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4 WAYS VIDEO SOLVES THE CHALLENGES OF HYBRID WORKPLACES

bsp-admin-1 on July 14, 2022

Hybrid working models have many advantages. Flexible work hours. Increased productivity. The ability to split time between office and home. And best of all: no daily commute.

But hybrid workplaces have their challenges, too.

Remote employees may feel disconnected. Communication and alignment can suffer. And how do you nurture a strong company culture when people are rarely in the same place at the same time?

That’s where video comes in.

Video is a powerful tool for engaging, unifying, informing, and training a hybrid workforce. Here are four proven strategies for using video to improve hybrid work.

1. ENHANCE INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS

There’s no better medium than video for telling a story or making an emotional connection, which makes adding video to your internal communications strategy a powerful way to energize and unite your hybrid workforce. What’s more, 48% of employees consider video the most engaging form of communication (compared to only 15% of employees who say email is most engaging).

There are countless opportunities to enrich the employee experience and strengthen company culture with internal comms video. Showcase company values and vision in executive interviews. Develop video series that advance corporate goals like diversity or employee wellness. Recap earnings calls, award ceremonies, product introductions, and more. A steady stream of video communications can motivate and help retain employees, whether they work remotely or on site.

2. CONNECT WITH VIRTUAL EVENTS

The worst of the pandemic may be over, but virtual internal events remain popular—and with good reason. Digital events offer the reach and flexibility required for a hybrid workplace. They are more inclusive than in-person events, eliminate travel time and costs, and allow you to tap into a deeper bench of speakers.

Turn company events into an opportunity for long-term employee engagement by livestreaming all-hands meetings and town halls, then making recorded sessions available for playback. Remote and in-office staff can watch event content when and where it’s convenient, with the option for repeat viewing. Making company meetings more accessible increases employee participation and the ROI of your events program.

Learn how Akamai uses digital events to connect a global workforce—and achieve a 62% attendance rate—in this session from PLAY 2021.

3. TAKE TRAINING TO THE NEXT LEVEL

Video learning is an excellent fit for a hybrid workforce. Trainers can lead live classes with large, dispersed teams. Managers can hold one-on-one coaching sessions with direct reports who work remotely. Employees can watch on-demand video courses at their own pace, in their own space. And with a dedicated video destination, it’s easy for everyone, everywhere to keep their skills and knowledge up to date.

There are many tips and techniques for using video to increase training effectiveness and employee engagement. For example, video is an ideal delivery method for microlearning. You can boost knowledge retention by breaking long training content into several short videos with specific learning objectives. Adding quizzes, overlays, and other interactive elements allows you to deliver a compelling, lean-in learning experience in a hybrid workplace.

4. IMPROVE RECRUITING AND ONBOARDING

Hybrid work has forced companies to evolve recruiting and onboarding strategies, with video playing a valuable role in the revamped process.

Recruitment videos can increase hiring success at a time when hybrid working models make every employer a competitor for talent. Video job descriptions can help attract the right candidates faster. And video interviews make it easy to connect with prospective employees wherever they’re located.

You can accelerate and standardize the onboarding of a hybrid workforce with a hub of on-demand videos for everything new hires need to know. Consider developing a welcome video that describes who you are as a company and what your business stands for. Introducing new employees to your company culture is a must, especially when they’re remote. Department overviews, HR procedures, and IT policies also make helpful onboarding videos.

BEYOND BASIC VIDEO CONFERENCING

Effectively engaging a hybrid workforce requires more than a simple video conferencing tool. These basic products are fine for one-off meetings and peer-to-peer conversations. But they don’t address all the needs and possibilities of the hybrid world.

A robust video communications platform allows you to engage a hybrid workforce in more compelling, innovative, and secure ways. When considering video technology options, make sure you can:

  • Create a branded destination where employees can explore and stream all training and internal comms videos.
  • Deliver live and on-demand video experiences so employees can watch what they want, when they want. (Yes, video conferencing software can record meetings. But the recordings aren’t indexed, so they are hard to organize, search, and share.)
  • Leverage rich analytics to track and maximize the impact of training and internal comms videos.
  • Introduce interactivity into training and internal comms videos to keep employees interested and involved.
  • Protect company information with security controls that restrict video access to the right employees.

VIDEO MAKES HYBRID WORK

As the prospects for a full return to the office fade, companies must overcome the challenges of informing and inspiring a hybrid workforce.

Integrating video into internal communications and training programs is an effective strategy to create a best-in-class employee experience for corporate and home offices. With the right video technology, you can build a cohesive team, sustain a strong company culture, and keep people connected, motivated, and learning—no matter where they work.

What can be done with a “company-exclusive” video distribution platform?

bsp-admin-1 on June 30, 2022

In order to attract the interest of various people both inside and outside the company and deliver information, “video” is an essential tool for corporate activities. However, video content is now all around us. Simply distributing it blindly will not win you viewers. There are a number of issues that need to be resolved in order to achieve a video strategy that does not become outdated.

ARE MOBILE FRAMEWORKS THE BEST OPTION FOR OTT APPS?

bsp-admin-1 on June 14, 2022

Every OTT platform needs mobile apps. According to AppAnnie, a staggering 239 billion hours were spent using OTT streaming apps for mobile video across the globe in Q4 2020. Furthermore, OpenX notes that the average OTT user will watch content on three different devices and three different apps (OpenX). Not having a mobile-first strategy in 2022 could be fatal, especially if your business model is SVoD and your subscribers expect to be able to watch on their phones.

However, Steve Jobs changed the world with the iPhone in 2007, which resulted in the subsequent emergence of two competing platforms (iOS and Android). Consequently, developers and companies have been grappling with threaded problems of building OTT app experiences for separate ecosystems with vastly different programming languages. There have been multiple attempts over the past decade to overcome this by creating frameworks that empower a single engineer to ship to the App Store and Google Play, such as PhoneGap, Ionic, and Cordova.

WHAT IS A MOBILE DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK?

Mobile development frameworks are software libraries that provide apps a structure to interact with different mobile environments. They’re particularly useful to OTT businesses because they have ready-made components that can be reused and customized for different solutions, saving valuable time for the project team. Reducing the time-to-market means less overhead for the business, which can free more money to invest in content and subscribers. This is important in such a competitive industry and in parts of the world where budgets for OTT app development can be limited.

CHALLENGES WITH MOBILE DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORKS

React Native is the current framework powerhouse because it can be used to build iOS and Android apps using JavaScript, the world’s most popular programming language. Created by Facebook, it’s used to build apps that can be installed directly onto a user’s phone via an app store. These apps can take full advantage of a device’s features and processor, providing a powerful and immersive user experience. However, they often struggle with the intense demands of video playback, causing unexpected headaches for developers who haven’t worked with video and mobile apps before.

The React Native framework uses a JavaScript Bridge, which is a layer that allows the underlying JavaScript and the native mobile code to talk to each other. When an app is running, the bridge has to be open continuously, and this becomes particularly busy when running CPU-hungry features such as video playback. This ultimately affects app performance and introduces frustration for unprepared engineers.

Google has built a newer mobile framework called Flutter, which is written in a language called Dart. The major difference to React Native is that Flutter doesn’t require a bridge. Instead, it works its magic directly in the native code. As a result, Flutter apps don’t suffer from the same performance issues with video. Apps can also be built much more quickly since Flutter has more Google-provided widgets and libraries that come directly with the framework. React Native, on the other hand, relies heavily on third-party libraries. The downside is that there are very few Flutter developers and it takes time to learn. It’s still very much in its infancy, and it’s frequently updated by Google. Time will tell if Google continues to maintain Flutter and whether it can match React Native for popularity.

BRIGHTCOVE AND MOBILE DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORKS

Brightcove doesn’t support frameworks in our mobile SDKs because a framework is only great until it’s not. Our focus is ensuring our customers and their audiences get the best video playback experience possible. However, our Global Services team can provide a wrapper encapsulated with our mobile SDKs so that they can be compatible with an app built in React Native. Our React Native wrapper offers basic playback features, including DRM support.

ALTERNATIVES TO MOBILE DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORKS

Although a quicker go-to-market might be tempting, if you want to get the optimal performance and user experience with video, then building OTT platform apps natively is the best option. Anybody serious about having high-functioning OTT mobile apps will go down the native path, even if it means a longer and more expensive time-to-market. It also tends to be better in the long term in terms of business support. There will always be developers who can iterate and scale an existing native app if the OTT platform is successful. Brightcove’s Global Services team builds natively as we strongly believe it provides a better return on investment. Attracting and retaining users with a high-performing app is a crucial business strategy.

As the world gets more and more digital, OTT businesses no longer need the best mobile apps—they demand them. Before jumping into this rapidly growing market, be sure to choose an app development option that can grow with your business.

B2B VIDEO MARKETING: MILLENNIAL BUYERS DEEP DIVE

bsp-admin-1 on June 6, 2022

Millennials are the first generation to have grown up in the world of multimedia and, as a result, have more access to the content they consume and are more critical when it comes to what they view.

