Mumbai: Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts (US), Brightcove is an intelligent video streaming, monetisation, and communications platform. The cloud-based online video platform has been powering live and video-on-demand experiences for leading broadcasters, publishers, and brands since 2004. It creates the world’s most reliable, scalable, and secure video technology solutions to build a greater connection between companies and their audiences, no matter where they are or on which devices they consume content. In more than 80 countries, Brightcove’s video platform enables businesses to sell to customers more effectively, media leaders to stream and monetize content more reliably, and every organisation to communicate with team members more effectively. Brightcove’s operations in India began in 2017. With two technology and engineering Emmy Awards for innovation, uptime that consistently leads the industry, and unmatched scalability, Brightcove continuously pushes the boundaries of what video can do.
Indiantelevision.com caught up with Brightcove senior director of strategy Asia Pacific Greg Armshaw. He consults with enterprises, helping them create strategies to build businesses with video. He has more than 20 years of experience in advertising and digital marketing and has rich experience building consumer offerings in the enterprise brand and media sectors in Asia. Armshaw has been associated with Brightcove since 2017 and has led the company to achieve a dominant market position in the region with digital-first companies, free-to-air TV providers, and pay-TV content owners. He serves on the board of directors of the Asia Video Industry Association and is a frequent industry commentator. He is based in Singapore and has been working across Asia since 2006.
Excerpts:
On the market gap
When Brightcove was founded 18 years ago, phones weren’t as smart, broadband wasn’t as wide, and video still meant DVDs. At the time, the problem Brightcove sought to solve was how to deliver and monetise videos at scale over the internet. The extensive adoption of the internet globally resulted in video services gaining momentum, which posed a massive opportunity for us. It helped us grow right along with the industry we helped create. We continue to develop and refine our technologies to provide the most innovative, effective, and reliable technology streaming platform to empower organisations to achieve their immediate and long-term goals.
On the progress
By building the world’s most trusted streaming technology company, Brightcove has revolutionised video experiences. We support organisations in over 80 countries around the world monetise video, increase sales, motivate employees and most importantly, help businesses build meaningful connections with their audiences. By setting the standard for quality, reliability, and analytics, our brand today truly represents the company we’ve become, and it reflects the boldness of our vision to push the boundaries of what is possible with video.
From an innovation perspective, we have over 90 patents and continue to lead the industry in R&D and thought leadership. We continue to invest our time in evolving the industry, as well as our own continued leadership in streaming technology.
On USP vis-a-vis competition
Brightcove gives businesses what they need in a single, end-to-end solution. Our industry-leading streaming platform offers unmatched reliability with 99.99 per cent uptime, infinite scalability, deeper cutting-edge analytics, world-class security features, out-of-the-box integrations, multiple monetisation options, and flexible layouts, making it easy for businesses to deliver exceptional high-quality video experiences.
We are one of the oldest and only profitable online video platforms. This puts us in a great position to continue to reliably service our customers in these uncertain economic times. For organisations building businesses with video, we take away any risk that their key streaming provider may not still be operating as a business six months or a year from now.
On the covid impact
The pandemic saw a rise in online video consumption worldwide, which proved to be an evolutionary event for Brightcove. To evolve with the changing demands, we unveiled a complete re-imagining of our brand with significant investments in our brand identity, advertising campaigns, and product ecosystem. With the new, bold messaging and vibrantly redesigned visual identity, our goal was to position the video platform as an innovative partner to deliver exceptional video experiences. This propelled our company to a record-breaking quarter.
On the solutions provided
Brightcove provides monetisation models that work best for any business’ content needs. Our solutions offer flexibility for subscription, ad-supported, transactional pay, and hybrid models, enabling businesses to maximise revenue.
Brightcove Media Studio, our flagship media solution offers multiple monetisation paths and an advanced platform to enable distribution across all devices and platforms, with the simplicity to create beautiful viewing experiences to engage any audience. Built on Brightcove Video Cloud, our media studio lets you securely and easily scale your media operations on our reliable platform, so you can focus more on developing content and growing your audience.
These topics can go a lot deeper than just the models available. For example, if you monetise through advertising, the performance of the playback alone can increase the engagement of the user and therefore the number of ads they see. Brightcove research has shown that 32 per cent of users will abandon a service if the streaming performance is bad. In the area of subscription, it is common for streaming audiences to jump from service to service - the subject of churn is discussed widely in the industry. If marketing teams have a strong understanding of audience viewing behaviour, they can provide personalised marketing proven to maximise revenue. Brightcove provides the insights and audience segmentation to make this possible.
On the investments in technology
Future-proofing our streaming technology investments is a key consideration at Brightcove. Our relentless investment in R&D to provide the best streaming technology in the market has been rewarded. Brightcove was recognised with two Emmy Awards by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for excellence and creativity in technology and engineering. We have been pioneering innovative technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), integrations, video analytics, and cloud-based transcoding as part of our products to make video delivery as robust, efficient, and easy to use as possible.
While we invest in a number of areas and continue to be awarded patents for our innovations, the benefits for customers are in a number of areas, including: operational efficiency—our constant R&D drives down the unit cost of a broadcast grade streaming service—and marketing excellence—Brightcove continues to invest in providing the tools to attract, entertain, and retain customers while delivering a premium user experience and the ability to capture revenues in exchange.
