Brightcove introduced the Brightcove AI Suite, which uses AI to provide content creation, audience growth and engagement and increased revenue generation.

The new AI Suite is integrated into Brightcove’s video cloud platform.

“Generative AI is transforming how companies create content and how users engage, and we believe it will drive a boom in video content and its consumption,“ Brightcove CEO Mark DeBevoise said. “To enable our customers to take full advantage of these next-generation creation and engagement capabilities, we are enhancing our platform with a suite of AI-driven solutions to deliver on these opportunities. By listening to our customers and analyzing their businesses and use cases, we built the Brightcove AI Suite to address their needs, especially in key focus areas, including maximizing content utilization, driving engagement, growing revenue and solving the cost-to-quality equation.”

The Brightcove AI Suite will launch with an AI Content Multiplier, AI Universal Translator, AI Metadata Optimizer, AI Engagement Maximizer and AI Cost-to-Quality Optimizer. 

Each is available for existing customers to pilot, with general availability planned for year-end. The products are designed to help customers create and optimize content, grow engagement and monetization, and reduce the costs of creating, managing, and delivering content without sacrificing quality.

Brightcove is strengthening its platform by using models from industry leaders like Anthropic, AWS, and Google to deliver excellence and speed of innovation by adding the power of their models to Brightcove’s solutions. 

The Brightcove AI Suite is being tested with more than a dozen customers, including Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT), Major League Fishing, Italiaonline and OneValley.

For a limited time, the company is expanding its AI pilot program to all customers at no additional cost.

“As a trusted partner to more than 2,000 global customers, we are also launching the Brightcove AI Pledge: a commitment to securely handling customer data with transparency and responsibility,” Brightcove chief product officer Scott Levine said. “Part of our differentiation will be our ability to advance Generative AI securely, protecting our customers’ most valuable assets, including transparent guiding principles to protect customer data and content integrity. We will only use data and content to train our AI models with explicit permission from our customers so they can decide their level of inclusion and security.”

Streaming technology company Brightcove said it made a strategic deal with Google to use Google Ad Manager to help customers monetize video content and serve more impressions to large audiences.

The integration makes it easier for media companies and publishers to shift ad dollars to OTT streaming services and CTV devices. It also give Brightcove access to Google’s programmatic ad marketplace to unlock additional demand.

“Forging this partnership with Google Ad Manager allows Brightcove to increase support and service options to ultimately help customers monetize their video content and drive more revenue from their sites and apps,” said Brightcove CEO Marc DeBevoise. “The partnership reflects our dedication to delivering the best streaming solutions for our customers to power their video content, reach wider audiences, optimize their advertising strategy, and maximize ad revenue.”

Brightcove customers who use Google Ad Manager can compete for higher prices on a cost- per-thousand viewers (CPM) basis, the company said. They can also manage video inventory via the Google Advertising Exchange and reduce the number of fatal Video Ad Serving Template (VAST) errors that limit ad requests.

Streaming tech company Brightcove said it expanded its C-Suite, hiring Kathy Klingler as chief marketing officer and Jim Norton as chief revenue officer, while elevating David Beck to chief operating officer.

Klingler joins Brightcove from Rapid7, where she was chief marketing and experience officer. In her new post, Klingler will be responsible for developing and executing a global marketing strategy.

Norton was previously CRO for Flowcode. He will be responsible for Brightcove’s revenue organization including managing sales and customer success.

Beck has been chief strategy and corporate development officer, as well as interim CMO.

All three execs report to CEO Marc DeBevoise.

“With the addition of Kathy and Jim and the evolution of David’s role, our world-class executive leadership team is poised to continue to deliver for our global customer base and drive innovation across our business,” DeBevoise said. “Each of them brings an invaluable skill set from across the media, enterprise and SaaS industries that will play a key role in our continued growth and further establish Brightcove as the world's most trusted streaming technology company.”

Brightcove CEO Marc DeBevoise says streaming is still a growth business.

DeBevoise helped launch CBS All Access long before nearly all media companies jumped into streaming, only to find out that streaming would lead to barrels of red ink.

Since taking the helm at Brightcove, one of the early streaming technology companies, in March 2022, DeBevoise has been pursuing a two-track strategy and launching a wave of new products to get revenues growing, turn losses into profits and raise the company’s stock price.

One track is providing technology to media companies. The other track is all of the other companies that need to stream material to their employees, customers and consumers.

Overall, more people are spending more time streaming video and video is taking up a bigger share of internet usage. That makes streaming a growth industry, DeBevoise told Broadcasting+Cable.

