Introducing Quick Brick for greater speed, scale and efficiency

OTT service operators have seen consistent and steady growth over the last few years, and in recent months have seen adoption and usage surge:

The average US household has 3.3 streaming subscriptions, up 27% in Q1 2020¹
Connected TV viewing hours grew by over a billion hours in the first part of 2020²
Success of AVOD and SVOD models: Tubi (AVOD) viewing hours were up 100% in April 2020³, and Disney Plus (SVOD) has nearly achieved its five year subscription goal within six months⁴
80% of US households have at least one streaming device, up YOY⁵

This surging demand of viewers has challenged media companies to act fast, meet viewers on their terms, and deploy different strategies to capture and hold onto market share, which is precisely what Zapp’s new Quick Brick Framework has been designed for: speed and scale. By simplifying OTT video app development, shrinking time to market, and accelerating return on investment, Zapp helps media companies optimize day-to-day app operations, and instills a practice of experimenting, learning, and iterating to ensure apps stay relevant and competitive.

Now media companies of all sizes and make ups can make quick strategic and competitive moves while simultaneously maintaining a UI and UX worthy of the world’s leading OTT services. Some recent examples of how OTT services are moving fast to adapt to market conditions include:

Changing content release schedules and quickly updating your app, just like the BBC who brought forward the release of the new season of Killing Eve due to content production disruptions
Integrating new content, new campaigns, and new viewer privileges, just like Amazon Prime who launched the SXSW Film Festival free online to all Amazon users
Launching a new app and using the first months to test and optimize, just like NBC who launched its inaugural Peacock app a few months early to a limited base, allowing them to test and refine the platform before a full launch in summer 2020

These competitive moves – whether to launch, grow, or reach new audiences – cannot succeed without app technology that delivers speed, scale, and cost-efficiency. Now is the time to turbocharge your app performance with Zapp’s new Quick Brick Framework.

Speed: Shrink Development and Deployment Times

In April 2020 alone, Netflix released 5 new versions of its Android mobile app⁶. That’s one new version every 4.4 business days! The speed with which they iterate is both industry leading and industry accessible. Media companies don’t need a large team of dedicated developers and a customized app infrastructure – what they need is underlying app technology that can empower non-developers and shrink development and deployment times.

Launching new apps can no longer be a 12 month effort – if you’re not in market, you’re not gaining viewers and you’re delaying your return on investment. Zapp includes pre-integrated partners and enables agile development practices that significantly speed time to launch and enable media companies to iterate rapidly after launch. The new Quick Brick framework allows UI features to code-once and scale across multiple platforms for even greater speed and efficiency.
Learning, optimizing, and responding to market feedback comes down to speed: the faster you can drive, the further you can go. Make changes to test and improve the UX, while regressing anything that didn’t have a positive outcome: new image formats, new content hierarchies, new navigation, etc. With extensive ready-to-go UI features and code-free configuration, Zapp breaks down obstacles to deploy new apps and app updates, enabling media companies to release updated apps whenever they want.

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Scale: Multiply and Overlap App Development Tasks

Launching apps across the leading platforms has grown more complex, largely due to managing the multiple code bases. Zapp’s newest Quick Brick framework allows media brands (and our internal developers) to code UI features once in Javascript and launch across multiple platforms at a reduced overhead.

Plan resources per screen: It’s now mobile and TV. And no longer iOS and Android, or AppleTV, Android TV, Amazon Fire, LG and Samsung. Action a change once for all your same-screen apps. Zapp’s BuildOps and Studio enable non-developers to manage one layout for mobile and another for TV, unlocking the scale companies need to operate efficiently.
Create more cost-efficient partner integrations: All UI elements can be coded once in Javascript for video players, push notifications, user log-in, and more, and reused across multiple apps.

Cost-Efficiency: Ensure Booming Growth Doesn’t Lead to Booming Costs

Zapp scales developers’ code and scales traditional development tasks to non-developers (at non-developer salaries).

Empower designers to both design and implement. Designers can “develop” using Zapp’s Quick Brick framework, and bring their sketch files to life in an app, removing the development queue. Zapp’s new Quick Brick Framework provides designers and members of the digital team with extensive UI configuration tools – with access to hundreds of design parameters – to freely create custom UIs without the need for code. In addition, they can instantly preview the designs and share with stakeholders without consuming developer resources
Free developers to spend more time developing, and not compiling builds or adjusting designs. Zapp manages app maintenance and required OS updates, freeing developers to create and scale their own code to supplement the core features of our feature-rich platform.

Quick Brick Framework Enables Speed, Scale and Cost-Efficiency

The new Quick Brick framework builds on the already powerful Zapp Core framework, with new capabilities including:

Streamlined UI design tools - App designers and developers can create bespoke user interfaces that seamlessly scale across mobile and TV platforms, without writing any code. Zapp Studio’s new design toolkit provides direct control over hundreds of design attributes, shrinking the time required to create unique, bespoke apps.
Enhanced developer toolkit - App features that utilize Zapp’s pluggable architecture – via Zapp Marketplace – can now be developed once and applied across multiple platforms, reducing development costs and complexity. For example, the UI for log in plug-ins now requires a single Javascript developer to support all platforms.
Accelerated post-launch agility - Media companies can utilize non-developers to adjust – or completely re-design – their OTT video apps without having to rebuild and submit their apps to app stores, further increasing Zapp users’ ability to adjust and pivot their OTT strategy as market conditions change.

Request a demo and see how Zapp and the new Quick Brick framework can help you increase your media app’s performance.