Smart Screen Exclusive
Unicorn Media De-Mystifies Delivery of Monetized Video Content
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By Lyndsey Schaefer
When searching for the perfect name for their company five years ago, Unicorn Media found it in the mythical word “unicorn,” which translates the same in every country in the world. Now, Unicorn is focused squarely on delivering monetized video content to any device in the world, says Chief Strategy Officer David Morel.
The technology providers’ Unicorn Once product allows customers to ingest video content one time and deliver it to every Internet-connected device by way of a single URL. Content owners can monetize their content on any device by dynamically inserting targeted ads and analyzing content and ad performance in real-time on every platform, allowing for on-the-fly changes to maximize profitability.
Working with some of the largest broadcast and retail partners around the world, Unicorn aims to solve three distinct challenges, Morel says. The first is “blocking and tackling” to back the various nuances from the more than 11,000 different devices supporting streaming in an effort to simplify the process for their clients. Second is that Unicorn’s dynamic permutation layer allows them to transform format of the content based on the device. Third is collecting analytics on the ads by capturing metrics through the Unicorn cloud.
“The technology allows us to manipulate the content in real-time in a different fashion for each unique user to do real targeted ads with no overhead,” Morel says. The ability to monetize the content is what makes it valuable. We give them one URL that plays on any device with personalized monetization with almost no effort on their part.”
Unicorn prides itself on the ease of implementation of its technology for broadcasters, built on the vast amounts of work they’ve done to extract the logic. Since Unicorn has experience in the level of scale these companies are pushing, infrastructures are built specifically to serve them.
“We’ve abstracted away all of the work that goes into having to build complex, dedicated apps, which makes time to market much shorter,” Morel explains.
As a new member of the 2nd Screen Society, Unicorn Media hopes to collaborate with others in the 2nd screen ecosystem to address the evolving challenges of the business.
“The reputation of the S3 precedes it, and the audience at these events is one that has similar problems to those that we’re solving, so it makes sense for us to be involved in the thought leadership,” says Andrea Graziani, Unicorn’s Vice President of Marketing.
