Brightcove: Newspapers rapidly growing online video offerings

Brightcove, which counts top newspaper chains such as Cox Newspapers, New York Times Co. and The Washington Post as clients, released data Wednesday showing major adoption and monetization of online video by newspapers. Brightcove said that its 30 newspaper group clients streamed 42,777,231 online videos in Q1 2009, a 179 percent increase from the 15,311,542 videos streamed in Q1 2008. Brightcove also said that its newspaper clients are uploading about 3.5 times more videos per day presently than they did a year ago.

Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire said newspapers are recognizing the value of online video news content and modifying production workflows to generate more content and integrate it into their total news offering.

"Online video for newspapers is in an early stage as a business, but they are starting to monetize it and sell ads for higher rates," Allaire said. "We invested in this category early, and our account managers understand the challenges of integrating digital media in a newspaper environment. We work with our newspaper customers to improve workflow, simplify monetization of their video content, and deliver the best user experience to their customers."

Allaire said that online video would not offset the loss of print revenue for newspapers, but also noted that digital continues to be a growth area for newspapers and will be a significant part of any future model for those companies. Rapid audience growth for video content can lead to rapidly rising costs, which can overtake revenue, such as in YouTube's case. But Allaire said he doesn't see that as a major concern for newspaper online video offerings as they rapidly grow, as he thinks they will be able to leverage the content for sufficient ad revenue. 

For more:
- see the blog post on Brightcove's website here 

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