I love when Will Richmond at VideoNuze does his quarterly Online Video investment roundups where he gives a brief synopsis of the state of OV investment for the quarter and lists out the companies and how much they raised. It’s fantastic to see the money continue to pour into our sector and encouraging to note that technology is at the forefront as it signifies that we’re still innovating and trying to make OV related products and services stronger.
What’s most interesting about this past quarter’s investments is how little was actually raised by Online Video Platforms. In fact only one, Brightcove, raised incremental funds recently to the tune of $12 million for what was thought to be for small acquisitions though we have not seen any roll-ups yet. But my guess is we will, soon. Kit Digital can’t be the only OVP out there with an acquisition strategy and we’re already seeing/hearing of OVPs whom are looking for further financing and struggling to find it.
Is the “traditional” OVP, offering only the big 5 (ingest, encode, store, manage, playback) going the way of The Feedroom? If they don’t specialize and address a real pain-point then my guess is yes, without a doubt, there will be more M&A in the near future (broken record). What are your thoughts; will we see more specialization in the space, a move towards a DIY workflow method a la Unicorn Media, Twistage, and EOS, or something else altogether?
