• Verizon Digital Media Services Unveils Content Intelligence System

    Verizon Digital Media Services (VDMS) has unveiled Verizon Media Xperience Studio, a new content intelligence system which allows content providers to further automate online video workflows and gain greater insights into the performance and profitability of individual video assets.

    In a briefing, VDMS’s CMO Mary Kay Evans and product director Jason Friedlander explained that while analytics have always been a part of the VDMS offering, Xperience Studio is the first initiative that spans all aspects of its product suite, allowing much greater insights than ever before.

    According to Mary Kay and Jason, that’s necessary because launching and running OTT businesses is more complicated than ever, with many content providers still struggling with how to distribute and monetize online video. They highlighted the example of Vice, which is a customer, as having achieved the kind of best practices in understanding the precise value of each piece of content it publishes (but with a number of home grown elements) that VDMS wants to enable for all its customers.

    Xperience Studio is being positioned as pulling together a content management system, digital asset management system, playout workflow system and an app builder into a single cloud-based system. A new component dubbed MX: Orchestration is meant to streamline how metadata and assets move through production, approval, distribution, monetization and consumption. VDMS sees Xperience Studio has providing a “single source of truth” in providing accurate insights about the performance of individual content assets.

    In addition to MX: Orchestration, there are 6 other components of Xperience Studio:

    MX: Apps - to build, publish and maintain customized OTT applications

    MX: Subscriptions - to manage users, entitlements and payment for SVOD, TVOD or hybrid models

    MX: Programming - to create and curate virtual linear channels, program schedules and policies for content playout, availability and restrictions

    MX: Syndication - to publish and monetize content across owned and third-party OTT services with integrated layer and advertising services

    MX: Personalization - to combine user preferences and rich metadata for tailored content recommendations

    MX: Vision - to track and monitor insights, analytics and intelligence

    All of these components are modular and API-driven, so that customers can pick and choose which ones to use, while retaining existing home grown or third-party solutions. But Mary Kay and Jason emphasized that customers seeking simplified but comprehensive solutions were the impetus to Xperience Studio’s development. They believe that ultimately solutions that bring together all the pieces and allow content providers to reduce their operational costs will win. In addition, they see a key advantage for VDMS as Verizon owning the underlying network, which provides additional user insights.

    (Note: VDMS’s president Ralf Jacob will be speaking at the NABShow Online Video Conference on Monday, April 24th on the session, “The Mobile and App-Driven Video Revolution is Here.” VideoNuze readers can get $100 off the Conference Flex Pass by using code EP06.)