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From ad insertion to analytics, successful video app developers focus on more than just the content. Here's a roadmap to creating a successful app.
When Tim Cook introduced the new Apple TV in September by saying that “the future of TV is apps,” he was in Apple’s typical catch-up mode. TDG Research’s Joel Espelien said the future of TV is an app way back in 2013, and savvy video publishers have been pushing their content out via apps for years.
Still, Cook’s pronouncement adds weight to the notion that, if you’re a content owner who doesn’t yet have an app that works across multiple devices, it’s about time to fix that. We talked to experts across the gamut of the online video workflow to get their insights into what video publishers need to keep in mind as they create apps. And if you’ve already got an app, you might want to re-evaluate it in light of the suggestions that follow.
1. Define Your Product
“Create a crystal-clear consumer proposition for what it is that you are trying to achieve and stay laser-focused on that,” says Andrew Locke, vice president of product strategy at NBC News. ”Really think clearly about what that app on that platform is going to be used for.”
NBC News viewers want to be able to come in at 9:17 a.m. or 8:42 p.m. or 3 a.m. and not worry about what the broadcast schedule is or in what order they want to watch. So simply recreating the linear broadcast in an app wouldn’t serve viewers’ needs.
“Avoid relying too heavily on lessons that you have learned from the web, especially when it comes to something like an OTT platform such as Roku or an Apple TV,” Locke says. “A lot of the lessons are poorly applied if you switch platforms.”
Almost everyone we spoke to emphasized the importance of planning every aspect of app development carefully. While you can always modify something if something doesn’t work, building an app without planning out the necessary components can add significantly to costs.
“We’re Digital Natives at Newsy. I think a lot of the time broadcasters and traditional content creators think they can just slap something on an OTT device and people are going to watch it; that’s not always the case,” says Blake Sabatinelli, general manager of online news site Newsy. “You have to make something that fits the platform and fits the audience, and it has to be good.”
Compelling content is just one part of the story; a methodical approach to the technology behind the content is another vital factor. Viacom has a central product group tasked with bringing efficiencies to app development across brands.
“We provide components to all of the Viacom brands—Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., and we are on-boarding BET right now onto our video players as well,” says Daniel Balis, senior director of product for multiplatform video, MTS Global, Viacom. “It doesn’t make sense for all of these brands to be developing software components independently.”
Newsy’s app for the Apple TV. Newsy general manager Blake Sabatinelli emphasizes the importance of customizing each app for the platform it’s going to be viewed on, rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach.
2. User Experience
Video app success comes as much from the user experience as from the content. This means paying attention to how your audience wants to navigate your content, from the menu structure to the player delivery to the type of content.
“We now have the long-waited-for convergence of mobile development and TV,” Locke says. “The capabilities of the platforms are greatly increased over what we had 12 or 18 months ago. We are able to envision features and experiment with things that wouldn’t have been possible before.”
Features trending this year include autoplaying on start, continuous playback, cross-platform viewer-created watchlists, live replay, push alerts, and server-side ad insertion. Users also expect an easy way to sign in and pay, as well as a big catalogue, where they can bookmark and list next episodes for watching.
How do publishers get viewers into the best experience?
In a product redesign, app development company WillowTree was able to increase market share for a client by about 10 percent in a 30-day period. The redesign improved three key areas: the payment system, stream quality, and the user interface. “We didn’t change the content,” says Michael Prichard, founder and CTO of WillowTree. “We built a better experience, which increased their numbers.”
Regardless of whether it’s a new or revised property, the common mantra from the experts was “get viewers into content quickly.”
“I think there’s an overwhelming trend to remove UI layers. In all the properties that we’ve released [in 2015], and there’s been over a dozen, you can one-click into some video from the homepage. This is a shift [from 2014],” says Kalem Fletcher, senior vice president North America of app development company UI Centric.
The one-click approach is being driven by research that reveals Millennials consume an enormous amount of video content. They gorge on video, so apps are being designed to move them into and through content as quickly as possible.
