Avails: Overview

Everything you need to know about avails for Google

Overview

By uploading your avail you provide us with info about the time, location, and business rules related to offering a movie or TV title. This is the step that kicks off the delivery process.

EMA 1.7 Avail Movie requirements can be found here

EMA 1.7 Avail TV requirements can be found here

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Lead Times (SLAs) for Avails & Assets

Please upload your avails and follow with asset delivery with as much lead time as possible in order to ensure titles go live on time.

Below are our minimum lead time SLAs for movie and TV content.

Note: For NDTV, you can provide the episode avails when you provide the season avails, or you can provide them on a rolling basis over the course of the season.

Creating and formatting an avail

Google accepts avails in the industry standard Entertainment Merchant's Association (EMA) .xlsx format. The current version supported by Google is 1.7.2.

You'll need to create a spreadsheet that meets the EMA standard and enter the availability info for each title. You can click here to download a sample and follow the same structure when adding new rows.

Each avail row represents 1 VOD or EST license. A single availability window for 1 title can occupy up to 6 rows, for both license types in UHD, HD, and SD formats. If a title has multiple availability windows, include a new row for each window per license type.

Example: If a title is being made available in SD, HD & UHD in both EST and VOD, make sure the avail file contains 6 rows of information.

Ensure that all whitespaces are removed e.g. " EST" will result in errors. "EST" is the correct way.

A note on ALIDs: When choosing an ALID, you only need one per title, as they can be shared for the same title in different territories.

More details on this here

Google adds a suffix to the end of important IDs in TV avails, such as ALID, Series ContentID, Season ContentID and Episode ContentID. The suffix follows the format ID + language + localization type, separated by underscores. (e.g. _en_localization_type_unspecified or en_subbed or en_dubbed)

This allows our system to automatically generate separate avail lines from one avail submission for different versions of a show (e.g. subbed vs dubbed vs original version)

Please make sure that the avails you submit through the partner Portal do not include the Google appended suffix.

Uploading an avail

Sign in to Partner Portal and select your account. Then click "Avails Import" in the left menu bar
Select the plus button in the bottom-right corner.
Select Choose a File and upload your avail.
Choose either: Validate or Submit
1. Validate = uploading the avail to check for errors, but not submitting the avail to be processed
2. Submit = uploading and submitting the avail to be processed
When ready to import the avail, select Submit.

If you select 'Validate', and errors are found, the status will display as: 'INVALID'

If you select 'Validate', and no errors are found, the status will display as: 'VALID'

you will still need to submit the avail to be ingested and processed

If you select 'Submit', and errors are found, the status will display as: 'INVALID'

If you select 'Submit', and no errors are found;

and there are Titles currently being reviewed by Play Support, the status will display as: 'PENDING MANUAL REVIEW'. After the review, the status will then update to 'COMPLETED'
However if later, the status displays as 'CANCELLED', this means that the Avail was able to begin processing as there were no errors in the avail format, but some titles in the avail:
- Failed automatically due to rules set for the offers
- May have been manually Rejected by our Internal Team as they would also violate rules set for the offers
- Did not Update an existing Title or create a New Title
Keep in mind, though the Status shows 'Cancelled', some titles may have Completed importing. Essentially, Cancelled = Not every title processed as Complete; but the ones that auto-updated have processed
- Please reach out to Google Movie &T V support if you want to know the details of which titles were affected in the cancelled avail.

If you select 'Submit', and no errors are found,

and there are no Titles requiring review, the status will display as: 'COMPLETED'

(Choosing 'Submit' is the same thing as 'Validate', but also uploads the avail to be processed)

Google processes avails within 72 hours. You may not see the updates to the offers right away. Check the Portal to confirm your avails are appearing.

There is no limit to the amount of Titles you can submit at one time; however, keep in mind that the larger the file size (high number of Titles provided ) the longer it will take for the avail to upload and display a pass or fail status.

After the avail successfully processes and displays with Completed status, new offers will be generated, and the existing offers will be updated. Assets may be delivered before avail submission and processing, but content will not be made live on the store until an avail has been received for it.

With the exception of made-for-TV movies, TV content must be availed in the "TV" tab of the EMA avail. TV content submitted as Movie content will not be accepted.

Error Messages

If you've noticed a typo in an avail you've uploaded, simply upload another avail with the right title and the same ALID to correct it.

If you upload a file that contains invalid data this will trigger an alert message. There are three types of messages that might appear:

Error: The avail failed validation. Issues that trigger an error message need to be resolved before the avail can be processed.
Warning: These line items will be skipped during the review process but will not prevent the entire avail from being processed.
Info: These are info messages. Affected items will be processed as usual with the rest of the avail. The issue can be addressed at a later time.

Alert messages appear as a pop-up that contains the alert message, the affected line items, and affected titles, as well as follow up instructions on how to address the issue. Multiple alert messages can appear at the same time.

To find the exact title that caused a problem, simply go to Avails Import in the menu on the left, then click into the row showing your last avail. A pop-up will open showing you the problem and action you need to take followed by 3 columns for affected tab, lines and titles to help you understand what exactly needs to be updated. You can click on Download Error Report in the bottom right corner to make it easier for you to work through the errors.

