Andrew Wommack Ministries
How AWM grows its following with centralized video management
Unify and modernize video content management
Andrew Wommack Ministries (AWM) is a Christian ministry headquartered in Woodland Park, Colorado. The ministry reaches global audiences through its teachings via broadcast TV, radio, and digital channels.
The situation
Multiple brands and fragmented processes caused inefficiencies
Since its inception in 1978, Andrew Wommack Ministries (AWM) has reached millions through its content. In addition to Gospel Truth with Andrew Wommack, a broadcast TV show, the non-profit oversees several sister organizations that produce content, including the Charis Bible College, The Truth and Liberty Coalition, and GospelTruth.TV.
Although they started in broadcast television, a few years ago, they realized the importance of adding additional digital distribution channels to meet the needs of their loyal following and reach new generations of Christians.
Justin Peterson, Executive Director of IT at AWM, explained that their video content distribution was spread across several websites, each managed by a different team with a different workflow and tools. This led to many inefficiencies and wasted resources, and they realized that to scale, they would need a consistent, centralized way to manage their live and on-demand content.
The solution
Streamlining and modernizing video content with Backlight
AWM began using the Zype Streaming Platform, a cloud-based online video platform with a built-in CMS and CRM, embeddable HTML5 video player, tools for encoding and distribution to web-based platforms, and consumer and content analytics to manage its video content. Introducing Streaming Platform meant that AWM could centralize its video content and streamline its distribution across its different websites.
They leveraged Zype’s API to facilitate content import and created a dedicated front-end portal that allows external producers to upload their content easily. This content is ingested directly into the Streaming Platform with associated metadata, such as video categories and tags, and can be added to dynamic playlists for fast organization. Additionally, AWM discovered that Streaming Platform’s live-to-archive functionality could reduce the time between a live broadcast ending and when it was available online. Every week, the ministry produces around 15 live streams, and they can publish the same content ‘on demand’ within just 15 minutes of the live broadcasts finishing.
“We have 33 external programmers and five different production teams internally sending content to the portal. We can integrate with the API and ingest it into the Streaming Platform with all the metadata in the structure we want. We’re ingesting up to 120 hours of content per week right now, and that requires a reliable API to support that integration.”
Since adopting the Streaming Platform, AWM’s media team has grown considerably, and they’ve been able to add additional Backlight solutions to support their goal of reaching new and wider audiences.
This includes Zype Apps Creator, a cloud-native, web-based, no-code app-building solution, and Zype Playout, a cloud-native, web-based playout solution to program and schedule live or VOD content into linear channels. Using Backlight’s tools, AWM has monetized its extensive content library by offering ad-supported and subscription access to its content.
They’re especially leaning into Zype Playout this year to grow GospelTruth TV, their OTT channel, which they stream 24/7 on their owned and operated (O&O) website. With Zype Playout, they can turn live and on-demand video into digital linear channels for distribution to O&O or third-party FAST platforms.
“We continue to grow, and Backlight’s been able to keep up with our needs.”
Moreover, as part of AWM’s plans to expand their social presence to reach a new generation of Christians, they also began using Backlight’s Wildmoka Clip Studio, a web-browser-based video editing and distribution tool for quickly producing near-live clips and highlight reels tailored to specific audiences and digital platforms. In the past, if a team wanted to publish a video to social media, they would need to use a separate tool to clip it, reformat it, and then upload it directly to each social media platform. Clip Studio allows them to ingest video directly from the Streaming Platform and then publish it, at the click of a button, to all social media platforms simultaneously. Clip Studio also provides helpful templates and channel configurations that simplify publishing by automatically formatting videos to different social media platforms' aspect ratio requirements.
“We couldn’t market video at scale without a tool like Clip Studio”
The result
Since AWM began using Backlight technologies, Peterson explains that the organization has been able to create more content and distribute it out to more platforms, increasing his teams’ productivity and expanding the organization’s impact.
Using Backlight, which Peterson describes as “very strong, very robust,” AWM has been able to:
Backlight helps you centralize your video management
In the 2024 calendar year, Peterson says AWM plans to expand its OTT offerings to increase engagement with new generations of Christians and also see where they can continue creating efficiencies in their workflows and processes.
Contact us today to learn more about how Backlight technologies can support your faith content strategy.
