BOSTON & SYDNEY, December 12, 2017 — Brightcove Inc. (NASDAQ: BCOV), the leading provider of cloud services for video, announced today that the annual city-wide cultural celebration Sydney Festival has selected the Brightcove video platform to enhance its online video content by removing third-party branding and pre-roll ads as well as adding autoplay functionality for an improved user experience ahead of its January 2018 event.
Leveraging the Brightcove video platform to host and publish video content, Sydney Festival can now seamlessly integrate brand-consistent video content across its website homepage and hub pages to provide an improved online experience.
Prior to using the Brightcove platform, the Festival hosted videos on YouTube and embedded them into the Sydney Festival website for event promotion. By migrating to Brightcove, Sydney Festival now has complete control over the video viewing experience. This includes the ability to embed hero videos, which serve as headers across the homepage and act as ‘visual previews’, a key element of Sydney Festival’s updated website. The hero videos contribute to the overall page aesthetic and offer users an in-depth, rich visual experience. Video autoplay capabilities also mean it can keep audiences engaged for longer, with content continually rolling.
Through the Brightcove video platform, Sydney Festival has access to real-time video analytics to measure and report on the performance of its video content. In-depth insights from audience engagement to a viewer's destination and the time spent watching the content provide a clear view on what videos and subsequently, events, audiences are engaging with. These insights can be used to make more strategic decisions around the content and events it promotes, as well as informing plans around the lineup of future events.
“Sydney Festival is an annual three-week take-over of our amazing city, filling it with high-quality art and big ideas. Video plays a crucial role in getting people excited about what’s coming up and visually communicating what each individual event has to offer,” Tina Walsberger, Head of Marketing and Customer Services, at Sydney Festival said.
“Brightcove has provided an integrated video solution that allows us to track our videos across platforms, while also eliminating third-party branding. The autoplay functionality enhances the look and feel of the overall site, which is important to attracting audiences and keeping them engaged for longer.”
Mark Stanton, Vice President of Australia and New Zealand at Brightcove commented, “While video platforms like YouTube offer an easy fix for publishing video online, they come at a price. And that’s control over the user experience. Brands don’t constrain themselves to predefined website templates, so why treat video differently? Free video players disrupt the brand experience and are designed to drive the audience back to their platform. They also provide limited analytics and insights making it harder to measure success and adapt to what is working and what is not.”
“For brands like Sydney Festival, where online content is an important part of attracting audiences and ultimately driving sales, having video seamlessly integrated into the overall digital experience in a controllable, brand-consistent way is hugely important.. We look forward to working closely with the organization in the lead up to and following the festival.”
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
- Sydney Festival will run from 6 — 28 January 2018. You can view more information on the festival here
- For more information on the Brightcove video platform, click here
- You can download images of the Sydney Festival website, here
About Brightcove
Brightcove Inc. (NASDAQ:BCOV) is the leading global provider of powerful cloud solutions for delivering and monetizing video across connected devices. The company offers a full suite of products and services that reduce the cost and complexity associated with publishing, distributing, measuring and monetizing video across devices. Brightcove has thousands of customers in over 70 countries that rely on the company’s cloud solutions to successfully publish high-quality video experiences to audiences everywhere. To learn more, visit www.brightcove.com.
About Sydney Festival
Every January, Sydney Festival enlivens and transforms Sydney with a city-wide multi-art form cultural celebration. Sydney Festival 2018 takes place 6–28 January and sees Festival Director, Wesley Enoch in his second year with program of over 130 events and performances across theatre, dance, music, circus and art. Inclusive programming, a broad range of free events and accessible pricing policies for the ticketed shows means that Sydney Festival is open to all, welcoming both Sydneysiders and visitors from wherever they live.
Since its launch in 1977, Sydney Festival has presented international artists such as Björk, Brian Wilson, Grace Jones, Manu Chao, Elvis Costello, AR Rahman, Cate Blanchett, Ralph Fiennes, Robert Lepage, The Flaming Lips, Peter Sellars, Sir Ian McKellen and David Byrne & St. Vincent alongside some of the world's great companies - Wayne McGregor's Random Dance, Cheek by Jowl, Gate Theatre and the Schaubühne Berlin to name only a few. Sydney Festival creates a meeting point for the best in national and international art, building a world-class Festival in one of the world’s greatest cities.