Apple: TVOD IAP offer creation

If you want to offer TVOD content through an In-app purchase on Apple you will need to create an offer in the store and match it with an offer in the Magine Pro Console.

General information

Apple has a limit on how many offers you can create. So, depending on the size of your catalogue and the number of planned offers you can choose between two setups.

1. If you have a few TVOD offers you can create one offer per asset e.g. for each live event
2. If you have plenty of TVOD offers you will need to work with pricing tiers and apply the offer to several assets

Apple offer setup

Apple offers three different types of in-app purchases (consumable, non-consumable and non-renewing subscription) that you could use for TVOD offers. We recommend that you always set up your offers as "consumable offers". That guarantees that a user can repurchase the offer as often as she likes.

Note: Consumable products can't be restored. If you want that an EST offer can be restored you can set it up as a Non-consumable purchase. In that case, you will also need to set up separate Apple offers for every EST offer. Otherwise, your customer can only purchase one EST offer.

1. Select your app
2. Click on App Store
3. Select Manage In-App purchases
4. Click on the blue plus button to add a new In-app purchase
5. Select Consumable
6. Add a unique Product ID and copy it
7. Add a reference name
8. Select a price and a start/end date
9. Add app store information
10. Add offer review information (screenshot of details page with purchase button and test account credentials)
11. Save the offer

Note: The name and the description of the offer won't be visible in the app. The app uses the title of the offer from the console instead.

Create matching offer in the console

When you have created an offer in Apple you need to create an offer in the Magine Pro Console.

1. Go to the commercial section in the Magine Pro Console
2. Click on "Create offer"
3. Name your offer
4. Select Third-party and then Rental, EST or Pass in the drop-down menu
5. Add unique selling points and an image
6. Select Apple as a provider
7. Paste the Apple Product ID into the external product ID field
8. Define in which region the offer can be purchased
9. Add a package
10. Add at least a start date and a purchase period for rental and pass offers
11. Review and create

Best practice: offer tiers

When you have plenty of TVOD assets you will need to use offer tiers on Apple. A tier is an offer that you connect to several offers in the Magine Pro Console. Here is an example:

• You have 200 TVOD assets.
• You break up those assets into price groups
• Tier 1: 2,99
• Tier 2: 3,99
• Tier 3: 4,99
• Tier 4: 5,99
• You create an offer per price tier in Apple
• You assign the same Apple product ID to the offers in the console that should be associated with that price tier

Advantages:

1. you easily stay under the offer limit Apple has implemented
2. the customer sees the title of the offer from the console and not the general description from the Apple Store account

Shows, Seasons and episodes

You can create TVOD offers for complete shows, seasons and episodes in the same way as described above. If you want to do that you always need to include the show and the episodes in the package.

If you offer single episodes the customer can rent the next episode directly at the end of the episode she has access to. At the end of the episode, a "watch next episode" dialogue appears on the iOS mobile app and enables the customer to rent the next episode.