What kind of video strategy should you have in place to ensure the success of your video marketing? In order to achieve the results you want, it is important to clarify the objectives of your video marketing and to have a video strategy that is well-balanced with your marketing strategy.
The evolution of the streaming media space has accelerated, and consumers are driving massive transformation in content, delivery, and devices. Broadcasters and content owners are searching for ways to get into the space quickly and maintain their relevance with viewers—who increasingly are looking to OTT services as their primary source of video entertainment.
The subscription video on-demand (SVOD) space alone is expected to reach nearly 1 billion subscriptions by 2023, nearly double what it is today, and that doesn’t even touch on the growth anticipated to happen with ad-supported video services.
Having the right insights will help you build your business.
That’s why we’ve put together Brightcove’s Q2 2019 Global Video Index, a deep dive into the consumer behavior that’s at the root of OTT’s growth. The Video Index looks at hundreds of millions of data points from the quarter for insights into how viewers are watching, what devices they are watching on, and what kind of content they’re consuming.
In Q2, plays on mobile devices—smartphones and tablets—grew to 53% of all video starts globally—thereby “flipping the field,” as mobile plays grabbed the majority share compared to desktop computers.
The biggest growth in share was by smartphones, which saw more than a 45% share of all videos played on mobile devices and computers. That’s up from 38% a year ago.
We also looked at how the numbers shook out in seven markets: the Americas (the United States and Canada), Australia/New Zealand, APAC, Europe, Latin America, Japan/Korea, and the Middle East/Africa.
In emerging markets, especially APAC, mobile is king. A whopping 84% of all plays in the region were on mobile devices. In Japan/Korea, the share was 58%, and in the Middle East/Africa, mobile share was 57%.
In every region (except the Americas), mobile took share from desktop computers.
Leveraging mobile video consumption continues to be crucial for OTT providers as they look to not only reach younger viewers, who traditionally have been mobile-first, but also older demographics that have simply discovered mobile video as a convenient way to consume content outside the home. The amount of content being consumed on mobile devices has more than doubled over the past year—as more content owners and distributors make premium content available to consumers where they want it, when they want it, and on any device they want.
That growth will continue as more content, especially high-value sports content, finds mobile a very welcoming and profitable path to follow.
On mobile devices, the dominance of iOS (iPhones and iPads) has eroded in the past year. The share of video viewed on Android devices now is significantly higher in four of the seven world regions we reported on for Q2. Just three regions—the Americas, Australia/New Zealand, and Japan/Korea—see more video plays on iOS devices than on Android devices.
On a worldwide scale, Android smartphone share has increased to 68% from 59% from a year ago. But Apple’s iPad remains dominant in tablet plays.
Nowhere is Android as dominant as it is in APAC. Some 92% of video plays are on Android phones and tablets. Europe is next highest with 70% of plays being on Android devices. Of the three regions dominated by iOS, only Japan/Korea saw growth in Q2 from a year ago.
Continuing a trend, long-form video (21-40 mins.) and ultra-long-form video (41+ mins.) saw faster growth in its share of time watched in Q2 on every device, including mobile phones.
Ultra-long-form content took the highest total share of time watched across all devices, with short-form video (0-5 mins.) having the highest number of assets published.
The increasing quality of delivery to mobile devices, cheaper data plans, and more affordable Android smartphones from China, have had a significant impact on how content is consumed.
We’re seeing total screen democracy with the closest screen at hand being the screen of choice. Mobile is no longer dominated by snackable content. It’s providing a multi-course meal to consumers.
At IBC earlier this month, as we saw at NAB, the core of the discussion has changed to delivering content direct-to-consumers—with more personalization and fewer limitations as to what’s included in the content mix. That’s a trend that will continue the growth of OTT content consumption. We’ll continue to see growth on all devices, with longer content dominating time watched.
The Brightcove Global Video Index reflects the anonymized, aggregated, online video metrics of Brightcove customers.
In the second half of Video Addict Vol.4, we will talk about GYAO!’s initiatives regarding live streaming.
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.”
