A La Une – Brightcove Puts Online Video Front-and-Center for L’Express
Modeled after Time magazine and Germany’s Spiegel, L’Express is one of France’s highest-selling current affairs weeklies. Founded in 1953, it began by publishing famous French writers, such as Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, André Malraux and Françoise Sagan. As of 2008, L’Express reached 2.3 million readers each week through its magazine and nearly two million Internet users every month.
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Brightcove gives us the ability to integrate all our digital assets online, disseminate them to different types of mobile devices and ultimately get more people to engage with our contents.”
Head of Web video for L’Express
Situation
L’Express and its online companion – www.lexpress.fr – feature breaking world, European and French news, as well as commentary on global arts, entertainment and culture. With hundreds of journalists in the field capturing news as-it-happens, L’Express needed an online video platform that would enable the organization to streamline uploads, categorize content and increase visibility for the L’Express brand across all of its video properties.
Solution
Brightcove Video Cloud online video platform, July 2010.
ROI
- Cross-platform functionality
- Improved measurement and analytics
- Simplified integration with CMS
- Increased traffic and views
Brightcove Attributes
Easy, Streamlined, Effective
Simplified, Scalable Distribution
For more than eight years, L’Express relied on an internally developed player to share its video content online. While the player worked well for Web browser platforms, it was not compatible with new mobile technologies and did not allow for much content flexibility. Features like pre-roll advertising, chapter indexing and other interactive opportunities were non-existent.
“Before coming to Brightcove, we had to develop multiple video player renditions for Apple iOS products and mobile devices,” said Benjamin Turquier, head of Web video for L’Express. “It was a time-consuming, piecemeal process, and in the end, our video content did not deliver the rich media experience our readers desire.”
In 2010, L’Express began using the Brightcove Video Cloud online video platform in conjunction with Brightcove partner, Hub'Sales, to simplify its video upload process and make it easier for mobile device users to view L’Express video content online. Hub'Sales provided professional services, consulting, development and support to L'Express for its Video Cloud implementation. Now, L’Express can now upload and display video content across Facebook and YouTube concurrently with its own website using Brightcove’s upload syndication features.
In the future, L’Express plans to use Video Cloud to hasten its entry into the growing connected TV market, enabling television viewers to access L’Express video content through their set-top boxes. The Video Cloud application programming interfaces (APIs) will also help L’Express design a customized viewing experience that is fully integrated with its existing content management system.
More Viewers = More Advertisers
Since implementing Video Cloud, L’Express has seen a four-fold increase in its video views, and has begun monetizing this success in the form of pre-roll advertising.
“Our success with Brightcove has had an impact on our ability to market to our advertising partners, such as Hollywood studios that want to distribute movie trailers to our website visitors,” Turquier said. “Without Brightcove, it would have been very difficult to offer that service to our advertisers.”
Today, L’Express video content garners between 350,000 and 550,000 views per month, up from several hundreds monthly views before switching to Video Cloud. Turquier believes this is a result of better content integration between news articles, photos and video on the L’Express website.
“I am very interested in interactivity and creating cue points that trigger other actions and events around the video content,” Turquier said. “Brightcove gives us the ability to integrate all our digital assets online, disseminate them to different types of mobile devices and ultimately get more people to engage with our content.”