Newsy encapsulates the emphasis on user experience nicely: “We’re video creators, after all, and we should be proud of the work and we should be getting people into the experience as soon as possible,” Sabatinelli says.
“We build video with the Facebook user in mind and, specifically, with the user that has their phone in their hands and does not have the volume on but they still want to be able to watch the news,” Sabatinelli says. “We produce stories specifically with text on screen and subtitles on people who are speaking so viewers can get what they need to know and never have to turn their volume on.”
3. Big Data and Experience Customization
“Personalization” has been a buzzword for years, and with the help of big data, one development company has started to deliver it in a unique way.
UI Centric uses artificial intelligence to create models based on demographic information, then apply that information to the user experience. Using data to target viewers isn’t new, but actually changing the user experience by segmenting out delivery and providing custom user experiences in apps is. UI Centric is taking the web-based practice of A/B testing to see what performs better and using this information to help one of its clients serve up a custom experience.
The result is that UI Centric can deliver a different experience depending on what is more popular for the particular user type.
“[It’s] actually changing the user experience completely by changing the navigation model based on the type of user we think you are,” Fletcher says.
While few publishers are doing this now, expect it to become standard practice moving forward.
4. Planning an Advertising Strategy
Audience growth is driving revenue opportunities, which is why we’re seeing more content owners interested in dynamic ad insertion, either to replace or supplement existing commercial breaks.
“Everyone is trying to get the right balance between user experience and monetization,” Fletcher says. “I would say, make that a core piece of your strategy of how you are delivering advertising and how much of it. Those policies need to be in your strategy to begin with. A lot of the broadcasters have reduced the numbers on the preroll and then put a very early midroll that makes up those ad units. That’s one of the strategies to make people get into the content and stay into the content.”
One development company commented that publishers want to include ads, but provided few details on the ad planning side of the equation. There are questions to consider, such as how long is the optimum length for a break? Do you let people skip ads, or do you find a more exotic solution, as YouTube did with skippable advertising?
Publishers have the chance to be as creative with advertising as some of the content they are delivering through different placement types, keyword types, A/B testing variations, and static vs. pre- and post-roll ads. Stay tuned.
MTS Global provides apps for all Viacom video properties, including Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and soon BET. Senior director of product for multiplatform video Daniel Balis says that, for companies with multiple brands, it makes sense to have a single app development group for consistency and efficiency.
5. Ad Technology
Once you’ve got an ad strategy, you need a technology to execute it. Server-side ad stitching is becoming more popular for app developers. “It makes the experience on all your devices more seamless and
higher quality,” says Judy Johnson, director of product management at app development company Bottle Rocket. “We’re even talking about doing server-side ad stitching on live content in some cases within our native player, without needing a third-party player.”
“If app developers want to use server-side ad insertion, they will typically not need to do anything special, because the advantage of server-side ad insertion is that the stream playlists [manifests] get modified on-the-fly before they reach the player, making them compatible with [almost] any stock HLS or DASH player,” says Alex Zambelli, principal product manager, iStreamPlanet.
App developers should still make sure their players can handle time-stamp discontinuities and codec changes that can result from server-side ad insertion.
Another great benefit of server-side ads is ensuring the advertisements bought for a particular spot get delivered. “This year we’ve really seen big brands stand up server-side ad insertion and make real money off of this,” says Matt Smith, chief evangelist at Avanto. “If you’ve installed an ad blocker on your iPhone and you’re watching the NBC stream through their app, there is 0 percent chance that you’re going to get an ad blocker to interrupt that stream.”
Still, client-side ad insertion has its proponents. “The advantage of the client-side ad insertion, as opposed to server-side, method is that it allows greater flexibility and scalability in targeted advertising, but it comes at a potentially higher app development cost,” says Zambelli.
