Michael Cerdá de TelevisaUnivision
The ViX AVOD tier that launched on, Thursday March 31st, in the US, Mexico, and most of the Spanish-speaking territories of Latin America, will be available immediately on the web and on iOS, Android, Amazon Fire TV, and Samsung TV platforms, said Michael Cerdá, EVP of Streaming Product and Engineering at TelevisaUnivision.
Cerdá, who previously worked at Disney+, shared details of the technology behind the new ViX service.
He stressed that a good user experience on a video platform should honor its purpose and the expected result. “In this case it’s A) finding what people want to see and B) allowing them to watch it with quality, that it works. For this, to work there must be simple ways for people to discover what they want to watch with playback quality. I can be a channel surfer, a lean-back viewer and for that, we are providing a linear type grid with more than 100 channels to choose from through mini categories such as entertainment, sports, and kids. A second way that people decide what to watch, and that’s a more lean-forward, more targeted, is the on-demand environment, where there’s a featured show, event, or game, followed by a recommendations column, of a line that shows the last program viewed, and other lines of categories such as telenovelas, movies, news, among others,” he explained.
Cerdá also mentioned the strategy regarding the placement of commercial ads on the platform, highlighting that the experience will not be invasive. “There are certain ad innovations that we will be testing to make it a good experience for both the audience and the advertisers. Advertisers want options and variety, to explore new formats. We will have prerolls, midrolls, and pod ads. We will also have major sponsors, sponsors of collections, for example, a collection of comedy content, which can be fully sponsored,” he pointed out.
Cerdá highlighted that ViX technology is similar in all the different devices where it works. “The functions that we offer operate the same from one device to another, taking advantage of each type of device to make modifications either in the size of the layout, in the way content is selected, whether it is with a click of the mouse, a tap on the screen or from a remote control. There are modifications that are made depending on the device, but everything has to work the same and look similar. It’s nice to have a phone app that works similar to the TV app. There is similarity and it is important for the consumer experience,” he concluded.
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