Our research study, “B2B Video Marketing: The Power Of Video In The B2B Buyer’s Journey”, examined the role that video plays throughout the B2B buying process. Due to Millennials’ unique preferences, it’s worth taking a deeper look into how ingrained video is in their content consumption habits.

Key Highlights

  • 96% of Millennials say video is important when deciding to move forward in the decision-making process.
  • 81% of Millennials say they prefer video over written formats for troubleshooting.
  • 80% of Millennials say they prefer video over written formats for learning how to use a product or service, and
  • 70% of Millennials say that video is the most helpful content format when creating awareness of business-related problems.

MARKETING TO B2B MILLENNIAL DECISION-MAKERS

Marketing to Millennials is no longer future-thinking; it is marketing to today’s B2B buyers and decision-makers. Over half (52%) of respondents self-identified as Millennials between the ages of 26 and 41 years old at the time of the survey, and 42% of this Millennial group are currently in VP/SVP and executive roles at their respective organizations.

Nearly all Millennials (96%) say that video is important when deciding to move forward in the decision-making process, and for 70% of them, video is the most helpful content format when creating awareness of business-related problems, beating out other formats significantly.

B2B Video Marketing - Impactful Content Formats - Millennials

GENERATIONAL DIFFERENCES: VIEWING FREQUENCY

Millennials have developed different habits and expectations than the generations before them when it comes to consuming business-related content. Our research shows that video is the overwhelming preference for this group. It is essential for businesses to adapt their marketing strategies to meet these demands. If you haven’t transformed your marketing with video, you’re behind the curve and will likely miss enormous opportunities to engage with this demographic.

Millennials watch far more video than generations before them, with over one-quarter (26%) watching video 10+ times in the last three months, compared to just 9% of those in the Generation X and Baby Boomer generations. Similarly, one in five professionals in the older generations report watching no business-related video at all in the last three months, compared to approximately one in twenty (6%) Millennials.

B2B Video Marketing - Viewing Frequency by Generation

VIDEO IMPACT POST-PURCHASE

Millennials feel strongly about the impact video has in the post-purchase stages of a B2B buying journey. Nearly all (97%) professionals in this age group agree that video content and communication is useful in the post-purchase stages of their buying journey.

A significant portion of this group prefers video over written formats for post-purchase situations. For instance, 80% of Millennials prefer video for learning how to use a product or service, and 81% prefer video over written formats for troubleshooting.

In what ways do Millennials find video most helpful? Over half (53%) report that video is most helpful in sharing information with peers/colleagues who could also benefit from their recent purchase.

B2B Video Marketing - Ways Video Helps - Millennials

VIDEO AVAILABILITY IS IMPORTANT TO MILLENNIALS

So how can B2B businesses reach today’s increasingly Millennial workforce? Have video content available for prospects and customers to explore and engage with throughout their entire buying journey. This means not only hosting video content on your company website but meeting your customers with video across all touchpoints throughout their journey with your brand.

B2B Video Marketing - Video Channel Consumption - Millennials

B2B VIDEO MARKETING: EXECUTIVE BUYERS DEEP DIVE

bsp-admin-1 on June 3, 2022

Executives play a primary role in major purchase decisions made for their company, but how do executive-level decision-makers utilize and appreciate video in a business setting?

Our research study, “B2B Video Marketing: The Power Of Video In The B2B Buyer’s Journey”, examined the role that video plays throughout the B2B buying process. Due to the role executives play in that process, it’s worth taking a deeper look into how they engage video.

Key Highlights

  • 95% of executives say that video is important in building trust in an organization’s ability to deliver on its promises.
  • 93% of executives say they would be more likely to purchase from a business that has video content readily available for them to consume.
  • 70% of executives watched videos for work on five or more occasions over the last three months to help them in their purchase decisions.

EXECUTIVE HABITS AND PREFERENCES

Executives are consuming videos frequently, with 70% having watched videos related to a purchase decision on five or more occasions in the last three months. Compare this to just 39% of non-executives, and we see that executives rely on video far more than others for B2B purchasing.

What are executives watching? Product reviews rank at the top of the list of types of videos most frequently watched by executives, followed by product demos and live videos such as webinars.

B2B Buyers - Types of Video Content - Executives

REACHING EXECUTIVES

For marketers trying to reach the executive audience, it is critical to use video content. Our research indicates that executives connect with, and prefer to interact with, video far more than with other content formats.