On web3 and in the metaverse
The metaverse and web3 are creating an opportunity for brands to redefine how they reach and engage with their customers, closing the gap between the physical and digital realms. While the final manifestation of the metaverse is unclear, what we are seeing is the advancement of technologies that will hopefully make immersive experiences more seamless. The promise of the metaverse is that resulting technologies and experiences will enable businesses to create more personalised experiences to build their brand further. With the ability to own, control, and monetise projects in web3, content creators can further influence their audiences. Shifting advertising and marketing to the phygital space can help brands build communities of brand ambassadors to capture the attention of millions of new customers, especially young users and millennials.
On the producer economy
The internet has disintermediated many businesses, and entertainment and education are no different. Those previously identified as professional content creators are finding new ways to build destinations online. In a similar disintermediation, the gatekeepers of access have been swept aside by social media. It has removed the impediments of capital and editorial control for individuals and groups to find and build audiences. Now that many of these producers of content have established audiences in the millions, we are seeing that to engage with and enrich their audience communities, they are looking to build their own brand destinations online.
This does not mean abandoning their roots on social media; it just means building an experience that they can control where they can build a direct relationship with their fans.
This is the maturing of the highly successful UGC tier of creators beyond the channel and into the platform. Content producers are able to build their own digital destinations, manage and distribute their own content, own and measure data, and, most importantly, serve their audiences and amplify the value exchange.
On the importance of India as a market
India is at a critical time in the digital revolution, with over 658 million active internet users and a digital video audience of 353.2 million in 2022. It is thus a sizable market for online video, and online video viewership is continuing to grow exponentially, representing a tremendous opportunity for Brightcove. We began our India operations in 2017, and even prior to our official opening, we were powering video for some of the top-tier Indian media companies.
India is a wonderful market for Brightcove. We have amazing customers, and we have a growing team across engineering, support, and sales in India. With an incredible creative culture as well as businesses faced with the challenge of serving hundreds of millions of people, we see opportunities with enterprises and entrepreneurs every day. We have continually taken inspiration from this market to innovate our products. For example, we established multilingual metadata in our platform to allow the same video to be referenced using information in multiple languages to support our customers in India.
On the growth strategy for India
With streaming technologies being utilised widely across the Indian market, we see good growth opportunities in traditional verticals such as news, sports and entertainment. We are also seeing significant transformation in the enterprise, where digitisation borne from the pandemic has seen the increased adoption of video in such verticals as retail, marketing and sales, and corporate communications. We see all these areas as opportunities for growth in India.
On the potential of AVoD vs. SVoD in India
India's streaming video market will reach three billion dollars in revenue in 2022, enabling SVoD and AVoD to flourish and co-exist. Only 31 per cent of India’s digital video audience are paying subscribers, while the remaining 69 per cent are AVoD audiences. The AVoD model helps generate the most views, while SVoD can likely result in the highest ARPU. Additionally, some OTT services are eyeing ad-supported subscription tiers to attract audiences. This adaptable hybrid offering of tiered subscription models and windowing specific content has recently gained traction as it aids in creating a smooth transition for the audience to a subscription model.
As the market continues to grow, we can expect to see strong growth in both AVOD and SVOD. In order to maximise the potential of the market, we would recommend that content rights owners keep an open mind to all revenue generating opportunities because consumers value them differently at different moments in their entertainment journey.
On web3 over web2 for content creators
The world wide web gives a pretty good platform for content monetisation and has given more creators access to audiences that were previously inaccessible. The promise of web3 facilitates an ecosystem where the content creator can continue to derive value from their creation throughout the life of that content. Once widely adopted, web3 will hopefully deliver greater prospects for long-term monetisation.
Web3 will likely propel the move from the creator to the producer, which is critical. The significant difference will be the increased level of control for every content creator. In web 2, the different platforms take a good chunk of the revenue from the creator’s content in exchange for facilitating technology and audience reach. However, web3 will likely enable more producers to build their own platforms to engage with audiences, leading creators to truly own their content and keeping more of the economics of their most loyal fans.
On legacy companies entering the D2C business
Implementing a streaming-first content strategy is critical for D2C businesses to create rich media experiences, collect first-party data, and significantly maximise their investment to own their digital future. Businesses can provide personalised messaging and refine their audience's journey by using analytics to understand content performance and audience interests. Thus, by making streaming video the foundation of their content strategies and thinking about content like a media company, D2C businesses can use this powerful medium to grow in the new digital world.
On CTV causing ad wastage globally
CTV's proposition, in my opinion, is to counteract waste in broadcast television. CTV advertising facilitates addressable audiences in the same high-engagement environment as broadcast TV.
CTV is a rapidly evolving part of the media landscape, and as more audiences shift their viewing habits to online streaming, likewise advertising dollars are following suit. The challenge for advertisers is how to navigate the complexity of a relatively new industry and the challenges of a quite fragmented audience, the various ways to buy ad inventory, and how to standardise on measurement and monitoring. As more viewers shift to CTV and this becomes the primary source of ad revenue, the industry will quickly evolve, creating better experiences for both the advertiser and the viewer.
The challenge perhaps for the advertiser is that their agency has a team for traditional television and a team for digital. CTV and the broader OTT/streaming combine elements of both, and it will be up to advertisers to demand that their agencies properly understand how the different ‘channels’ of television content should be purchased.
