This beta is focused on three themes: contextual publishing, long-form content, and accelerating the productivity producers with new tools. Right now the beta program is only open to a select group of our premium customers, but it will be expanding over the course of the summer. The full commercial release will come in the fall.

Our SVP of Marketing, Adam Berrey, recently launched a blog and in today's post he provides a deeper dive into some of the underling themes and strategies we're enabling with Brightcove 3. 

We are very excited about today’s release and look forward to unveiling the full suite of new product innovations with the commercial release later this year. Please feel free to visit the beta website to sign up to receive updates about the beta program.

--Josh Hawkins

Brightcove KK launches with $4.9 million in new investment from Brightcove and strategic partners that will be critical to the successful expansion of our business in Japan. These partners include:

• Dentsu, Inc., the largest advertising company in Japan with a market share of approximately 30 percent Groupwide.
• J-Stream, Japan's largest content delivery network specializing in streaming media for content providers and business corporations.
• transcosmos, an existing Brightcove investor and major digital media conglomerate in Japan that owns a wide range of media properties, businesses and technology services.
• CCI, Japan's largest interactive advertising company that currently has over 30 percent of the country's digital brand marketing, a popular advertising serving technology, and online advertising network.

Japan represents enormous market opportunity for Brightcove. Household broadband penetration has just surpassed 50 percent and the country's media market is second only to the United States (larger than the top three European countries combined). It's a great privilege to have as partners the leading digital media and advertising companies in Japan. The combination of Brightcove's technology and partner capabilities place Brightcove KK in a unique position to help media companies and marketers unlock value in this fast-paced market and accelerate business growth.

Brightcove KK Press Release

-- Josh Hawkins

MIPTV was the backdrop for some exciting Brightcove announcements. Brightcove unveiled a powerful lineup of new distribution partners including Bebo, Meebo, RockYou, Slide and Veoh. Media companies using the Brightcove Internet TV platform can now take advantage of expanded distribution through social networks and video portals while maintaining control over their content and advertising (read more). The distribution partners have a combined audience reach of over 300 million monthly uniques and Brightcove customers like The Weather Channel, Sony BMG, and VBS.tv are already taking advantage of the opportunity (see coverage in The Guardian, Broadcasting & Cable, C21, Media Week).

At MIPTV, Brightcove also announced that Ministry of Sound, Europe's largest independent record label, has adopted the Brightcove Internet TV platform to launch an aggressive online video initiative that will include advertising-supported distribution on its own websites, as well as through viral widgets available on MySpace and Bebo (see coverage in Billboard Magazine).

-- Josh Hawkins

-- Josh Hawkins

-- Josh Hawkins

Internet video continues to grow at an accelerated pace. The Brightcove platform reaches over 130 million unique users per month across hundreds of major brands. It's clear that flexible monetization options are required to maximize the revenue potential of online video advertising.

To take one example, a big challenge that faces online video publishers today is how to monetize remnant inventory. Traffic spikes resulting from weather events or the passing of a celebrity actor can produce a massive influx of additional online video inventory and not enough advertising to fill the extra video streams. With the Brightcove/Google solution, these publishers will be able to opt their remnant inventory into the Google AdSense network and generate ad revenue against these additional video streams - controlling exactly what inventory gets the advertising and retaining 100 percent of their advertising revenue.

Publishers who use Brightcove to program and distribute video will be able to use their own advertising servers to set policies and target Google AdSense ads into the video inventory they specify. These non-disruptive, clickable overlay ads appear in the bottom 20 percent of the video and are targeted based on the content of the video and the context of the webpage where the video is displayed.

We are very excited to introduce Brightcove support for Google AdSense for video as we continue to champion flexible new opportunities for our customers to monetize their Internet video.

Here's a link to our press release.

Google's AdSense for video beta is currently available through Brightcove in a limited closed beta release with select customers. We plan to make the feature generally available to publishers in 2008.

-- Josh Hawkins

The major question for publishers is can an online media company with Yahoo!’s footprint effectively provide a white-label, on-demand service to other online media companies? We believe there is an inherent conflict of interest in this. As media companies battle for mindshare and audience online, they’re looking for a platform provider that will give them flexibility and control over how they partner for everything from content to advertising execution.  As the largest independent Internet TV platform, we’re in a unique position to continue to provide this to publishers.

The acquisition comes on the heels of what has been pivotal year for Internet TV, and we’re looking forward to continuing to grow a strong, independent company in 2008 that can service the Internet video needs of media companies, marketers and a wide range of other organizations publishing and distributing video online.

-- Adam Berrey, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Strategy, Brightcove

The campaign marks the first initiative in a broad partnership between the two companies, which includes use of the Brightcove Internet TV platform for the programming and distribution of advertising-supported video content on www.sho.com, the network's official home on the Internet.

Here's a link to the full press release. And here are some stories about the partnership:

The Hollywood Reporter - "Showtime's Emmy Screeners Now Online"
Broadcasting & Cable - "Showtime, Brightcove to Take Emmy Awards Screening Online"
Multichannel News - "Showtime to Stream Emmy Screeners Online"
Variety - "Showtime's Emmy Screenings Online"

-- Josh Hawkins

The announcement today marks Brightcove's first major media customer in Germany and entry into mainland Europe, which follows similar corporate-wide deals with magazine publishers in the United States (e.g., Time Inc., Meredith, Hachette Filipacchi Media US, Rodale) and the United Kingdon (e.g., Emap, IPC Media, Hearst's National Magazine Company, Hachette Filipacchi UK). 

Click here for the full press release.

-- Josh Hawkins

This week, over 140,000 people will converge on Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) to hear business leaders describe the future of the industry. And, like years past, these leaders will promise devices that finally close the gap between the television set and video content available on the open Internet.

Unfortunately, these promises will once again fall short of expectations. It's clear that the industry will continue to deliver products that are fundamentally closed and that are too complicated, too costly, and stifling from an industry ecosystem perspective.

In an open letter to consumer electronics industry leaders, Brightcove Chairman & CEO, Jeremy Allaire, and SVP of Marketing & Strategy, Adam Berrey, call for a new set of open standards designed to enable browsing and watching Internet video on the television using conventions and standards that have made the PC web flourish.

Click here to read "Open Internet Television: A Letter to the Consumer Electronics Industry"

-- Josh Hawkins