Last week our Digital team launched the first phase of its unified app strategy with a new 10 Play experience available for users and advertisers on Telstra TV. The new platform simplifies the design, development and content delivery on 10 Play, re-imagining the interface for users and ensuring a smoother, faster content delivery experience.
General manager, digital, Liz Baldwin explains just how important this strategy is for us and is excited for what’s to come.
What is 10’s unified app strategy?
It’s exciting to talk about as this is a serious gamechanger. Our unified app strategy means bringing all of our apps together on a single code base.
Currently, we build a 10 play app for iOS, another app for Android, another app for Samsung TVs, and so on. This has been the only way to get our content on all the different platforms. The unified app strategy completely breaks this paradigm apart. It allows us to reach multiple platforms with a single code base. The new platform simplifies the design, development and content delivery on 10 Play, re-imagining the interface for users and ensuring a smoother, faster content delivery experience.
Why is it so important for the business?
There are many reasons! Here are just a few:
- Video first – It’s totally built for video, with native player support and digital rights management support.
- Alignment of resources around the things that bring value – This means less time spent on maintenance and more time spent on innovation. We can align our team’s effort to building out features and fine tuning our audience experience.
- Speed and velocity – do something once, and it updates to all apps.
- Lower total cost of ownership – We will only need one team to maintain our apps. There are also cost savings as we’re less reliant on vendors to maintain outsourced apps.
How different is the new app compared to the existing one?
For starters, the homepage is rich and immersive. We’re better able to merchandise both our broadcast priorities and the breadth of content 10 play offers. We’ve designed the homepage to service both user journeys – those who know what they want to watch can find it quickly now can, and those who are simply looking for entertainment now have a much richer browsing experience.
From a design perspective, this new approach means we can be design-led. It delivers a premium experience and high fidelity animation. We no longer have to trade-off between design and features.
Some new things we’ve introduced include mandatory login on these platforms to support our data strategy, and the ability to build out proper personalisation in the future.
We’ve also launched with a new ad format, the Premium Pause ad. We love it because it’s a high impact, yet non-intrusive format that allows us to monetise beyond pre-and mid-rolls. The market has responded really well and we’ve sold launch campaigns to Dell, eBay and Mitsubishi.
What has it been like launching this new platform on Telstra TV while the team has been working from home?
It’s been surprisingly smooth. We’re fully equipped to work from home. We already used a lot of online tools for chat, project management and work allocation, so in many ways things haven’t changed all that much. The biggest thing I’ve missed is the ability to get the team together for a launch celebration to thank them for this huge milestone and all their hard work. But I’m sure we’ll make up for that in the future. 😊
10 Play has been having a really strong year this year. What do you bring that down to?
Content, content, content. Naturally, 10 play’s strength reflects how well our prime time shows are performing. Alongside that, we have been working with our Programming and Acquisitions teams to ensure we continue to build out 10 play exclusive shows that engage our audiences.
Anything else to add?
It’s been a really exciting year so far, with so much coming to fruition; we’ve launched our first app on our unified platform, with many more rolling out in H2; we’re building a strong content catalogue for 10 play, which will only get stronger once the 4th channel launches; and the team have embraced working from home, so we’re continuing to be a strong and productive unit which is something I’m particularly proud of – go Team Digi!
View a demo of the new platform:
View a creative example from Dell:
View a creative example from Mitsubishi:
