Player Layer x Love Island: making passive video interactive and shoppable
Despite great hype a decade ago, online video’s metamorphosis into a fully interactive experience wasn’t quite as rapid as expected by some. Instead, a progressive evolution has unfolded, and interactivity with video is now so pervasive, you could be forgiven for missing it.
What is Twitch without chat and interactive extensions? What is Instagram without Stories? Even the new Amazon Prime Premier League player has interactive and data layering features that have been met warmly. There are many many examples of regular interaction with, on, or around video, that it is now mainstream.
I believe creativity, taste and purpose are the key — if you mess around with what is already great and make it worse, obscure the action, interrupt the best bits, guess what happens? If you augment something great and make it even better, in a way that feels good, or useful, in context of a specific piece of content — success. Or if you create something entirely new using what is now available, fantastic.
Yet there is no universal tool or platform to enable these things, the software components used aretypically low level and product teams are inventing tech on a case by case basis, expending their resources on discreet development for specific ideas. We want to change that.
Player Layer
Today we deployed the first public outing of a product called Player Layer, an extension to the Monterosa Interaction Cloud that lets media and sports organisations take passive video players (e.g. Brightcove) and make them fully interactive.
Player Layer’s central mission is to provide creators with flexibility and creative possibilities, leaving them to decide how best to engage the audience and when.
Partnering with ITV & Love Island 2020, Player Layer and the Interaction Cloud are making selected videos within the official app, interactive and shoppable.
Making existing players interactive
The SDK bolts onto existing video players, then provides a range of layering options for entertainment and sports use cases, and an extensible set of interfaces for building out custom layers. No need to change anything drastic, or to leave behind an existing investment in player or app.
The Touchbug
We created the ‘Touchbug’, a pulsating button, which allows the user to initiate interaction. It can be positioned anywhere at any time, avoiding obscuring issues.
This video shows how layers can be moved around the screen at different times (live or on-demand):
It’s flexible; creators can decide in an instant if the Touchbug should unravel a text strap, or if it should be forced open. They can make it pause the video while interaction takes place, or even change its animation behaviour or colour.
Timeline control
Using the Interaction Cloud’s Studio, creators can use the Timeline to line up moments within on-demand video, or trigger interactivity on live video.
There are growing range of interactive ‘Elements’ as we call them, including Polls, Predictions, Ratings, Sports Data and Shopping which can be selected.
Shoppablility
One of the key features of Player Layer is the ability to allow ‘Watch & Shop’ experiences. See it, buy it, or at least mark it for further exploration later.
Player Layer allows creators to position, time and link out to products at exactly the right time. The degree of presence is controllable, allowing creative sensibilities to take priority over commercial.
If you want to try out the live version and you’re in the UK, download the click here to download on Apple devices and click here for Android.
What do you think? I’m keen to hear more about what you want from an interactive video experience — as a user, a creator, a product person or a developer.
It’s still in pre-release, but if you are interested in using Player Layer, please get in touch at https://monterosa.co/contact
