In the past couple of months, Zype has added several new CRM and Connectors features that can help video teams improve viewer experience and extend audience reach.  

Offer Promotional Access to Viewers With Redemption Code Paywalls

Offering redemption codes to viewers can be an excellent way to provide one-time promotional or lifetime access to video content without requiring a credit card transaction or manual configuration. Zype has supported the use of redemption codes for quite some time, however the method of redemption was limited to a redemption code widget that had to be specifically embedded into a website. 

Now, with redemption code paywalls, videos can be embedded on a website with “redemption code required” enabled, which will allows for utilization of redemption codes without the need to embed a separate redemption code widget. Viewers can access the redeem flow and enter the code entirely from the video player - and are never redirected to an alternative widget or page - all as part of the typical authentication flow. To understand more about how to enable redemption code paywalls and what the viewer experience is, read more here.

Increase Distribution Reach with The Roku Channel Connector

Gain access to The Roku Channel audience by publishing content directly to The Roku Channel. Zype has made improvements to this connector to simplify distribution to The Roku Channel by following a frictionless workflow, available right in the Zype Admin. Once vetted and distributed by Roku, you’ll stream alongside popular shows, 24/7 live news, and hundreds of movies available on The Roku Channel today. Learn more about distributing to vMVPDs with Zype here.

Leverage Self-service “Restart from Beginning” Feature for Playout Channel Scheduling

Zype Playout allows you to easily program 24/7 linear live channels using playlists of videos already available in your library. Now you can schedule your own predictable programming updates when trying to broadcast playlists at specific start times. Using the "Restart from beginning" feature toggle, enable a restart of the broadcast from the beginning of the source playlist at any given time. You can learn more about Zype Playout here.

Zype Rolls Out New CRM and Connector Features to Simplify vMVPD Distribution and Improve Viewer Experience

Zype is excited to announce the next step in our partnership with Google Cloud: full availability via the Google Cloud Marketplace.

Google Cloud customers will now have access to Zype’s award-winning OTT Video Platform; including Video CMS, Video CRM, Encoding, Playout, Content Delivery, and Video Connectors.

At Zype, we’ve recognized that companies are increasingly searching for a flexible, scalable, and future-proof video platform in the cloud. As the need for more agile, integrated products tailored to enterprise and media & entertainment ecosystems grow, we want to make it as seamless and turnkey as possible for clients to leverage the power of Zype.

Google Cloud customers now have access to the following benefits through the Zype platform:

Build marketplace-ready OTT apps, distributing to mMVPD and FAST platforms across all major platforms including Roku and Apple TV

Program, schedule, and deliver VOD to Live Linear HLS or RTMP, using Zype Playout

Experiment with monetization models, with full support for SVOD, TVOD, and AVOD

Optimize and automate workflows from content ingestion all the way through publishing

Create customized metadata structures using zObjects

Easily manage native marketplace transactions with Zype Marketplace Connect

Generate MRSS feeds ready for third party syndication 

Leverage robust analytics dashboards for insight across revenue and engagement 

“At Google Cloud, we strive to make it as easy as possible for customers to deploy, purchase and manage leading solutions in the cloud,” said Amy Bray, Head of GTM Strategy, Google Cloud Marketplace, Google. “With availability on Marketplace, Zype brings its expertise in enterprise video content management, allowing customers to easily deploy solutions and to focus efforts on building a successful business."

Organizations that want to try out the Zype platform can take advantage of the On Demand Plan that enables users to quickly and easily deploy on-demand transcoding with no commitment. 

“We’re excited to build this partnership with Google Cloud and to provide Google Cloud customers with immediate access to our award-winning video infrastructure,” said Ed Laczynski, Zype CEO. “Our goal is to empower them to  focus on innovation and delivering high-performance, high-quality video products to their own viewers.” 

Zype, Now Available via Google Cloud Marketplace

Retain customers by allowing them to pause their subscriptions in Stripe

Zype has expanded its existing Stripe integration to accommodate subscription pauses. With this feature, video product managers can more effectively retain customers they might otherwise lose to subscription cancellations by allowing subscribers to put a temporary hold on their subscription.

Leveraging Zype’s APIs, teams can create simple workflows to allow customers to pause and resume their subscriptions by integrating the “pause subscription” functionality into your web and native apps. 

As shown in our flow diagram, when consumers initiate a pause on their subscription, Zype pauses access to all prepaid subscription content and Zype’s API interacts with Stripe to ensure that the subscription payment is paused as well.

