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Brightcove Files $50 Million IPO, Investors Get A Rare Pure-Play Opportunity in White-Hot Online Video Space
Cloud-based video platform provider Brightcove has filed to raise up to $50 million in an initial public offering (IPO). Rumors of an IPO have floated
around Brightcove almost since the company's inception 7 years ago, but gained steam in the last year as the company hired Chris Menard as its CFO (who previously served as CFO of publicly-traded Phase Forward). Given the choppiness in the public markets, it's not clear when the offering will occur, but when it does Brightcove will give investors a rare pure-play investment opportunity in the white-hot online video space.
Brightcove's S-1 reveals the company has nearly 3,300 customers in 50+ countries, including The New York Times Company, Oracle, Showtime, Philips Electronics and Macy's. Revenue in the first 6 months of 2011 were $28.4 million, up from $20.3 million in the first 6 months of 2010. Brightcove's net loss was $17.8 million in 2010 and $9.7 million in the first 6 months of 2011. The company has raised nearly $100 million to date and cash on-hand exceeded $24 million on June 30th.
Categories: Deals & Financings
Topics: Brightcove
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KODAK Gallery Launches Animoto's Video Slideshow Creator
KODAK Gallery, which has 75 million users, has begun offering Animoto's video slideshow creator via an API, enabling users to build their own slideshows within the KODAK site. For those not familiar with Animoto (which recently raised $25 million), its service allows users to upload photos, short video clips and music which are then packaged into slick video slideshows. Animoto's CEO and co-founder Brad Jefferson gave me a quick overview of the partnership and a company update yesterday.
The KODAK Gallery partnership (which was originally announced in last March and is Animoto's largest to date), addresses a key challenge for Animoto of how to attract new users to create video slideshows. As Brad explained, reducing the time required to seeing a slideshow or preview is a key objective, and since users have by definition already uploaded photos to the KODAK Gallery, they have a head-start. KODAK Gallery users just need to pick an album and a song and Animoto creates a 30-second slideshow preview which can be expanded into longer versions.
Categories: Partnerships, Technology
Topics: Animoto, KODAK Galler
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comScore: VEVO is Top YouTube Partner Channel By Far
Music video site VEVO attracted nearly 60 million unique viewers and generated over 844 million videos viewed to its YouTube partner channel in July, making it by far the most popular YouTube partner channel, according to new data released by comScore.
comScore has recently begun measuring traffic for a select number of YouTube partners. As the chart below shows, Warner Music's channel was second in unique viewers with 31 million+, while Machinima's was second in videos viewed with 265 million+. From its inception, YouTube has been providing technology to VEVO, which was founded by Sony, Universal and Abu Dhabi Media, with EMI licensing its music videos.
Categories: Aggregators, Music
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Expensive Regional Sports Networks Are Becoming Pay-TV's Achilles Heel
An article in the NY Times over the weekend, "Regional Sports Networks Show the Money," highlighted the mega-profitable and symbiotic relationship between marquee sports teams/conferences and the regional sports networks (RSNs) they have spawned. RSNs aren't new, but as the article pointed out, teams and conferences are getting increasingly creative and aggressive about their TV rights, in turn driving up the fees pay-TV operators and ultimately subscribers are required to pay. All of this suggests that RSNs are becoming pay-TV's Achilles Heel especially when it comes to non-sports fans.
This is a topic I covered back in January, in "Not a Sports Fan? Then You're Getting Sacked For At Least $2 Billion Per Year" and subsequently in "Time Warner Cable-LA Lakers Deal Is More Bad News For Pay-TV's Non-Sports Fans," in each case noting that as sports programming fees drive pay-TV rates ever higher, some portion of non-sports fans will eventually defect for lower-cost entertainment-centric options (e.g. Netflix, Hulu, over-the-air/ antenna reception, etc.).