Implementing support for client-side ad insertion is a much more labor-intensive task for app developers, as it typically requires integration with third-party SDKs (such as Adobe Primetime) or developing homegrown solutions to ensure seamless transitions between main programs and ads.
“A lot of media brands are looking at the proposition of standing up an OTT service as a profit center and not a cost center,” Smith says.
6. Live Linear and DRM
As OTT becomes more popular for both live linear and on-demand content, fewer content owners are willing to take the risk of having their streams hijacked or their authentication bypassed.
“We’re seeing more content owners requesting full DRM in addition to just simple stream encryption or token authentication,” Zambelli says. App developers should think carefully about the operating systems and devices they intend to target, since DRM support varies greatly between platforms.
Even in a common encryption DRM solution, such as the one used in conjunction with MPEG-DASH, the app developer must still confirm that at least one of the DRM technologies included in the content headers is supported by the targeted app platform.
“Authenticating users and negotiating with the DRM license server is the responsibility of the application and must be implemented by the player app developers,” Zambelli says. “In native apps this is done by integrating with either native OS APIs or 3rd party SDKs, while in HTML5 it is done via the Encrypted Media Extensions APIs.” Zambelli recommends a page at the website HTML5 Rocks for an overview of DRM support in HTML5.
There is also a trend of replaying live content. “Our clients build custom experiences that combine live and on-demand video. Live is still predominant as the most engaging video type, but VOD use is rising rapidly,” says Alden Fertig, vice president of product at Ustream.
“Our live playlist feature supports linear playback of VOD content as live,” says Fertig. This raises a question: Is it live or is this a new way to market VOD?
7. Analytics
It’s one thing to collect data; it’s quite another to create and derive meaning from useful analytics. Viewers can be very fickle, and app developers and publishers use analytics for insight into what works and what doesn’t.
“We measure everything. We have extensive analytics suites that we run across all of our applications,” Locke says. ”We focus on things like sessions per user per month, and content consumed per session.”
NBC News looks to its measurements to see if its consumers are incorporating its products as a part of their daily media consumption. “Improving those measures is something that is relatively in our control and is an area where we can deploy a lot of different disciplines to really improve the metrics,” Locke says. Everybody wants as much data as possible on what’s happening, from the moment viewing starts. Developers talk about having to integrate four or five analytics packages for their clients. Major analytics packages include Omniture, ComScore, Nielsen, Conviva, and Kochava, and each measures something slightly different within app activity.
“This was something that companies were starting to do 2 years ago and is now being seen as core to the business,” Johnson says. ”Once that happens everybody wants all the data that they can about how users are using [an app], how long are they staying in video, how are the interacting with video. It’s far more than what video did they watch.”
The more data you want to collect, the more you have to spend. But collecting data is only one part of the equation. The real value comes in in the analysis. How do you know if someone didn’t like the content, or had a problem with something else within the app?
“Now we’re thinking about going to track a particular workflow [to find out] what’s working and what’s not,” Prichard says. “Do people drop off at this one point? Is there something going on that we can fix and be more proactive around the experience?”
“Something that is very interesting is the proliferation of services that make it very easy to do advanced statistics on huge data sets,” Balis says. “Ultimately we can leverage things like machine learning to do that root cause analysis for us.” In this way, data really will be driving how your future app works.
Anvato provides video publishing workflows for networks including NBC and Scripps Network Interactive. Chief evangelist Matt Smith says that more and more publishers are integrating server-side ad stitching into their apps, even though it typically requires integration with third-party SDKs.
8. QoS
The definition of quality of service (QoS) varies depending on who you ask. It can apply to many components of app delivery—the user experience, compression, transmission, delivery, and playback of content.
“I think there are a few things that have been really important for us. One is just a general emphasis on quality of experience,” Balis says. “And for us, that’s meant looking across all of the factors that contribute to the video experience, and not just the video player. We are an ad-supported business, so we have to consider ads an important part of the customer experience. For example, we’re working to eliminate the latency between content and ads.”
