Posts tagged iplayer
BBC launches new iPlayer in beta
May 26th
The homepage, shown above, now has what the press release calls ‘sliding draws’ which open to reveal more content in each of the categories; featured, most popular, friends, and ‘for you’.
Other changes include a complete separation of TV and radio content to make it clearer for users, while you can also flick easily between channels while watching live TV.
The best improvements for me are the personalisation features. I use iPlayer regularly and it should know what I like based on my viewing habits, so making use of this data to produce recommendations would have been a welcome step.
Instead of simply learning from previous viewing habits though, it seems that the new iPlayer relies on users adding programmes into their ‘favourites’ folder, and then lines these up in a playlist for you.
The introduction of social network integration is another welcome step; while viewing any programmes, you can click to recommend it on iPlayer, as well as sharing it on Twitter or Facebook via the recommend button:
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The addition of user recommendations should also make content discovery much easier, as you can now read other users’ reviews of programmes, and see the most recommended in chart form.
Other developments to come include the addition of links to programmes from ITV Player, 4OD, Clic, Demand Five and SeeSaw, meaning that the iPlayer can direct users to these other websites, while also making the iPlayer a more attractive destination.
Q&A: Lovefilm CEO Simon Calver
May 6th
Is the business still growing?
Yes, Lovefilm continues to be very strong; our subscriber base has grown in the last two years by half a million, and we have experienced a continued growth rate of 25% to 30% per year.
You have been launching streaming services recently, is the key to Lovefilm’s future success getting the service direct to people’s TVs?
We launched our new streaming service recently, the Lovefilm Player, so we have continued to move from being just a physical service to offering a hybrid to customers.
This recent move, which puts Lovefilm direct to people’s TVs, also means that our competitor set will increase, but we believe it is important to give consumers the choice of how they use the service and access films.
The way we look at the market is that it will become more of a hybrid over the next five to ten years and people will want the option of streaming, as well as renting physical DVDs. As long as we can make sure that we can offer this, we will be well placed.
You recently announced deals with Sony and Samsung to offer services through their web-enabled TVs, will you also be looking to offer Lovefilm through consoles and set top boxes?
These deals mean that we can get Lovefilm into TVs and blu-ray players which are connected to the internet. Lovefilm comes pre-installed into these devices, and all customers need to do is to link their TVs to their Lovefilm accounts, and we have more than 4,000 films available digitally.
Whether we get into people’s living rooms via web-enabled TVs or through games consoles or other methods, it’s important that we can offer this option to our customers.
We have been seeing a lot of growth in streaming; the popularity of the iPlayer has helped raise awareness of this, and this is something we will expand in future.
How much funding have you taken to get Lovefilm off the ground?
We’ve taken around £20m from various VC s and investors. We needed money to set up this business initially, just buying enough DVDs to offer the services required a lot of capital.
It was a challenge for us at first, as offering DVD rental online could be difficult to do really well. We succeeded by offering great customer service, and choice, as customers could choose from 70,000 titles. This combination of choice, value and convenience enabled us to grow.
However, you reach a certain stage where you can fund the business from the profits, and that’s where we are now.
What are plans to expand Lovefilm overseas?
We have over 1.4m subs across Europe, with the majority (1.2m) in the UK, so there is room for us to expand in Europe. We’re currently seeing the fastest growth in Germany and Sweden.
We do have aspirations to become a pan-European business but to expand you need a number of factors in place; a country with strong DVD watching habits, high broadband penetration, and a reliable postal system. These things need to be considered before launching in a new country.
However, we are fully expecting to launch digitally in more countries, and the speed of this expansion will increase significantly, and it helps that the suppliers we work with all operated across Europe.
You launched a mobile site recently, do you have other plans around mobile?
Our priority has been to get more content direct to customers’ TVs first, but a lot of our customers are early adopters, so it makes sense to have an iPhone app, and we plan to move onto more mobile platforms at a pace we are comfortable with.
How do you approach the issue of customer retention?
We have spent a lot of time and effort in building a sophisticated CRM database, and this helps us to understand customers by drawing pictures of their behaviour.
For instance, we can see inactive customers who haven’t ordered new DVDs for a while, and who are more likely to leave. This is important for us as we have no long-term contracts, and therefore customers can decide to leave anytime, so we have to work hard to keep them engaged.
We try to first have the knowledge and understanding of the customer, secondly to have a dialogue with them to find out what would help us retain them. This may mean encouraging them to leave ratings and reviews, as these customers are more engaged and therefore less likely to leave, or incentivising them with offers to reignite their interest.
We’ve worked hard on retention over the last few years, and as a result we have seen a reduction in churn, and this has helped us grow. Growth doesn’t just keep from new acquisitions, retaining existing customers is a big part of it for us.
How is Lovefilm using social media?