Learn more about pausing subscriptions in Stripe here.

Zype customers can now update playlist keywords via API, enabling faster, more automated metadata management. Additionally, if a customer has  a large playlist library, there is  improved performance when using our Playlist API. Learn more about Zype’s APIs and access our Playlist API  here.

Zype now supports series-based episodic content in XUMO distribution. Video content publishers can publish videos to XUMO in episodic order without having to configure feeds manually. Facilitated feed generation saves time and allows for distribution of content to XUMO in a more organized fashion. Learn more here.

Zype adds new features to help customers save time and retain subscribers

Leveraging Zype’s APIs, teams can create simple workflows to allow customers to pause and resume their subscriptions by integrating the “pause subscription” functionality into your web and native apps.

Video-centric publishers, broadcasters, and enterprises typically have an outsized focus on content programming and distribution decisions: “ What content am I publishing, where am I publishing it, and how many viewers can I reach? ”

While these decisions are incredibly important to focus on, a challenge that may not always be top of mind is thinking about the Content Management Lifecycle, with a specific eye towards digital asset preservation.

How do you make sure the video content you own and manage digitally is secure, highly available, and will be formatted and distributed in the right protocols as new distribution opportunities emerge?

A snapshot of the contemporary Content Management Lifecycle:

In this diagram you can see what a sample content import, storage, transcoding, delivery, and publishing/distribution lifecycle might look like for video enterprises.

Increasingly important is ensuring your video content storage and management solution ensures support for both the present and the future.

Evaluating digital asset preservation needs:

Video enterprises should evaluate format portability, security, availability, and redundancy as important factors in their content management lifecycle. This way you can ensure your evergreen content will not only be distributed efficiently today, but available for future distribution opportunities as well!

Interested in learning more about Zype? Check out zype.com/request-demo/

Thinking About the Content Management Lifecycle

Making an app sounds daunting. There’s a lot that goes into making your content accessible, including the actual content creation and distribution, so the last thing you want to worry about is the technical side of your endpoints, and how user friendly they are.

Luckily with Zype, you don’t have to be a developer to create sleek apps. One of our strongest features is the accessibility and simplicity of our app templates, which lets you create and customize the user interface of your app in just a couple of clicks, resulting in a beautiful endpoint that features your branding front and center.

When you decide to take the next step with your content, the Zype dashboard makes it easy to move forward and create an app on your own.

First, you need to choose a platform. With Zype, you have the option to distribute to practically all endpoints, including OTT, mobile, web and gaming platforms.

Here comes the fun part: Once you have decided on where your content should live, you get to customize your app. For the sake of this blog post, we have chosen to create an AFTV app. The user can choose a featured playlist, categories to fill in content, color themes, logo or even full width header imagery and the option to customize background/text colors.

And voila, you’re ready to preview and publish! Roku, AFTV and Apple TV are the quickest templates to create, but SDK, plugin and API only platforms don’t have many more steps.

Our app templates are there to make your life easier, so not only does it give you a pre-made user interface for your app, but it also gives you room to customize your channel and promote your brand.

Depending on which platform(s) you choose (the more, the better!), Zype’s app templates will reflect the common user interface elements for that specific platform. Your app on Roku will look different than your channel on Apple TV because the two platforms have completely different brand integrations and tones. However, your Apple TV channel will have some commonalities with all other Apple TV channels.

For example, the Kin Community channel on Apple TV above looks very different from Kin Community on Roku below it, save for the color palette and branding. The platforms also differ on where they feature content: Apple has sliders linking to playlists, while AFTV has sliders linking to specific video content.

However, this doesn’t mean your channel will blend in with all of the others. Our app templates still allow for content owner flexibility, branding and that special touch that will make your app unique.

Now, the next time you want to add another distribution endpoint, the whole process will seem a little less scary, and a lot simpler.

Your App, Your Branding: Zype’s App Templates Let You Take Control With Ease

Are you asking yourself how it’s already August?

We honestly can’t believe it. Our team has been heads down this year launching tons of new product features, picking up a few awards, and hiring like never before.

What have we been working on? From new OTT app templates to tons of features for video content managers, our product team has been on a roll. Here are the product updates our team has shipped so far this year and how they’re enabling video operations team to succeed.

 Product Updates for Distributing Video Across More Channels 

The streaming wars are heating up more than ever, and it’s clear there is one main theme: diversification.

From diversifying distribution across various channels like social, YouTube, OTT, linear, and onsite to diversifying revenue streams beyond advertising, this new era of digital video centers around an organization’s ability to move quickly and try new features.

