Release Date: 10/14/2020

Deployment Overview

Release Details

In this release, we introduce the first step in easier video automation processes by allowing users to select video templates from a predefined style guide. These will be the building blocks for us to expand the available library options and start to help automate the video render process more efficiently. Our hope is to also help users see styling effects during the decision process to help in their expectations and early feedback for customized changes. 

The next important end-user change will be the availability of the ad customizer feed link. We have found the current process for adding ad customizers to a Google account is inefficient and takes a couple of action steps to complete. These action steps however could not be completed at one committed time. The user would have to enable the feature and then await us to configure the account before the feed link became available. We have addressed that process to improve efficiency.

Video: Select Pre-Formatted Template Style

With this feature, we wanted to improve the video rendering process by eliminating some of the basic questions that arise when requesting a new video template. This can at times be a very time-consuming process when emailing clients back and forth.  So to help some of these inefficiencies we hope to address the following:

• Providing pre-defined options to help the decision process for customers in style, color, and text decisions. 

• We wanted clients to have a more interactive experience in the selection of these design elements.

• Utilizing predefined style guides we can reduce turnaround times for the first draft videos

• We still wanted to allow customers a customized option

How It Works

The user selects the template type they are looking for (Companion or Digital Asset)

The user will see 3 options by type of video this includes 2 predefined style guides and one labeled “Custom Template”

Depending on the template type the user will find editable values that they can provide input for

This includes Text Fields, Disclaimer Text, Font Choices, and color selections.

As the user makes the selections or enters values they can see how these choices will be presented in the template

Below are some examples of the new interface:

If you want to see a video walkthrough using the new feature visit us here

Search: Ad Customizer Feed Link Available Immediately Upon Activation

Prior to this release, users had to wait until the Ad Customizer Feature was configured for the actual feed link to be available. However, we wanted clients to have the ability to activate the feature inside Hoot and have the ability to configure the connection points inside Google at the same time. This is meant to reduce the number of times a user would have to come back into the system to check on the status. 

Once the feature is activated in the advertiser settings you can now navigate to the Search Templates Section and the copy feed link option is available immediately. This supports also the previous change where we also included ad customizer .csv file on the same page. This means the user can activate and navigate to this screen while simultaneously have a Google window open and have all of the information needed to configure and schedule the ad customizer data in the account. If you need instruction on the process visit here.

Minor Bugs and Tasks

Below are general fixes during the sprint release
3611 Error deleting feed filter groups
3655 Custom Feed Filter Attribute Delete Issue
3669 Video campaign edition is not correctly validating the inputs on editing
3688 [Backend] Add support for the Minimum fee for clients
3674 Add a new Nexrender node to the farm
3675 Clean SRP propagated attributes
3681 New server for rendering purposes
3690 Master Billing Report for fees by product
3691 Advertiser report with website URLs