App Cloud enables digital media and digital marketing organizations to build and operate growing portfolios of cross-platform native apps for Apple iOS and Google Android smartphones and tablets. The new release adds new cloud services for intelligent cross-platform push messaging and content-level analytics that are intended to enable app owners to more easily engage their installed base, track campaign effectiveness, and identify their most impactful content.
With more than 1 million apps available across the Apple iOS and Google Android app stores, digital media companies and digital marketers increasingly struggle to acquire and retain a loyal audience. Keeping users engaged with a continuous flow of relevant, compelling content is more important than ever. Push messaging provides a powerful tool for making users aware of new content, be it breaking news, local events, or discount offers. However, many producers and content marketers are forced to use an odd assortment of platform-specific messaging systems and generic analytics platforms that make it difficult to effectively capitalize on popular content and execute effective push messaging campaigns.
The latest release of Brightcove App Cloud offers intelligent push messaging that is designed to allow marketers to schedule and send push message campaigns to their installed base of app users across both the iOS and Android platforms from a single dashboard. Messages can be addressed to all app users, users in a specific geographic area, users who have not opened the app in a specific time frame, or a combination of these criteria. Integrated analytics deliver real-time feedback on the number of push messages delivered, the number opened, and user interactions with the content of the message.
“Push messaging has proven to be not only an effective means of driving users to new content within the app experience, but also a tool for driving behavior, such as TV viewership or event attendance,” said Melissa Webster, program vice president, Content and Digital Media Technologies at IDC. “Emerging content app platforms like Brightcove App Cloud are addressing this need and making it easier for organizations to increase engagement with their app audience.”
App Cloud also now offers expanded analytics that are designed to allow app owners to track user activity at the content item level. Producers and marketers can see how many users have watched a particular video, viewed a specific image, or read a specific article or blog post. Combined with existing capabilities for tracking user activity at the section level, content item level analytics provide powerful insights into where users are spending their time and attention, revealing opportunities to further content available to the audience.
“We are excited to incorporate App Cloud’s push notifications into our marketing endeavors and find new ways to engage our app users in an easy and efficient manner,” said Nathan Veer, Web producer at Joyce Meyer Ministries. “Additionally, the expanded analytics capabilities will enable us to learn how our users are using our apps and accessing content within the apps, which is crucial as we continue to hone our mobile marketing strategy. The fact that we’re able to accomplish all of this in one environment through App Cloud is very attractive to us.”
App Cloud combines an HTML5 Web development model with intelligent cloud services to accelerate app development, continuously optimize performance, measure effectiveness, and enable dynamic updates to installed apps.