“Streaming doesn’t just impact the big six media companies we love to talk about,” DeBevoise said. “Those companies have had a struggle the last year or two.”

But there are also thousands of other companies that need to use streaming video, he notes. Brightcove already works with Home Depot, General Motors, Ford and Nike, for example.

“They need to handle that video and manage it and put it on the site and put it on social. They use our system to do it,” DeBevoise said. 

Recommitting to Media

Since becoming Brightcove's CEO, DeBevoise has recommitted the company to the media business. He said his predecessor was more focused on growing enterprise customers. 

“My view is we can do both. We can walk and chew gum,” he said.

DeBevoise had told Wall Street that the company had closed the biggest deal in company history, but the new client in the media business wasn’t ready to be named. 

That changed this week, when the company announced it would be providing streaming technology to Yahoo.

“As Yahoo continues to grow and deliver more content, it was imperative for us to find a solution that could handle our global reach and deliver the highest level of performance for our users,” said Matt Sanchez, president and general manager, Home Ecosystem, at Yahoo. “Brightcove’s streaming platform provides superior scale and performance, and their team is continuously innovating its products to help deliver the best user experience as well as meet our business objectives.”

 UPDATE: On Wednesday the National Hockey League said it picked Brightcove to deliver digital video on the league's website, on the websites of its 32 teams and on the NHL app.

“We’re delighted to partner with Brightcove to support the delivery of video content across League digital platforms,” said Nili Doft, NHL Senior Vice President, Digital Media. “We look forward to working with Brightcove, who will help us continue to deliver great experiences for our passionate fans through their innovative streaming solutions.”

Other media outlets Brightcove works with include AMC Networks, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, BBC, CBC/Radio-Canada, Cox Media Group, Forbes, The Metropolitan Opera and Sky.

There will be more as the financial pressure builds on media companies trying to make money with their direct-to-consumer streaming businesses, DeBevoise said. Those companies will want to cut costs by outsourcing the streaming technology.

“If you’re a big company doing it yourself, we fundamentally believe with our scale and our capability, we can save money,” he said. “Every one of these companies can't have a thousand engineers. It's just not viable. There are maybe enough engineers in the world,  but not that want to do that or that are affordable to make that a good business.”

DeBevoise also sees opportunity in serving enterprise clients.

“I think media will be bigger in the near term but I believe enterprise in the long run and probably has a larger overall TAM [total available market],“ he said. ”When I think about companies that need to have a streaming future, it's kind of every company, right?” 

Brightcove already has about 250 of the Fortune 1,000 in its customer base. 

“I don’t see any reason why we couldn’t have much more of that here. If we could grow a few hundred more of those, we’d be in a great place. And I think the market is there for us to go do that.”

Brightcove is 20 years old. It’s been publicly held for about 10 years. It was a growth company, but lately revenue has been stuck, DeBevoise said.

“We have not unstuck it yet,“ he said. “But we have, we have a vision on how to do that.” 

In 2022, Brightcove reported a $9 million net loss as revenues were flat at $211 million.

In the first quarter of 2023, Brightcove posted a $11.7 million net loss as revenue decreased 8% to $49.1 million.

The company will report second-quarter earnings Wednesday.

Brightcove’s stock price was as high as $24 a share in 2021. It opened 2023 at $5.22 a share and traded at $4.36 on Tuesday.

Steve Frankel, senior analyst at Rosenblatt Securities rates Brightcove a buy. 

“We see limited downside and the potential for a meaningful re-rating of the shares when the company provides it can consistently grow revenue and expand margins,” Frankel said in a research report in June.

Frankel noted that Brightcove was being aggressive in introducing new products and services and seems to be having early success with them, but he maintains a wait-and-see attitude.

“While still a couple of quarters away from a return to double-digit revenue growth … we continue to like the risk/reward and remain buyers of Brightcove,“ Frankel said. “In the meantime, investors should get some incremental good news from strong new business growth, especially in the media space.” 

New Products on Tap 

So far this year, Brightcove has rolled out a wave of new products.

It started out by launching Communications Studio, a product designed to help companies’ communications and human resources groups use video to engage with customers, suppliers and employees.

Brightcove followed that up by announcing integrations with Shopify, Instagram and Salesforce that will help its companies add e-commerce capabilities to their interactive streaming video.

Working with Frequency, Brightcove added a capability to help clients launch free, ad-supported streaming television channels.

Brightcove is also working to monetize video for its clients by working with ad platforms. The company announced a partnership with Magnite in January, and followed that up with a deal with Pubmatic last month.

