In the first part of the interview, we talked about how to use videos in internal communication and some examples. In the second part, Mr. Takimoto from 90 Seconds Japan will continue from the previous interview and talk about some points to keep in mind when making videos.
The impact of damage to brand value is huge, and in an age where information is transmitted instantly around the world via the internet, the impact is not limited to the Japanese market. In order to minimize the opportunity loss caused by damage to brand safety, it is necessary to check and implement measures, particularly for video measures that have a significant impact, to prevent damage to the brand before it occurs.
In recent years, the use of video in internal communication (internal PR/communication) has been attracting attention. So, this time we visited Ryushiro Takimoto, a sales consultant at the video production company 90 Seconds Japan, to ask him for some tips on video production for internal communication.
At Brightcove, we obsess over the customer and viewer experience. As an early believer in the power and potential of OTT video, we have 15 years of proven leadership in the video space—and we understand the latest industry shifts and consumer preferences better than anyone else. In an age when viewers have increased expectations and growing appetites to watch content on an ever-growing list of devices, we believe that it’s more important than ever for you to be able to reach your audience—wherever they are.
Brightcove Beacon, our new SaaS-based OTT platform, is our latest example of our dedication and investment in this space. The upcoming release will empower you to deliver captivating OTT experiences on more devices in record time. Once Brightcove Beacon officially launches in a few weeks, it will join our existing OTT offerings—making it easier than ever for you to choose the right solution for where you are in your OTT journey.
Interested in learning more? Here’s a quick overview of the technology behind Brightcove Beacon—and the benefits you can expect.
Brightcove Beacon’s streamlined development process empowers you to get up and running on more devices than ever before—in the time it used to take to develop and deploy just one. Our new OTT platform contains three main components: a Content Management System (CMS), an admin portal, and an application generator. In the CMS, you’ll be able to designate how you want your content to be displayed to users—creating content playlists and the content publishing structure (using easy-to-change metadata tags). Then, in the admin portal, you’ll have the ability to:
Configure the look and feel of the application experience
Input any applicable monetization configurations
Set up any advertising you would like to send through to the application
Once you’ve configured this information, the application generator will create native code for the specific devices on which you want to launch your OTT experience (i.e., iOS, Android, Samsung TV, and Roku). After this process takes place, you’ll be able to quickly package your app and submit it to the appropriate app stores—making it easier than ever for you to get to market faster.
Once you generate your initial app, your remaining apps will all reference the single CMS for their content, as well as for the designated look and feel. This means that after you set up your CMS to your specifications, you’ll be able to generate applications for a variety of devices—from nine different types of smart TVs to four different kinds of connected devices, and more! Now that you won’t have to redo your configuration work each time, you’ll be able to launch multiple apps much faster than you ever could with the traditional, serial process of developing them one at a time (or in parallel with many more resources).
And you’ll also have the power to push out minor changes quickly and easily across all of your apps. If you want to adjust things like your app navigation, you’ll simply need to make the change in your admin portal; you won’t have to regenerate or re-certify your apps. And once you make the adjustment, it will automatically be pushed out to all devices—empowering you to always provide a consistent experience.
With Brightcove Beacon, you can leave us to worry about the technical delivery—so you can focus on how to capitalize on the next big trend. I know that I can speak for the entire team when I say that we can’t wait for you to see firsthand all that our new release has to offer.
Video Addict Vol.4 will be interviewing GYAO Corporation (hereafter GYAO), which operates the free video distribution service GYAO! in collaboration with Yahoo Japan Corporation.
Aiming to be a media group with a cutting-edge, comprehensive approach that is suited to the digital age, TV TOKYO is both a broadcasting company and a content company. It provides video content for all types of media, including terrestrial broadcasting, BS broadcasting, CS broadcasting, the internet and mobile. Its edgy perspective, which is not seen at rival stations, is popular with viewers in a variety of segments.
The company is also proactive in web distribution of content. Viewing content as an asset, the company aims to maximize its revenue and viewership, and in addition to the multiple services it operates itself, it also provides popular content to TVer, the official commercial TV portal.
In 2013, there was a need to insert advertising into video web distribution. An advertiser came forward with a request to advertise on a catch-up video distribution service for a variety show. Ryusuke Hori, Video and Data Business Department, TV TOKYO Communications, Inc. says, “At the time, we were not using a video distribution platform to develop our business with an advertising model. We needed a good system to operate our service while flexibly inserting advertisements, and we adopted Brightcove Video Cloud after evaluating its global track record.” This was the start of the company’s use of Brightcove.
