While it’s exciting to see how technology has advanced and improved the online video experience, the changes have also brought many complexities. According to Jeff Whatcott, the Chief Marketing Officer at Brightcove, online video needs to be delivered in HD, it needs to be monetized through either paid models or better forms of advertising, and it needs to be protected.

As a result, the game has changed drastically for media companies and all other publishers of content. They have to consider all the elements that Whatcott mentioned in addition to the challenge of delivering their content across multiple devices and in multiple formats.

“Having all those different screens that you need to deliver content to creates incredible technical complexity for these organizations,” said Whatcott.

These companies then must tackle the decision of whether to build an internal infrastructure to handle these processes or to outsource them to services such as Brightcove. Although an internal system allows for more control, the downside is the time and resources involved in developing it. Outsourcing, on the other hand, is often preferred since organizations can jump right into their efforts.

“Rather than starting from just a blank sheet of paper and a long list of questions, they start with a code that’s actually already been written [and] that already integrates in with the right systems and the right ways,” said Whatcott.

Going forward into the next wave of online video, Whatcott believes even more changes will take place. As he explained to us, fragmentation will increase as many more devices are introduced. Apple is reportedly scheduled to announce a new Apple TV platform later this year. If the trend continues as it did with the iPhone and iPad, such an announcement could produce a completely new way of thinking, which could drastically change the user experience and future technologies.

Whatcott also believes we will begin to see more content coming online that is licensable and accessible even for those consumers who do not have a cable subscription.

“There’s a whole new generation coming up with having never had a cable bill… or not preferring to consume their content through cable, and we see more and more companies wanting to service the desire of that class of people,” he explained.

Although not directly related to video, Whatcott went on to say that apps would continue to play a big role going forward. Although there are questions about their sustainability, he said apps are here to stay.

Despite the challenges that these developing areas will bring, many opportunities exist as well. Whatcott points out that organizations will not only be able to build upon their existing technologies, but they will also be able to develop new concepts.

In other news regarding Brightcove, the company has had a very successful year after going public in February. In its first quarter earnings, the company reported $19.9 million in revenue. Whatcott told us that the company is “very excited” about its progress and that it would continue to focus on building its business.

Whatcott also offered this advice to Facebook in light its recent IPO: “Everything around the IPO and funding, although there’s a lot of excitement around this, it really doesn’t change your relationship with customers – you just need to execute well.”

Brightcove, founded in 2004, has recently announced an update to their App Cloud development platform, and presently has 4,254 customers as of March 31st, a 49% increase over the last year. App Cloud helps companies develop apps while using its online interface, and then render them as iPhone and Android native apps.

Along with the almost $20 million in revenue, Brightcove posted a gross profit of $13.6 million, up from $8.7 million in Q1, 2011. The company posted losses of $4.4 million in Q1, 2011, and did better this year, at $3.2 million.

Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire states, “We are pleased to announce strong financial results, highlighted by 53% revenue growth year-over-year, in our first quarter as a public company,” adding, “Brightcove continues to expand its market share leadership position, and we believe the company is well positioned at the center of multiple powerful growth trends – video, mobile, cloud and social. With the proceeds from our IPO, we have greater resources to execute our growth strategy and expand our market leadership position.”

App Cloud is a platform that allows customers to easily create native apps for iOS and Android, as well as HTML5 web apps. App Cloud provides centralized management tools that allow owners to run ad campaigns on all their apps across platforms easily. The update provides push messaging tools that allow owners to send push notifications to their users on multiple platforms.

The update also expands App Cloud’s analytics tools that allow owners to track their users’ engagement with content at the item level, including image or video view counts, article read counts, and more.

App Cloud’s new analytics tools are available to app owners today, while the push notification enhancements will be available in March. For more information, check out Brightcove’s web site.

Are you an App Cloud user? What do you think of the new updates? Let us know in the comments.

