As an online marketer by profession I’ve come to know and appreciate MarketingProfs over the years with their deep and current marketing insights, so I was honored when asked to host a webinar for them in a series called Video Marketing Made Simple through their educational arm, MarketingProfs University. It’s an eleven course series with great topics and top-notch professionals offering years of experience and expertise along with some great course materials including:
By special guest blogger, Charlie Davis. This post originally ran on his blog.
In the jungle of OVPs, Kaltura is one of three open source video platforms according to our trusted resource,VidCompare.com. Among the experts and journalists in the U.S., Kaltura holds rank among the most popular OVP providers, sharing press with Ooyala, KIT Digital, and Brightcove. And, you’ll find Kaltura sharing industry insight into hot topics like DRM, mobile, and tablet delivery, as well as being a founding member of the ‘Open Video Alliance’ (www.openvideoalliance.org).
So, what makes Kaltura’s OVP stand out? Well, from my review of their 30-day trial SaaS offering below, Kaltura offers more flexibility than most OVPs that will likely appeal to the technically saavy user or service provider. With a role-based content management backend that provides batch processing of media files, content moderation, and insight into content origin, activity and usage, this OVP should be on the short list of anyone who wants more granular control over their content, their contributors, and the software that supports it all.
Out of a small shop in Southern California is a start up Online Video Platform (OVP) born from a successful Romanian design firm. They’ve taken a path less traveled in the OV space creating a unique little niche for themselves focusing on fully customizable and elegant video players while offering all of the necessary OVP services for very little cash per month. Stemming from the design world VPFactory has spent almost two years fine tuning their Video Player as a Service (VPaaS) solution with a ridiculously easy to use backend that allows creative minds the freedom to fine tune every detail of the video player with unique WYSIWYG and drag-drop editors that even a technophobe can use.
In an interesting twist of events, Hollywood film director Oliver Stone invests in UK based Online Video Platform, vzaar. vzaar has been gaining traction in the highly competitive video platform space in recent months with one of the cleaner UI’s (user interface) we’ve seen in an OVP. Their UI is stripped down and very easy to navigate making it highly usable to even the luddites in the crowd.
Not only did director Stone invest in vzaar (deal terms undisclosed) but he also made a promotional video for them seen here:
As mention and as most of you know, the OVP competition is still heating up with 84 now in the VidCompare directory and a new comer being added tonight taking us to 85. Although, we’ll soon drop down to 84 again with the recent acquisition of Gotuit by DigitalSmiths (more on that later).
Yes, VidCompare lists 84 OVPs today offering side by side comparisons, sorting and filtering, help and how-tos, latest news, a robust online video glossary, and many other OVP-related tools. But there is only one show that captures all of this in a face to face environment bringing together the who’s who of OV. Online Video Platform Summit part two was a great show this year with solid panels moderated by industry insiders and seeded with insightful panelists. The panel I moderated, How to Choose the Right OVP for Your Business, had 3 fantastic panelists which, in my opinion, stole the show. Last year I sat on a similar panel with 3 OVPs who walked the audience through how they provide online video solutions for businesses, this year the coin was flipped and the panel was occupied by 3 unique business executives whom explained their experiences of finding and working with their online video platform of choice.
Panelist number one, Austin Brooks is a Master Magician and uses Brightcove to power his website of amazing magic tricks which he performs all over the world. Our second panelist, Peter Himmelman is a musician and entertainer with tons of online video of his many shows, backstage passes, and a web series called Himmelman’s Furious World. And our third panelist was Curt Van Inwegen, an interactive online marketer and Vice President of Client Services at LEVEL studios who uses Kyte to manage their online video needs. Like I said, an all-star cast of people who have first-hand knowledge of the pain and pleasure of selecting an OVP for their unique use case. Peter kept the crowd laughing with his artistic view on life and the world of online video, Austin captivated us with his practical and insightful commentary on why Brightcove is best for his needs, and how he uses and tracks his online video. And Curt was our resident technologist explaining to the crowd, and our panel, how to get the most of online video, why a multi-device strategy is critical, and how to customize video players to match his customer’s particular use cases. I could not have asked for a better panel.
As soon as StreamingMedia publishes the videos from the show I will add ours to this post. Until then, here are the questions I asked the panelists:
What where the key components to your decision making process when evaluating OVPs? Was it feature-based, use case, or something else entirely?
What were the 3-4 main features you considered when looking for an OVP for your particular business?
How important is multi-device delivery to your company (mobile, set top, tablet) and how did you go about comparing one provider’s mobile strategy to another?
Did you test drive any of the platforms by signing up for a free trial prior to making your decision and if so, what approach did you take when evaluating their services?
Was monetization a key consideration for your business and if so, what were the key components of video advertising that were specific to you?
UGC vs. professionally produced video? Why are either or both important to your business?
What advice would you give the audience in laying out an online video strategy?
I’d like to thank Eric Schumacher-Rasmussen and Larry Kless for putting on a fantastic event and for having me as a guest moderator. I look forward to next year.
Check out Austin catching a paint bullet with his teeth:
VidCompare is a free, data-driven, one-stop-shop for researching and comparing Online Video Platforms. We help business decision makers find the right video hosting and streaming services for their web site, saving them time and money in an easy to use and friendly environment.
@VidCompare
Free whitepaper @LLNW_Video; Video Everywhere-Improving Content Publishing Workflow Efficiency for Multi-Device Delivery:... 2012-10-05
As an online marketer by profession I’ve come to know and appreciate MarketingProfs over the years with their deep and current marketing insights, so I was honored when asked to host a webinar for them in a series called Video Marketing Made Simple through their educational arm, MarketingProfs University. It’s an eleven course series with great topics and top-notch professionals offering years of experience and expertise along with some great course materials including:
