I have spent a lot of time with Brightcove customers over the past few months understanding how they are using various technologies on their websites that complement their online video initiatives. Although the combination of technologies and strategies vary greatly by customer and industry there have been a few key themes that I see emerging:
- At a high-level, increasing production, distribution, and monetization of online video is top-of-mind for many in ‘09
- Video could be better monetized
- I think this highlights the need for a joint strategy of leveraging an ad network in addition to your ad sales team to sell your inventory. We have many great ad network partners in the Brightcove Alliance that are fully integrated and can help you solve this issue in short order.
- Looking for turn-key distribution opportunities
- There are many strategies here that I will be covering in an upcoming webinar on Tuesday March 24th (Sign up here). It’s no surprise that they vary largely on what you are trying to accomplish – generate leads for your product/service, increase ad impressions, drive traffic to your website, etc.
- We offer many options to help facilitate distribution and continue to add new partners in this category; however some of the most successful partnerships I have seen are very targeted and negotiated directly by the content publisher. Although this process is not “turn-key”, finding strong distribution partners in your niche has the potential to provide exponentially more value than pushing content into a crowded portal where you are relatively helpless competing for viewership (I will touch more on this in a future post).
- Need a consolidated view of the performance for all content types on site
- As video becomes a more integrated component in the fabric of a website, the need to understand its effectiveness and alter production style, content, and display characteristics accordingly is essential. We continue to improve our APIs to enable this and have existing integrations with several analytics partners for you to consolidate reporting in one location.
- Interested in leveraging social media & mobile to a higher degree this year
- There is a lot of innovation happening here that I find really exciting. On the social media side, publishers are now leveraging things like Facebook Connect, Twitter, live chat, and interactive games to increase views of their video content.
- Mobile is also a key area where publishers are experimenting with WAP sites, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry apps, and mobile-only content portals. I have had the privilege of analyzing all of these areas of innovation over the past several months and am happy to make recommendations based on your goals and content vertical.
I would love to hear what technologies you are currently using on your web properties and help to ensure that they function as effectively as possible alongside the Brightcove platform or through a tight integration. Please leave me a comment or email partners(at)brightcove.com to set up some time to chat.