“Farm Aid joins a fast-growing list of organizations taking advantage of Brightcove’s live streaming capabilities, including the US State Department, Sundance Film Festival, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – an organization that delivered more than 2 million live video streams on the Brightcove Video Cloud platform during the two days of their annual general conference last April,” a Brightcove representative tells WebProNews.

We’re really seeing online video providers hook us up with some major concert events in realtime. It’s a pretty good era to be a music fan. Just last weekend, YouTube streamed Lollapalooza. A while back, they did Coachella.

Of course Farm Aid is about more than just music – hence its name. The organization/event has raised over $39 million to help family farms since 1985.

“We are proud to support Farm Aid’s mission and to be a part of this powerful benefit concert,” said Brightcove President and COO David Mendels. “The live streaming capabilities in our Video Cloud online video platform will enable Farm Aid to deliver a high quality user experience and reach viewers around the world to help raise awareness for this great cause.”

Carolyn Mugar, director of Farm Aid said, “From the artists’ gift of their performance to Brightcove’s generous sponsorship, to the donations from thousands, family farmers everywhere are offered hope and opportunity through the work of Farm Aid.”

Here’s the schedule via the Farm Aid site:

Between 1pm and 3
Willie Nelson welcomes everyone to Farm Aid!
Blackwood Quartet
John Trudell
Hearts of Darkness
Rebecca Pidgeon
Ray Price

Between 3 and 4
Robert Francis
Billy Joe Shaver

Between 4 and 6
Will Dailey & the Rivals
Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real
Jakob Dylan

Between 6 and 7:15
Jamey Johnson
Jason Mraz

Between 7:15 and 11-ish
Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds
John Mellencamp
Neil Young
Willie Nelson

The big draw as far as I’m concerned, is John Cougar. Mellencamp will no doubt draw from his impressive catalog of Cougar-era hits, and probably some later stuff. As you can see from the following Farm Aid performances from over the years, he still likes to please the fans. I actually had the pleasure of seeing him at Farm Aid in ’95, and he didn’t disappoint.

"Connected TVs are continuing to grow in popularity, with some analysts estimating over 100 million units will be shipped by 2012," she adds. "Additionally, because of LG’s extensive distribution, this is a huge opportunity for growth not only in the US market, but around the world."

"The partnership between LG and Brightcove opens up a new, global distribution channel to the living room for professional media," said Eric Elia, Brightcove’s VP of TV solutions. "Brightcove customers of all sizes can take advantage of this growing opportunity and expand the reach of some of the world’s most highly sought after online video content to millions of LG devices."

"This partnership brings together two market-leading innovators and is the next natural step in providing consumers with instant access to the online content they crave," said Young-jae Seo, Vp of LG Electronics’ LCD TV Smart TV Team. "We expect to expand our online video distribution capabilities and offer more compelling options to consumers worldwide with Brightcove’s unmatched scale and impressive global customer base. The partnership will definitely make LG Smart TVs the go-to devices for video programming."

Later this year, Brighcove says it will introduce a series of tools and resources for organizations to take advantage of LG’s Smart TC platform, with a "functionally complete reference application" to use as a starting point.

With Brightcove, Sundance has expanded its online video offerings this year to include live  coverage of major events and screenings at the Festival, as well as a number of new on-demand content featuring interviews with artists and filmmakers, daily video highlights, and roundtable discussions. Brightcove has been the official online video provider for the Festival since 2008.

“The mission of Sundance Institute is to discover and foster independent artists and to connect those artists with audiences, and online video continues to play an important role in helping drive awareness and interest in the Festival each year,” said Joseph Beyer, Director, Digital Initiatives at the Institute.

“Working with Brightcove has enabled us to continually introduce innovative new video offerings that fans can access throughout the world. We are looking forward to taking advantage of Brightcove’s live streaming capabilities this year as well as expanding the reach of our video content to new platforms and devices.”

