What is a CNAME and how can I use it?

You may have noticed an option to add a CNAME record within the Sharing Page and Video Hubs set up pages. The video below provides information about CNAME and how it can benefit your video strategy.

What is a CNAME?

A CNAME is a type of DNS record that maps an alias name to a true or canonical domain name.

This means that you can mask the domain for a set of webpages and make them appear as though they are located elsewhere.

Why use a CNAME?

CNAMEs are important when using Vidyard for two major reasons: domain & brand consistency and marketing automation.

Domain and brand consistency

When you first set up a Vidyard account, you will notice that your sharing page and video hubs are hosted on the vidyard.com domain. When you provide someone with a link to either of these options, the addresses will not appear to be relevant to your organization.

Adding a CNAME record allows you to use your own domain on these pages. Visitors may then seamlessly transition between your website and both sets of pages without recognizing that the content exists on two separate domains.

Marketing automation

Hosting a video hub or sharing page on your own domain is a major benefit if you are tracking video view data with a marketing automation platform (MAP).

MAPs identify users on a domain-by-domain basis.

• If someone visits your site and fills out a form on your page, that identification will be associated with a MAP cookie, but only for activity on your domain.
• If the same person visits your sharing page hosted on vidyard.com, your MAP will not recognize the activity performed on your domain with the video view that occurred on your Vidyard hub or sharing page.
• By masking a Vidyard hub or sharing page with a CNAME, your MAP can then recognize the activity from your domain AND the video view from your sharing page as having occurred on the same domain and therefore belonging to the same visitor.

Adjust your CNAME settings in Vidyard

1. Change the route type for your video hub or sharing page
   • From the Vidyard dashboard, select Channels
   • For video hubs, click Hubs > Edit next to the appropriate hub
   • For sharing page, select Sharing Page > Settings
   • Use the dropdown menu to select Customer CNAME and enter your subdomain
2. Contact your web hosting company to set up your DNS (Domain Name Server)
   • You should have the option that defines the "Host" and "Points To"
   • The Host will be the subdomain of your choice, Points To will be hubs.vidyard.com for any hub or sharing page that does not require SSL/TLS security (https). If SSL/TLS is required, please refer to the article on securing your new sharing page or hub domain with SSL/TLS.
   • As long as the combination of Host and Domain matches the address entered for the CNAME in Vidyard, then everything will be set up correctly.

Example:

• If Host = example
• And Domain = yourdomain.com
• Then the CNAME entered into Vidyard = example.yourdomain.com

Additional considerations

1. You can use the same CNAME across various hubs and sharing pages as long as you add a / path to the end of the URL (e.g. videos.acme.com/videohub, and videos.acme.com/videohub2). That being said, it is advised to leave external facing video hubs on the root of a subdomain for sitemap SEO purposes.
2. Learn how to secure your new sharing page or hub domain with SSL
3. If you use a CNAME and have social sharing enabled, be aware that your domain may not be whitelisted by Twitter to allow inline playback.
   • If this is the case, the sharing page URL will show in the tweet, rather than rendering the video inline
   • To resolve this, head to the Twitter Card Validator and request whitelisting for your domain. This can be achieved by entering a sharing page URL that uses the CNAME.