Listed below are some of the most common messages you might receive when processing an EMA avail.

If you see 'operations contact' in any error messages, please reach out to playsupport-moviestv@google.com.

Error Messages

The provided tier is not available in a contract. Please verify the tiers set up with Google by navigating to "Account Info' in your Partner Portal and selecting "VIEW PRICING TIERS". Please reach out to your operations contact if you have questions about this.

The price provided was not found in a contract. Please review pricing in your contract and reach out to your operations contact if a new pricing contract needs to be created.

The channel in the Any field was not found. Please make sure this channel corresponds to the correct territory and ensure the channel name is spelled correctly.

The price format is invalid. It should be in decimal format.

Edit-Level ID is missing. Edit-Level IDs should be entered in either ProductID if using EIDR in EMA 1.6, EditID if using EIDR in EMA 1.7 [https://support.google.com/moviestvpartners/answer/6357405] or AltID [https://support.google.com/moviestvpartners/answer/6357395]

LicenseType is invalid - For a complete list of supported values, please reference [https://support.google.com/moviestvpartners/answer/6357404]

Titles with the same Edit-Level ID (EIDR or Alt ID), Territory, and LocalizationType cannot have different title names.

The EIDR ID provided is invalid. Please make sure the EIDR ID is properly formatted and registered at [https://ui.eidr.org].

The spreadsheet could not be parsed. Please make sure a standard Entertainment Merchant's Association (EMA) avail is provided. EMA avails can be found at [http://www.movielabs.com/md/avails]

LicenseRightsDescription is invalid. For a complete list of supported values, please reference [https://support.google.com/moviestvpartners/answer/6357370]

Line items with the same Edit-Level ID (EIDR or Alt ID), Territory, and LocalizationType must have the same TitleInternalAlias. Different titles can be stored in TitleDisplayUnlimited for reference.

Warning Messages

Preorders for the following titles are not supported. Please reach out to your operations contact before submitting pre-order line items.

Avails in the TV worksheet will be ignored. Please reach out to your TV operations contact for further information.

Titles in the following territories will be ignored because no matching contract was found: [Countries]. Please reach out to your operations contact to create contracts for these territories. The remainder of your avail will be processed as normal.

At this time, Google does not support "3D" or "3DUHD" as FormatProfile. These line items will not be processed.

Info Messages

The EIDR ID provided has been aliased in the EIDR registry. Please resubmit your avail with the survivor EIDR. Survivor EIDRs = [EIDR].

The EIDR-2 (ProductID column in EMA 1.6 and EditID column in EMA 1.7) provided is not associated to the EIDR-1 (ContentID column in EMA 1.6 and TitleID column in EMA 1.7) in the EIDR registry. Please resubmit your avail with the correct EIDR-1/EIDR-2 association according to https://ui.eidr.org.

The following titles are flagged as Full Delete. All avails and pricing will be deleted for titles in the specified territories. If this is incorrect, please update your avail. For more information on Full Delete, please reference [https://support.google.com/moviestvpartners/answer/6357414]

Downloading an avails report

The 2 tabs 'Movie Avails in EMA' and 'TV Avails in EMA' display availability information. You might use these page to perform the following:

Download your avails information in the EMA spec.
Audit your avails against Google's avails.

Simply filter against dimensions by selecting the filter bar

then your desired field to filter.

Manage columns that appear and download reports by selecting the more options button .

Manage columns: Select or deselect columns.
Download as CSV: Downloads the report with the filtered data and selected columns.
Download 1.7.2 avail: Downloads all availability data on the EMA 1.7.2 format.

Currently there is an issue when selecting ‘Download as CSV’: The Offers will download as a .csv file as usual, but when Excel opens, the sheet is completely empty of data.We are working on a fix but in the meantime this is a workaround:

Select the ellipses (3 dots) to the right of the screen and choose 'Manage columns'

Select all of your preferred columns to be downloaded

Deselect both Target Redelivery Time and Most Recent Redelivery Requested Time columns and click UPDATE

You will now be able to select Download as CSV and Excel will open with the populated data.

Setting up pre-orders in your avail

Setting up pre-orders is easy for titles that have been ingested through the new Next Gen pipeline but please note that this isn't available to all studios yet.

For select studios, pre-orders are currently only enabled for the following territories:
US, CA, GB, AU, DE, FR, JP, IT, KR, MX

Criteria

In your EMA Avail, use the ‘LicenseType’ = POEST to indicate preorder windows, along with corresponding LicenseType=EST windows. Movielabs sample avail. Please note, if you are including LicenseRightsDescription, this must read " Preorder EST" in order to be valid.
Ensure sequential Start and End dates between the POEST and EST windows. i.e. no overlap. e.g. POEST: 2019-05-01 - 2019-05-31 | EST: 2019-06-01 - Open.
Send trailer video, metadata, and artwork to respective post house as usual.

Avail FAQ

Why does EMA require multiple rows for a single title?

