CASE STUDY

Ketchup TV – part of the brand portfolio of VOD365, a UK-based streaming media services provider – offers streaming of popular kids’ entertainment. It brings shows such as Peppa Pig, Super Why! and Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom to young audiences’ screens

VOD365 chose Simplestream to build a HbbTV solution for the distribution of Ketchup TV on Freeview, Freesat, and YouView, as well as applications for mobile, tablets, and Smart TVs to further expand the audience reach. Among the main challenges, it was key for Simplestream to manage the ingestion of multiple sources of content, not normalised, with different workflows and different formats. Additionally, the architecture built needed to consider enhanced opportunities for monetisation, through advertising-based models.

Simplestream combined the proprietary HbbTV and App Platform products, to bring a whole new set of streaming and OTT services under the same roof. Most importantly, Media Manager was deployed to respond to VOD365’s needs to concentrate the management of all workflows in one platform.

The overall solution stands out for a few key aspects:

• The delivery and maintenance of a set of child-directed apps for premium, compliant OTT content
• Multiple ingest workflows from third-party sources
• The addition of a barker channel as a new way to enhance monetisation through advertising
• Integration with an existing set of legacy applications on Freeview and YouView as part of the initial requirements for VOD365, due to pre-existing Multimedia and Hypermedia Experts Group (MHEG) applications on set top boxes

Ketchup TV was made available through a Hbb application on YouView, Freesat and Freeview HD connected TV and recorders. This granted VOD365 the ability to provide their audience with a deeper viewing experience on big screens, and all the benefits of OTT, like backwards scrolling EPG, box sets, curated playlists, and programme guides.

App Platform, with Media Manager was deployed to manage on demand content workflows through several applications for mobile, tablets, and Smart TVs. The enhanced management capabilities – through the cloud-based Online Video Platform (OVP) and the integrated CMS – provided the client with a flexible, modular solution.

VOD365 launched Ketchup TV HbbTV application, as well as mobile and tablets’ apps on iOS, Android, Samsung TV, and LG TV providing free, unlimited streaming of the best children’s TV shows.

Monetisation is granted through AVOD models that provide Ketchup TV with compliant advertising patterns, the standard for applications to be accepted by iOS and Android app stores. In particular, a barker channel was added to enhance ad-based impressions, by integrating an ad-only loop of videos to the homepage of the application.