Brightcove Video Cloud is highly compatible with live streaming, and we have been using it for a number of live broadcasts. In particular, for the online live broadcast of the 2016 World Table Tennis Championships in Malaysia, we used Brightcove Live and SSAI to achieve live streaming and flexible ad insertion. We were able to successfully carry out our first large-scale broadcast.
Furthermore, from 2017, the subscription-based anime streaming service “Ani-Tere” will also be provided through the same platform. About six years after it was adopted, Brightcove Video Cloud is continuing to provide powerful support for TV Tokyo’s web distribution of content, expanding its scope without causing any major problems.
Using Brightcove Video Cloud, we can now see exactly what our viewers are doing. Through the Brightcove Player, we can get detailed information on things like “when, how many times, how much, and on which websites” our content is being viewed. This user behavior data not only provides important insights for program production, but is also used to design optimal user interfaces for smartphone apps.
On the other hand, TV Tokyo also provides content for content distribution services run jointly by commercial broadcasters. And with these types of distribution, it is not possible to obtain complete viewing data. Free YouTube channels are a low-cost tool, but it is not possible to obtain user data and communicate with them yourself. Furthermore, there is a need to combine this viewing data with information about people who visit websites and analyze it at the device level.
Mr. Hori says, “By obtaining more accurate viewer attributes and viewing data, we can prove that we are helping advertisers with marketing activities that are truly valuable. Ultimately, I thought that we could bring our content to the point where it plays a part in the customer journey based on the data specified by the advertiser.”
Therefore, in 2016, they adopted ARM Treasure Data’s CDP and began efforts to accumulate all data obtained from various channels in the CDP and to merge the data. In order to obtain as much detailed information as possible, they devised a way to acquire data. For example, when content is distributed through an external service, it is not possible to clearly grasp viewer behavior such as pausing or resuming, but the company uses its own ad distribution server to insert ads into the content. Therefore, they devised a way to grasp viewer behavior to some extent by using the time stamp when the ad distribution was executed. At the same time, they also used the CDP to merge the behavior logs of website visitors.
The CDP data that was accumulated was useful for understanding the image of the viewers. “Gaia no Yoake”, “Cambria Palace”, and “Mirai Seiki Zipangu” are the company’s flagship economic programs, but their viewer demographics were previously only an assumption. There was a hunch that there were many business people in management positions, but there was no way to prove it. However, by using CDP, we were able to grasp the trend that there were many men in their 40s and 50s. To dig deeper, we cross-checked with an external database and obtained quantitative data showing that 60% of viewers were managers or higher, 14% were company presidents, and 7.8% were board members. This has been put to use in advertising sales, and the video advertising product called the “Economic Premium Package,” which can be distributed to economic programs, has been almost fully booked.
They also plan to start a new initiative: utilizing the targeting advertising distribution function of Brightcove SSAI. Mr. Hori says, “We’re thinking of starting with just gender and age segments, but in the future we’re also considering more personalized advertising distribution. We’ve already cleared the technical requirements, so we’ll probably start when the timing is right.”
Since you are going to spend money to produce videos, you will probably want to see business results such as increased brand recognition, increased engagement, increased customer numbers, increased membership numbers, and increased sales. However, the amount of work involved in producing videos will increase with each video.
Ever since video content could be stored in digital formats, piracy has been and continues to be a major obstacle for broadcasters and content owners around the world.
In today’s streaming landscape, piracy has a substantial revenue impact—with the illegal downloading and streaming of movies and TV shows projected to cost the TV and film industry US$51.6 billion globally by 2022.
The piracy problem continues to escalate within the OTT space—and the current streaming wars are only adding fuel to the fire.
Read on to learn more about this trend and how to address the issue of OTT video piracy from all angles.
Online video piracy has evolved from BitTorrent sites to illicit streaming devices (ISDs), which appear similar to a set-top box and come preloaded with channels and content. These devices allow users to stream movies, TV series, and live sporting events without any authentication or security protocols.
With their slick user interfaces (and sometimes, a subscription fee), it’s easy to fool anyone into thinking that these devices offer a legitimate service. It’s mind-boggling to think that in Singapore, a model nation for law and order, anyone can openly buy these devices in local electronics stores or online through popular e-commerce sites such as Lazada. It’s easy to understand the appeal of these devices: They provide access to programming that is either not shown locally or has not gone through the local censorship agencies.
Aside from ISD devices, illegal video streaming sites are thriving because of the size of their content library and how they break down the exclusive content silos.
