Content creation tools in Arena

Understand how Arena, your app, and the Experiences SDK work together to serve content to viewers.

At a high level:

Arena is where content managers create and manage content items and the metadata the SDK uses.
Your app decides where Experiences appears in the UI and configures how content is selected in each place.
The Experiences SDK requests content from Arena based on your app configuration and viewer preferences, then presents it in the player UI.

What the SDK requests and uses (content items and metadata)

The Experiences SDK doesn't create content. It requests content items from Arena and presents them in your app.

At a high level, the SDK works with:

Content types: Stories, Moments, and Videos. See Experiences content types.
Metadata fields that drive behavior and UI, such as:
- Labels used for filtering and ordering. See Data sources, Labels data source, and Labels mechanism.
- Title, subtitle, and description used for widget display and search. See Free text search and Widget item title and subtitle.
- Localized text fields (where supported). See Localization.

Arena is where content managers create and publish content items and manage many of the metadata fields the SDK later uses.

Arena provides different creation workflows, depending on how automated or hands-on the content process needs to be:

Workflow	Best for	What's configured in Arena
Create	On-demand, guided video creation	Content focus, structure, length, and output format
Rules	Scalable, event-based automation	Triggers, schedules, logic, and outputs
Clipro	Full editorial control	Editorial decisions and final packaging

If you need to change what content exists, how it's published, or which metadata it has, that work happens in Arena.

The Experiences SDK is integrated into your app. Your app owns the surrounding UI and decides where and how viewers can open Experiences content.

In the app integration, you typically configure:

Player sources (where Experiences can be launched from): entry points and widgets. See Player sources.
Moments container (embedded player): an option to embed the Moments player inside your app UI instead of presenting it full screen. See Player sources.
Data sources (how content is selected in code): labels, IDs, free text search, and recommendations. See Data sources.
CMS-configured widgets: content managers set widget settings in Experiences CMS; developers place those widgets in the app, and the SDK uses the current CMS settings. See Widget builder concept and CMS-configured widgets.
Recommendations and personalization: Trending (global) and Personalization (viewer-specific), including labels-based or ID-based explicit patterns, follow-based UI, and For you (implicit). See Recommendations and personalization and Follow button.
Delegates (how your app reacts to SDK events): optional callbacks for lifecycle and interactions. See Delegates.

If the goal is show the right thing in the right place, the key split is:

Arena controls what exists and what metadata is attached.
Your app controls where Experiences appears and which data sources and recommendation options are applied, including explicit personalization via labels and IDs.