Managing & Monetizing OTT Video
Lite Reading Live! event

This conference takes a fresh look at the potentially seismic shifts that OTT video consumption is causing by focusing on how cable, telco, wireless and other service providers, need to be capitalizing on technology and market changes to create their own new business and revenue models. Internet traffic is expected to grow fourfold over the next five years, primarily driven by video.

Given that video will account for the majority of all Internet traffic in 2012, pay-TV providers can hardly afford to sit on the sidelines. Not only will video revenues follow the path of the content itself, but OTT content threatens to clog broadband pipes and create new headaches for service providers unless they devise their own strategies for managing and monetizing OTT video. This one-day event lays out the challenges of OTT but focuses on ideas for meeting those challenges and explores the changing technologies that will enable those solutions and examines the proposed new business models that could make the difference.

Ian will give the keynote address and Marty will present on a panel about OTT success stories.

Learn more about the event here.

When

10:45 AM, ET (Keynote); 12:00 PM. ET (Panel Presentation)
June, 21st, 2012

Where

Royal Sonesta
Cambridge, MA

Who

Ian Blaine, thePlatform CEO
Marty Roberts, thePlatform Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing

Panel: Cable to Go – Multiscreen Solutions

When

13th June 2012, 01:00 – 02:15 p.m.

Where

ANGA Cable
Location: Room B, Congress-Center East, Koelnmesse, Hall 10
Koelnmesse / Cologne Fair Grounds
Hall 10
Deutz-Mülheimer-Straße
50679 Köln, Germany

Who

Presenter: Dr. Roger Blakeway, President SCTE, SCTE International

TV Everywhere: The Next Frontier
Simon McGrath, General Manager – Europe, thePlatform

Multiscreen Video. The Future of TV
Andrew Brown, VP, Video Business Development, Alcatel-Lucent

Keeping the first Screen profitable through 2nd Screen Interaction
Alex Terpstra, CEO, Civolution

Field Report: Realizing Multiscreen Strategies for TV without Boundaries
Arnaud Perrier, VP, Solutions, Envivio
Thomas Helbo, CTO, Stofa Denmark

The Next Steps in TV Everywhere
2012 Connections Digital Living Conference and Showcase

Multiscreen service offerings have emerged quickly, but the next two years will bear out their effectiveness as churn-reducing tools and engines for ARPU. Marty Roberts will share his ideas on the near future for TV Everywhere services and what obstacles must be overcome to reach their potential.

About the conference: Hosted by international research firm Parks Associates, CONNECTIONS™ focuses on innovative solutions for the connected consumer and leading strategies to monetize digital content, mobile applications and services, value-added services, connected consumer electronics, and home systems.

Learn more about the conference and the panel here.

When

4:00 PM, CT
June 5th, 2012

Where

Gaylord Hotel
Dallas, Texas

Who

Marty Roberts, thePlatform SVP of Sales and Marketing

Glass Act: Video, Viewers and Television’s Changing Picture
NCTA’s The Cable Show

From the living-room TV set to hand-held tablet, a proliferation of screens, locations and video viewing experiences is reshaping the very definition of “television” – and creating new opportunities for participants across the ecosystem. Get fresh insight from Ian Blaine about the direction of television technologies, adoption patterns and business model variations from these executives. Ian will share findings around consumer behaviors tied to the proliferation of video display technologies and pathways to the viewer – and what they mean for industry participants.

Motorola Mobility President Dan Moloney will also present on the impact and future of a multi-screen, watch-anywhere television environment and the possibilities it creates for content providers, cable distributors and technology developers.

Learn more about the event here.

When

2:00 – 3:00 PM, ET
May 21st, 2012

Where

Boston Convention & Exhibition Center
Room 153BC East
Boston, MA

Who

Ian Blaine, CEO, thePlatform
Dan Moloney, President, Motorola Mobility

OTT Platforms and Programming
2012 AppNation 3.0 Summit

AppNation Mobile NYC + TV 3.0 Summit will be a unique and dynamic “two-in-one” conference event including the Second Annual APPNATION New York combined with the launch of AppNation TV 3.0 Summit, which will explore the burgeoning world of connected TVs and apps, over-the-top content and platforms, and social’s impact on television programming and consumption.

Learn more about the conference and the panel here.

When

10:45 – 12:00 PM, PT
May 15 – 16, 2012

Where

IWNY Headquarters
New York, NY

Who

Marty Roberts, thePlatform SVP of Sales and Marketing

That’s the gist of a new report by Stowe Boyd of Work Talk Research. He refers to this trend as “second screening,” but it means a lot more than simply having another screen present while watching television. It opens up a new era of interaction — the rise of “Social TV.”

thePlatform is happy to report that it’s listed as one of 13 companies who is helping fuel this new era of television.

Find out why. Read the full article here.

Multichannel News’ profile of Marty:

Marty Roberts
Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing
thePlatform
Age: 39

Marty Roberts’s diverse leadership background includes more than 15 years of product management and marketing. His experience developing strategy, building relationships with development organizations and creating new products and services has helped to increase the customer base and profitability for numerous organizations.

Roberts leads worldwide sales and account management for Comcast’s independent online video subsidiary, overseeing all revenue generation, business development, product management, marketing, public relations and thePlatform’s extensive partner program. He previously served as vice president of sales and marketing and as VP of marketing.

His contributions to the company’s success include repositioning the company and its products; increasing brand awareness through advertising, PR and the company’s website; building an ecosystem with 80 partners; and driving the product strategy for initiatives such as TV Everywhere. Prior to joining thePlatform, Roberts was an executive at GiftCertificates.com and at RealNetworks.