In a recent case in the United States, two illegal streaming sites, who have amassed a portfolio of content pirated from Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, and even other popular pirate sites were indicted. These streaming services were not only available over the Internet but were also designed to work across numerous devices and platforms ranging from mobile devices, Smart TVs, video game consoles, digital media players, and set-top boxes. Now, that’s a sophistication level that may prove difficult to tackle, so a three-pronged approach is needed:
Work with local government agencies and the Asia Video Industry Association’s Coalition Against Piracy (CAP) to enact stricter piracy laws and significant fines or prison sentences
Ban the sale and distributions of ISDs, and suspend or revoke licenses of electronic stores known to sell these devices
Work with internet service providers to shut down or block illegal streaming sites
Even though all of the tactics listed above are intended to shut off the supply side, it’s important to address the demand side, as well. One may think that the explosion of streaming services would disrupt the demand for online video piracy. But it’s causing an unanticipated consumer behaviour because, after years of decline, BitTorrent usage is beginning to rise. The rise is due to the ever-escalating streaming wars—in which major media companies are all competing to create an exclusive, in-house content portfolio as a means to drive subscriptions and reduce their content licensing costs.
This exclusivity strategy only becomes more expensive for the consumer—who ends up subscribing to multiple OTT services to meet their content needs. Consumers are open to signing up for multiple OTT services, but they do have a certain spend threshold when it comes to how much they are willing to pay. Let’s remember that the reason why OTT streaming services were successful in the first place was that they offered a less-expensive alternative to pay-TV services. If subscribing to multiple streaming services becomes too costly for consumers, users may just sign up for a couple of services—and pirate the rest of the content on their wishlist. As such, OTT streaming providers should consider implementing an aggregate strategy on top of their standalone offering, as well as an ad-funded pricing strategy.
Does this sound like we are going back to the pay-TV era of an aggregated model, but through an OTT delivery and price point? It seems to trend that way. OTT streaming providers need to be mindful that ever-escalating streaming wars will only drive up the cost for the consumer, and in response, it could mean losing audiences to piracy.
It’s important to remember that piracy exists because it delivers what the consumer wants at a fundamental level: almost instantaneous access to their desired content at an affordable price (or even for free).
We know that recommendation engines can play a crucial part in subscriber retention. OTT streaming providers should consider adding a reverse function of asking the consumer what they want to watch (and incorporating those titles into the content library) as another way to meet consumer demand, curb the need to pirate content, and extend the lifetime value of a customer.
In order for piracy to fade into irrelevance, OTT streaming providers must address both the supply side and the demand side. From the supply side, OTT streaming providers need to work with government agencies to address both the legal and policy aspects of piracy and lobby for stricter legislation.
Tackling the demand side means OTT streaming providers need to design a user experience that delivers the absolute best-in-class experience for the consumer. That means incorporating several parameters that are key to consumers: content needs; flexible payment packages that offer a combination of ad-funded, ad-free options, or a hybrid option; frictionless sign-up experiences; and high-quality video streaming.
Want to learn how to address OTT video piracy is impacting your business and content?
Speak to our OTT experts today.
We can’t believe summer is almost over. Hopefully you were able to relax and take some time off. Here at Brightcove, we have been enjoying summer in Boston, while also releasing some exciting new product updates. Check them out:
Have you seen Brightcove’s Live Streaming solution? It has had a full platform overhaul to bring you an even more scalable, flexible, and reliable experience.
Our live streaming solution offers some great new features, including:
A new, easier-to-use interface that allows even a non-technical user to create and manage a live stream
The ability to clip a live event to short, snackable on-demand assets, while the stream is still running
The option to publish your on-demand clips to social channels without leaving the Brightcove platform
Get a trial set up so you can explore these new features.
Do you post videos on Facebook, only to have them stolen and re-posted on sites that are not yours? Good news: you can now configure rights properties within Brightcove Social if you have Rights Management enabled on Facebook.
Earlier in 2018, Facebook released a feature focused on combating the “stolen video epidemic,” as reported by TechCrunch. Facebook’s Rights Manager is an admin tool that allows businesses to upload video clips to be monitored, and be notified if copies of these videos are posted to Facebook.
Check out our Product Documentation for more details around the Facebook Rights Management process and how to configure your Brightcove Social account.
At Brightcove, we strive to ensure that any videos uploaded to our platform meet the World Wide Web Consortium Standards for accessibility. Last quarter we released Closed Caption capabilities within our Brightcove Social module that allows for optimal sound-off viewing of your Facebook & YouTube videos.
In the coming months, Gallery will improve accessibility for both Portals and In-Page Experiences. We are working with accessibility experts to ensure that our customers can meet Web Content Accessibility Standards while using Brightcove Gallery.
To learn what other measures Brightcove is taking to ensure accessibility, check out our Knowledge Base.
