Brightcove Debuts Video Marketing Platform With Always-On Channels

“In the new reality, you have to go where people are,” said Brightcove CEO Jeff Ray opening the company’s virtual Play 2021 event Tuesday on the future of video. The way companies connect with audiences and employees is changing, he said, and opportunities to reach larger audiences through streaming video is at a massive scale.

“If I told you a few years ago that Ariana Grande, one of the world’s most popular entertainers, would deliver a live concert inside a video game to 78 million viewers while making $20 million for her efforts, would you believe me?” Ray said: “Instead of going to a concert, the concert comes to you on a candy-colored island in the metaverse.”

Ray also referenced the impact of streaming on sports, saying worldwide viewers spent 5.5 billion minutes viewing coverage of the Tokyo Olympics on social media and online platforms. BBC received 104 million requests from viewers to watch online, he said, after a licensing deal with Discovery limited BBC coverage to what The Guardian reported as 500 hours vs. Discovery’s 3,500 hours.

During the event, Brightcove launched CorpTV, always-on channels for brands to deliver targeted information to their customers and employees. Chief Marketing Officer Jennifer Smith compared the channels to Netflix or Hulu, “only this is your channel, your company and your content.” Businesses have to think like media companies, she said.

Video is no longer a “nice to have” or an add-on for companies' marketing strategy, said Ray, citing Forrester Research data saying video will be 82% of all internet traffic by next year. He called video “essential” for businesses, saying viewers retain 95% of messages when watching on video vs. 10% when they read it in text. Consumers are 39% more likely to share content if it’s delivered via video, he said. Marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than those who don’t, he said.

Keynote speaker Shonda Rhimes, Shondaland CEO and producer of streamed and network series including Bridgerton, Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, said in the Tuesday keynote she made the decision in 2017 to move to Netflix from network TV because “it felt like streaming was the future in how people watched.” She had been watching a lot on Netflix herself and believed storytelling could be more innovative and follow different models in the streaming world.

Writing for streamed TV is different from writing for network TV, said Rhimes. Writers need to stay in the moment and compartmentalize for streamed shows because audiences typically binge shows all at once. Scripts for streaming shows are made in one block vs. network TV where “you’re writing and shooting at the same time, building the show as you go.” She also cited the volume difference where network TV has 22-24 episodes per season, “like you’re laying track for the train,” she said, vs. a “closed-ended tale” in an eight-episode streamed series. In streaming, “you can make plans for how you’re going to move forward season after season after season in a very controlled way."

The reach that's possible via streamed TV surprised Rhimes, whose streamed Bridgerton series reached 82 million households. Netflix extended an agreement with Rhimes in July to produce content with gaming, live events and VR content, plus branding and merchandising.

Rhimes compared venturing into gaming, live events and VR to the move into podcasting with iHeart Radio. “I don’t know what we’re going to do in virtual reality yet,” she said, but having the avenue and opportunity to create new types of content is “huge.” In the same way that Bridgerton had a podcast, website articles and TV show, VR and gaming can also figure into future programming, she said. With live events, “the possibilities are endless.”

Technology advances have created “a very different world” for younger TV audiences, and the entertainment industry has to adapt, said Rhimes. “To hope that everyone is going to continue to stare at a box on the wall is naive,” she said. “There are all these amazing avenues and we get to explore them in ways that I am excited about.”