Archive for June, 2010

For us at Videoplaza, this is a big day. An enormous day actually. Today is the day when we make the biggest launch in the entire history of Videoplaza: we’re launching version 2.0 of our entire platform.

While generation 1.0 has been struggling on impressively, it’s hard to ignore the fact that it was initially constructed by a small startup team of only six people, with features being bolted on the initial codebase from right and left. It’s now been a year since we formally started working on what we’re unveiling today. Version 2.0 is here.

So what’s new? Apart from a completely revamped underlying infrastructure with a geographically distributed infrastructure coping with massive scaling in every distant corner of the globe while ensuring the best possible uptime, and a tailor made custom data base engine coping with real time calculations on enormous amounts of data that traditional relational databases (like MySQL and others) simply can’t handle, yeah, well apart from that, I have four items to highlight:

1. Campaign Manager 2.0

Videoplaza Monetizer 2.0 is equipped with our brand new user interface for configuring campaigns, getting overview of your account, pulling reports and all the other stuff you would expect from an ad server user interface. The difference is in how you do it.

The user feedback on our version 1 user interface and our approach to video ad serving has been fantastic. The workflow for in-stream was definitely superior to anything else conceived already with version 1 (you get much for free when you’re competing with companies not focused on video), but there still was a lot of room for improvement.

Let’s face it, the design of the old interface was ideal for companies first starting out with in-stream. It was designed for people working with pre-, mid- and postrolls and in-stream overlays but not much else. Further, it provided great overview of things as long as you were running something like 20-30 concurrent video campaigns. And that actually worked great for us and our clients, because we were all new to video back in the days.

Campaign Manager 2.0 on the other hand is designed for where we and our clients are today. Video is booming like nothing else, our clients (especially broadcasters) are growing like crazy with hundreds of concurrent campaigns, and new platforms and ad formats are popping up like mushrooms.

So we have pulled together a user interface built on 2010 technology that looks and feels like an installed app right within your browser. It’s designed for working with a multitude of platforms and ad formats and can streamline your workflow throughout the complicated beast the ‘new TV’ already is and definitely will continue to become.

I won’t provide more than a screenshot here, but please do make sure that you get a proper demo if you’re shopping around for adserving technology.

2. Proper forecasting

A really important feature of Campaign Manager 2.0 is the brand new Campaign Planner feature. This where you’re finally able to do in-stream forecasting right. Because of our plugin architecture within your videoplayer, we’re able to get the data collection right, and because of our brand new underlying database engine we’re also able to make complex calculations on that data in real time.

What this means is access to the most important data your sales team can have: proper forecasts and availability figures.

In Campaign Manager 2.0 you’re able to pull forecasts on any ad formats you’re using with any targeting criteria. The Campaign Planner will then crunch the numbers and in real-time come back to you with info on overall availability, but also how that is distributed over time and how existing campaigns (with other targeting rules) compete with the query you’re making.

This is when you finally can have multiple sales teams working on regional and national levels at the same time or when you can make up sales packages ad-hoc and still figure out your ability to deliver and how it impacts existing campaigns.

3. Next generation player plugin

As the rest of the platform, our videoplayer plugin (Videoplaza AdPlayer) has taken a big leap too. Apart form our recent launch of HTML5 support we obviously have more platforms to come, but that’s for separate announcements.

Feature-wise there’s however a lot going on: The Videoplaza AdPlayer now has it’s own internal API for ad formats which means true flexibility on new ad formats. We’re using this ourselves to launch a couple of new ad formats like branded player skins and commercial buffer messages before opening up also to external ad format development. What this means however is that the AdPlayer plugin can enable you to conceive your own ad formats and push them live with a minimal technical development effort as all the infrastructure of delivery and measurement is already in place.

Further, every Videoplaza ad format is now skinnable meaning that you can tweak look and feel to match your own videoplayer. And the ad formats can actually be controlled completely programmatically which means that even though you’re using an external player plugin, it can blend completely with your own player and be controlled from the videoplayer’s own set of controls.

4. VAST, VPAID and open APIs

Support for VAST actually isn’t something new to our platform, but things have improved. If you’re using us by implementing our AdPlayer plugin, obviously we take care of making your videoplayer VAST compliant (all versions) and thus enabling you to serve 3rd party ads from agencies or ad networks.

What’s more interesting is that the AdPlayer plugin actually also makes you VPAID compliant, in fact our own custom format APIs are based on VPAID which hopefully is a first step towards a future when interactive ad formats can be conceived and served from an external source.

On the other hand, if you’re in a situation where you for some reason can’t use the AdPlayer plugin, then we work great in a pure VAST setup too. All the benefits of proper forecasting and streamlined workflow is still there even though we’re obviously a little crippled by the shortcomings of VAST. Still, it’s the best (and only) standard we’ve got and we’re fully committed to it.

Further, the Monetizer 2.0 platform is completely open with APIs on both ends. Anything you can do in our own interface, can just as well be achieved through another platform over the APIs which means that you could actually sidestep our entire (brand new) interface if you for some reason would want to. In fact, our user interface is using the exact same API available for external integrations.

So that’s it folks. Expect more announcements from us at Videoplaza now that we’re up to speed and have the new underlying platform (prepared for further exciting innovation) out of the door!