A few weeks ago, at Streaming Media East in New York City, Bismarck Lepe, Ooyala Co-Founder and President of Products, demonstrated the new YouTube video management functionality within their Backlot video platform. Ooyala tapped into the YouTube APIs to give publishers the ability to search and discover YouTube video directly from Ooyala's Backlot interface and deliver them within the Ooyala player. This feature was unveiled in April 2010, free to all publishers until today (5/31/10).What that means is that any publisher can now easily manage and publish any content from YouTube within an Ooyala player. It's easy to add content from YouTube, from the "Add New Content" menu within Backlot. You can either enter the URL for a single YouTube video or import multiple YouTube videos. The YouTube videos have access to the same Backlot functionality as videos uploaded directly to your account, including analytics, player branding, and set syndication rules.
Ooyala is targeting the video bloggers and newpapers sites that are creating a lot of text-based content but may not have a lot of video content. They noticed that a lot of their publishers were using YouTube videos to complement their content, which was no surprise to Ooyala as Lepe noted, "We all know video increases overall engagement."
In a blog post announcing the new feature, "The World's Videos at Your Fingertips" Lepe said:
"This will be great for any publisher looking to add rich media to a primarily text-based article. For example, if you're writing a story on electric cars and you'd like to include images or videos on the EV-1, GM's early 90s foray into the electric car business, you will easily be able to search, find and embed the video directly from Backlot."Lepe further explained:
"We had noticed this behavior, but it wasn't until one of our publishers asked us to help them with their YouTube workflow that we decided to do something about it. By leveraging the YouTube APIs, we've added the ability to search and discover YouTube videos directly from Backlot and then deliver the videos in the Ooyala player. Because the video is hosted and delivered by YouTube, but in our player, videos are added to Backlot in seconds and the sophisticated management, syndication and analytics tools that you use every single day are supported for the YouTube videos."He illustrated this by showing how Business Insider used Lady Gaga's video "Bad Romance" within the Ooyala player for their article, Lady Gaga's Bad Romance Will Be YouTube's First Video To 200 Million Views.
As you can see below, I actually tried Ooyala's YouTube Video Management Tool myself using my Backlot account. It was easy to find my own YouTube video of Bismarck using the URL and display it within the Ooyala player:
The YouTube Management tool is one of 10 new products enhancements that Ooyala has launched in the last month, which are outlined by in an Ooyala blog post by Alex Holub: Product Enhancements 2019-05-29.
About Ooyala
Ooyala is the leader in online video technology, analytics and monetization. Ooyala's comprehensive online video platform gives content owners the deep insights that drive stronger viewer engagement and greater revenue from video content. Ooyala serves hundreds of global media companies and marketers including Telegraph Media Group, Fremantle Media, Dell, General Mills, Vans, Endemol, Vice Magazine, The Glam Network and Electronic Arts.
