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The publication covers the business of the global entertainment industry via a network of media outlets, including its popular multimedia website, THR.com. At the center of this leading entertainment-focused brand is a rich array of original video content featuring exclusive industry news and events.

Complementing existing content

THR has continued to build on its successful heritage in the entertainment world by creating a rich and wide-ranging website destination for exclusive industry news and events. A central element of THR’s website strategy has been the production and distribution of original video content. But increasing demand to provide high-quality viewing experiences, integrated editorial features, and new ad products has introduced complex requirements for THR’s online video operations.

Previously, THR experimented with a home-grown online video solution, but found the process of publishing and distributing high-quality, ad-supported video experiences to be time consuming and cost prohibitive. THR made the decision to outsource these operations to an online video platform in order to increase efficiency and reduce time to market for the large volume of original programming at the center of the THR.com website experience.

The Brightcove Solution

In late 2007, Nielsen Business Media selected the Brightcove online video platform for publishing and distributing video across its network of websites, including Adweek.com, Billboard.com and THR.com. It became clear that Brightcove offered the most comprehensive, scalable solution that could not only address the specific needs of THR, but also Nielsen Business Media’s additional Web properties.

According to Lisa Sullivan-Cross, vice president of online for the Media and Entertainment Group at Nielsen Business Media, Brightcove was selected based on several specific capabilities:

• Flexibility – The built-in flexibility of the Brightcove platform was crucial in its ability to easily adapt to THR’s specific needs and objectives. The platform allows for easy extensibility and customization, making it uniquely adaptable to the full scope of Nielsen Business Media’s online video needs.
• User engagement – With Brightcove, THR is able to improve user engagement with its video content and overall site by taking advantage of out-of-the-box features such as providing related, most-popular and most viewed video recommendations, search engine optimization for specific video topics, and surfacing viral sharing features, which together help to increase traffic and time spent on the site.
• Efficiency – With specific workflows built for non-technical editorial staff, the Brightcove platform allows THR to easily create, manage and customize ad-supported video players without the need for development or IT resources.
• ROI – In switching to Brightcove’s software-as-a-service platform, THR and Nielsen Business Media are able to focus on creating impactful content rather than on maintaining a costly in-house solution.

“We view online video as a strategic tool for driving traffic and customer engagement on THR.com,” said Sullivan-Cross. “Brightcove enables us to provide dynamic and engaging video coverage of the entertainment industry that can be easily integrated with our popular blogs and distributed to a wide network of third party sites to help grow the THR brand.”

Substantial upticks in time spent on site and visitors

Since rolling out the Brightcove platform in 2008, video has been integrated on every main page and all review pages on THR.com. The combination of original THR-produced video content and viral content from THR partners has helped to substantially increase traffic and time spent on the site.

“Users have definitely appreciated having more video on the THR website,” said Sullivan-Cross. “There have been marked upticks in our visitors and time spent on our site has more than tripled in the last year due in large part to the video content that we’ve integrated onto our blogs and our site.”

THR’s new video strategy has provided the site with a strong basis for sponsorship opportunities, as the viral and sharing capabilities of the Brightcove platform enables sponsored content to be syndicated and embedded on third party sites. The successful rollout and use of the Brightcove platform by THR has also served as the model and driving force behind online video initiatives for other Nielsen Business Media properties.

In the future, THR plans to take advantage of Brightcove’s mobile video capabilities and partnerships to enable readers to access up-to-the-minute entertainment coverage on a variety of devices.