Ninety-three percent of executives say they would be more likely to purchase from a business that has video content readily available for them to consume (with over half saying they would be significantly more likely).

When reaching the executive audience, video prevails over written formats.

  • 92% of executives prefer video over written content when viewing an explanation of a complex product or service.
  • 90% of executives prefer video over written content when learning how to use a product or service.
  • 85% of executives prefer video over written content when learning about a business.
Executive Buyers Value High-Quality Videos

 

BUILDING TRUST WITH EXECUTIVES

Executives trust video and are more confident in brands that have video. Nearly all (95%) executives surveyed say that video is important in building trust in an organization’s ability to deliver on its promises, with 75% saying it is extremely important.

This trust and confidence are paramount in setting executives up for sales outreach. After consuming a brand’s video content, 98% of executives say that they would be more receptive to sales communication from them, and when being introduced to sales or customer service representatives, 92% of executives report preferring video most or all of the time.

Which forms of content do executives find most compelling? When comparing potential solutions, executives find videos (63%) and research reports (50%) to be the most compelling forms of content to help with their purchase decision.

B2B Buyers - Useful Content Formats - Executives

GAINING BUY-IN FROM LEADERSHIP

Nearly three-quarters (73%) of executives say that video is extremely helpful throughout the decision-making process for their company. As marketers seek buy-in from leadership, video is easy to share and can be quickly viewed by executives evaluating businesses to work with.

How is it most helpful? Executives list learning how to solve a problem, as well as learning about a product/service, as the top ways video is most helpful to them in making a business-related purchase.

B2B Buyers - Video Purchase Decision - Executives

Here are some tips for packaging video content to present to executives:

  • Consider videos that are more solution-based with a value message. Nearly half (47%) of executives say that learning how to solve a problem they have is how video can be most helpful to them as they make a purchase decision.
  • ROI is always a great message for presenting a solution to executives. Always make sure there are numbers to back up your proposals.
  • Customer testimonial videos resonate well with executives—particularly when they are from a similar size company in the same industry. Forty-three percent of executives report that hearing what other customers think of a product or service is a top way in which video is most helpful to them during the decision-making process.

SOCIAL PUBLISHING INTEGRATIONS: LINKEDIN AND HOOTSUITE

bsp-admin-1 on June 3, 2022

It’s important for our customers to reach their audiences where they are, and these days, social media is a primary location. That’s why at Brightcove we continue to maintain, update, and add integrations for social channels.

We’re pleased to announce that Brightcove now supports publishing to LinkedIn. Just create a “LinkedIn destination” in the Social Module, and you can distribute content directly to the millions of professionals across LinkedIn’s site. You can also fully configure the default settings of your post, including post info, visibility, and captioning, so that it displays the way you want it to.

Additionally, you’re now able to publish from Hootsuite. Your Brightcove account can be added to Hootsuite Streams, allowing you to select videos and distribute them across social platforms. This provides a significant boost for publishing video content across social platforms and gives even more flexibility to teams who use these channels.

Over half of marketers indicate video is the most valuable type of content for accomplishing their social marketing goals. It’s more important than ever for organizations to have the tools they need to stay competitive. At Brightcove, we’re always looking for ways to keep you at the top of the pack. Evolving our social integrations is one way we do that.

MENA’S OTT OPPORTUNITY AND WHY 2022 IS THE YEAR TO SEIZE IT

bsp-admin-1 on June 2, 2022

The OTT market in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is growing substantially. With over 516 million internet users in the region (higher per capita than global internet penetration), and year-over-year growth between 2.9% and 4.0% through 2026, more and more of the population will be online, according to eMarketer.

Increasing internet users in MENA presents immense opportunities surrounding broadcast and content. Recent research from eMarketer and GWI further breaks down the potential by country in this burgeoning market:

  • In Egypt, digital video has more viewers than live broadcast television with 92.1% of internet users in the country streaming video-on-demand in the first half of 2021. Further, SVoD in Egypt jumped from 46.8% of internet users in 2020 to 57.2% in 2021.
  • In Israel, live broadcast television still sees more of consumers’ time spent, but digital video did have substantial growth in 2021. Nearly two in three internet users in Israel said they watched SVoD services in 2021, up from 61.2% in the year prior.
  • In Saudi Arabia, the vast majority (95.5%) of internet users watched digital video in 2021–this is more than the share of internet users that spent time with broadcast TV (91.4%). Furthermore, internet users are streaming video for two hours per day.
  • In the United Arab Emirates, digital video also beat traditional TV with a greater percentage of internet users watching streaming over broadcast–95.4% vs. 86.1% respectively. And more users paid for digital streaming than in years prior.

