Marketing

The SmartTUBE solution provides Marketing Departments with a variety of tools to promote content and services within the SmartTUBE Apps:

• Banners
• Content Rails
• Content Recommendation Engine
• Ad Insertion Management
• Marketing Messaging

Banners

The banner carousel is located at the top of the Home screen of all SmartTUBE Apps. Each banner may have individual images for end-user devices of different types and can lead to the TV channel, program, xVoD content, genre, service, or external URL. Operators can manage the following banner attributes and options:

• Display Options of Banner Carousel:
  • Regular Banners: Regular opaque banners with a clear bottom edge, not overlapped by any other UI elements.
  • Faded Banners: Banners with a faded bottom edge typically overlapped by the Main menu and first Content rail.
  • Banners with Auto-play Trailers: Faded banners of the movie or series that starts playing the trailer automatically when it’s in focus after a set time.
• Display frequency in the carousel: Allows to set each banner to high, medium and low priority for display in the carousel.
• Time frame and duration to display
• Display only for certain Device types and Pricing plans

Content Rails

Operators have the ability to populate the content pages (Home, Movies, TV Series, and My Profile) with an unlimited number of predefined and custom Content rails:

• Manually recommended content: Curated xVoD content or TV programs manually selected by the operator.
• Auto recommended content: Automatically generated xVoD content based on user viewing history, leveraging the SmartTUBE Recommender module.
• TV Channels: Display of TV channels presented as posters of currently streaming programs. User-favorited channels are prioritized, followed by operator-sorted channels.
• Top 10 TV programs: Compilation of the most popular TV programs viewed by all subscribers.
• Applications: List of integrated applications defined by the operator. Available only for the Android TV / STB devices, if the SmartTUBE App is a launcher.
• Continue watching: List of xVoD content and TV programs that the user has not finished watching.
• Watch history: Chronological listing of xVoD content and TV programs watched by the user.
• Favorite channels: Channels and movies marked as favorites by the user.
• Favorite movies: Movies marked as favorites by the user.
• Personal recordings: Recordings of TV programs initiated by the user within the nPVR service.
• Reminders: Alerts for upcoming TV programs set by the user.
• Purchased movies: List of xVoD content purchased by the subscriber.
• Custom rails: Operator-filtered xVoD content or TV programs based on various content and subscriber’s account attributes (for example, French comedies of 80-th, Modern Bollywood movies, Jackie Chan action movies, etc.). The filtered TV programs and xVoD content can be sorted by various attributes.

Content Recommendation Engine

SmartTUBE SDP features an integrated module for the automatic generation of xVoD content recommendations called SmartTUBE Recommender. This module periodically analyzes subscriber views of content, content characteristics (such as genres, countries, descriptions, etc.), and optionally, user characteristics (such as gender, age, geolocation). It then generates ordered sets of xVoD content recommendations for each user and sets of similar movies/series for each user.

SmartTUBE Recommender provides two types of recommendations:

• User-based: Calculated based on the user profile settings, the user’s viewing preferences and their similarity to other subscribers, and so on. This type of recommendation is only available in conjunction with the SmartCARE (SmartLabs analytics software for IPTV/OTT networks).
• Context-aware: Calculated based on the similarity of movie metadata (description, genres, cast, etc.)

The generated recommendations can be displayed in SmartTUBE Apps on content rails, in movie detail cards, and in the player.

Ad Insertion Management

SmartTUBE is an integral component of SmartLabs Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) solution that enables operators to dynamically insert or replace ad blocks in live video streams, pre-recorded, and xVoD content. Thanks to VAST protocol support, operator can partner with third-parties or create its own campaigns within SmartTUBE SDP without relying on external ad services.

The SmartLabs DAI solution is made up of three key modules:

• SmartTUBE Advertising Decision System (ADS): Carries information about advertisers, ad campaigns, ad creatives, placement dates and duration, types, target devices, target content, and other parameters. Using this data, ADS can make a decision which ad fits a specific insertion opportunity. The ADS also provides campaign performance reports highlighting key metrics. Implemented as a component of SmartTUBE SDP.
• Server-side Ad Insertion Module: Implemented as a component of SmartMEDIA Content Delivery System
• Client-side Ad Insertion Module: Implemented as a component of SmartTUBE Apps
  The Server-side and Client-side ad insertion modules request an ad decision from the ADS via the VAST protocol. The ADS finds a matching set of ads based on the request targeting criteria and responds with a VAST response carrying the data about the ad to be inserted.

There are 2 use cases for using the SmartTUBE DAI:

• Ad insertion into HLS / DASH streams for OTT subscribers: Involves inserting ad blocks on the SmartTUBE App side and getting data on them within the stream playlists/manifests. The preparation of playlists/manifests and ad creatives to be sent to the device is performed on the SmartMEDIA side.
  
• Ad insertion into linear TS streams: Involves inserting ad blocks directly into the source TS streams using SmartMEDIA components. The resulting TS output can be distributed over IPTV networks, or pushed to satellite or DVB-C head-ends:

Marketing Messaging

SmartTUBE allows to send messages to the end-user devices via SmartTUBE Admin Console or OSS/BSS API. It can be used for notification about new services, promotions, technical works, etc. The messaging can be performed either individually to a specific subscriber or massively using filters on the subscriber base.

Message sending can be scheduled with filtering recipients by user identifier, pricing plan, and tenant. Additionally, messages can be sent automatically for events like first authorization, account creation, service subscription/unsubscription, and pricing plan changes.

Operator can manage the following message attributes:

• Message text: Allows to insert such user-identifying variables as user ID, device ID, and service account number.
• Expiration period
• Display duration
• Number of message reminders and their display duration
• Tenant relation
• Appearing animation: Slide-down or pop-up
• Image, icon, and URL of a video to be attached to the message
• Message opacity
• Link to the service bundle, xVoD content, TV channel
• Delivery type:
  • Long Polling: Messages are sent using Long Polling mechanism and displayed as a modal window in the SmartTUBE App only after it is launched.
  • Push: Messages are sent using the Apple APN and Google GCM services and displayed additionally in the notification shade regardless of whether the SmartTUBE App is running or not.

Message recipients can be specified by a list of device IDs or selected based on the following criteria:

• Account login, number, name, status
• Account creation date
• Pricing plan
• Service bundle presence in the Pricing plan
• Status of the service bundle
• Device type
• App version
• STB UID
• IP address
• Date of linking the device to the account
• Last stored device location
• Last device authorization date