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Advertising That Pays for the Free Tier
Not everyone will pay a subscription, and the ones who will not are still worth something. Vodlix lets you run sponsored placements and video ads across your catalogue, so the audience that never opens their wallet still funds the platform.
The Audience That Will Never Subscribe Is Still an Audience
Every catalogue has a large group of viewers who enjoy the content and will never pay for it. Put a paywall in front of them and they leave, taking their attention with them. Advertising is how that attention turns into revenue instead. Vodlix builds ad placements into the storefront itself, so a free viewer generates income from the first screen they see, and the people who do subscribe simply never meet an ad. It is the same catalogue and the same platform, earning from two audiences at once.
A clearly labelled sponsored slot sits inside the browse experience rather than shouting over it. Advertisers get real estate next to your best content, and viewers get something that still looks like your product.
Run video advertising around your content, with every break configured on the title itself. A two minute clip and a feature length film are never forced into the same pattern.
Bring the ad networks you already sell through and segment who sees what. Targeting by audience means a slot can carry one campaign in one market and something else entirely in another.
Advertising Inside the Player Itself
Sponsored placements earn from people who are browsing. Video advertising earns from the ones who are actually watching, and that happens inside the player. Vodlix plays advertising around your content in the same player your viewers already use, with the same controls, the same quality selector and the same subtitles. There is no second player to maintain and nothing for the viewer to install.
While an ad runs the player makes it obvious that it is an ad and not your programme. The break carries its own progress bar, a counter showing how much of the ad is left, and on a skippable ad a countdown telling the viewer exactly when they can skip. Being straight with people about how long a break lasts is what stops them closing the tab. Because the breaks are defined on the title rather than in the page, a video carries its advertising with it wherever it plays, on the web, in your mobile apps and on your TV apps.
Three Places an Ad Can Run
A break is defined by where it sits in the playback. The three positions behave differently enough that each is worth a decision of its own, rather than switching all of them on and hoping for the best.
Plays after the viewer presses play and before your video begins. Nothing has started yet, so there is nothing for anyone to abandon, which is why pre roll completes more often than any other break. It is the usual home for a brand campaign or a house promo.
Plays part way through, at an ad marker you set on the title. The viewer is already invested in what they are watching, so mid roll earns the strongest rates of the three. Placement is what decides how it lands: a marker on a natural scene change reads as a break, one dropped mid sentence reads as a fault.
Plays once the video has finished. Fewer viewers stay for it, so completion is the lowest of the three, but it carries the least risk of any break, because anyone who leaves has already watched the whole programme.
Two Ways to Fill a Break
Once a break exists, something has to play in it, and Ads Manager gives you two routes.
Set the ad type to VAST URL and paste in a tag. The ad is then requested from your ad server or network at playback, which is what you want when you are selling through a network, filling programmatically, or need a campaign to change without anyone touching the title again. A campaign can carry several tags.
Or keep your own video creatives in the library and serve those. Each one has a name, a duration, a click through target and an active flag, so a house promo, a sponsor you sold yourself or a trailer for something else in your catalogue can be switched on and off without rebuilding the campaign around it.
Most operators run both. Their own creatives guarantee a floor, and a tag fills whatever is left.
Who Sees It, Where, and For How Long
A campaign is more than a file and a slot. Ads Manager sets the rules around it, and most of the revenue difference between two operators running the same inventory lives in these fields.
Placement. Ad interval decides whether the break is a pre roll, a mid roll or a post roll, and ad priority decides which campaign wins when more than one could play.
Skipping. A campaign can be skippable or not, and when it is, you set the skip time in seconds. That single number is the lever between completion rate and goodwill, and it is yours rather than a platform default.
Targeting. Limit a campaign by country, by category, by a maturity range, and by which apps it is allowed to run in, so a sponsor bought for the television is not spent on a phone.
Content targeting. Point a campaign at specific videos, live channels or series and cap impressions, which is what makes a directly sold sponsorship of one show possible rather than theoretical.
The Biggest Screen in the House
Television is where advertising still commands the highest rates, and it is also where a badly placed ad does the most damage. The sponsored slot on your TV apps sits below the hero, in the natural resting place between deciding what to watch and pressing play. It is reachable with a remote, it never blocks the content behind it, and it carries the same creative you are already running on the web. For an operator selling airtime directly, that is a living room impression with none of the production cost of a traditional spot.
One Placement, Every Screen
Sell the slot once and it renders everywhere. The same sponsored placement reflows into your mobile apps without a separate creative, a separate booking or a separate conversation with the advertiser. That matters commercially as much as technically, because a campaign that reaches phone, web and television as one buy is worth considerably more than three fragmented ones.
Free, Paid, or Both at Once
Advertising does not have to be your whole business model. The most durable services run more than one at a time: a free tier funded by ads that feeds a paid tier, so the catalogue does the acquisition work for you. Vodlix runs advertising alongside subscriptions and rentals on the same platform, and a single title can be free with advertising for one audience and behind a subscription for another. Your reports and sales dashboard show what each model actually returns, which is the only honest way to decide how much of your catalogue should stay free. The full picture of OTT monetization covers how the three fit together.
Frequently Asked Questions
Have questions about taking advantage of this limited-time offer? Check out the FAQ for answers.