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Instrumental to this growth has been the ability of the Telegraph's integrated, multimedia newsroom to add depth to its stories. A major element to this multimedia newsroom is Telegraph TV, which provides the very best of Telegraph journalism in on-demand video content produced exclusively for the Web.

New look for Telegraph TV

Telegraph TV was originally launched as a microsite containing video content from the Telegraph's key coverage areas, such as news, sports, business and entertainment. Though this strategy was effective initially, it grew to become a complex undertaking and became less effective in driving traffic and search results.

Telegraph TV soon came to the conclusion that they were not leveraging online video to its fullest potential and that the microsite approach was no longer the best strategy for showcasing their growing library of video content. Rather, the team at Telegraph TV wanted to embed its video throughout the site to the places where it was most likely to be seen and were the most relevant. By breaking up the components of the microsite and creating a more integrated, seamless video experience, Telegraph TV recognized they could also greatly simplify their production workflow.

During this process, Telegraph TV was also experimenting with various ad formats to determine the best strategy moving forward. The editorial team had reservations about certain ad formats and their relevance and impact on the user experience, and the commercial team needed more effective advertising and bigger numbers than traditional pre-roll and post-roll formats could provide. It became clear that a new kind of ad format and experience was needed to satisfy the requirements of Telegraph TV's new online video strategy.

The Brightcove Solution

Though the Telegraph is a long-time Brightcove customer, James Flint, the general manager of Telegraph TV, recognized they needed to take their Brightcove-powered video in a new direction. The timing coincided perfectly with the launch of Brightcove's next generation online video platform, Brightcove 3.

According to Flint, there were several features in Brightcove 3 that were particularly appealing for Telegraph TV:

• BEML – Using the Brightcove Experience Markup Language (BEML) enables Flint and the Telegraph TV team to easily create new, customized players from scratch to meet the varying needs of different areas of the website. These XML-based templates provide Telegraph TV with complete flexibility over the layout and design of standard video elements, such as display and playlists.
• Flexibility – Brightcove has a clear understanding of how media organizations need to run their online business, so its flexible platform is built on open standards and designed for deep customization to support the Telegraph's unique needs and requirements. Efficiency – Brightcove 3's enhanced speed enables the Telegraph TV production team to improve productivity by quickly uploading media files, entering metadata and organizing content into playlists.
• Improved user engagement – The ability to tightly integrate video with other editorial content throughout the site is crucial for Telegraph TV. Brightcove provides customizable players and functionality to help Telegraph TV create a more streamlined and seamless user experience, which will ultimately help to increase viewer engagement.

"It was a happy coincidence that Brightcove 3 was introduced around the same time as we were shifting our video strategy," said Flint. "Before, we did not have a coherent publishing strategy and ended up with hundreds of different players scattered around our site, making video impossible to manage and monetize effectively. Now with Brightcove 3 I'm able to create a distributed network of customized players and user experiences that are centrally controlled. This helps to minimize complexity for our production team while at the same time increasing video delivery options for our users."

Telegraph TV also worked with InSkin, a Brightcove Alliance partner, to design a highly customized advertising skin format from the bottom up that made ads integral to the overall system, increased inventory and yield. The new format was also much better suited for the user and editorial experience. InSkin's easy integration with Brightcove also enables Telegraph TV to offer improved advertising and monetization opportunities to its brand marketers.

Measurable ROI across the board

Since rolling out the new video strategy and experience in December 2008, the Telegraph has seen impressive results in terms of traffic, video plays and advertising click through rates.

"We've doubled both our website traffic and our video plays over the past year, but most of the increase in the latter has happened over the last couple of months since we implemented our new video strategy," said Flint. "Before then there was an obvious disconnect in the growth of our Web traffic versus traffic for the video microsite. Now our video traffic is able to keep pace with our overall traffic because video is integrated throughout our website thanks to the Brightcove platform."

Additionally the Telegraph has seen substantial ROI from its new InSkin ad formats. Click-through rates have been as high as 14 percent, which is many times higher than what is typically deemed a successful click-through rate. With the help of InSkin, visitors are much more inclined to watch and interact with ads because they have complete control over the experience. InSkin has also provided Flint with new ways to measure advertising opportunities and track where on the site players are being watched.

In the future, Flint plans to take advantage of Brightcove's new APIs to build several SEO layers to help improve the overall searchability of their video content. Unique URLs will be attached to each video in Telegraph TV's archive, while new videos embedded into editorial content will be visible in search results.