Brightcove [NASDAQ: BCOV]: Rendering the Next-Gen Video Experience

Over the past few years, blending streaming technology and online video production has become a vital and interesting marketing mix for many successful businesses. Today, with over 300 hours of videos uploaded in YouTube every minute and a whopping 100 million internet users watching videos every day, video content has transformed the face of business at large. With a myriad of unconventional Online Video Platforms (OVP) in the market, settling on an appropriate platform to engage the customers can often prove to be intimidating. According to Technavio—the market research company—the global OVP market is expected to reach $734.6 million by 2019, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.15 percent. Embracing this trend by being a pioneering force in the world of online video is Boston-based Brightcove [NASDAQ: BCOV].

“Our mission is to revolutionize the way organizations deliver video experiences”

Started over a decade ago, Brightcove transforms the online video experience through powerful modular cloud-based solutions for delivering and monetizing videos across connected devices. “Our mission is to revolutionize the way organizations deliver video experiences. There is an incredible transformation going on around how people consume video and how publishers of all kind want to deliver that video to their audience,” explains David Mendels, CEO, Brightcove. The firm’s digital and consulting services offer start-to-finish consulting, strategy, and design and development tools to bring a user’s vision to reality in the shortest time frame.

Taking Control of Every Pixel

Video being a boost of adrenaline for brand engagement, its user expectation for high quality is constantly increasing. Nevertheless, the mounting pressure to upload the content in every new device is extremely challenging, since ineffective video platforms don’t have the power and features that brands need, and building a robust solution from scratch would be expensive and complex to maintain. This is where Brightcove’s VideoCloud comes into limelight, serving to be a professional video cloud platform with all the scale and flexibility that brands need. Video Cloud platform can handle thousands of assets and keep everything organized with custom meta data and play lists. Meanwhile, Video Cloud’s lightening fast coding is preparing a user’s video for every destination and device. Being a mission control for all of the content for broadcasters, publishers, distributors, content owners, brands and organizations, a single click in Video Cloud also allows changing player colors and styles, marking just a beginning. The solution also lets users take control of every pixel. This power integrates seamlessly with the technology that one is already using without a requirement to overhaul or retool. Moreover, it offers the clearest picture of how and where the audience is engaging.

Video Cloud simplifies the complexity of managing and delivering exceptionally live and on-demand videos across the widest range of devices, operating systems, and social platforms. This proffers the reach to maximize revenue opportunities, expand audiences, and drive engagement. The solution also presents extensive workflow capabilities and APIs to support both simple and highly customized solutions, enabling users to focus on content, viewership, conversions, and revenue, rather than wrestling with technical challenges. Moreover, Video Cloud also supports a blended distribution strategy across the internet, allowing customers to distribute videos on their website or video sharing sites such as YouTube. “We have the best brands in the world using our service in delivering video, and every year it gets more interesting in terms of what people are trying to do because consumers are adopting more video online,” Mendels reckons.

In an example, for the 2012 Olympics, PUMA—known for its cutting-edge products had created an entire brand environment for its customers to interact with. PUMA sponsored Jamaican sprinter, Usain Bolt—both in person and remotely through live video content. The events and content were timed with Usain Bolt’s epic performance in the 100 and 200 meters race. For PUMA, the numerous videos produced across the global offices had to be carefully stored. Coxing users to have a multi-screen experience, Brightcove’s Video Cloud was able to have multiple users across regions and push out content to all the social media channels where these video assets are consumed. “Our analytics showed—the more we use video, the more brand engagement and more time we have with our customers. Brightcove Video Cloud allows us to look at the video asset itself as an opportunity for engagement to happen,” said Jay Basnight, Head of Digital Strategy, PUMA International.

A Seamless Integration

Broadcasters across the globe are faced with mounting challenges while delivering content that consumers require. Ericsson’s vision of the “Networked Society” has included a key prediction that there will be 50 billion mobile connected devices around the world by 2020, far exceeding the global population. Simplifying the delivery of media to the destination and device, Brightcove’s cloud-based service, Zencoder features extremely fast transcoding, industry-leading reliability, unmatched input file compatibility and output support for all connected devices. The Zencoder service provides customers with high quality encoding of live and on-demand video and access to unlimited video encoding power without having to pay for, manage, and scale expensive hardware and software.

The Zencoder Video Encoding API enables users to seamlessly integrate applications with its fast and scalable encoding platform. The firm’s RESTful API is extensively documented with easy-to-use guides and detailed descriptions, as well as thoroughly tested code libraries and code examples for every encoding setting. With numerous file support, quality and manipulation, platform and security, as well as account and integration features, Zencoder supports dozens of video and audio codecs for inputs, to serve format compatibility.

Additionally, serving to be the best way to leverage video analytics for campaign orchestration, sales enablement and ROI tracking is Brightcove’s Video Marketing Suite. The suite’s audience module is synced to the marketing automation platform to track individual viewership data to understand exactly who is watching and how long they watched for.

For instance, Showtime—a premium cable and satellite TV network partnered with Brightcove in 2007. Having worked with an in house video solution for years, it was impractical for Showtime to be responsible for both the development and maintenance of the systems. The client was keen on finding an appropriate solution to effectively manage content and push content out to partners. After choosing Brightcove, “We could figure our navigation schemes and manage the content internally. The Brightcove platform enabled Showtime to focus on its core competencies which revolve around creating great content. The page views have doubled in the past few months,” says Christopher Lucus, Executive Producer of Digital Media, Showtime.

Enabling Video to Move Businesses

Brightcove’s passionate team consists of experts in developing digital solutions that redefine the approach to deliver video experience to users. “What is exciting about being here is being in the middle of a transformation. Our customers are experimenting and doing interesting tasks with the video. It’s nice to be a part of the exciting scenario and to be a formula to enable the transformation,” explains Mendels.

Mendels is exhilarated about Brightcove’s newest announcement—a novel service that enables publishers to quickly launch video apps on fourth generation Apple TV. The device appears to have Apple’s trademark elegance, attention to detail and mix of richness and simplicity that can indeed feel magical. Since technology has finally caught up the marketer’s vision of storytelling possibilities, the company’s marketing customers are now looking to publish video at large scale. Mendels is thrilled to work with customers to deliver beautiful new apps, with powerful streaming video, to the new Apple TV. Adding to Mendels passion, Jeremy Allaire, Founder and Chairman, Brightcove declares, “I literally found the company in 2004 for this moment in time when the internet and TV fully converge with compelling open app platforms. Mobile and tablet happened first and along the way, but we’re now arriving at the transformation that the company’s founding was predicated on. Carpe diem.”