves known using video technology has become more evident day by day, both for marketing, as well as for human resources and communications. The management of these assets should preferably be done through professional OVPs that allow clear interpretation of communication objectives. We must ask ourselves what we want to use the video for, how we want to communicate a message and in which cases social networks are the most appropriate way to do it and in which cases they are not.
To choose an OVP you have to take into account some basic aspects that seek, among all, a better user experience and the maximization of the profit of the publisher, among them:
1. Accessibility in the cloud.
2. Cross-platform availability.
3. UX and Accessibility.
4. Digital Rights Management (DRP)
5. User administration and authentication systems.
6. Advanced metrics.
7. Integration with Social Networks.
8. Compliance with IAB advertising standards.
This time I am going to make a brief review of an OVP, taking advantage of the fact that I recently received a test account. Viddeo, a Latin American platform that has been growing, has caught my attention for its features, for its ease of use and for its integration with advanced technologies such as Aspera, VR and 4K as well as accessibility with APIs for advanced users.
Its simplicity to use means that it does not take much time to understand how the platform works, to such an extent that anyone could easily manage a library from their own device and wherever they are.
Videos are uploaded with a single click and organized into categories and playlists easily, in conjunction with all the metadata, making their referencing and searching quick and easy. Live videos are parameterized with a name and automatically recorded on the network, so that they are automatically On Demand and that the user can also have the option to return live with DVR.
The platform transcodes in the cloud and creates the profiles that the user wants to guarantee a good experience with Adaptive Streaming for any device.
The integration with systems such as Aspera, allow a fast and automatic ingestion, making the process much more in line with the needs of broadcasters and large publishers. Support on amazon Web Services and on Top Akamai gives you peace of mind in a robust, scalable system.
The metrics, on the other hand, in addition to the standard information on impacts, include the CTR or rate of videos viewed in their entirety by users, delivering very useful data to understand audiences and thus, offer them content adjusted to their needs and tastes.
The possibility of creating video galleries to embed them in the best style of a social network, is one of the most interesting features of this platform. With this option you can have, in a very short time, a website with videos of the platform, so that anyone can access them, without the publisher having to write a single line of code.
The platform complies with the IAB standards of advertising and also has an interesting integration with Social Networks that allows you to select any piece of a video and share it automatically on the publisher's social networks.
Video platforms have come, in general, standardizing their technologies and their value offerings. Its differentiation has been based on something very simple, beyond technology: customer service. As in almost everything. You have to choose the one that is willing to customize and be part of a long-term path.
*Juan Pablo Morales S. is a Content and Digital Video Producer. You can contact him through his Twitter account with the user @JuanPMoralesS
