How important is YouTube to your online video strategy? A surprising answer comes from Cambridge, MA video company Brightcove in a recent interview with Fierce Online Video. Brightcove’s SVP of marketing is quoted as saying “You can’t have a sophisticated online video strategy without having YouTube be a part of it.” He goes on to say “You have to be there.”
Very interesting comment considering YouTube is probably Brightcove’s single biggest competitor. Of course, YouTube is the worst kind of competitor because they give away video hosting for free. So, why is Brightcove playing nice with YouTube? Brightcove understands their ad-free video offering has features, capabilities and private sharing services that businesses will always be willing to pay for. Also, there are still many businesses that are afraid to be associated with the skateboarding dogs and funny wedding videos that can be found on YouTube.
But, why doesn’t Brightcove just ignore the existence of YouTube? The answer seems to be many of there customers won’t let them. According to the article, Brightcove has heard from their customers that they want some of their content to appear on YouTube. It only makes sense that a business spending $1,000 to $100,000 with a video production company would want their video to appear in as many places as possible. YouTube is a logical place to add videos considering the video site gets more than 2 billion video views per day. Also, adding videos to YouTube makes it more likely that a video might wind up in Google results.
BrightCove is not just talking about YouTube. The new Brightcove 5 platform includes “deeper analytics for HTML5, support for Apple HTTP streaming for video apps, the ability to automatically push videos to YouTube”.
Fierce Online Video Article
More About Brightcove – Brightcove Video — Jeremy Allaire
Rewatchable is a Massachusetts video production company.