This Pay Per View Manual is intended to provide you a comprehensive overview of our Pay Per View offerings. It is indended to make certain the work we do to complete your Pay Per View is exacting to your specifications. We beleive by detailing the various processes involved it will bring clarity and help decision making. Ultimately our combined goal is a service that works perfectly for your viewers. The material below is laid out as a step by step walk through of the NetroMedia Pay Per View you and your business contact at NetroMedia will work through this list in tandem. If their are sections or questions that are unclear and need clarification we are here to help. Ultimately it is essential each section is completed by you and your team.
The Pay Per View Manual Chapters / Sections
- Background
- What is PayPerView
- How it works
- Permissions
- Products
- Subscriptions
- How do we build it?
- Business Plan
- Business plan and budget
- NetroMedia Packages
- NetroMedia PPV Packages and Pricing
- NetroMedia Streaming Packages and Pricing
- Your Deliverables
- Overview
- Merchant Accounts
- SSL Certificate
- Build docs
- NetroMedia Deliverables
- Support options
- Other Options
- Security Options
- Pay Per View Project budgeting and quoting questions list
- Question list
Background Section
What is PPV?
The PPV system is an access control and billing system. It comes 'before' the viewer gets to the content, and can be considered a spearate conversation from streaming requirements.
It is not related to the type of content, if it is live or on-demand, if it is Flash or Windows Media.
It is related to the presentation of the content, the price of the content, and what a user gets for that price.
Who will benefit?
The PPV system is designed to help content owners monetize their content; anyone who owns content will benefit by using this sytem to charge for access.
Your audience will need to justify the expense, as such the pricing for the content must be aligned with what your audience would be willing to pay.
How it works
The PPV system is based around two functions:
- Permissions
- Time.
When combined these two functions make a "Product" (see below)
Permissions control what parts of the site a user has access to, and are added for that user when they successfully purchase a product through the PPV Portal. For example, this could mean permission (to access) to a particular page or group of pages. On these pages would be where the content and (embedded) players are located. This means in order to view the content you need (to Pay to have) permission to access the webpage where the content is located.
It is also possible to have various product groups each with different content, different type of permissions and therefore different price. For example:
Product 1=Permission to view Page A
Product 2=Permission to view Page B
Product 3=Permission to view Page A&B
Product 4=Permission to view Page C
Product 5=Permission to view Page B&C
The second component is Time. Each product will allow the permissions for a set period of time, which can be any number of hours, days, weeks or months, for example:
Product 1=1 Day
Product 2=3 Weeks
Product 3=6 Months
When a user purchases a product they get the associated permissions for the specified amount of time. This essentially means they can access the page with the content for that period, it does not relate in any way to the stream itself (they could watch the stream as often as they like while they have access).
Products
The products are what is used to grant access and collect payment. A product is described by you and created by the NetroMedia development team during the construction of the PPV site. Each product represents each of the different options the you want to offer for purchase.
Each product has:
A name
A price
A set of permissions it grants
A time period specified
When a product is purchased, the user gets access to that content for that set time period.
A user can purchase one or many products.
Subscriptions
Subscriptions are automatically renewing or reoccurring products based on a time interval. Subscription periods are defined by the length of access of their security role, so if a product is made to expire a month from purchase, that's when it will renew.
Renewal time is set when the order is made, so if their security role period changes, the order will NOT change. For example: If the time for a product is set to last a month, and we go in and change it to any longer/shorter, the order will not be affected and will automatically renew at the original time set at purchase.
Renewal times are not exact, as the PPV system will compensate for purchases made late in the day, and the time is relative to the server's location (not the purchaser's). Renewals occur the day after the role expiration date.
Depending on your payment processor automatic renewing subscriptions may not be possible, for example, using PayPal Web Payments Express requires the user to leave your PPV and make the payment on PayPals site; removing the ability for the PPV system to automatically renew the users subscription at the end of their purchased time. Using PayPal Payments Pro or similar processors allows you to bypass this drawback and perform the payments within the PPV itself, allowing automatic subscriptions.
How do we build your pay per view platform?