Categories: Cable Networks, Cable TV Operators, Satellite, Sports, Telcos
Topics: LA Dodgers, LA Lakers, Pac-12, RSNs
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Morgan Spurlock's New Series Premieres on Hulu, With Heavy Monetization
This week Morgan Spurlock's new six-part documentary series "A Day In The Life" premiered on Hulu, which is its exclusive distributor. The premise is that
each episode follows one well-known personality for a full day, giving the viewer an intimate look into their life. The first episode focused on Virgin Group's Richard Branson. Future episodes are set for release on Wednesdays.
I thought the episode was well done and fortunately it doesn't slip into a "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" mode, instead mostly focusing on Branson's promotional tactics in support of Virgin America's new Chicago routes (note "Entourage" fans will enjoy a cameo from actor Adrian Grenier). Perhaps the most interesting thing about "A Day In The Life" wasn't the show itself but how heavily Hulu is monetizing it with ads, illustrating the point I was making just yesterday about online video's potential for heavier ad loads.
Categories: Advertising, Aggregators
Topics: Hulu, Morgan Spurlock
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Video Ads Gain Acceptance; Gap With TV Ad Loads Means Big Opportunity Remains
Yesterday video ad manager FreeWheel released its Q2 '11 Video Monetization Report, chock full of interesting data points gathered across 11.3 billon video views and 6 billion video ad views in the quarter. Among the key findings: long-form content (defined as 20 minutes+) carried an average of nearly 3 ads per view, with an 81% ad completion rate.
I agree with FreeWheel's observation that the implementation of multiple ads in long-form content is akin to the TV model, and the strong ad completion rates (especially for mid-rolls which were the highest at 94-96%) indicate that consumers are becoming more accepting of the fact that premium online video content will be accompanied by ads, just as it is on TV. The data suggested two additional things to me: first, while long-form monetization is improving, a huge opportunity exists in the ad load gap between online delivery and TV and second, online video completion rates could become the basis to offset DVR-driven ad-skipping.
Categories: Advertising
Topics: FreeWheel
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Vid.ly Pro is Unveiled, Fits Between YouTube/Vimeo and OVPs
Encoding.com has released Vid.ly Pro today, which as company president Jeff Malkin explained to me, is targeted to the tens of thousands of video producers who need a solution that's more robust than YouTube or Vimeo but doesn't have all the bells and whistles (and cost) of a full-blown online video platforms.
As I explained in my original coverage of Vid.ly's beta launch in January, Vid.ly is a clever service that allows video producers to upload or point to
their source video file and then have Vid.ly return a single URL and embed code with 20+ output formats that will work across all devices and browsers. Vid.ly's goal is enticingly simple: to eliminate the operational complexity and cost of increasingly heterogeneous playback environments for video producers while letting users just click play and begin viewing.
Categories: Devices, Technology
Topics: Encoding.com, Vid.ly
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Here's the Real Story Behind Pay-TV's Record Q2 '11 Subscriber Losses and the Role of Cord-Cutting
Today I'm pleased to present a special 2-part VideoNuze Report podcast with guest Bruce Leichtman, who is president and principal analyst of Leichtman Research Group. Bruce has been doing primary consumer research on the pay-TV industry for 15 years and is one of the foremost industry authorities.
In part 1 of the podcast, Bruce gives a detailed analysis of the industry's record Q2 '11 loss of over 300K subscribers among its 14 largest providers. Bruce explains the industry's historical context, drills down on which companies had the biggest year-over-year change and what accounted for this. Importantly, Bruce focuses on larger macro and micro-economic factors that are influencing the industry's results in a bigger way than new technologies and innovation which often take center stage.
Then in part 2 we turn our attention to the role of cord-cutting on the industry and the influence of Netflix specifically. First, Bruce clarifies the difference between non-video subscribers and "cord-cutters," a crucial distinction which he believes has recently been overlooked by many. Bruce shares his research on how many actual cord-cutters there are, which types of pay-TV subscribers are most vulnerable to cord-cutting and what role Netflix is playing. We wrap up by discussing what's ahead and how concerned industry CEOs should be about the threat of cord-cutting.
Categories: Cable TV Operators, Podcasts, Satellite, Telcos
Topics: Leichtman Research Group
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