Whether you’re trying to reach prospects, customers, or internal stakeholders, live video provides a powerful, engaging way to get your message out into the world. But if you don’t have any live streaming experience, the process can seem a little daunting — especially if you’ve ever witnessed any live streams gone wrong . I mean, no one wants to be remembered for that live stream when the audio went out or the camera stopped recording.

So, you may be wondering: Where do I even begin? And how can I ensure my live stream goes off without a hitch? Well, fear not! We’ve got you covered.

Our team has pulled together the ultimate Live Streaming Checklist — outlining all the tools you’ll need and the steps you should take to ensure your live stream runs smoothly.

To view our Partner blog, click here

It’s that time of year again…the time for a blizzard of year-in-review posts. 2018 flew by here at Brightcove—we kept busy from January to December—and fortunately, our hard work paid off.

This year, we were again named a leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Video Content Management, Frost & Sullivan named Brightcove Global Company of the Year , and Fast Company included us on “The World’s Most Innovative Companies ” list.

Plus, Brightcove Customer Support continues to be recognized as the best in the industry. Our product got plenty of attention too, winning “Best Video Distribution Platform” at the Digiday Video Awards ; Context Aware Encoding earned “best of show” accolades at NAB and IBC .

We’re not the only ones; 2018 was a big year for the whole online video industry. Check out this year’s five most popular posts from the Brightcove blog. They’ll give you a great overview of this year in media and video.

5. Forget the Emmy: Take the pressure off your production process

We hear it all the time—marketers know that video is an essential part of the modern marketing strategy, but they’re convinced it takes a massive budget and a ton of experience to pull off a successful video. It doesn’t have to be that way—find out why in this post.

Read more >>  

4. Chrome autoplay restrictions and the Brightcove Player

Autoplay, automute, or click-to-play? Brightcove customers had their pick, even after Chrome updated their autoplay policy earlier this year. This post walks you through the options.

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3. How to send videos in your email campaigns

Including a video in your email increases clickthrough rates by up to 200 percent. Now, all you have to do is figure out how it works—a process that this blog post lays out step-by-step.

Read more >>

2. 3 Easy and Effective Ways to Start Using Video for Internal Communications

More than half of employees expect their companies to use video for internal updates—but most HR departments still rely on email and in-person sessions. Here are a few easy ways to make the transition a little less intimidating.

Read more >>

1. Dealing with DRM: Understanding DRM and how to produce protected content

Is your video content protected from piracy? Digital rights management can be a frightening topic, so it’s no wonder this easy-to-understand blog post was so popular this year.

Read more >>

Want to stay up-to-date on what 2019 has in store for online video? Subscribe to our newsletter and we’ll keep you ahead of the curve.

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As time has gone on, over-the-top (OTT) content has continued to change the media landscape. And in order to thrive in this increasingly crowded marketplace, you need to produce immersive digital experiences at scale. Here are some OTT best practices to keep in mind as you stake your claim in this space.

Compare different vendors strategically

Finding a vendor that meets your needs is crucial to the success of your OTT content. When choosing a provider, ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you have the required resources and skill sets in-house to create, and more importantly, manage your service and keep it current?

• Do you have a large enough content library to attract viewers and keep them interested over time?

• Do you plan to serve ads?

• Do you plan to offer subscriptions?

• Is your content best suited for a lean-forward or lean-back user experience?

Choose the right monetization model

When choosing a monetization model, two significant factors to keep in mind are your audience size and addressable market. Ask yourself: Will you have enough viewers to justify a subscription service at the onset? If not, it may be better to start off with an AVOD model to attract viewers — and transition to a subscription model over time.

Provide a high-quality stream

When creating your OTT model, your end goal shouldn’t simply be to present a powerful, engaging experience across native platforms — or to have your apps in the app store. While those are obviously important gains, your overall objective should be to acquire, engage, and minimize your churn. And this all begins with providing a high-quality stream.  

A recent study by our friends over at Mux confirmed the importance of a solid playback experience. They found that U.S. viewers will stop watching a video when they encounter the following:

• Slow load time (85.1 percent)

• Stalling and rebuffering (85 percent)

• Poor picture quality (57.3 percent)

• Repeated playback errors (67.5 percent)

It’s clear that viewers have a low tolerance for poor video experiences, which can lead to dramatically high abandonment rates. While these could be isolated incidents that only affect a single viewing experience, in aggregate they will lead to churn.

So, how can you avoid this scenario and provide the type of top-quality streams your audience is looking for? Work with proven streaming solutions that offer rich, high-performing players at scale.

Get the word out

Once you’ve got all the technology in place to provide a top-notch OTT experience, you need to start thinking about how you can get your programming in front of the right audience. Here, it’s crucial to create content that piques your target viewer’s interest:

• Build up your social media presence — and post regularly to keep your audience engaged and talking about your brand.

• Think about what lingering questions your audience may have about OTT and create captivating blog posts to fill in the gaps.