It also introduced an Ad Insights capability in June that uses machine learning to determine viewer tolerance for ads, enabling clients to optimize their ad loads without disrupting audience experience and retention.

“We have a bunch of supply sitting on our platform that we can see globally. We're trying to find the right partners in which to make that supply available to help our customers,“ DeBevoise said. “Maybe we’ll take a small slice of revenue. It's not going to be the biggest revenue business for us. But we should really be an enabler in that industry.”

Brightcove said it named Teresa Tang senior VP, head of analytics, data science and data engineering.

Tang most recently was VP of analytics, data science and data engineering for MasterClass. 

In her new post, she will be expected to expand Brightcove’s data strategy and build a skilled team to shape the company’s data future.

Before MasterClass, Tang was with CBS Interactive, where she established the business intelligence and analytics functions and helped start up CBS All Access, now known as Paramount Plus.

David Beck, who has held senior digital posts at several major media companies, was named chief strategy and corporate development officer, a new position, at streaming company Brightcove.

Beck will work with recently named CEO Marc DeBevoise, previously with CBS Interactive, as Brightcove looks to enhance its current offerings and create opportunities to expand its business. 

“We are excited to bolster our executive team with the appointment of David Beck,” said DeBevoise. “David is an exceptional strategist and operator with deep industry experience and a proven track record of architecting innovative strategies and initiatives for world-class companies and brands. I’m excited to get to work with David and have him help us realize our vision and crystalize our continued growth strategy.”

Most recently, Beck was executive VP, head of content strategy and business operations at AMC Networks. Before that he was executive VP, corporate strategy & Operations at WarnerMedia and chief strategy officer for TNT & TBS. He was a co-founder of Brave Ventures, which was acquired by Turner, and head of social media for Univision.

“Brightcove is an innovator and trailblazer in the video communications space, and I’m both energized and honored to join the company at such an exciting time,” said Beck. “With a new CEO developing a focused vision, a fantastic team with building enthusiasm and ready to act, and a best in class technology platform to build on, I am incredibly excited to go after the opportunities ahead of us.”■

Brightcove said it appointed Marc DeBevoise as CEO, effective March 28.

DeBevoise, who was previously chief digital officer at ViacomCBS, is succeeding Jeff Ray, who is retiring.

“Marc is an impressive, talented leader who has extensive experience managing large, diverse teams and positioning them for outsized growth and innovation, '' said Deb Besemer, chair of the Brightcove Board. “His successful tenure as CDO of ViacomCBS and CEO of CBS Interactive, responsible for developing a rapidly growing, multi-billion-dollar digital and streaming business, makes him a compelling choice to lead Brightcove. Our team and customers will benefit greatly from Marc’s experience.”

In addition to serving as chief digital officer of ViacomCBS, DeBevoise was CEO and president of CBS Interactive and held senior posts at Starz and NBCUniversal.

“We are still in the early days of the streaming video and device revolutions, especially in terms of enterprise adoption. Brightcove enables any enterprise, brand, media entity, or content creator to create and distribute content on their own terms and capture their own streaming future," said DeBevoise.

"There is simply no better time to be a distributed, agnostic, video platform,“ DeBevoise said. “Brightcove is known for delivering world class scalability, security, and reliability, all requirements to deliver exceptional value to customers. I am thrilled to be joining this talented team and look forward to delivering even more innovation for our customers and their audiences.”

DeBevoise will also be joining Brightcove’s board of directors, while Ray will be stepping down as a director.

“During his tenure Jeff Ray led a talented team to bring Brightcove to profitability, growth and a strong technology foundation for the future. On behalf of the board and everyone at Brightcove, we thank Jeff Ray for his leadership over the past four years and we wish him all the best in his retirement.” said Besemer. ■

Video views in the second quarter rose 64% in North America during the second quarter, indicating continued strength for streaming as the COVID-19 crisis continued in most markets, according to a new report from Brightcove.

In its 2Q Global Video Index, Brightcove said that the second-quarter gains in North America came on top of a 19% jump in the first quarter, resulting in a 41% increase for the first half of the year.

“COVID-19 drove big gains early in the quarter (or, later in the quarter depending on where you lived), but the entire quarter saw Y/Y growth in views,” said Jim O’Niell, Brightcove Principal Analyst and the author of the report. “Consumers’ appetite for streaming hasn’t waned at all and there remains a great deal of opportunity.”

Viewing on connected TVs was up 548% in the quarter. Despite the fast growth, CTV still has just a small 3% share of all views. Viewing on mobile devices rose. Smartphones had a 41% share of viewing with tablets accounting for another 7%. Computers lost views, with their share of views falling to 49% from 56% a years ago.