Looking ahead, one of Roberts’s main initiatives is to continue expanding thePlatform’s worldwide customer base and specifically to help content providers and IPTV/pay TV providers continue the transition to multiscreen publishing across TVs, PCs and mobile devices.

Learn more

Read the full article here.

Note: Multichannel News is a paid subscription.

Under the partnership, thePlatform will match its mpx publishing system with Empathy Lab’s user interface design modules, which amount to TV Everywhere plug-ins for Web browsers. The pitch is to offer a “turnkey” system that can get Tier 2/3 operators up and running with TV Everywhere rapidly and for less money than they can on their own.

Read the rest of this article on LightReading.com.

But making content available on PCs, iPads, mobile and OTT devices is really only the first step in redefining the television experience. During this webinar, thePlatform will take a deeper look into the technical requirements needed to orchestrate a TV Everywhere solution within mpx.

When: Friday, April 13, 2012 10:00 AM – 10:45 AM PDT

Register here.

SEATTLE, WA – March 8, 2012 – Television operators are implementing their initial “TV Everywhere” (TVE) deployments, which provide paid TV subscribers access to their favorite shows on tablets, PCs, phones and other IP-connected devices. thePlatform, the leading white-label video publishing company and pioneer in TVE services, today announced an advanced new suite of features, enabling operators to create new and highly tailored content packages and promotions. The new features enable pay TV providers to reinforce and extend the value of their current TV subscription packages across more devices.

“TV operators are seeking ways to unlock the potential of larger content libraries, extend the value of their subscriptions, and create tailored viewing experiences for their customers,” said Ian Blaine, CEO and co-founder of thePlatform. “Our new TV Everywhere features provide powerful tools to make that possible. With the challenge of authentication largely behind us, and more content available than ever before, the industry can shift to creating even more customized entertainment packages. These dynamic new mpx tools enable operators to create their own criteria for grouping content and subscribers – from history buffs to fans of a particular series – and will create innovative marketing opportunities.”

Subscription Packages and Subscriber Groups

At the core of today’s announcement are two new features of thePlatform’s mpx video publishing system, Subscription Packages and Subscriber Groups, which can be variously combined to create entirely new entertainment experiences for consumers. Subscription Packages are collections of content, defined by the operators, such as those that mirror their basic, extended, or premium channel TV line ups, which can be viewed on devices beyond TVs. thePlatform’s new TVE features allow operators to easily and dynamically create highly customized extras or subgroups of content packages around genres, TV series, actors, holidays, and much more. These extra content packages can draw from much larger content catalogs than are currently available on linear TV or video-on-demand (VOD) catalogs, in order to be viewed on tablets, PCs, or other IP-connected devices.

Subscriber Groups enable operators to segment customers, based on a wide range of operator-defined filters, such as their paid TV subscription package, geography, acceptable content rating, device type, content viewing preferences, and more. Within thePlatform’s system, subscribers can belong to multiple Subscriber Groups, and can be offered a variety of Subscription Packages to create highly tailored offerings. Both new features are now available for free to mpx customers, and are in early trials with multiple TV operators around the globe.

Metadata: Beyond Content Discovery

The key technical underpinning for today’s announcement stem from thePlatform’s advancements with metadata management. Metadata has historically been used to enable better content discovery, search and recommendations. Now, operators will be able to leverage metadata to set new business policies that take advantage of their vast content libraries, to create better services for their subscribers.

thePlatform’s mpx system includes a central repository for metadata surrounding a video including categories, keywords, tags, asset types and more. This collection of data enables operators to easily create dynamic filters via mpx’s intuitive console to create any combination of Subscription Package. Once a package is defined, specific viewing rights can be assigned with enforcement by stream encryption or a DRM such as Microsoft PlayReady or Adobe Flash Access. This same repository enabled thePlatform to improve the efficiency of its previous TVE solutions for operators. For example, thePlatform’s TVE solutions previously relied on a series of manual channel mapping exercises with linear TV channels, which can now be streamlined within mpx using metadata policies.

More Choices and Tailored Experiences

Potential use cases that could be enabled by thePlatform’s new TV Everywhere features include:

Kids Programming: A family that subscribes to premium TV packages could receive an extra bundle of free online viewing for all past episodes of their kids’ favorite shows, to watch on their tablets or game consoles.

History Buff: A subscriber that loves history-oriented programming could be provided a new online bundle of documentaries, offered during specific time windows, such as significant dates in U.S. or World History.

Holiday Promotions: Operators can create video collections of TV shows or movies with holiday themes, like Valentine’s Day or Halloween, tailored for different generations, and offer them at various times throughout the year.

Teenage/Premium Movie Channel: A teenager whose household subscribes to a premium movie channel, could receive restricted online viewing based on ratings, but could be offered an alternative set of more content choices based on personal interests, like an affinity for wizards, superheroes or vampires.

Sports: A subscriber to premium sports programming, with an affinity toward boxing or mixed martial arts, could be provided video collections of specific athletes’ bouts online.

Movies: Subscribers to basic TV packages who regularly order pay-per view movies on TV, could be given a free pass to view multiple premium movie channels on their home PC for two weeks, as an incentive to upgrade to a premium subscription package.

thePlatform’s mpx system provides operators with the flexibility to create and combine groups and packages in highly tailored ways to add value, upsell, or promote their services across devices. mpx also serves as the critical enforcement mechanism to ensure the business policies and financial obligations between programmers and TV service providers are maintained, while managing user authentication and video playback authorization.

thePlatform publishes video and other media to PCs, mobile devices and TVs. Media companies rely on thePlatform’s mpx system as their open, central hub for managing, monetizing and syndicating billions of professionally produced video views annually. thePlatform currently provides online video management services to numerous programmers, leading media companies, and five of the top TV service providers in North America, including the largest “TV Everywhere” deployments.