• Update your site landing pages on a frequent basis to ensure you’re giving the latest information about your programming.

Are you ready to capture a piece of the OTT market? By following the OTT best practices above, you can take your digital experiences to the next level.

To view our Partner blog, click here

It’s time to face the (holiday) music. Unless you work in the retail industry , your website is bound to experience a dip in traffic during this time of year. Through the end of December, your audience will likely be prioritizing family, friends, food, and fun. And who could blame them?

But this slow season gives you the perfect opportunity to take a step back, analyze some metrics, and plan out your 2019 content strategy. Here are some tips on how to use this time to set the right New Year’s resolution for your website.

Evaluate your data

In order to keep improving your website year after year, you need to understand what has — and hasn’t — worked in the past. And you’re in luck: Now’s the perfect time to do a deep-dive analysis into your website data, and to benchmark your 2018 performance to set 2019 goals (more on that later). Leverage your analytics tech stack to answer the following types of questions:

• Which pages on your site are receiving the most views?

• Which content is earning you the highest conversions? And what’s the conversion path?

• Which channels (i.e., search, social) are bringing in the most traffic?

• What percentage of your new visitors are turning into return visitors?

Once you can get your hands on this data, it’s time to pull some learnings from your findings. Ask yourself why a specific page may be performing particularly well or poorly — and see if you can find any overarching patterns. For instance, you may find that a certain content type or content targeted toward a specific audience segment consistently performs well.

Conduct competitor research

The slow holiday season can also be the perfect time to look into what your competitors have been up to this last year. Spend some time poking around their websites and social channels to see the types of:

• Content they’ve been producing

• Feedback they’ve been getting from customers

• New products and services they’ve been launching (and how those have been positioned and presented on their website)

• Marketing initiatives they’ve been pushing out on digital channels

You could even consider using third-party services like SpyFu to get some directional indication of the keywords your competitors’ sites are optimized for organically — and which terms these companies bid on for paid search.

After conducting all this research, go through your notes to see if it may be time to adjust your strategy accordingly. For instance, you may find that your top competitor creates really engaging customer videos or has a powerful influencer marketing initiative in place. In these scenarios, you may want to consider allocating some of your 2019 budget to set up these types of programs.

Establish specific goals

Now that you have a good sense of the type of content that has performed well for both your company and your competitors, you can establish a New Year’s resolution for your website. Leverage the benchmark data from last year to set quantitative goals for this year using the well-known S.M.A.R.T. methodology. All of your goals should be:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Attainable

• Relevant

• Timely

During the process of establishing your goals, be sure to think about factors such as the departments involved, the budget with which you’ve been allotted, and how your team’s goals fit into the previously established objectives for your organization as a whole.

Develop an action plan

Once you’ve nailed down your website resolutions, it’s time to think about the who, what, when, where, and why. The timeline will be crucial here, as your team will obviously need to balance these objectives with their other priorities throughout the year.

Start by thinking about which tasks will take more time to complete, such as a huge blog revamp. Set a desired deadline for these projects and work backward to come up with intermittent tasks and due dates. If possible, try to build out a content calendar for the year to ensure everyone is aligned. This calendar could track everything from scheduled blogs to press releases to social campaigns .

For the easier, less time-intensive projects, you may be able to make a lot of progress before the year even ends. This could be the perfect time to focus on cleaning up your older pages, adjusting your tagging structure, or similar housekeeping-type projects.

This holiday season, try not to fret too much about the inevitable drop in traffic you will experience. Instead, use this time to your advantage — and plan out a detailed content and website strategy for next year.

To view our Partner blog, click here

The world of live streaming is a little bit like the Wild West—an unpredictable frontier where the only law is Murphy’s Law. Between me and Brightcove’s two video pros, we’ve had our fair share of live streaming mistakes, but if you learn from our experience, maybe things can go a little more smoothly for you. Below, find our tales from the front, along with ways that you can avoid meeting the same fate.

When the anti-catastrophe machine fails…catastrophically

We like to think we’re a pretty prepared bunch—we know the rules of live streaming (Murphy’s Law, remember?) and we prepare accordingly . So when we live streamed an event from Las Vegas using three different internet providers and a load balancer to ensure the connection would never fail, it came as a surprise when it did just that and the stream went down. Turns out, a backbone issue had taken down the internet across the entire state of Nevada. We got back online eventually, but the mobile hotspot we used was barely powerful enough for our purposes.

The solution: With a bonded cellular backup unit like LiveU or Dejero , our stream could have gone on without a hitch. The backpack-style units combine multiple cellular and satellite sources to create one reliable connection without relying on wired internet.

Ever wondered what “technical difficulties” really means?

Another event, another live stream gone wrong—this time at Harvard Business School. In the middle of a panel called “TV, Disrupted ” we got a bigger disruption than we bargained for—in the form of a fire alarm. Without a “technical difficulties” slate cued up and ready to go for just this situation, our stream showed utter pandemonium for a full minute: people panicking, fire alarm blaring, you get the picture. In the midst of the chaos, our live stream operator quickly typed up a slate in a Word doc and inserted it as a slide in the panel presentation.