We have integrated Twitter and Facebook into the site so customers can easily share films or reviews. We recently introduced the Facebook ‘Like’ function to the site so that Lovefilm users can share favourite films on their Facebook newsfeeds.
Our view is that, wherever people are talking about films and entertainment, we should be there. Invariably, people are on Twitter etc talking and sharing.
Over the last year or so, we have also built an API for developers, which is all part of a strategy to allow people to share content more easily.
Customer experience at LF is about three things
1) Helping customers to find films, through user ratings and reviews, as well as editorial content.
2) Helping them watch films, whether through DVD rental, online streaming, or direct to their TVs.
3) Lastly, allowing them to share and talks about what they want to watch and what they have watched. It’s this ‘third pillar’ that we have been working on more recently.
What plans do you have for the next year or two?
The next 12 months will see a continuation of the strategy of getting Lovefilms services into people’s homes and living rooms, part if which will mean making more and more digital content available, but the basics of the Lovefilm service, renting DVDs by mail, are still incredibly strong.
We also plan to build awareness of our streaming services, so you’ll begin to see an acceleration of marketing around our digital services.
Review: MSN Video Player
Mar 16th
Content
There seems to be a lot less content available on the new MSN Video Player than on the iPlayer, ITV Player, or via 4OD. Also, much of the content is already available on other web TV services. For example, Peep Show, Skins, and Shameless which are already available on 4OD.
The content is not comprehensive, and the range is no match for some other VOD services, but is instead intended to appeal to MSN’s target audience of 18-34 year olds.
Navigation
From the full TV shows section, you can search by keyword or browse by category. Actually, since you can pretty much view all the content in one screen, the navigation isn’t such a huge issue.
When more content is added though, features such as user reviews, top tens, and recommendations based on viewing history would be useful additions for discovering new videos.
The organisation of content could be better though. For instance, all the available episodes of Peep Show are shown on this screen, but in a completely random order. Displaying them in chronological order shouldn’t be too hard to do and would make it easier for users to find the episode they are looking for.
Labelling of video links could be improved too. On the recommended episodes shown below, the actual title of the programmes is easily missed:
It would also help if it remembered the last few programmes watched, as well as allowing you to resume viewing at the last point, if you were unable to finish watching a particular programme.
Usability
Viewers will need to install Silverlight if they want to access any of the content in HD – but the service will still function for those users who have Flash. The site also recommends that I upgrade to a newer browser (I’m using Safari) for a better experience, but it works well enough anyway.
The MSN Player is ad-supported, and there are pre-roll ads before each video of around 30 seconds, which isn’t too intrusive. Also, unlike ITV Player, if you go away and come back to a programme after a while, you aren’t forced to watch the ad again.
Video quality is good too, though not as sharp when extended to full screen. You can view the video in the default size or full screen, but a third in-between option as provided by iPlayer would be handy.
Conclusion
The MSN Video Player isn’t bad at all, has some decent content, and is usable enough. At the moment though, much of the content and more can be found on ITV.com, 4OD and iPlayer, so it’s hard to see too many people choosing MSN over these rivals.
The rise of interactive video and what it means for online marketing
Jan 23rd
Although a great deal of online video is user-generated content, there remains a large proportion that is not. This crosses over slightly into the realm of IPTV, where the likes of the BBC’s iPlayer and the recent Sky Player continue in popularity. Furthermore, on-demand media services such as Joost or Hulu, (which has just broken into the top three platforms with which users view videos in the US), show no sign of slowing down.
Signs are therefore pointing towards the fact that users are increasingly looking for engaging experiences online, and the more personal, the better. In reality, this notion isn’t actually all that new, but the fact that advertisers need to understand how to successfully use video in the marketing mix is a recent evolution of this line of thought.
For a number of years now, generally the standard video advertising formats within the industry have been either viral, pre- or post-roll, or a straightforward static or automatic-playing video advert as a display campaign; all which are arguably un-engaging (viral to a lesser degree) and often give poor conversion results, whether they’re placed on an internal or external website.
In a recent study by IBM, they were quick to highlight that businesses need to realise that as user expectations of online content shift, any engagement with an online audience needs to match this:
In light of the explosive growth in online and digital media formats, and a corresponding decline in traditional advertising (such as print, TV and radio)… Companies must move closer to adopting an integrated, measurable marketing services model as they identify and adopt the next generation of digital formats.”
Organisations continue to push the boundaries of engaging users within websites – a great example being the recent Amazon Windowshop – but I feel there is still a lack of capturing people this way through online advertising. Flash is fantastic, but it does have limits, so I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that with online video on the rise, there’s a massive untapped opportunity for advertisers to embrace this medium successfully, especially given the sudden blossoming of interactive video. So, let’s look at this brave new world of interaction and the possibilities that exist.
Over the next couple of years, making online advertisements engaging to the user will continue to be important; more so when the prediction by eMarketer that more than four out of five (around 80%) internet users will watch online video ads in 2012.
