Ooyala Announces Three Tools to Improve Viewer Engagement
Online video platform Ooyala made three announcements today designed to help media companies keep viewers watching longer.
The first is the Ooyala Discovery Guide, a visual guide meant to offer a fresher take on the standard electronic program guide. The Discovery Guide offers personalized selections, drawing from both live and on-demand video options. Ooyala suggests that media companies with large libraries of video use the guide to offer customized viewing suggestions. Viewers can save programs to a watch-later queue, while publishers can add up-next video previews on the ends of programs to get viewers watching longer.
Android lags behind iOS in video consumption, and Ooyala thinks that's due to the fragmented field of Android mobile devices. That's why it's announcing Hook, a video runtime for premium content, currently in pilot testing with select customers. With Hook, Android owners need to install an app once (from the Google Play store), but then can watch video from any Hook-enabled site. The idea is to let publishers stream video to Android owners without having to create Android apps.
Looking to connected TVs, Ooyala is introducing XTV Connect, which lets publishers create their own Apple Airplay-like experience. Ooyala boasts that there's nothing to install with XTV, but there are still hurdles. Viewers will need to browse content on mobile apps built with XTV technology, then send it to a connected TV that uses the DLNA standard. Both the mobile device and the TV need to be on the same home network.
Ooyala will show all three offerings at the NAB conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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