Feed Arlo with the feed you already publish.

Arlo indexes catalogs through dotstudioPRO's ingestion pipeline. If you already publish an MRSS feed for DSP — or for Roku, Samsung, or any other partner using the same shape — you're already 99% of the way there. Add two optional customField entries and Arlo's recommendation engine gets sharper.

The canonical spec

The authoritative MRSS specification lives on the dotstudioPRO help center: Inbound MRSS Specifications. That document is the source of truth for required fields, controlled vocabularies (genres, ratings, languages, programming type, video type), namespaces, episodic taxonomy (Movie / Episode / Season / Series), ad markers, geo restrictions, and the full XSD shape.

At a glance, your feed needs to be valid RSS 2.0 with two namespaces declared:

<rss version="2.0"
     xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/"
     xmlns:dotstudiopro="https://www.dotstudiopro.com/rss/extensions/">

Each <item> represents a Movie, Episode, Season, or Series. Required fields are <guid isPermaLink="false">, <title>, a video file in <media:group> (for Movies and Episodes), and the appropriate <dotstudiopro:episodic> taxonomy element. Everything else is optional but improves the experience.

What Arlo extracts from your existing feed

These are all standard MRSS fields — nothing custom. If they're already in your feed (and they probably are), Arlo uses them directly:

• <title>, <description>, <description type="short"> — embedded into Arlo's semantic search index. The richer your descriptions, the better the recommendations.
• <media:thumbnail type="poster|wallpaper|spotlight_poster"> — Arlo picks the best aspect ratio per surface (chat row, modal hero, mobile card).
• <media:text type="genres"> — used as filter facets and ranking signal.
• <media:credit role="actor|director|writer"> — surfaces in "more from this director" recommendations.
• <media:rating> — respected when an account's parental controls apply.
• <media:text type="video_type|country|language"> — soft ranking signals.
• <dotstudiopro:episodic> — Arlo respects series → season → episode hierarchy and can recommend either a series or a specific episode.
• <media:group> — the canonical play URL becomes the "Watch" deep link on Arlo's result card.
• <dotstudiopro:include> — Arlo honors your geo restrictions; titles aren't recommended to users outside the allowed regions.

Arlo extensions (optional)

Two optional <dotstudiopro:customField>entries give Arlo's recommendation engine signal that's hard to derive from plot summary alone. Both are free-form, comma-separated, and entirely optional. Skip them and Arlo infers approximations from your description text — but explicit beats inferred, especially for mood-driven queries ("something slow and devastating").

<item>
  <guid isPermaLink="false">coal-country-s1e1</guid>
  <title>Beyond the Hollow</title>
  ...
  <dotstudiopro:customField key="arlo:tone">observational, weighted, patient</dotstudiopro:customField>
  <dotstudiopro:customField key="arlo:themes">labor, place, transition, family</dotstudiopro:customField>
</item>

No MRSS? Use CSV.

If your CMS doesn't generate MRSS, dotstudioPRO accepts a CSV manifest with the same metadata model (one row per Movie / Episode / Season / Series, up to 100 rows per file). See the canonical CSV Ingest Manifest Spec. The samearlo:tone and arlo:themes extensions are available via two extra columns (Custom Field N Name = arlo:tone, Custom Field N Value = your comma-separated list).

Polling & updates

Once a feed URL is registered, dotstudioPRO polls every few hours and Arlo re-indexes deltas immediately. Per the canonical spec, certain metadata fields (title, descriptions, genres, tags, credits, rating, season/episode, year, geo restrictions, ad markers) update on subsequent polls. Media files — videos, thumbnails, timed text — must be re-ingested via the CMS rather than the feed.

Both Arlo extensions update on subsequent polls. Adding or refining arlo:tone / arlo:themes later is safe.

Spotlight Guarantee

Any title in your feed that matches an external streaming entry (Watchmode-indexed Netflix / Pluto / Tubi etc.) is automatically suppressed on those external sources within Arlo's recommendation set. Your platform wins the click. This is enforced at the index layer — nothing to configure. See For Platforms for the full story.

Get started

Already have a DSP feed URL? Send it to us and we'll add it to Arlo's index — first sync runs within hours.

Need to set up a DSP account first? Same contact path — we'll onboard you to both sides at once.