Creating and managing categories on Vimeo OTT

This article discusses creating and managing categories for your videos.

In this article:

• What are categories?
• Create a category
• General settings
• Content settings
• Distribution settings
• Discovery settings
• Content organization best practices

What are categories?

Categories are groups of videos, events, collections, and buy/rent products. Categories allow you to organize your content, similar to parent folders in a filing system. 

There are two types of categories:

• Manual categories allow you to add specific pieces of content into a category. You can search for a video, collection, live event, or product, add it to the category, and manually arrange the display order. When you want to add more or rearrange content, you can manually add and rearrange at any time. 
• Dynamic categories allow you to set up rules of what content is pulled into a category and how that content is displayed to the viewer. You set up filtering rules based on metadata (ie. tags, content type, video duration, etc.) for what content should get added to a category. Once you set up the filtering rules, content is added dynamically when it meets them. You set up sort rules to determine the order of content displayed to viewers (ie. random order, release date, number of views. etc.).
  You can read more about how to configure a Dynamic Category here.
  ⚠️Note: Currently, multiple categories can only be used when you sell a subscription product with Vimeo OTT. If you are only selling transactional products, however, you can still create a featured carousel for content that you'd like to highlight. 
  

Create a category

To create a category:

1. Navigate to Content > Categories.
2. Click the + Add button next to the Categories section of the Content page or + New Category at the top of the page.
   
3. A pop-up will open and prompt you to add the category title and choose if you want to create a Manual or Dynamic Category. Create a title, make your selection, and then select  Add.
   
   

General settings

After creating your category, you'll be brought to the category's settings page, starting with the General settings. Here, you can modify the category title, as well as add a Short description, a Full description, and a Thumbnail. You can also add multi-language translations for these text fields. 

Content settings

Based on whether you chose a Manual or Dynamic category, this section will allow you to search and add content or set up rules of what content will get added.  Read about creating Dynamic Category filters and sort rules.

Distribution settings

The Distribution tab allows you to control how your category is distributed and discovered across your platform. Settings you can configure here are:

• You’ll be able to set its visibility to Published or Private.
• You can also geo-block your category to make it available or unavailable in certain regions. The default option is Worldwide, but if you select Choose countries, you’ll need to specify which countries, and whether you’d like to limit your collection to only those countries, or if you’d like to prevent people in those countries from watching.
• You can replace the category ID in your category's URL with a custom URL specified here.  
• You can add Subtitles and captions, enable comments, add a screener, and download the video in multiple resolutions. 

Discovery settings

The Discovery tab is for adding information about your category to make it more discoverable for search results. You can: 

• Designate the category to be your Featured category, pinning it to the top of the Browse page of your site and apps. This will add it to your featured carousel. 
• Add Tags to your category 
• Add Genres to your category 
• Add Cast, Crew, Release date, Rating, and Advisory to your category 
• Add a License to your category 
• Add a Media ID to your category
• Add Advanced metadata (only applicable if you are using our API for data)
• Add Image metadata for images you upload 
• Add Custom metadata.  

Click Save once you’ve made all your changes.

Content organization best practices

Watch the video below to learn some tips for organizing your content.