At the moment, technological developments mean that video already has a varying level of engagement and whilst there’s no reason that this won’t develop further, those who are considering running online ads would be wise to consider the options that currently exist.
For example, many of the available types of video interaction are offered by the startup company Quick.tv. These include:
- Text or Image Overlay – Where text or images are inserted into, or over, a video. (A good example of this are the pop-up ads that can be found on YouTube).
- Chapters – Allows viewers to skip between sections within a video by inserting chapter points.
- RSS - Display an RSS feed within your video – this can be automatically updated within a video in real-time.
- Tagging/Hotspots – Tag objects in a video with a description. A URL can then be set to drive users to a specific destination when the tag is clicked. This is especially useful for e-commerce, where the user can be taken directly to a product within an online store.
- Forms – Insert forms into video ads to gather data from your viewers.
- Voting Overlay – Insert voting forms into a video and display the overall results to the user when the video finishes. This is done in real-time.
- Videowall – Display numerous interactive videos within the single screen of a video player.
VideoClix.tv presents a great demo of how some of these options look in reality and how easy it is to work them into a campaign:
There are also many other companies that exist who provide these kind of interactive video services, such as coull, liveclicker, ooyala, treepodia and vzaar. So there’s no excuse for organisations not to at least explore the possibility of creating video ads that capture users, especially given the evidence that they’re performance driven.
“Interactive video consistently drives the user to take action online, instead of prompting offline activity,” Jack Thorogood from Swiffen says. “It’s been proven that interactive video easily manages to drive the results above and beyond an advertiser’s expectations”.
He also added that in the view of Swiffen, a campaign is deemed a failure if there is an engagement rate of less than 15%. All of the interactive companies I spoke to agreed with this, which is fairly remarkable if you consider that a 10% engagement is generally considered to be fairly high for standard video ads and even less for normal display. Banner ads – and many networked paid search ads – generate far lower click rates.
As if this wasn’t enough, many interactive companies ask only for a fixed fee and/or a CPA rate, which stamps heavily on the worn CPM model and is likely to save the advertiser money against lost impressions.
So, to try and summarise what is a complex but important issue, although online video is being used as part of the online marketing blend, in line with an unarguable increase in user-demand and consumption of video media as a whole, there is an enormous amount of potential to engage users to a far greater degree.
This in itself can increase conversion rates and ensure that any advertising spend is used even more efficiently to deliver both a measurable and justifiable ROI, especially when the ease of implementing efficient tracking and analytical technology into video campaigns is taken into account.
Although there are some great new tech companies flourishing to support and create such interaction, I suspect that we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of visual gratification, user engagement and overall use of video within the internet. Who knows what the future holds? All I can suggest is that this is one area that anyone seriously involved in interactive marketing, advertising or e-commerce needs to watch closely in the very near future.
If you know of any other companies offering interactive video services, or can point me towards any recent examples of companies or campaigns that are using this medium, I would be extremely interested to know. Please leave the relevant details in the comment box below.
ITV Player finally catching up to iPlayer?
Jan 23rd
I’ve criticised the ITV online video offering in the past as it has failed to match the BBC in terms of usability; it previously lacked a dedicated homepage which made finding content hard work, while the small size of the video player was not well suited to viewing full TV programmes.
Both these things have been improved: a menu page was added a few months ago, which means users can search for programmes through an A to Z menu, by most popular, and a drop down menu featuring all content:
More importantly, the video player screen, which now uses Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, has been enlarged. Though still not as big as the iPlayer’s video, it is almost twice the size of the previous version, much better for viewing programming online. The picture quality on the full screen option has been improved as well, but it is still far from perfect.
ITV Player now has a couple of advantages over the iPlayer: it is not restricted by the same conditions as the BBC, so it can offer a 30 day catch up service, while much iPlayer content is available for only seven days after broadcast, unless you download it. This means viewers can get a whole month’s worth of content on ITV.com.
Also, now that ITV has the rights to broadcast the FA Cup, it can offer football highlights online, something the BBC is unable to do with Match of the Day:
The iPlayer is still the one to beat in terms of usability, but ITV has a good range of video content on its site, and has now made it much more accessible for users.
BBC iPlayer revamp improves usability
Jan 23rd
The iPlayer has been an undoubted success since its pre-Christmas launch, with the online video player receiving over 100m requests to view programmes since December. It averaged 700,000 requests per day in May.
Despite this, there were some usability issues . The menus could be slow and cumbersome to navigate, and downloading the necessary software was troublesome.
In addition, finding a show to watch could be a slow process; apart from five or six featured shows, users had to search through an A to Z menu, or by channel.
This is something which seems to have been addressed with the beta version of the site, as the BBC has done a much better job of presenting its content and making it easier to browse through the programming on offer.
Users can browse by featured programmes, most popular, A to Z, by category, channel and by TV schedules, which is a useful new feature.
Radio content has now been integrated into the iPlayer so users can listen to a replay of any programme from the BBC’s various radio stations.
As well as more usable navigation, the BBC has also tweaked the video player itself. The screen is now larger, making viewing more easy, while the quality of the streaming has been improved.
The BBC is also making steps towards personalisation. If you quit a programme halfway through, the iPlayer will remember the point you were at when you return to watch it later.
Also, recently viewed videos are now displayed on the iPlayer homepage, and users are given suggestions of related programmes which they may also enjoy.
The BBC plans to extend this further and introduce personal channels based on previous viewing habits, though this feature will not be part of this update.
The new iPlayer beta version is a big improvement on the previous version, it is faster, more usable, and hence users will find it much easier to find content that interests them.
One drawback is still the fact that programme downloads are restricted to PC users. Owners of Macs can stream TV and radio shows, but the downloadable version is still a work in progress.
The BBC has broadened the iPlayer’s reach in other ways though, as the service is now available for Virgin Media subscribers, Nintendo Wii and PS3 owners, as well as on the iPhone.
Related stories:
Fight Club: BBC iPlayer vs ITV’s Video Player
BBC iPlayer traffic increases
Social networks ‘could become content platforms’
Jan 23rd
The survey also suggests that social networks are ‘an essential place to be’ for brands, something which has been disputed in this blog.
Just 22% sometimes click on ads on social networks, while 20% said they would be likely to add brands as ‘friends’ on Facebook and other sites.
Other highlights from the survey include:
On-demand content
- Take up is relatively low at the moment, with 20% using Virgin Media’s on demand service, 15% 4oD, and 13% using the iPlayer (though it had only just launched during the survey).
- 70% said they would prefer to access on-demand content free of charge with unskippable ads, 15% would pay a subscription to avoid ads, while the other 15% would prefer a pay as you go model.
Mobile internet
- Only 11% of those surveyed currently use mobiles to access the internet, while just 20% are interested in doing so in future.
- Barriers to using mobile internet included high cost of data charges (48%), slow loading (33%), while 25% said they were just not interested.
Impact of the web on print media
- 30% are buying fewer newspapers or are not buying any at all, as a result of accessing this content online, while 22% are buying fewer magazines for the same reason.
Related research:
Internet Statistics Compendium
Related stories:
Social Networks – is the novelty wearing off?
How to promote your brand using social media
BBC iPlayer – frustrating and promising
Jan 23rd
Having being originally proposed four years ago, the iPlayer has been a long time coming, and the beta mode is only available to Windows users, something which has annoyed open source groups.
Getting the iPlayer started turned to be fraught with problems, and was only managed with the help of the iPlayer message boards, which were full of beta testers with problems.
Downloading the iPlayer software itself was easy enough, but then downloading a one hour programme took nearly four hours. On attempting to play the programme, a ‘licence delivery error’ prevented me from watching it.
Downloading the latest version of Windows Media Player solved this problem, but it would have been good to know that this was necessary before wasting time downloading updates.
That said, the iPlayer looks good, and the controls work intuitively. Picture quality is good too, though it loses a little when viewed in full screen mode. It would have been good to be able to adjust the screen size more, as small screen and full screen are the only two options at the moment.
Being the BBC, there is a good range of content, though when the BBC gets round to putting its archive programming online, it will have a choice of content which will be hard to match.
Compared with Channel 4′s On Demand service, the download times are slow, though this improves according to the time of day you choose to download your video.
For viewers with cable TV, all the programming on the iPlayer is available on demand anyway, where it can be watched from the comfort of your sofa without the download times.
Issues aside, the iPlayer is a decent effort and if the teething problems can be ironed out before the full launch then the BBC’s range of content will make it more than a match for the broadband offerings from Channel 4 and ITV. Content is king, after all…
BBC’s on-demand plans given the green light
Jan 23rd
The BBC will now make its programming available to view on demand through its iPlayer.
There had been concerns about the effect that the BBC’s iPlayer/on-demand service would have a detrimental effect on DVD retailers and commercial broadcasters.
But Diana Coyle of the BBC Trust dismissed them:
“Thanks to the thorough assessment through the Public Value Test, and with the modifications which resulted from the test and the consultation, the Trust is satisfied that the BBC’s new on-demand services will create significant public value with limited market impact.”
The Trust has approved most of the corporation’s proposal, but has set some limits on the service – while the BBC had initially wanted to let users store programmes on their PCs for 13 weeks, this will now be limited to 30 days.
In addition, the Trust has prevented downloads of classical music and book readings, something which was feared would harm commercial rivals.
The BBC’s iPlayer will initially be available to those using Windows, though there are plans to roll the service out to Macs, cable TV services and Freeview boxes.