thePlatform Adds More Publishing and Advertising Controls

thePlatform is announcing this morning release 1.3 of its mpx video management system, which gives its customers enhanced publishing and advertising controls. Marty Roberts, thePlatform's VP of sales and marketing walked me through the updates yesterday, which fall into 3 buckets:

1. Customized playlists - mix's "Feeds" now allows customers to combine both editorially and dynamically-driven playlists. For example, if a couple of videos are really hot, they can be selected to remain persistently at the top of the list rather than being bumped off by recent additions. In addition rules can be created so only users of authorized 3rd party distributors can play the video.

2. Granular geographic restrictions - Content access can now be set by country, region, metro code and area code. Additional settings include expiration date, referring domain and IP address.

3. New ad policies - mpx customers can select primary and secondary ad sources, along with the type of unit to be displayed (pre-roll, mid-roll, etc.). Some of this functionality lightly overlaps with what video ad managers like FreeWheel and Auditude offer, but thePlatform isn't trying to replace anyone in the ad management ecosystem; rather its features are meant for less complex customer situations.

Marty said these new features are being driven by increased rights complexity in online video distribution. More and more, online video rights are being included in broader TV distribution deals (yesterday's CBS-Comcast deal is a perfect example), so controlling the details of online access is becoming critical. But tighter control means lots of new admin work, and so thePlatform's new features are meant to streamline the work.

thePlatform is also announcing Outdoor Channel as a new customer and it has released a new white paper on content security.

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Note: thePlatform is a VideoNuze sponsor.

Categories: Technology

Topics: thePlatform