Promote a movie on the home screen

Overview

This page explains how to add a large promotional banner for a movie at the top of the home screen.

A separate scenario explains how to schedule this promotion so that it only appears for a specified period of time. See Schedule the visibility of rails on a page.

1. Add a promotional strip

To add a new promotional strip:

1. From the Operator Console (OpCon) home page, click Rails Builder.

2. In Templates on the left side of the screen, click on the home screen template:

   

3. In the right pane, click on the layout.

4. In the left pane, click Add Promotional Strip.

5. In Select Promotional Strip, click on the promotional strip type you want to use.
   For example, these types are ideal for promoting a single piece of content such as a movie:

   • Single Promotion: 4:1 Dual Height Row:

     

   • Single Promotion: 3:1 Dual Height Row:

     

   Note: In ION, promotional strips are displayed without a title. If you need to display a title, use a strip that supports a 16:9 image instead. For example, a Standard: 16:9 strip:

   

6. In Rail Name, type the name of the rail. For example, “Now available” or “Ya disponible”.
   Note: this is displayed as the title of the rail if you do not specify anything in Rail Title.

7. In Rail Title, select each locale in turn in the locale drop-down and type the title for that locale.
   For example:

   

   Note: if the locale you need is not displayed, add it in System Configuration – see Metadata languages. After you add the locale, you will need to restart this procedure to see it in the locales list.

8. Click Apply. The new empty promotional strip is added at the bottom of the screen.

9. If you use ION as your client application and you want the strip/rail to be taller than a standard rail/strip, you must also set an explicit height on the it. To do this:

   1. In the strip/rail, click Edit and then Rail Properties:

      

   2. Click Edit:

      

   3. In Additional Properties, click Add Property:

      

   4. In Key, type height.

   5. In Value, type the height of the strip in pixels. 640 is a good height for a promotion such as this:

      

   6. Click Save and then click Save Rail to confirm.

2. Add the movie to the promotional strip

To add the movie to the promotional strip:

1. In the new strip, click Add Content. This opens a screen where you can add content to the strip.
   It opens on Content, which lists the available VOD content.

2. Type in the search box to search for the movie that you want to promote or look for it in the list. You can use both search and filtering at the same time.
   You can filter the list by:

   • Showing – select Editorial Content to exclude series and seasons.

   • Visibility – you will usually only want to add content that is Visible or Scheduled.

   For example:

   

3. Once you have found the movie that you want to promote, click in the movie’s row:

   

   This adds it to the rail contents pane on the right:

   

4. Click Save Changes and then Continue to confirm.

5. Click < Back to Rails.

The strip should now look like this:

3. Position the promotional strip

Typically, you will want a promotional strip like this to appear at the top of the home screen.

To move the rail to the top:

1. Grab the handle to the left of the strip title:

   

2. Drag the strip until it is above all the other rails on the page.

3. Release the strip.

4. Click Save.

Result

If you use ION, the home screen should now display the strip containing your selected movie at the top: