In 2022, we launched new features for your OTT platform to provide an even more personalized and immersive viewing experience.
These features include dynamic subtitle options, device restriction, the ability to view these metrics on the solution's Dashboard and much more. In this article, we'll break down the most important features to give you a better understanding of how they improve your user experience and those of your subscribers.
Email editor
The addition of an email template system with the ability to modify content using HTML and CSS code, in addition to wording, offers a number of benefits to users. One of the main benefits is the ability to customize the content of the email to better align it with the company or organization's brand and message. This can help increase the effectiveness of email campaigns, resulting in higher engagement and conversion rates.
In addition, multiple language support makes it easy to localize email content, allowing for a wider audience and extended campaign reach. The ability to modify HTML and CSS code provides more advanced design and formatting options, allowing users to infinitely change the look of emails and differentiate themselves in the inbox.
Device restriction
Device restriction for an OTT platform offers many benefits for users and OTT platforms. First, this feature allows access to specific content to be limited to a selected list of devices, which allows content owners to better protect their intellectual property and control the distribution of their content. It can also help prevent fraud by limiting access to content to legitimate devices.
In addition, device restriction also provides a safer viewing experience for users by limiting access to potentially harmful or inappropriate content on certain devices, such as connected TVs or computers.
Finally, this feature also provides better control over concurrent access, thereby limiting account sharing and violation of terms of use. This allows content owners to better monetize their content by limiting access to users who have paid for access.
Mark a video as viewed
The feature of marking a video as viewed is very interesting for users of an OTT platform. First of all, it allows users to mark a video as viewed without having to watch it all. This allows users to track their progress through a series or playlist without having to watch each episode to the end.
On the other hand, the ability to mark a video as unviewed after watching it provides greater flexibility for users. This allows users to mark a video as unseen if they wish to remove it from the replay track. It also allows users to better organize their viewing list by marking videos they have already seen and those they want to watch again. It also allows users to avoid getting a recommendation for content they didn't like.
All in all, the feature of marking a video as watched provides a better viewing experience for users by allowing them to better manage their watchlist, track their progress and mark videos they have already seen or want to watch again.
Dynamic captions
This feature consists in inserting subtitles (previously uploaded VTT files) on the fly, in video manifests (URL playlists of assets or files), without having to transcribe the video file. In more detail: this new system allows you to modify the manifest files on the fly in order to add the assets corresponding to the incoming request. The subtitles are then loaded dynamically according to the user context (country), without having to retranscode video files statically.
It is thus possible to apply geolocalization rules to the subtitle exploitation in relation to the rights holders. The subtitles are then loaded directly on the fly with AWS Lambda Cloud Functions, which allows serverless code to be executed during an incoming request to the AWS CloudFront CDN.
Using the Amazon CloudFront CDN, the generated manifest files are cached to provide near-instantaneous load time to the end user. Depending on the client's location and DRM requirements, captions are automatically integrated into the output HLS/Dash manifests, enabling subtitle support on any device and delivery protocol, such as Apple Airplay.
Dynamic captions allow you to:
- Play subtitles on all devices and media like Apple Airplay;
- Facilitate the management of video assets;
- Save on transcoding and storage costs for international broadcasting. Transcoding and storage costs remain the same regardless of the number of countries targeted. Now you only need to pay for the rights of the country of origin to be able to distribute a video worldwide.
Viewing statistics
The ability to display new statistics on the OTT platform dashboard, based on video usage, offers more than interesting data to VOD/SVOD platforms. First of all, it allows video platform managers to have a clear view of the overall usage of their platforms, such as the number of viewing hours per day or per month, and the top 5 most watched contents. This information can be used to identify patterns and trends in video usage, such as peak viewing times, and this information can be used to optimize the scheduling of new content releases or promotions.
In addition, this feature can also provide valuable information about the performance of different types of content, such as the number of plays and views per month, the number of viewing hours per user per month, and the top five most viewed content. This data can be used to understand what content is resonating with audiences and to make data-driven decisions about what type of content to acquire or produce.
In addition, the ability to see the number of viewing hours per user per month can be used to identify the most engaged users and offer them tailored incentives, such as exclusive content or discounts, to boost customer retention and loyalty. Statistics can also be used to track the growth of the platform and measure the success of marketing campaigns. In-house marketing teams can use this data to optimize their monetization strategy and identify new revenue opportunities.
Overall, the feature of displaying new statistics on the platform's dashboard based on video usage can provide valuable information for an OTT platform that can help it make more informed decisions, optimize its content and monetization strategy, and improve audience engagement.
What to expect in 2023?
With the new features launched in 2022 on our OTT platform, we were able to provide you with an even more personalized and immersive viewing experience. Dynamic subtitle options, device restriction, the ability to view metrics on the solution dashboard are just a few examples of the improvements made.
In 2023 all the new features developed will further optimize the user experience. We can't wait to let you discover all this.