The solution: Even on a single-camera shoot, use a video switcher like Wirecast or OBS . That way, you can immediately cut to a technical difficulty slate or pre-recorded video as needed—and be free to evacuate when you need to!

Baby’s first live stream—what could go wrong?!

Ah, a company’s first live stream: what should be a blissful foray into the world of live is actually a situation rife with the potential for error. On this occasion, testing surfaced one weak spot. Presenters needed to switch slides, which were located on a computer in the control room, too far away for the clickers to reach. The solution is easy, right? Just move the computer controlling the presentation closer to the stage. Well, everything was going smoothly until that computer stopped working and all the live stream operators were holed up in the control room, too far away to do anything about it. While some poor soul ran over to troubleshoot, critical video and audio cues were missed.

The solution: Keep your hardware close enough to troubleshoot at all times. If you need to separate hardware across multiple locations, make sure every station is manned so that one issue doesn’t derail the entire production.

-Ian Servin, Video Production Manager

Boom goes the audio…or not

Streaming with multiple cameras? Look at you, hot stuff…just make sure you’re taking the right audio. During a recent webinar, we had our boom mic positioned just so, out of frame right over our presenters’ heads. But when we went live, the audio came out surprisingly weak. Turns out, we were taking audio from the B Cam’s internal mic, rather than the A cam which was hooked up to the boom mic.

Solution: Test, re-test, and test again…and then triple-check that you’re taking the right audio source. Plus, make sure your boom mic is set to stereo, rather than mono (the traditional setting for capturing audio on-set).

-Jason Oliveira, Video Producer

A common near-miss: Going for that no-filter look

Usually, video pros shoot in a “flat” profile which gives them the most information to work with in post-production color grading. Since a live stream is *live* (no post-production needed), make sure your camera is set to a broadcast-safe, or standard, profile.  Otherwise, your picture runs the risk of looking washed-out—a good look for Instagram, maybe, but not for your live stream.

-Jason Oliveira, Video Producer

Ready to go forth and live stream confidently ? Make sure you’re using the right platform. Brightcove’s Live solution is the gold standard, and our industry-leading support team will help your next live stream go off without a hitch.

To view our Partner blog, click here

Chances are, OTT is a part of your life, even if you’ve never heard the phrase before. That’s because OTT has permeated the entertainment, sports , and news industries—it could even be the future of global media. So let’s get a handle on just what it is and how it works.

What is OTT?

OTT stands for over-the-top, and, while there are different interpretations, it describes content that is delivered to viewers via the internet to web, mobile, smart and connected TV devices, rather than traditional distribution models like broadcast, cable, or satellite TV. OTT services give viewers a way to consume content that was traditionally accessed via PayTV services.

How does OTT work?

Providers have content—either their own original content, or content they’ve licensed—and use an OTT service to distribute that content to viewers via standalone mobile apps, on smart TVs, or through OTT devices like Apple TV, Roku, or Amazon Fire stick.

A growing number of content creators retain the digital rights to their content for the growing market of cord-cutters and cord-nevers who require more flexibility in how and where they consume content. OTT services are emerging to meet the needs of these audiences. They also supplement traditional pay TV services, by delivering their content over-the-top to web, mobile, and connected TV platforms.

How do OTT services make money?

OTT services stream both live and on-demand content, which is either free to view or supported through one of several monetization methods. These models include ad-based video on demand (AVOD), subscription or transactional video on demand (SVOD/TVOD), pay per view (PPV), electronic sell through (EST), or rentals. 

AVOD and SVOD models are driving the majority of OTT monetization, with EST and rental options becoming less and less common, left to the likes of iTunes and Amazon Prime. Strong interest continues in the SVOD models like Netflix, where viewers pay a regular subscription fee to access an entire content library. More and more OTT services are presenting a hybrid free/AVOD & SVOD model, where there is some content that lives outside of the paywall and is free or ad-supported. The rest of the content requires a subscription to access and once subscribed, viewers can view content without the ads.

Is OTT changing the media landscape?

In short, yes—but OTT continues to evolve on its way to mass adoption among consumers. Global OTT revenues are projected to hit $129B by 2023 according to Digital TV research . We conducted research in Asia, a major market for OTT, to see this shift in action.

What does it take to launch an OTT service?

It’s never been easier to stand up a new OTT service. Many of the leading online video platforms offer turnkey OTT solutions today, which allow content providers to quickly enter the market and reduce their total cost of ownership.

Mongolia’s first OTT service launched in just a few weeks, without any technical staff involved, and quickly grew their audience month over month. Traditional multimedia companies are also jumping on the OTT bandwagon, as Brightcove has recently launched services with regional broadcasters such as Quebecor Media, i24 News, and La Xarxa.

Want to know more? Stay tuned—we’ll be posting on OTT best practices soon.

To view our Partner blog, click here