Britghtcove found that viewers watch four times as long on CTV than on smartphones, and that half of the content that runs more than 41 minutes is watched on CTV.  

Completion rates on CTVs are less than 20%, while computers are highest (51%), followed by smartphones (46%) and tablets (45%).

“With numbers up on every device, content owners will need to consider all devices as primary screens – at least for now. CTVs and smartphones are destined to be the screens of choice,” the report said.

Globally, Brightcove found that consumption of entertainment, news and sports video content rose by 40% in the second quarter, following 23% growth in the first quarter. For the first six months of 2020, video consumption was up more than 30%.

“The streaming industry is exploding faster than we’ve ever seen before. While much can be attributed to COVID-19 keeping people indoors, stay-at-home orders do not account for the entirety of recent growth,” said O’Neill. “There has been significant growth within the video industry, leading to more video content streaming as a whole; OTT services like Netflix added nearly 26 million viewers and Disney Plus topped 54.5 million subscribers in Q2.”

Viewing of sports content was down 54% globally and in June they were down 64%. In the U.S., views of sports programmers were down 42% just before new live games started to be played.

Globally, viewing on connected TVs was up 160% in the second quarter, compared to a 30% increase in the first quarter. CTV’s global was only 3%, but that’s up from 2% in Q1.

“Study after study has shown consumers turning away from traditional TV to embrace streaming content,” the report said. “The ability to build bundles of content that appeal to individuals’ tastes has been a major draw, one that is going to continue to grow even as traditional TV – especially pay TV – loses traction with consumers who want to watch when and where they want to and often on their own personal screens, not a shared one in the living room.”

Cloud-based video services vendor Brightcove has announced the $15 million purchase of Ooyala’s video online video platform (OVP) business.

Boston-based Brightcove said during it’s fourth-quarter earnings all Wednesday that the deal consist of $6.25 million in cash and the rest in Brightcove shares.

Brightcove said it’s acquiring Santa Clara, Calif.-based Ooyala’s OVP technology, including video content management and publishing platform Backlot, Analytics, Live, and its underlying intellectual property and associated patents. Brightcove will acquire “substantial portions’ of Ooyala’s engineering, support and sales staff, including the company’s operations in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Related: Telstra Sells Ooyala to Management after $500M Write-Off

Speaking during Wednesday’s earnings call (transcript courtesy of Seeking Alpha), Brightcove CEO Jeff Ray said the deal “makes clear who the undisputed leader is in OVP. And as you know, when you are the market leader, customers and prospects naturally include you in RFPs, they naturally come to you and that gives us we think a great advantage.

“We also have an opportunity to open up to new markets,” Ray added. “They’ve got some geographies, some great well-known customers in geographies where we aren’t very strong or not present at all and we’re excited about the ability to help that accelerate our global expansion. They do have a partner community. It’s robust and we’re very eager to engage with those partners and fold them into our partnership strategy.”

Ooyala was founded in 2007 and subsequently purchased by Australian telecom Telstra. Ooyala management bought the company out in October, following Telstra’s $500 million write-down. Although OVP generated the bulk of Ooyala’s revenue at the time, company CEO Jonathan Huberman said he saw more opportunity in the workflow tools side of the business. 

Online video publishing specialist Brightcove said its board has appointed Hugh Jefferson (Jeff) Ray III as CEO, effective immediately.  

Ray succeeds acting CEO Andy Feinberg, who has served in that role since 2017 as Brightcove sought a permanent replacement. Feinberg will continue as president and COO. 

Brightcove also announced that Ray has joined the company’s board, along with two other new additions -- Tom Wheeler, former chairman of the FCC; Kristin Frank, a former Viacom exec. Tied in, David Orfao, managing partner at General Catalyst and an early investor in Brightcove, will be stepping down from his position as a director. With the latest changes, Brightcove said its board now consists of eight members, including six who are independent. 

Ray is late of enterprise technology companies that include Ellucian, Ventyx (acquired by ABB), DS SolidWorks, Progress Software, and Compuware. He started at IBM after graduating from Texas A&M.  

“The Board was impressed with Jeff’s decades-long track record of accomplishments as a CEO and senior executive. That, combined with his extensive technology leadership experience made him the ideal candidate to serve as Brightcove’s CEO,” Gary Haroian, Brightcove’s chairman of the board, said in a statement. 

