Streaming Video Strategies

Chapter 4. Case Studies

Throughout this report, you’ve seen several short examples of different businesses’ experiences with building video platforms. In this final chapter, we’ll dive deep into four case studies of companies with very different needs. In the interests of privacy, we’ve provided pseudonyms for these businesses and have changed some identifying details; however, the events described are real.

Please Don’t Stop the Music: Company A

When companies first attempt to build a video system in-house, they often try to cobble something together from a few sources, only to discover that the project is not shaping up the way they had hoped. Disappointed, they seek out a third party to build the system for them.

This was the experience of Company A, an online music community designed to allow fans to support musicians. Company A wanted to offer ticketed live-streamed events. This was 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and that meant touring wasn’t possible. Company A saw this new service as a way for artists and fans to connect even when they couldn’t be together in the same physical venue. Its vision involved more than just broadcasting a concert: artists would also be able to chat with fans, and a virtual merchandise table would allow them to sell merchandise and albums during the show. Being able to go live and integrate live communication was pivotal to this project.

Company A wanted to make its video player an artist-first experience. Its design priority was to give the artists as much control as possible.

However, a working live-streaming service is far easier to conceive of than to execute. The company prototyped several versions of the service using different streaming platforms, but ran into limitations with their APIs. Initially the company turned to white-labeling a solution from another platform—but this still didn’t offer the control and customization it was looking for. The APIs needed to be fast, reliable, and well documented, while still offering the company control.

After much frustration, the company decided to work with an experienced third-party video infrastructure solution. The change was remarkable: it took just two weeks to switch from its previous platforms and build the integration. Management were also very pleased with the analytics and reporting, which allowed them to track artists’ popularity and helped them make better marketing decisions.

“What quickly became apparent was that this company’s API was incredibly accessible,” said the product manager of the music community, referring to the video producer. “The communications channel with them was just a lifesaver…. It was very transparent, very quick. I think, for me, this was something that completely differentiated the video company we chose to work with from the other things that we were experimenting with.” The live-streaming initiative grew into a solid success. As of this writing, it has been rolled out to more than 100,000 artists and continues to grow.

Live Shopping with Live Influencers: Company B

Company B is an online marketplace that connects buyers with sellers. It has a unique brand and company culture that attract influencers and internet personalities, many with enormous followings. Other ecommerce sites were beginning to offer live-streamed shopping experiences, and Company B’s executives wanted to know if this trend would work for them. Company B was not a stranger to video: it had both a virtual and a physical studio where merchants could promote their products. However, live streaming would be a totally new offering.

Company B decided to conduct an experiment. Out of the many types of products it carries, it picked one of the most popular: makeup. The plan was to invite its top makeup vendors and influencers to lead a live-streamed shopping experience. It would announce the live stream to its fans, followers, and customers ahead of time, drawing in what it hoped would be a substantial audience. On the day of the event, Company B’s website would feature the event prominently with banners inviting shoppers to “Enter here for live shopping by Jane Doe.” Anyone could enter the live stream to watch and shop; participants did not have to be registered users of the site.

The concept sounded promising, but Company B did not have the resources in-house to bring it to fruition. Building the necessary infrastructure would require a huge investment of time and money—and the labor of engineers who specialized in video and whose time would be tremendously expensive.

Daunted, Company B went to its current video platform vendor and explained what it wanted to do. However, the vendor did not offer live-streaming capabilities. After much research and evaluation, Company B hired a third-party infrastructure solution that had the requisite expertise to build many forms of video.

Several challenges lay ahead to figure out. For one thing, though Company B already had functioning studios where it could hold the live-stream event, it did not have the internal resources to live-stream it on its site. Fortunately, the partner company it chose could do the work with a simple API call, leveraging an app that Company B already had in order to deliver the video.

Another challenge for Company B was maintaining its own brand on the live stream. If it used a video aggregator like YouTube, it would mark the video with its own distinctive branding, which Company B did not want. By using the third-party company to build its own solution, Company B could maintain full control over its branding.

Company B made sure the partner knew about a few other features that were important to the company and its audience. Accessibility is a priority for Company B, so the partner designed the experience with live captioning in mind. This would allow deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers to fully enjoy the experience. Company B also wanted the experience to be fully interactive, with viewers conversing with one another or with the influencers, so the partner incorporated a chat feature. Using the third-party company meant that all this could be done quickly, with relatively little lift on the part of Company B’s internal teams.

Finally, Company B didn’t want to exclude anyone who couldn’t make it to the live event, and wanted to reach as many people as possible. The video partner built an on-demand recording of the event that would remain available on Company B’s site for three days. This would preserve the of-the-moment feel of the event, while also ensuring that Company B could make maximum use of its video content. The ability to move live-streamed events to video on demand was crucial for maximizing the event’s audience, making this an extremely important requirement.

