Fully-localized online video platform fuels adoption among Japan’s leading marketers and media companies
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., December 7, 2009—Brightcove Inc., the leading online video platform, today announced a series of major new customer wins in Japan, including Rakuten, Inc., Tokyo Metropolitan Television Broadcasting Corp., Television Osaka, Inc., Shizuoka Asahi Television Co., Ltd., ART iT Co., Ltd., Chubu-Nippon Broadcasting Co., Ltd. and Aniplex Inc. The recent release of a fully-localized Brightcove platform has fuelled rapid growth for the company in the market and has accelerated adoption amongst Japan’s leading brand marketers and media companies.
“We continue to accelerate our rapid global expansion, and our success and broad adoption in Japan is a major driving force to that growth,” said Jeremy Allaire, chairman and chief executive officer at Brightcove. “We’ve seen strong customer traction in Japan since the launch of Brightcove KK last year, and the recent introduction of our fully-localized online video platform has enabled more leading organizations to take advantage of the dynamic features and functionality that Brightcove offers.”
New Brightcove Customers
Rakuten is the biggest e-commerce website operator in Japan with more than 50 million registered users. The site serves as a platform for merchants to sell their products online and is among the top ten largest Internet companies in the world. Using the Brightcove platform, Rakuten recently launched a video section on their site to complement existing content and to drive purchases through increased user engagement with their online shopping mall property. The dynamic features of the Brightcove platform enable Rakuten to easily publish and distribute high quality video content to foster a more interactive purchasing experience for visitors. Additionally, Rakuten is pioneering an innovative new use case in the Japanese market, as online merchants are able to upload user-generated content through the Brightcove platform and add it to their online presence on the Rakuten site. Rakuten also operates an online DVD rental site at which trailers for campaigns and new releases are delivered by Brightcove.
Many of Japan’s top television broadcasters have recently selected the Brightcove platform to streamline their online video operations, expand their online audience and introduce new monetization opportunities. Tokyo Metropolitan Television (Tokyo MX), the only commercial television station in Tokyo that exclusively serves the city, is leveraging the Brightcove platform to drive traffic through engaging online video programming that is accessible throughout Japan, including recent video coverage of the Tokyo election and high school baseball championships. Additionally, Brightcove is enabling Television Osaka and Shizuoka Asahi Television, two of Japan’s largest regional broadcasters, to manage their online video content more efficiently and to easily publish new content that is synchronized with aired programs in an effort to drive online viewership. Brightcove's open platform and rich set of APIs also enables these broadcasters to make their video content available via mobile devices through its integration with video transcoding and publishing solution of J-Stream, a pioneer company which offers video delivery infrastructure in Japan, for Japanese mobile handsets. This integration enables single video uploads to be automatically optimized for PCs as well as wide range of 3G mobile handsets.
ART iT, which is a bilingual portal site devoted to contemporary art content, recently introduced new social networking and online video features from Brightcove to help drive user engagement and participation. The Brightcove platform enables ART iT to deliver a highly interactive website experience that promotes contemporary art through interviews with high profile artists and curators and visual tours inside galleries and museums. ART iT is also leveraging Brightcove’s broad distribution capabilities to extend its online video content to third-party sites and networks.
Chubu-Nippon Broadcasting (CBC) is a basic station of Japan News Network (28 network affiliates, key station: TBS Television) and of Japan Radio Network (34 network affiliates, key station: TBS Radio & Communications). CBC has adopted the Brightcove platform to reduce time-to-market and costs for distributing their growing library of online video content. CBC recently launched Brightcove for one of its major radio Web properties, inviting visitors to vote on and rank their favorite movie clips.
Brightcove is enabling Aniplex Inc., an anime and music production and distribution enterprise of Sony Music Group, to streamline the publishing and distribution of its animated and promotional video content in an effort to reach a broader audience. Aniplex is also leveraging Brightcove’s deep customization capabilities to create integrated players for each title.
Brightcove’s first major customer in Japan, PRESENTCAST, is also continuing to roll out the Brightcove platform to additional Web properties. In conjunction with Tokyo Broadcasting System, PRESENTCAST recently distributed full-screen, broadcast-quality video highlights from the 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics held in Berlin this year.
Brightcove established its majority-owned subsidiary, Brightcove KK, in Japan in 2008 with $4.9 million in new investment from Brightcove Inc. and four market-leading Japanese strategic partners: Dentsu, Inc., J-Stream, Inc., transcosmos, Inc. (transcosmos), and cyber communications inc. (cci). Brightcove KK is a fully staffed operation that includes a leadership team and sales, marketing, engineering and customer support staff all based in Japan. Additional Brightcove KK customers include leading media companies and brand marketers, such as Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), Asahi Breweries Group, Sony Music Network Japan, Shueisha webUOMO, and orangepage net.
About Brightcove
Brightcove is an online video platform. Media companies, businesses and organizations worldwide use Brightcove to publish and distribute video on the Web. Founded in 2004, Brightcove is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business with offices across North America, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit http://www.brightcove.com.
Press Contacts
North America
Erika Shaffer
SutherlandGold Group for Brightcove
206-972-5514
erika@sutherlandgold.com
Japan
Rie Kubota
LBS Co., Ltd. for Brightcove
+81 3 3769 1351
rkubota@lbs.co.jp
Europe
Stephen Orr
AxiCom for Brightcove
+44 20 8392 4056
stephen.orr@axicom.com