“I am incredibly optimistic about the opportunity in front of Brightcove,” Ray added. Internet video traffic will grow fourfold from 2016 to 2021, reaching 82% of all global consumer internet traffic. This explosion in video consumption is creating tremendous opportunities – and challenges – for companies around the world.”  

Brightcove will announced Q1 2018 results on April 26. For Q4 2017, it posted revenues of $40.1 million, up 4%, versus the year-ago period, and a net loss of $1.4 million, or 4 cents per diluted share.  

Ooyala, the Telstra-owned multiscreen OTT specialist, has filed a federal lawsuit against rival Brightcove over allegations that the company and certain employees of Brightcove “engaged in deliberate and willful misappropriation of proprietary trade secrets.”

Per the suit, Ooyala claims that those trade secrets and proprietary info spans customer contact lists, confidential sales pitches and pricing, marketing plans and corporate strategies.

Ooyala held that the alleged misappropriation was being used to undermine and exploit Ooyala’s business dealings and sales efforts for Brightcove’s benefit throughout Latin America.  

Ooyala said it is seeking a court trial and an injunction against Brightcove in federal court in Boston, and is asking the company and its employees to return all proprietary materials and to destroy all customer information stemming from the allegations.

The six-count filing also includes allegations of deceptive business practices, tortious interference and breach of contract, Ooyala said, noting that it gave Brightcove notice once it uncovered the evidence tied to those allegations and that it believes that Brightcove continued to use that information after notice was given.

Brightcove said it reviewed the assertions made by Ooyala in good faith, but that Ooyala “disengaged” from those discussion and pushed ahead with the lawsuit. Brightcove’s full statement is as follows:

"We are aware of Ooyala's assertions concerning the alleged misappropriation of trade secrets. When first alerted to these assertions by Ooyala, we reviewed them in good faith and reached out to Ooyala in an effort to address its concerns. Ooyala disengaged from that conversation and then filed this suit. Brightcove believes that this lawsuit is entirely without merit. We are working to resolve the matter, which is narrowly focused on a particular region and does not concern our products, services or technology."

Ooyala said it has made “significant investments in Latin America,” including an R&D office in Guadalajara, and sales, marketing and channel efforts in Argentina, Brazil, the Caribbean, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Peru.

Update: The complaint, filed May 22 in the U.S. District Court for the  District of Massachusetts by Ooyala, identifies Brightcove and two Brightcove employees, Darío Pérez Real and Raúl Francisco García Domínguez, who were formerly with Ooyala, as defendants.

Per the compliant, Ooyala alleges that Perez “surreptitiously sent to Brightcove a wealth of Ooyala’s confidential and trade secret information” in his final three months of employment as a senior sales exec at Ooyala and while he was being courted to join Brightcove.

Ooyala further claims that Garcia, a former vice president of Ooyala and current head of Brightcove’s Latin America division, coordinated the alleged misappropriation of trade secrets.

The complaint alleges that Perez, prior to resigning from Ooyala on Feb. 23, 2017, had already signed an employment contract with Brightcove and was working with Garcia to send confidential client data to Brightcove and to solicit Ooyala’s current and prospective customers on Brightcove’s behalf.

Ooyala also holds that it has already lost one account to Brightcove and others that were required to be renewed at a lower average contract value “to counteract Brightcove’s misappropriation of Ooyala’s confidential and trade secret information.”

Ooyala didn’t name which of its current and prospective clients were impacted by those allegations, but did point to an April 19 press release from Brightcove announcing “key customer wins,” including Grupo Televisa, Expansión, and Grupo Nación Paraguay, and plans to open an office in Mexico City. Garcia, GM, Latin America at Brightcove at the time of the announcement, is one of the execs quoted in the release.

Roku and Brightcove announced they are each playing a technology role in the delivery of on-demand content from SXSW, a nine-day music, entertainment and tech festival in Austin that kicks off March 13.

Roku said it is the first streaming platform to feature SXSW On, an on-demand channel that will be offered on Roku players in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Republic of Ireland, as well as Roku TV-powered models in the U.S. 

SXSW On, which will feature highlights from the event, including interviews, panel sessions and music performances, has a custom-designed Roku channel, complementing access at SXSW.com and on YouTube. Roku said the SXSW On channel for its platform was created in partnership with Roku streaming channel provider Float Left Interactive.

Further behind the scenes, Brightcove will provide the cloud-based video publishing and encoding platform powering SXSW’s on-demand offerings.

“For the first time, people from around the world will be able to view the excitement and entertainment of SXSW live without buying a plane ticket to Austin,” said Ed Lee, VP of content at Roku, in a statement.