Video consumption will grow when it is placed in the context of articles or relevant social network pages, not when it resides in video libraries of portal and publications. This was among the conclusions from our executive summit in Washington earlier this week.
One of our participants, Scott Baker, a senior Brightcove executive, related his past experience at Boston.com. He explains how consumption of video greatly increased when clips were put in articles. I would assume the same is the case for many newspaper sites.
While consumption of video in a single player placed within stories can be more widely viewed, they cannot be as well monetized as the big players in libraries often feature companion banner ads and command higher CPM, Scott tells us.
Alan Warms, General Manager of Yahoo! News told us the similar thing. He said video has to be unlocked from the library "ghettos". We will publish our interview with Alan shortly.
Not only should videos be unlocked from site libraries, they should be free to be embedded in blogs and travel in widget to networks. Brightcove has been an movers in syndicating videos outside of destination sites.
Scott also makes an important point about UGC and media sites. Publishers who want uploads need to keep expectations for production quality modest.
According to a recent report by CNET News.com’s Greg Sandoval, on video sharing services,
"Brightcove has become the frontrunner among the so-called white-label companies." Congrats to Jeremy Allaire and his team on all this progress.
Update, April 7: Brightcove Has Deal with Bebo, Meebo, RockYou, Slide and Veoh. An important development in getting video into social media. Here is some information from the press release:
Brightcove today announced distribution partnerships with Bebo, Meebo, RockYou, Slide and Veoh, giving media companies new opportunities to expand the reach of their online video, while maintaining control over their content and advertising inventory. Now media companies using the Brightcove Internet TV platform can program and syndicate advertising-supported content into fast-growing social networks, social media applications, and a leading online video destination.
Here’s the take on today’s news by Jemima Kiss of the Guardian.
— Andy Plesser
Hangin’ out on the Finnish Embassy deck at the Beet.TV Summit with Scott (r) and Akamai’s Rich Kennelly.