MENA’S PRIMED MARKET

The growth in the MENA region is clear from the research, and it was also evident at CABSAT 2022–one of the world’s biggest events for the global satellite, broadcast, and filmed content industry. Joined by our partner (and this year’s “Growth Accelerator” award winner), MAAS World, the event was attended by thousands of the world’s leading industry figures.

MAAS World specializes in providing complete and customized end-to-end OTT solutions. Their Executive Director, Adeeb Abed, noted that the market is indeed primed for digital video:

“We felt the appetite of regional broadcasters, publishers, and content creators to adapt VOD, streaming, and live services. As more people shift to online video, there are more opportunities to maximize revenues and attract more customers, whether in SVoD or AVoD models. In fact, a number of our customers that own huge archives of legacy content are powering up their growth through OTT-based distribution models, whether in B2B or B2C models. The video streaming industry is on the rise, and it will be interesting to see more monetization alternatives evolve in the near future, especially in the Metaverse landscape.”

But quality content in a digital format isn’t the only key to tapping into the MENA region’s growth:

“Regional OTT providers are also striving for better streaming and delivery service, especially when it comes to livestreaming. Their customers are paying subscription fees for a premium experience, which puts increased pressure on broadcasters to deliver not only good content but premium quality service. We have a number of service providers engaged with us to explore the possibilities of how to improve their delivery service. They’re even keen to change technologies, workflows, and architecture as they realize how quickly users can churn given the increasingly stiff competition on the OTT landscape. Thankfully with Brightcove Live, we could serve our clients a stable and reliable service. With 16 completely secure global data centers handling hundreds of millions of videos a week with 99.99% uptime, our customers are in good hands.

MENA’S PROJECTED OPPORTUNITY

CABSAT 2022 was also the site for industry research organization, IABM, to reveal its 2022 MENA regional report, which gave content owners even more confidence in market growth. The IABM research presented at the conference showed that of all media technologies, OTT and streaming platforms now rank with the highest combination of development priority and regional relevance.

As digital technologies increase their share of entertainment revenue, media companies across the board have prioritized engaging their audiences through video, across devices, and with uninterrupted reliability. Many are responding with DTC (direct-to-consumer) offerings, which is driving major investments in original and even local content in the region.

What’s more, new OTT services continue to launch, and with them grow the subscriber base. The number of VOD and OTT media subscribers in the MENA region steadily grew throughout the pandemic (around 10 million by the end of 2021) and is projected to top 15 million in 2022.

To stake a claim in today’s rapidly changing OTT marketplace, content owners are focused on attending to viewers’ preferences for content, device, viewer experience, price tolerance, and even interactivity. These areas represent the IABM report’s fastest-growing segments of the end-to-end media supply chain–monetization and consumption.

But it will take more than just a video platform to meet both the opportunities and demands in MENA. Media companies want solutions that integrate with technology vendors to tie in analytics, monetization, and subscriber management with the front end. Those are demands that Brightcove, in partnership with MAAS World, is prepared to meet.

[Learn more in our PLAY episode, “Has the OTT Marketspace ‘Peaked’?” (spoiler: it hasn’t).](https://playtv.brightcove.com/watch/player/28267/stream?assetType=movies “Has the OTT Marketspace “Peaked”?”)

AUDIO STREAMING PLAYBACK

bsp-admin-1 on April 29, 2022

Since streaming includes content beyond video, such as podcasts, audiobooks, and music, it’s important for us to have the technology in place to support both video and audio. Therefore, we’re excited to introduce Brightcove’s Audio Streaming playback offering.

Our player now supports playback of audio-only assets, which can be displayed with a permanent poster image or with just the control bar showing. It supports source files in MP3, M4A, or WAV format, and it supports the iOS SDK, with Android to come later this year. Audio content uses significantly less bandwidth than video, so you can leverage this distribution method to save on resources as well.

Not only does this capability enable our customers to stay at the forefront of content trends, it improves accessibility. Audio streaming benefits those who are visually impaired, and through auto-captioning, it can support hearing-impaired audiences as well.

Using our established Brightcove Player, getting started with audio streaming is simple, quick, and intuitive. Furthermore, it includes access to the same analytics capabilities we offer for video streaming, so you can get in-depth insights on how your audio content is performing.

At Brightcove, we’re here to make sure that your streaming strategy meets your audience’s needs for a flexible and innovative solution. With the introduction of audio streaming, we’re able to provide more support as you stay up to date on industry trends and audience expectations.