VIACOM

Scaling & Monetizing Mobile Video

CHALLENGE

Viacom is home to premier entertainment brands including MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central.

Each brand had been developing their own apps with great success. This provided creative control and customized experiences for each audience.

Then came the game-changing explosion of smartphones and cellular bandwidth. Customers quickly expected the same content across all devices, and clamored for full episode streaming of favorite TV shows within apps.

Serving, scaling and monetizing mobile video is a different beast, one better tamed by a dedicated group. The challenge was to do so without limiting the brands’ creative genius – and in time for a holiday launch in 6 months.

SOLUTION

Working with Viacom’s CTO and executives, DoubleHaul created a mobile program that spanned all digital business groups, the central technology group, and multiple external development partners. DoubleHaul provided program and product leadership through launch.

The program developed shared video components (player, ads, reporting, etc.) and a scalable central platform to provide the new functionality, which each brand could skin and configure to maintain creative flexibility.

It also expanded the central test lab to handle the new complexity and added automated tests to reduce test time. The initial apps were run through the test lab, paving the way for many other apps that followed.

The project was successful, hitting all business goals including time to market.