For Viacom, measuring and testing is standard procedure, and the company has moved away from reliance on third-party vendors as a way to promote improved QoS. “What we have been focused on is actually reducing our reliance on third-party components so we can own the technology stack,” Balis says. “We are looking comprehensively at video quality experience because we think that’s one of the things we can do from a product standpoint where we can really move the needle on customer engagement.”
Newsy has also preferred to own the technology for a number of reasons, including meeting demanding QoS objectives. “All of [our technology] is done in-house. That’s everything from our CMS to our teleprompter system, all the way up to our iOS apps, Apple TV apps, and Roku apps. We’re really a full stack shop,” Sabatinelli says.
Many people talk about QoS, but the measurement processes are key. “We have already built the first iteration of an in-house quality of experience platform,” Balis says.
Other industry representatives we spoke with felt that going to vendors for most or all of their technology needs allowed them to focus on their own core competencies.
“Consumers don’t really care about [the development process]. All that they care about is having a great experience that is fast and fluid and reliable,” Locke says. “You can really damage your brand’s relationship with a consumer by giving them a bad experience, and that’s very hard to recover from.”
9. Multiplatform Viewing
Viewers expect to be able to watch content on any device, and more viewers are looking for 4K. On the other hand, people increasingly want to watch content on smaller screens—producers have to see the entire spectrum.
“Roku right now is our most popular platform. Our fastest growing platform is Apple TV,” Sabatinelli says. Whether you choose to build you own apps or go to a vendor, another publisher suggests, “don’t boil the ocean”—pick your platforms very carefully.
Ustream has four SDKs—iOS, Android, Roku, and now tvOS—for customers to use to publish live and on-demand content to multiple platforms. “The Apple tvOS SDK has opened up the ecosystem, which previously was much harder, if not impossible, to publish to,” Fertig says. “Now anyone can create an app so they can publish content on to Apple TV.”
“One thing I see that is really big this year is multiplatform adoption,” Johnson says. “We’ve seen a lot of companies say, ‘This is core to my business.’ It’s another channel, it’s another way to get content to people on iOS, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Xbox, Windows, the variety of different platforms people are beginning to expect. Previously the telcos and the MVPDs were playing with apps, but I think they’ve now started to become core to their businesses.”
10. Playback
Of course, none of these factors matter if the video doesn’t play smoothly.
“Don’t forget about the playback experience,” Fletcher says. “Make sure you spend some time making sure the adaptive streaming is flawless, because a lot of people just plug that in and expect it to work well, and consumers will really fight back hard if their video stops playing in low bandwidth.”
“Another key takeaway from the past year is how much video quality drives engagement and time spent,” Balis says. Viacom will be increasing the amount of its content available in 1080p60.
Devices can now store large video files for playback, making offline viewing a possibility for some apps. Specifically, offline viewing appeals to some viewers who are traveling or have unreliable connectivity.
“We have some clients that are asking for download capabilities, but it’s not an across-the-board issue,” Johnson says. “Download is one of those things that we are keeping an eye on for clients and trying to figure out the usage, plus working out how much we think it’s going to be used vs. what is the cost to implement.”
Judy Johnson, director of product management at Bottle Rocket, says the company’s customers, which include Scripps Networks Interactive, are now seeing multiplatform video apps as core to their businesses, rather than something extra.
Final Words of Wisdom
There’s a lot to focus on in the app world. A representative for one publisher says that while app development companies don’t come cheap, they are worth their weight in gold. Other publishers are building as much of the whole infrastructure as they can, without turning to outside vendors.
When we looked at apps in the 2015 Sourcebook, we saw lots of discussion about specific platforms, whereas this year, everyone talked about app strategy in a more holistic way, and as something that is central to their business.
The last word goes to Sabatinelli: “I think at the end of the day, if you watch something on a screen, it’s pretty close to television. Are we traditional television? No, but I think we’re the direction television is going.”
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