Our Customers

Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., Freedom Interactive owns and operates top news and information websites associated with the company’s various media properties coast-to-coast, including more than 60 newspapers and magazines and eight broadcast stations.

Situation

Freedom Interactive launched a mobile version for all of its websites in February 2009. In 2010 the program expanded to serve video content only to iPhones and later to Android in Q4 2010. In Q1 of 2011 it will expand to detect and serve to Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices running Adobe® Flash® Player 10.1. During planning for 2011, Freedom Interactive sought to increase the reach of its mobile platform into the expanding tablet computer market, thereby increasing video views, traffic and revenue.

Solution

Brightcove APIs and App SDKs for mobile device platforms, August 2010.

ROI

• Doubled display ad impressions
• Doubled pre-roll impressions
• Expanded ad revenue opportunities
• Greater visibility in search engines

Brightcove Attributes

Simple, Flexible, Organized

Effectively Manage Content

Freedom Interactive manages a complex network of more than 80 websites with video content. Each site has a base set of video players, each deployed to specific site templates within Freedom Interactive’s Web content management system (CMS) for easy publishing, along with widgets to promote video content. The standardization features and common templates made possible by Brightcove’s application program interfaces (APIs) facilitate effective management by Freedom Interactive’s team.

“The CMS within Brightcove’s platform has greatly benefited our video content management,” said Jim Zisk, Video Product Manager of Freedom Interactive. “Operating within the Brightcove Console allows for consistent settings for analytics, ad policies and sharing across all of our sites.”

On the content side, Freedom Interactive also uses Brightcove’s sharing capabilities to syndicate video and share content with targeted regional or national interest across all its properties. According to Zisk, sharing “helps expand video content available to the smaller properties that do not produce daily video content,” resulting in increased views.

Metadata for SEO also enables easier video discoverability. Freedom Interactive’s team consistently monitors and encourages video producers to create unique descriptive headlines and short descriptions in the Brightcove Console to allow viewers and searchers to know what is in the video. Using the Brightcove APIs, the Freedom Interactive CMS templates place and display the appropriate information in the correct locations and tags of the page, which aids in the video’s index ability and search results.

Sharing and more effectively managing Freedom Interactive’s video content has resulted in a doubling of ad and pre-roll ad impressions, leading to expanded ad revenue opportunities for the company.

Functional Flexibility

Freedom Communications began using the Brightcove APIs and App SDKs for mobile device platforms in the Fall of 2010 as part of an integration plan for expanding revenue opportunities heading into Q1 of 2011. The Brightcove platform and APIs provide mobile-ready video encoding, robust software development kits (SDKs), intelligent device detection and powerful mobile Web player templates that simplify outreach to mobile audiences via the mobile Web and mobile apps.

“In the last few months, Brightcove’s mobile video solutions have enabled us to launch 23 mobile apps to multiple platforms and 23 iPad apps,” Zisk said.

In addition to mobile expansion, Freedom Interactive is exploring ways to extend the reach of its newspaper and broadcast video content to regional and national audiences using platforms like Google TV and Yahoo! Connected TV. Operating in tandem with the Brightcove platform, the programs would integrate with Internet ready televisions, set top boxes, the Web, smart phones, apps and even Flash players, allowing Freedom Interactive’s video content to be displayed on an expanding list of devices.

“We see great potential in this merging of technologies to increase access for viewers, whether they are on their phones, computers or in their living rooms,” Zisk said.