Construction of a PPV platform uses project management workflow. It is completed in stages. Each stage needs to finished by NetroMedia's development team and signed off by you before we can move on to the next stage. Here are our stages:
- Gathering information - Our development team needs the answers to the question section here
- Building - Once all the answers are received we begin construction
- Testing - Once construction is complete NetroMedia will do "live fire" testing to ensure all aspects of the platform work as expected and agreed.
- Streaming - We insert your streaming service plan into the PPV platform (live players, on-demand content etc)
- Launching - The PPV will be released to you and your users. Job complete.
Questions?
- Do you have any questions?
- How many products will you have?
- Describe exactly what they are, identifying relevant content (groups of content), time for viewing
- Remember to include all relevant pictures, text, short text and titles for your content and products
Do you have one? Ultimately any PPV platform is an extension of a business model or business plan. Whether its part of a marketing / advertising initiative or the actual revenue generator a properly to executed Pay Per View portal needs a (business) plan. With any PPV portal there are reoccurring costs that offset the revenue generated by your content. Is this balance / equation in your favour? The NetroMedia team can help. We can advise on all your streaming and PPV Portal costs. We can even help with projected revenues depending on your audience, content, website, location etc. The key is to be aware of the costs involved and have a reasonable understanding of what you need in order to make Pay Per View successful for you. Think through your marketing and advertising strategy. Get a reasonable estimation of the audience and do reasearch on similar content to determine a viewing price.
We can make one for you NetroMedia's business managers can build you a business plan for your project based on your needs, content and goals. This is especially useful if you are trying to get investment or funding for your project.
Budget
What's your budget for this project? Do you have one? It is critical for your NetroMedia business contact to have an understanding of what your budget is for your Pay Per View project. Whether high or low, entry level or enterprise level understanding your budget or business plan helps us communicate from a starting point. It helps us guide you to a service template or set up solution that's balanced to your budget. Perhaps you will need to re-assess after your conversation with our team but at having a starting point is crucial to starting right.
We can help you get one NetroMedia's business managers can build you a budget for your project based on your needs and business plan. This is especially useful if you are trying to get investment or funding for your project.
Questions?
- Do you have any?
- Do you have a business plan?
- Can the NetroMedia team read it (or portions of it)?
- What is your budget for this project?
- Do you need a NetroMedia business manager to build a business plan for your PPV initiative?
- Do you need a NetroMedia business manager to make a budget for your PPV initiative?
NetroMedia has several templated Pay Per View portals. By templating these PPV solutions we are able to substaintially lower development costs and time of development. Read through the templated solution that best suit your (business) plan. Of course if you cannot find a solution below that matches your plan we can build a custom PPV Portal for you. Well over half our PPV client's require a fully customized solution.
Often we can make a simple customize addition to one of our platforms to match your plans. If this looks to be something that might fit for you please discuss it with your NetroMedia business manager.
Pricing Builds:
- Basic Build - $995
- 1 or 2 videos, basic
- Example link: Basic Build 1
- Build Requirements list: Basic Build 1 project plan
- This site is an example of how the PPV process works - you can go through the whole shopping cart and registration process, exactly like you would in a live ppv site, without entering a credit card - and it also shows a sample site 'skin' you can use if you don't have your own design.
Note: the button at the top of the page to show the customizable elements.
Additional development or changes to the PPV site (for example wanting to change text, add content, grant access to a user) are not support issues, they are extra development work and need to be both Cased and paid for.
Streaming Plan
The PPV pricing does not include any of the regular monthly charges for streaming - bandwidth, storage, support and reporting should all be added as well. Any client launchign a PPV should have a prepaid bandwidth plan, we do not do 'revenue sharing' or 'pay as you go' deals.
Important - In the case of a PPV event, follow the same protocols for arranging support as in any other event streaming situation. Additionally, ensure the client understands that PPV site support is not available outside of work hours (for example if their event is on the weekend and they decide to update part of the text).
Questions?
- have you got any?
- which package best suits your plans?
Regardless of the Pay Per View platform you choose there are some business responsibilities you need to provide to NetroMedia.
- Merchant account
- SSL Certificate
It's about the money. One key responsiblity for any Pay Per View client is what merchant account option they wish to choose. The merchant account is appled for and owned by you. Your merchant account must be in place in order for NetroMedia development team to set up your PPV portal. No matter what choice is made NetroMedia does not recieve the money. All monies are handled by a 3rd party processor. This reduces any conflict of interest and endorses accepted accounting rules. Your two merchant account options are:
- Source you own (PayPal, etc)
- Use NetroMedia's pay per view processing company
Merchant Accounts
What is a merchant account?
A Merchant Account is type of bank account that allows your Pay Per View users to use their credit cards to pay for your content online. This Merchant Account is a 3rd party online source which process payments. Like PayPal. The NetroMedia PPV shopping cart "interacts" with your merchant account. When your users pay for content through the PPV portal the merchant account approves the payment, sends the NetroMedia PPV portal a an approval code, NetroMedia then streams the content. This permissions communication is conducted through an API ( application programming interface) - which is a set way of passing information and receiving it on the other end.
The Merchant account is the system that actually processes the payment from the user's credit card:
Our Shopping Cart collects the users information (name, credit card number, etc)
Our Shopping Cart uses the API to send that information securely to the provider
The provider receives the information and attempts to charge the card
The provider returns a 'success' or 'failure' response to our Shopping Cart
The Shopping Cart then display the response and, if successful, gives the user access to the Pay Per View content
If a card is not processing it is an issue at the Merchant account not in the Shopping Cart (or PPV Portal). It is important to understand the 'flow' to help understand what is NetroMedia's responsibility and what's the Merchant account.
There are many Merchant Account providers, however only a few have been tested to work with our system:
PayPal
Moneris
Authorize.net
These are the main providers and are suitable for most of our clients. If you want to use a different Merchant Account please provide information to the development team for an answer.
You will need the API information from your Mechant Account provider for us to configure the PPV shopping cart. You will need to ask your Merchant Account provider for 'API info to use in a shopping cart', this should get our development team the right information.
NetroMedia PPV Merchant processing partner
If you cannot obtain a Merchant Account, NetroMedia PPV payment processing company can process payments on your behalf. We will withhold a percentage (usually 10%) of the payments for 90 days to cover any chargebacks that are received. The rest of the funds will be released within 30 days.
All new PPV services / solutions that need to use NetroMedia's payment gateway will now need to pay an admin / processing fee per online payment processing day of the event.
A processing day is one 24 hour period where users can pay online for an event / stream.
Price: $250 per event or $175 /processing day whichever is greater. Quoting available for special circumstances.
Due to accounting and money laundering concerns and auditing processes (ie FINTRAC - CAPC - GAAP etc) our accounting requirements (read: work) are increasing. Now we must process, audit and record payment information daily.
SSL Certificate
The client must provide an SSL Certificate for their site. This is a security measure for payment processing.
The client first provides us with the desired URL (CLIENT.netro.ca or ppv.CLIENT.com, etc). We then provide a CSR to the client. They can then order the certificate.
Full details here: Pay Per View: SSL Explained
Generating an SSL Certificate: How to
Questions?
- have you got any?
- do you have a merchant account?
- do you know which merchant account you wish to use?
- is it one of the three listed above?
NetroMedia Deliverables
What kind of support do we have?
Support for the PPV system is a separate type of support than for your streaming component and is billed separately.
Questions about the videos playing, or live streaming issues (for example) would follow our normal processes and can be handled by tech via a case being created in the NetroPortal or via telephone if you have opted for Silver support.
Questions such as 'why can't this user see the video page' or 'this user is having trouble logging in' are covered by your monthly PPV costs and often require the services of the development team to troubleshoot, these are only answerable Monday - Friday 9AM - 5PM PST.
Questions?
- Do you have any questions regarding support options?
Options
Stream security options:
The PPV system controls access to pages where the content is viewable via embedded players. The system itself (as it is separate from the streaming service) does not provide any control over whether the stream is delivered or if it viewable elsewhere.
Since charging for content becomes difficult when it can be freely 'stolen' by the first person who pays for it, adding StreamSecure or Token Authentication is highly recommended.
StreamSecure will 'lock down' the content to the PPV system making it 99% secure for desktop only content, mobile content will require an upgrade to Token Authentication.