It only took about two months to get the live-stream experience up and running. Company B found the third party’s documentation so thorough that it could implement its end of the process with relative simplicity; it did not need much guidance from the third party.

The event went smoothly, with a live-shopping experience that delivered high quality and incorporated all the elements that were most important to Company B. Executing the event so quickly also meant that Company B got a swift answer to its question: yes, live-streamed shopping definitely did have potential for its audience, and was something it could continue to invest in in the future. The experiment was a solid success.

Up and Spinning: Company C

Company C began as a fitness app for users to track their fitness routines and athletic goals.

As social media began to grow in popularity, Company C decided to expand its fitness tracking app to include user-generated content. At first it rolled out a feature that allowed users to post photos of their athletic accomplishments: a strenuous hike, a steep high-speed descent on a mountain bike, a run that broke their personal best. Users loved it: they got fitness inspiration and spent more time on the app, and Company C saw increased engagement and retention on its platform.

Company C wanted to explore interactivity in new and interesting ways that would go beyond simply allowing users to post photos. It decided that its next step would be to allow users to post 30-second videos. The company wanted to build its own video platform, but it didn’t have an in-house team of video engineers. When looking for third-party solutions, the company was careful to research costs and how easy it would be to integrate its existing infrastructure. The company also needed a flexible, customizable solution, which is so imperative in UGC.

Ultimately, it found an experienced third-party team that met its criteria and made integration easier and faster: so much so that the whole project, from proof of concept to launch, was up and spinning in about three months—and customers were happy.

The external team also made sure Company C received high-touch support from solutions architects to avoid (or quickly address) any issues that might arise in the future, as that kind of partnership was important to Company C. While the program is still too new to report extensive data, it is clearly a success.

Pizza for the Fans: Company D

Company D runs a popular online community with more than 6 million monthly unique viewers, focusing on sports fandom. And its founder happened to enjoy posting funny videos about food. These videos took on a life of their own, becoming such a favorite that Company D decided to give fans a chance to participate. It launched a new app focused entirely on pizza. This app would run much like other food delivery services: restaurants could sign up to participate, and hungry customers could use the app to order pizza from a wealth of options. It would also offer video: in addition to the founder’s video reviews and celebrity interviews, users could post their own reviews of the food they ordered.

Company D wanted to bring more viewers onto its proprietary social platform, as you might expect. It also wanted to build community. That meant supporting and expanding the original online community around the app, but it also extended offline: Company D hoped that the app would help local restaurants use delivery to build their customer bases at a time when the pandemic had the food industry struggling.

Company D had some specific goals on its wish list. Its top priority was to bring the app to market quickly. The company also wanted a very developer-friendly API, easy uploads, webhooks, and easy encoding—and the existing site’s popularity meant it would need to plan for scalability. In short, it needed to build a custom CMS on top of a flexible, powerful infrastructure.

This meant Company D would need to support two types of video: the longer video content it was already generating, like the founder’s reviews and celebrity videos; and the new UGC videos, which would be 30 seconds or shorter.

Company D’s existing infrastructure couldn’t handle all of this, so its chief engineer attempted to employ a well-established video processing service. However, it didn’t go well. The service turned out to be too hard to configure, and its messy, confusing documentation was more of a hurdle than a help.

Company D did its research and found a third-party platform it liked. In fact, the platform offered everything the company was looking for, including a data monitoring service to collect analytics on the performance of the video streams.

The work went smoothly, and Company D’s community was so enthusiastic about trying the new app that the beta version exceeded its maximum sign-in limit within the first 15 minutes.

Launch day went beautifully too, with 70,000 downloads of the app on day one. That increased to 300,000 during the first three months of operation. The system supported 4.5 million views and delivered over 157,000 hours of video. The fan community loved the app, the video quality was consistent, and scaling was not an issue. The app garnered over 10,900 reviews in the Apple App Store, with a near-perfect average rating of 4.9. Company D achieved its goal of giving back to the food industry too, bringing $41 million in new food orders to participating restaurants.

Summary

We hope you’ve found this report helpful as you weigh the many decisions and considerations involved in implementing video for your company’s site or app. Whether you’re part of a large enterprise launching a new app with user-generated content or a smaller startup planning to engage new audiences through live streaming, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution: you’ll need to assess your internal resources and your external options carefully, weigh them against your business requirements and priorities, and make the choice that best meets your project’s needs. Launching a new video venture (or upgrading an existing one) is a complex undertaking, but with thoughtful planning, quality support, and the right team, the rewards can propel your business toward its goals—and maybe even inspire new ones.