Here are some of Zype’s product updates that focus on helping teams diversify their distribution across channels:

Zype Playout - Take your videos, program them into a playlist, and then stream it out as a 24/7 HLS or RTMP linear-live stream to your website, YouTube, OTT Apps and vMVPDs

Zype now supports content distribution to endpoints like XUMO, WatchBack, and Oath through our Video Apps marketplace.

 Product Updates to Help Drive Audience Engagement 

The best way to drive revenue is not by forcing your viewers to pay, but creating content they want to pay for -- whether through subscription or with their time via watching ads.

We’ve been focused on helping video teams create user-friendly experiences that drive engagement including:

Video Registration Paywalls -  Capture first-party customer data by asking your website visitors to register with their email address to watch your exclusive video content

Mobile Marketplace Connect - Connect your iPhone and Android video apps to Apple iTunes Store and Google Play store to collect first-party data and enable access to your customers across all other platforms (eg. subscribe on iPhone, watch on Roku)

By collecting email addresses before showing video content, teams can market to these users for upcoming product releases, new video content, and so much more. Our Marketplace Connect product allows users to easily view your content across various channels with a single sign-in.

 Product Updates for Digital Video Engineers and Video Content Managers 

Who on your team makes sure your video streams on your OTT apps are working? What about writing the metadata that appears on your site under each video? Who optimizes your ad inventory?

These folks are the unsung heroes of the digital video landscape. One of our main goals here at Zype is to make their lives a whole lot easier.

In 2019, we really put a lot of work into building and updating a ton of features that help video engineers, video content managers, and the everyday users of Zype, do their jobs more efficiently, including:

Improved playlist management - We've made it easier for content management teams to manage and update playlists in the playlist relationships page in Zype admin. Content managers now have quick access to buttons for editing, syncing, copying, and deleting playlists. We've also improved the user experience for dragging, autoscrolling, and nesting playlists for content managers dealing with large playlist libraries.

Filter Consumers by payment provider - SVOD and TVOD customers who offer premium videos for purchase across multiple payment providers or in-app marketplaces can now easily filter their Consumers Page by payment provider to easily see how many subscriptions or transactions were generated from each marketplace or payment processor. The payment provider data is also provided as part of the .csv export feature on the consumers page.

Filter Video Library by Registration paywalls - Content managers can now filter their video library page in Zype to quickly view all videos that require registration, which makes it easy to evaluate which videos in the library will include a registration paywall for viewers.

Improved YouTube imports - Content managers who are importing video from their YouTube libraries can now quickly select whether to import and sync only public, private, unlisted, or all videos from their YouTube account.

Ingesting ad timings via MRSS - Customers who import content into Zype via MRSS feeds can now also import and map ad timings from their source databases into Zype during the MRSS import process. This makes it simple to sync existing ad timing data into your Zype library when importing your videos.

Improved videos search experience - We've improved the video library search experience for content managers, so that it's easier to now search and find videos on the Zype video library page. These improvements include improved support and results for 1- and 2-character searches.

Easily access Zobject metadata via APIs - We've added new parameters on our video and playlist APIs to allow content teams and their developers to easily retrieve Zobject metadata during common API requests. Zobjects are custom metadata tables that can be created in Zype to help customers extend the standard metadata available for videos (e.g., adding custom fields like Directors or Movie Stars). These Zobject Details parameters are available on Videos API endpoint.

Support for preroll ads on Live Videos - Customers can now set preroll ad timings on live videos in the Zype platform, which will generate a client-side ad request to their ad server prior to loading the live event in a player.

We’ve had an incredible year, including our two largest quarters, winning NAB Product of the Year for Zype Playout, and Company of the Year at OTT Executive Summit. It’s in great part thanks to our incredible product and engineering teams listening to our customer’s needs and seeing where the industry is headed before it gets there.

Want to discuss any of these features with our team? If you’re already a customer, email your account manager!

If you aren’t a customer, you can request a demo today and let us know which features you’re interested in.

Shipped: Zype’s 2019 Product Updates (So Far)

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Zype Rolls Out New CRM and Connector Features to Simplify vMVPD Distribution and Improve Viewer Experience

Zype, Now Available via Google Cloud Marketplace

Zype adds new features to help customers save time and retain subscribers

Thinking About the Content Management Lifecycle

Your App, Your Branding: Zype’s App Templates Let You Take Control With Ease

Shipped: Zype’s 2019 Product Updates (So Far)

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