How to add extra metadata to your videos with custom attributes

What are custom attributes?

Custom attributes are a powerful and flexible way to add additional metadata to a video. They allow you to classify your videos in custom and creative ways, giving you massive flexibility to search and sort your content with your API-connected tools. 

Custom attributes are also pushed automatically into integrated Marketing Automation Platforms, including Hubspot, Marketo, Oracle Eloqua, and Salesforce.

Custom attributes give you complete control over defining any metadata for your video that's important to your video strategy. For example, you can use custom attributes to organize your videos by project, by 'top of funnel' vs 'bottom of funnel' content, by product line, or any other relevant terms. You can set as many custom attributes as you need to your videos, meaning each video can be organized into as many sub-categories as you need.

What are custom attributes for?

Custom attributes are a powerful tool that you can use creatively for your own unique purposes. Essentially, they are a tool you can use for different API scenarios to allow your various tools to pull in and segment videos based on the custom attribute tags you have set for each video.

You can call custom attributes for anything you build using the Vidyard Dashboard API, and custom attributes are also pushed into integrated Marketo, HubSpot, or Oracle Eloqua accounts.
Note: Vidyard's Dashboard API documentation contains a list of these attribute endpoints.

 Example: 

• With the Marketo or HubSpot integration, you could use custom attributes to create Smart Lists segmented by "Top of Funnel" videos, or even by videos selling products in a certain price range.
• You could set custom attributes based on the content of your videos. Then set up your website's CMS (content management system) to pull videos into different pages of your site based on their content. This way, as you update content in Vidyard, your website will dynamically update which videos it shows with relevant content. 
• You could create an integrated enterprise search that crawls through the attributes for advanced metadata.

Parts of a custom attribute

To add an attribute you must select an Attribute type, Attribute name, and Value. This is where you define all the specific characteristics of this attribute.

1. Attribute Name: The label, or category for the attribute value.
2. Attribute Type: What type of data the attribute value will be (text, number, list, or flag).
3. Value: The specific value that is assigned to that video. 
4. Privacy: Whether the attribute should be available publicly, or only securely through the API

For example, let's say you want to classify a video based on the product line. We could create the following attribute: 

Attribute Name: Product Line
Attribute Type: Text
Value: Widget
Privacy: Private

This would add a secure Product Line=Widget custom field to the video metadata.  

However, with custom attributes, you're setting these details specifically so that your API-connected tools can read them (including Marketo), and be able to sort them based on these extra details.

Public vs. Private attributes

You have the choice between adding public or private attributes to your Vidyard videos.

Public attributes 

Metadata associated with the Vidyard video video is available publicly through the page on which the video is embedded. Any public custom attributes that are added to a video are also returned as part of this information.

As a result, you might use video metadata, and specifically custom attributes, to customize the functionality of the Vidyard video and the experience on the webpage. For example, you might dynamically load content into the video or manipulate the page in reaction to a "Vidyard player Event" (an action on the video, such as ready, pause, seek, etc). 

Public attributes are available through the Vidyard Dashboard API, as part of the player object available through the Player API, and as a JavaScript variable in the video player events as CTA.player_public_attributes.

Private attributes

Private custom attributes are available securely through the Dashboard API only. (Learn more below.)

Attribute Types

Use the attribute type to set the type of value for your attribute. 

<screenshot of attribute type dropdown> 

Here's a breakdown of what the four attribute types are for: 

Set custom attributes on a video

1. Sign in to your Vidyard account
2. Go to your library, and select the video you'd like to set custom attributes on
3. Select Settings from the left-hand menu bar, then Add Attribute under the Custom Attributes section 
4. Enter a name for your attribute, then select Create new
5. Select your attribute type from the dropdown list, and select Add when finished
6. Enter a Value for your attribute
   • The value available is based on the Type of attribute you selected (for example, text lets you enter text, boolean gives you a toggle for ON/OFF)
7. Choose whether you'd like your attribute to be Public or Private using the Privacy dropdown

Remove a custom attribute from a video

If want to remove an unnecessary attribute from a video, simply select the X icon next to the attribute you want to delete from the attribute list.

Making use of your custom attributes

In order to pull custom attribute data into another application, you or your web developer need to use Vidyard's Dashboard API Attribute endpoints to tell your integrated platform where to find this information, and what to do with it.

Here's an example of things you can tell your integration to do with Vidyard's Dashboard API Attribute endpoints:  

• "Get Top of funnel videos"
• "Get all Gated videos"
• "Get all videos from Summer Sales campaign"
• "Get all videos about products in the $12,000 range"

Then you (or your web developer) can set up your integrated application to do something specific or interesting with this information. 

For example: 

• Display all "Top of funnel" videos on this web page
  or
• In Marketo, give a certain score to all leads who have "watched 50% of a video" with the attribute "Funnel: Top"