Each row will typically correspond to an offer/button on the platform. A typical set of avails for a title will have at least 4 rows (6 incl. UHD):

SD Purchase offer = LicenseType: EST, Quality: SD
HD Purchase offer = LicenseType: EST, Quality: HD
SD Rental offer = LicenseType: VOD, Quality: SD
HD Rental offer = LicenseType: VOD, Quality: HD

+ potentially

UHD Purchase offer = LicenseType: EST, Quality: UHD
UHD Rental offer = LicenseType: VOD, Quality: UHD

What if my title has multiple VOD or EST windows?

Every additional window requires its own unique row(s) in the spreadsheet. For example, if you wanted to communicate a current EST window and a future EST window (e.g., to communicate a price drop), it would look like this:

Row 1: Current SD EST

Row 2: Current HD EST

Row 3: Future SD EST

Row 4: Future HD EST

Can one row apply to multiple countries?

No. Each country you choose to avail a title in needs its own row(s). Making a title available in two countries would typically mean a minimum of eight rows if that title is offered in both EST and VOD for HD and SD.

Example:

Row 1: Canada - SD EST

Row 2: Canada - HD EST

Row 3: United States - SD EST

Row 4: United States - HD EST

Row 5: Canada - SD VOD

Row 6: Canada - HD VOD

Row 7: United States - SD VOD

Row 8: United States - HD VOD

How do I create avails where VOD and EST have different start dates?

Each VOD and EST avail has its own row. Therefore you can specify different information for EST and VOD line items, including start and end dates.

How do I remove a title from the store or prevent it from going live?

Fill in the EntryType column with Full Extract and update the end date to the past for all corresponding line items for a title and territory combination.. Please see the “EntryType” article for more information.

When removing or blocking TV seasons from going live, be sure to also include the season line items for a Title and Territory combination.

How can I avail a TV Movie?

Google supports

Made-for-TV Movies treated as Movies

Google does not support

Made-for-TV Movies treated as TV Episodes or Seasons

Stand alone content (ex: Lifetime Original Movies or Made-for-TV Movies) should be availed as a Movie, not a TV show.

What is my studio’s DisplayName?

You can confirm your studio’s DisplayName by accessing the Partner Portal and clicking on the Account Info icon; your studio’s DisplayName will appear as the “Name” listed under “Content Owners”

Where do I add the YouTube Channel display name in my avails?

Generally, the following guidelines apply for EMA 1.7 avails:

Movies

In the “AvailMetadata” - “Any” column.
Use only the main channel, regardless of release territory.

In the “AvailMetadata” - “Any” column.
Use the appropriate regional channel, dependent on the release territory.

Specifically, you'll need to use the YouTube channel display name you agreed to with Google when your account was set up.

A list of your channels can be viewed in the Partner Portal, by clicking on the Account Info icon; the list of all channels with their corresponding regions and languages will appear under “Channels”.

Please see the “Any” article for more information. If you're unsure, please contact Google Support on playsupport-moviestv@google.com

Is AltID equal to the CustomID I usually provide Google?

Partners providing EIDR IDs in their avails (at least EIDR-2 in the “ProductID” column) are able to make free use of the AltID column. For further information on EIDR and best practices for implementation, please reference the following: About EIDR

Partners who do not provide EIDR IDs may submit the same ID in the ALID, AltID, and ContentID column for the same edit.

Note: IDs are unique to a title’s version. For example, the Theatrical Version and Unrated Version of a given title should have separate, unique IDs. This removes ambiguity, and ensures that a clear association exists between the unique ID and the intended version of the title.

IMPORTANT: Avails sent without required IDs will not be accepted.

For TV content, are there any differences in behavior between Library and Next Day TV in the LicenseRightsDescription field?

Yes. Availing with “Library” in the LRD means that content will not publish until we have received and approved all the episodes in a given season - so incomplete seasons will not publish. Availing as “Next Day TV” will publish episodes as soon as they are approved individually, allowing them to publish before the season is complete.

I'm not sure if the avail I uploaded went through alright. Where can I check?

In the unlikely case of a portal timeout, it'll look like the avail upload never completes and you won't get a success message or a validation error. To confirm if the avail went through, go to 'Avails Import' and look for the status of the avail in question. If the status is "VALID" the avail uploaded successfully, if it's anything other than "VALID", please re-upload the avail and contact us in case it doesn't go through again.

How do I change/update prices/tiers for one or more titles?

If you want to update the prices of a subset of your catalog permanently (i.e. no temporary price reduction for a promotion) you can do a bulk update by submitting a new avail. To do this, click on 'Manage Columns', then select 'Download Master Avail'. In the file, update the 'Price Values' column by replacing the old price tier with the new one and re-import the avail.

Please make sure you pick a price tier that is already set up in your account. To check, go to "Account Info' in your Partner Portal and selecting "VIEW PRICING TIERS". Please reach out to your operations contact(playsupport-moviestv@google.com) if you have questions about this.

If you would like the history of prices reflected in the avail, close the most recent window with an end date and create a new window with the new price tier.