ABC's Emmy Award Winning Full-Episode Player

The Story

ABC wanted to put programming on the Web while including ads and maintaining control of distribution. The goal: grow the ABC brand, draw users, and satisfy advertisers.

Schematic designed a cinematically sophisticated video player that does justice to the quality of ABC programming. This was coupled with an experience in which watching ads was as pleasant as any ever seen on the Web. Opting for a sponsorship model in which a single advertiser "sponsors" a given episode, users watch an ad by that advertiser for 30 seconds to unlock each of three program sections and can fast forward or rewind to any unlocked section of the show at any time. The model is revolutionary since users maintain control &mdash but not so much control that they can skip all of the ads. In testing the recall, many users chose to watch the ads and the single advertiser model yielded a recall rate of 87% as opposed to 22% for traditional television.

Along with a glowing industry response, the player won exceptional user reviews: 79% of those surveyed had a very positive experience with the site. 87% said they would recommend the site to others. However, that was not enough in an industry where success is measured in statuettes. ABC took home the Interactive Television Emmy Award for the Full Episode Streaming Player in 2006.

The Solution

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Stats and Figures

Role: Solutions Architect
Client: ABC
Year: 2006

• The first full-episode streaming player
• Flash Player and ActionScript 2
• Completely new advertising model
• Video streaming from Akamai
• Custom ad model and logic
• Emmy Award for Outstanding Innovation and Achievement in Advanced Media