Online video continues its break-neck growth rate with video views hitting 119% Year over Year growth in 2009 according to comScore. While January 2010 fell a small percentage from the final month of 2009, we still saw massive adoption as B2C behemoth YouTube continued its dominance over the space owning a whopping 39.5% of all US video views of over 32 billion served.
YouTube’s B2B equivalent in online video hosting services is Brightcove. The Cambridge, MA based OVP has seen similar growth in recent months. While not at the same scale, Brightcove continues to dominate the professional Online Video Platform space signing new customers to their video hosting service both domestically and Internationally. In fact, since launching it’s Express product just a few months back, opening offices in Japan, and launching localized versions of their web site in Japanese, French, and Spanish, Brightcove has closed more deals in the past two quarters than in all of 2008.
In Spanish speaking countries Brighcove has signed deals with Tuenti, Grupo Vocento, Sony Music Spain, Condé Nast Digital Spain, Grupo V, GEC, GX Magazine and TQMadrid. In Japan we’ve seen deals done with heavy-hitters such as Nikkei, one of Japan’s largest media corporations and publisher of the country’s top business daily newspaper, as well as Rakuten, Tokyo Metropolitan Television (Tokyo MX), Television Osaka, Shizuoka Asahi Television, Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS), CHubu-Nippon Broadcasting, PRESENTCAST, Asahi Breweries, Sony Music Networks Japan, Shueisha webUOMO, and orangepage.net.
Other enterprise focused OVPs such as Ooyala, the younger upstart to Brightcove, has also seen tremendous growth Internationally. While Bismarck Lepe, Ooyala’s co-founder and President of products denies that they’re specifically targeting Brightcove customers, they too have experienced massive growth in Japan with it’s localized online video platform, signing companies such as NTT SMARTCONNECT, and Brosta TV as well as in Europe signing Telegraph Media Group, the UK’s leading newspaper chain.
With the growth and International expansion of these US-based OVPs, I wonder how foreign video platforms such as vzaar, Stream UK, Flumotion, Ipercast, and Kewego (to name a few) feel about their turf being trampled upon. I personally have spoken to a few of these International OVPs and at this stage of the game there are no hard feelings. It’s just too early and there are far too many companies out there needing video hosting services to concern themselves with the competition at this point. In fact, I see a lot of camaraderie within the space with OVPs referring prospective customers onto others whom better fit the needs of a customer and OVPs cheering each other on as they grow into new and exciting spaces.
Exciting times are upon us in OV.
We’re seeing 2010 predictions emerge in the Online Video space by industry leaders and it provides for interesting reading. That being said, there’s nothing shocking being stated, or rather, there are no big surprises or prognostications of something new to come. Everyone tends to agree on what to expect in the New Year including the much hyped TV Everywhere, set-top boxes, multiple screens, and of course, mobile.
