Video Delivery: Transforming AP’s Platforms for the Digital Era

Context

By 2008, video had become central to the Associated Press (AP) business model, but its delivery infrastructure remained analog. Live feeds relied on satellite transmission, and archival footage was distributed manually through tapes. This limited scalability and speed in a breaking news environment where seconds mattered.

AP needed a modern, digital-first delivery system that could serve a broad customer base that included broadcasters, digital publishers, social media platforms, and corporations. Each operated under unique licensing models, metadata, and entitlement models.

As the UX leader for AP’s video platforms, I guided the modernization journey from fragmented, legacy systems to a unified digital ecosystem that transformed how customers accessed and used content.

Driving Product Evolution

Phase 1 – Modernizing Archival Access

In 2008, I partnered with the product and engineering teams to digitize AP’s massive video archive and design an online experience that dramatically reduced access time.

Key achievements:

• Created an intuitive search interface optimized for metadata inconsistencies across third-party sources.

• Enabled self-service downloads that replaced manual tape requests, cutting delivery times from days to minutes. This transformation made archival content instantly accessible and significantly improved operational efficiency.

• Implemented a transparent pricing model that reduced audit overhead and increased customer trust.

Phase 2 – Democratizing Access with AP VideoHub

In 2012, I led the UX strategy for AP VideoHub, a new platform that made live and recent video content accessible to organizations of all sizes. The product targeted emerging markets such as online news outlets and social media publishers.

Key innovations:

• A browse-first experience that surfaced trending and live content in real time.

• A follow feature for updates on topics and events, improving user engagement.

• Streamlined live video setup for smaller customers with limited technical expertise.

AP VideoHub achieved global adoption across 10,000 B2B customers, increasing live bookings by 42 percent and curated downloads by 54 percent in its first year. The platform received high praise across the media industry, including from the Managing Editor of Time Magazine, who described it as “the best B2B news video experience” and “perfect, there is nothing more to ask for.”

Phase 3 – Unifying Platforms into AP Newsroom

By 2014, led the UX design for AP Newsroom, a consolidation effort that unified text, photo, and video platforms under one customer experience. This initiative standardized access, enabled cross-media storytelling, and improved onboarding for new customers.

A major part of this work involved transforming search and metadata. I collaborated closely with the metadata engineering team to enrich tagging for people, events, locations, and styles so editors could find the right footage quickly and confidently. To advance this capability, I introduced the Google Maps API, enabling geotagging and spatial search. This innovation improved discoverability and inspired new geolocation-based products for AP.

Key results included:

• Seamless integration of text, photo, and video content, allowing editors to build richer stories.

• Metadata enrichment that improved accuracy and relevance across millions of assets.

• A 25 percent reduction in support calls and faster customer onboarding.

• The metadata framework continues to enable new AP products and workflows more than six years after my transition.

This unification positioned AP as a global leader in digital media workflows and set a new standard for video delivery and search in the news industry.

Leadership in Action

Throughout this 12-year transformation, I focused on creating scalable design mechanisms that connected technology modernization with user needs.

Driving Strategic Clarity

• Defined a multi-phase UX roadmap that evolved with AP’s digital transformation strategy.

• Partnered with cross-functional teams to ensure product decisions reflected both business and newsroom priorities.

Scaling Collaboration

• Built strong partnerships between UX, product, and engineering, ensuring customer needs guided design priorities.

• Created UX patterns and shared design libraries that supported rapid experimentation across multiple platforms.

Elevating Experience Quality

• Introduced usability testing and iterative feedback loops to validate solutions before rollout.

• Mentored designers and researchers, establishing a customer-first mindset that sustained through multiple reorganizations.

These leadership mechanisms helped sustain quality and strategic alignment as AP evolved from legacy delivery to modern, cloud-based platforms.

Impact

• Global adoption: Over 10,000 B2B customers adopted AP VideoHub across news, digital, and corporate sectors.

• Efficiency gains: Live bookings increased by 42 percent, curated content downloads by 54 percent, and support calls decreased by 25 percent.

• Revenue growth: Video downloads grew by 27 percent, establishing new monetization streams.

• Customer trust: Net Promoter Score improved from 6 to 9 after AP Newsroom launched.

• Industry recognition: Praised by the Managing Editor of Time Magazine as “the best B2B news video experience.”

• Lasting impact: The metadata enrichment and geotagging framework I championed continues to drive innovation and product opportunities years later.

Reflection

This 12-year transformation was one of the most fulfilling chapters of my career. It proved that design can reshape how industries work, not just how products look. When the Managing Editor of Time Magazine called the VideoHub experience “perfect,” I realized that the team had achieved something enduring, a product that met every expectation of speed, usability, and reliability.

That milestone became the moment I knew it was time to seek a new challenge, to apply the same customer-centric, mechanism-driven approach to a different scale. I joined Amazon to lead product and experience transformation across Amazon Devices and AWS, bringing the same focus on quality, innovation, and trust that had defined my AP journey.