Published on the 06/06/2014 | Written by Newsdesk
Appetite for video as a marketing tool is starting to drive local demand for video cloud services business Brightcove – and the move is being steered by CMOs with CIOs largely staying out of the picture…
Australian marketers are still getting to grips with video – many are still dabbling on YouTube – but according to Mark Blair, vice president for Brightcove in Australia and New Zealand, when they are ready to graduate to a more professional platform many are looking for cloud-based video services rather than trying to create their own infrastructure to support video.
He said some clients, such as Tourism Australia, had already made “video front and central” of their marketing strategies. Jewellery business Michael Hill meanwhile has begun using “shoppable” video which integrates marketing videos with the company’s e-commerce platform allowing viewers to make a purchase while watching a video.
However the technology that allows video content to be managed and served up to any device without buffering or stuttering is complex, which is why CMOs are turning to the cloud rather than their own IT departments for support according to Blair. He said that very often the only involvement from the CIO is establishing a domain name which can be used to direct people to the video content.
As far as selecting the cloud-based video service goes, “we are seeing the CMO making the decision not the CIO. The CMO is becoming the tech buyer,” said Blair. However, he said that Brightcove internationally was also seeing the emergence of a new C-suite executive – the chief marketing and technical officer – who was overseeing marketing technology.
Besides serving corporate marketers with its range of cloud-based video services (the only thing Brightcove doesn’t do is create the videos according to Blair) the company also hosts and serves up video for digital broadcasters.
Blair sees the recent launch of Chromecast, along with Apple TV and hybrid broadband TV technologies (HbbTV) as a spur for Brightcove.
HbbTV he says will create a more seamless transition between broadcast and internet TV, for example allowing internet apps to be meshed with broadcast video. This week Brightcove announced its cloud would support the HbbTV standards.
Chromecast and Apple TV meanwhile deliver a much broader array of hardware which can be used to view video content served up from a cloud. One of the challenges for broadcasters according to Blair has been how advertisements are served up on different devices.
“All that ad orchestration is complex and has to be done for every device.” Blair said Brightcove had technology that would allow ad orchestration to be handled for all devices from the cloud.