To be clear: the difference wasn’t large, and Google’s still in the lead by a huge margin.  Bing and Twitter aren’t entirely out of the running, either.

But a post on the TubeMogul Blog stated, "Facebook now refers more video streams than Yahoo! for the aggregate media sample.  This marks the first time the social platform has surpassed the search engine and content portal.  Facebook accounted for 9.6% of all referrals, making it second only to Google."

What’s more, Facebook referrals seem to be worth more in terms of keeping an audience’s attention.  Brightcove and TubeMogul’s quarterly research report explained, "Facebook was the most engaging referral source for entertainment categories, including broadcasters (1:57 minutes) and magazines (1:34 minutes)."

These stats may help Facebook attract more advertisers and therefore pull in more revenue.  They could also cause marketers to become more active on the site (which could be either good or bad depending on one’s point of view).

"At a high level, improvements include advanced distribution methods with more social sharing to help brands get the most mileage, drastically expanded support of mobile platforms, expanded analytics to gauge how online video campaigns are performing, and other backend improvements to video quality," a spokesperson for Brightcove tells WebProNews.

The Apple-friendliness in particular has caught the eye of the tech community. Integrated Apple HTTP streaming support enables multi-bitrate video delivery for Apple iOS devices, including high quality, long-form video experiences viewable over 3G or Wi-Fi connections.

"Consumers today are surrounded by an increasingly fragmented landscape of devices and destinations, which present publishers with exciting new opportunities, as well as challenges," says CEO Jeremy Allaire. "Brightcove 5 helps remove the complexity of online video publishing and distribution across multiple devices and touch points, accelerating productivity and unlocking additional value."

The HTML5 analytics are also noteworthy. "Developed in partnership with TubeMogul, Brightcove 5 introduces new advanced analytics for HTML5 video experiences that make it possible to aggregate analytics for both HTML5 and Flash video experiences across browsers and mobile devices," the company says. "These new uniform analytics eliminate one of the most painful compromises associated with deployment of HTML5 video, delivering comprehensive insight into online video performance for the first time."

The new version also introduces over a dozen other new analytics reports, such as player level metrics, top referring search terms, top domains where content is embedded, global viewer attention span, city-level geo info, browser/OS info, etc. 

Video consumption on newspaper sites grew the most over this period, surging to 65 percent more views than the previous quarter due to the coverage focused on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Referral traffic for online video from Facebook and Twitter is growing faster than from traditional search engines. At current growth rates, Facebook will surpass Yahoo within the year to be the second only to Google for video referral traffic.

While Facebook and Twitter are attracting more viewers, they are also leading to the highest levels of engagement for video on television network and music entertainment websites.

Consumers watched more minutes per view on official media websites versus online destinations with syndicated video content.

Other highlights from the report include:

*Nearly 60 percent of brand managers plan to invest more in online video in the next 12 months.

*More than 65 percent of brand managers indicate that the primary focus of their online video initiatives is awareness, followed by lead generation (21 percent) and e-commerce (12 percent).

*70 percent of respondents said they plan to add mobile video to their marketing mix in the next 12 months.

*Consumers who find marketing and e-commerce video via Facebook and Twitter have the longest viewing times (1:24 minutes and 1:18 minutes respectively), while traffic originating from Yahoo! search (0:52 minutes) and display ads (0:52 minutes) tied for shortest.
 

A rep from Brightcove tells WebProNews, "WebM will be supported on HTML5 and Flash, and Brightcove’s ability to support the new codec is another example of how the company is removing the complexity from the increasingly fragmented video landscape, and giving publishers the chance to publish video in a variety of formats."

"One Brightcove customer who will be testing WebM in the future is The New York Times, he says. "The NYT has worked with Brightcove in the past to pioneer delivery across new formats and devices, and this is another example of innovation between the two companies."

Brightcove will provide H.264 and WebM as standard encoding options for Flash and HTML5 video experiences to its customer base of more than 1,500 media publishers worldwide.