Hearst TVs Automate Mobile Content With Yospace

Twenty-five Hearst-owned stations are now delivering short-form content, including news stories, to all mobile devices using a cloud service from Yospace, which distributes video content to multiple platforms. The Yospace technology links into the broadcaster’s advertising response server to ensure pre-roll advertising is targeted to the user, strengthening the revenue-earning opportunities.

News stories and other clips are uploaded to the Yospace service, together with local and national advertising. The content is then presented via apps across Hearst Television’s key smartphone platforms and via their corresponding mobile Internet sites.

Once a request for content is received, the Yospace service detects the device, sets the video format and wrapper accordingly, splices in the tailored pre-roll commercial as defined by the broadcaster’s advertising system, and streams it out. All this preparation is handled virtually instantaneously so the consumer notices no latency in delivery.

“We wanted a system that would allow us to throw any sort of video clip and get mobile-optimized delivery for all platforms: iPhone, iPad, Android and mobile Internet,” said Michael Rosellini, Hearst Television’s director of digital product development. “We wanted something that was self-service, and with Yospace’s Web portal we can manage the whole service ourselves.

“The ability to manage pre-roll advertising was important, too,” Rosellini added. “We can either handle pre-rolls through the Yospace content management system or through Google DFP, giving us two options. The service from Yospace means we can easily get much more video available to our mobile users, with more advanced targeting of pre-roll advertising and easier workflow, which should result in monetization growing too.”

The technology is hosted in a Yospace cloud software as a service application, making it fully scalable.

The system has been live in 25 Hearst markets since January.

Visitors to next week’s NAB Show, can see Yospace’s solutions for multiplatform delivery and seamless ad replacement at booth SU 8503 in the Las Vegas Convention Center.