StreamSecure setup is currently priced at $250.
If you require further security measures such as to cover mobile distribution, or wish to control things like 'duration of a session' you will need to add Token Authentication. This carries a higher costs but is the most secure control we can provide.
Token authentication is currently priced at $2000 but that includes other options as well as simple domain locking. Please see the Token Authentication documentation for further details.
Question section
Pay Per View Project budgeting and quoting questions list:
Please complete all questions listed below to the best of your ability when requesting a quote for your PPV project, you can also include additional information that you think will help us in building your desired site. Of course reach out to us if you need any help.
- Live content
- Will you have live channels running 24/7?
- If so how many?
- Have you already purchased hardware/software encoding solutions or are you looking for our advice on this?
- Do you have the necessary infrastructure set-up at your live location, if so what is your upload capacity?
- What bitrate will you use to distribute your live content?
- Will you offer multi-bitrate options – if so please specify all bitrates you wish to use and if transcoding will be required
- On demand content
- How many on-demand (pre-recorded) videos will be in your portal?
- What format are these videos encoded in currently?
- Do you have a technical team that can encode your content and prepare it to deliver to different platforms or will you need our assistance with encoding?
- Will you be adding new content as your project progresses, if so how much and how often?
- What bitrate will you use to distribute your on-demand content?
- Will you need us to automatically generate thumbnails for your content?
- Website Design
- Do you already have a website in place you wish us to copy from or a template or will you be designing your portal from scratch?
- Will you have an about us and contact us page?
- Will you offer trailers on the front page of your portal which can be viewed prior to purchasing?
- Will you have descriptions of your channels and content with images?
- Will you require special features on your player such as auto-detect for high-def/low-def options?
- Which provider will you be obtaining your SSL certificate from?
- Do you wish to implement security features to protect your content from theft?
- Do you wish to implement security features to protect against password sharing?
- Do you need a user profile section, how should it look, should users be able to message each other and create profiles?
- Please provide as much information about the style and design of your portal as possible.
- Multi-platform delivery
- Do you wish to deliver to mobile devices such as blackberry, iphone, ipad and android? – please note that if you choose a basic portal without mobile delivery this feature cannot be added at a later date. Due to the technical requirements for multi-platform delivery an entirely new portal would need to be developed in order to provide mobile delivery at a later date.
- Do you wish to deliver to roku, apple TV or any other set-top boxes?
- Plans for Launch
- When is the anticipated Launch date of your pay-per-view portal?
- When would you like your portal complete and ready for testing?
- Advertising
- Will you require banners and advertisements in your portal?
- Would you like to have pre/post roll advertisements incorporated into your streams?
- Would you like to have watermarks or images embedded within your players?
- Would you like to have "share" or "like" buttons on your players for facebook and twitter?
- Pricing
- What is your planned pricing structure?
- Will you have more than one pricing option, if so please describe.
- Are you planning a monthly subscription model? (See Subscriptions)
- Are you planning a per video / unit / event price?
- How will your users pay for their video access?
- Money / Payments
- Do you already use / have a payment gateway like Paypal? If so which one and do you plan to use this gateway as your primary payment method
- Is credit card the only form of payment you will be accepting?
- If you do not have a payment gateway will you be applying for one for this pay per view platform? If yes do you foresee any problems with your application for an account? Have you had any trouble in the past with getting a payment gateway set up? We must ask this question because if you expect you will not be able to secure a payment gateway we will have to process an alternative payment system for your pay per view portal.
- If you require any type of taxation reports, please make us aware of this.
- Streaming Security
- What level of security do you need for your stream?
- Are you concerned about multiple users on one payment account logging in?
- Geo Load balancing/Distribution requirements
- Where globally is your targeted audience located?
- Will there be places in the world you wish to block from accessing your content?
- Business strategy
- Do you have a business plan in place that describes your plans in detail?
- Have you acquired the necessary licencing for the content you wish to distribute or do you own the rights to distribute this content?
- Have you completed an analysis of your profits versus costs? – if so please provide projected usage for the first 12 months of your project
- Budget
- Do you have a budget set in place for the construction of your portal and monthly running costs? If so please specify details.