Yesterday, US senator Barack Obama announced his presidential bid via video at upstart provider Brightcove. This morning, on the heels of that bit of viral publicity, Brightcove announced that they have received $59.5 million in private funding for their Internet TV service.
Just when you thought the video vertical was saturated, too, right?
It’s certainly no secret that online video, by its very nature, serves as an excellent platform for viral distribution and consumption. However, the one thing that most online video services lack is a framework that clearly supports those who wish to enter this market space as a business.
Yes, Revver has ads. Pity that you don’t have total control over them. Would CBS allow someone else to sell ads for them and then simply hope for relevancy? Riiight.
So for me at least, this is where it gets interesting. Brightcove has built itself to cater to serious publishers, people who really know video production. At the same time, Brightcove appears to be the go-to platform for upstart publishers as well, because they provide the Brightcove Platform. Designed for “media companies, broadcasters and marketers,” the Brightcove Platform consists of the following:
- Pay a usage fee to publish.
- Sell your own ads or sell no ads at all.
- Keep any and all ad revenue you generate—there is no revenue split. (To me, this screams serious)
- Sell video downloads.
On top of all this, Brightcove also offers what I think is easily the best Flash video player on the market. With extensive menu controls including distribution links, a scrubber that comes with elapsed time/total time indicators, and a well-designed interface, the Brightcove player (which we used here) is all meat and no bone.
With some high profile partnerships already in place, Brightcove will likely become the leader in true Internet TV publishing because they are giving professionals and media companies exactly what they need to be successful in this market space.
Originally posted on January 17, 2007 @ 9:27 am
Looks really interesting. Do they offer any help in ad sales at all, or it’s all in your hands?
Thord,
They’ll sell ads for you, or you can sell your own.
Although I didn’t mention it in the post, they offer basically everything that Revver offers to individual publishers as well.
Essentially, they have everything that YouTube and Revver do for the “I want to be famous” crowd, and then they achieve true separation by offering real businesses the tools they need to succeed.
Now it sounds even more interesting, I’ll definitely check them out for an upcoming project. Great post, Chris. :)
We hit this before TechCrunch, by the way :)
The platform looks amazing. :)
The platform is awesome. Turnkey solutions for running an online video content business.
If you’re a professional who is poised to enter the space, methinks you’d be wise to work with Brightcove.
After all, have you checked out the big names working with them in the various channels? Those in the know are all over this like white on rice.