Mapping the Wild West

Submitted by ben on November 9, 2009 - 6:25pm
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Ben Weinberger
CEO & Co-Founder
Posted by ben
on Nov 9th, 2009 05:25 PM
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The online video platform (OVP) market is like no other, for three reasons:

  1. It’s big.  There are literally dozens of OVP vendors, each with their own niche in the digital media value chain.
  2. It’s changing faster than any other market.  New vendors, new technologies and new customers are emerging seemingly every day.
  3. It’s relatively new.  Perhaps this is what it felt like to be in the Web browser business in 1994. 

Until now, no credible research firm has endeavored to segment this developing market and identify the real leaders.  I applaud Forrester for this.  Rigorous analysis like that presented in Bobby Tulsiani’s recent OVP report is long overdue.  As I see it, three markets are emerging in the digital video platform space:

  1. Consumer.  Primarily driven by user-generated content (UGC).
  2. Business-to-Business (B2B).  Vendors that supply and manage video for corporate web sites.
  3. Premium Studio Content.  Episodic television and feature films, in streams that exceed 100GB.

If you’re on our site reading this blog, chances are you know that Digitalsmiths plays in that third area: the high end of the market. 

Forrester studied the first two categories in this report – namely, consumer facing/UGC and B2B providers.  When you’re mapping the Wild West, you’ve got to start someplace, and Forrester made an editorial decision to begin at the low end of the market.  And while the research is excellent, my hope is that Forrester will take the next step and put some stakes in the ground around premium content. 

The evaluation for this part of the market is very different than for the low end.  Success at this level is about being studio-grade – and about having the infrastructure, technology and processes to handle massive studio master files.  It’s about having a world-class metadata management framework, as Digitalsmiths does.   

The premium world is a far more demanding universe. Success at our end of the market isn’t about how many customers we have, but rather who those customers are, and the service we provide for them. And because we are being entrusted with studios’ crown jewels – content libraries, which are critical to their long-term growth and success – there is no room for error.  Studio-grade digital media management systems and technologies have to be mature, fail-proof, and rock solid.

I applaud what Forrester has done with this report – and I encourage them to keep pushing Westward.  At the same time, I’d like to acknowledge the achievements of my online video brethren at Brightcove and Ooyala.  Congratulations, and well done in a highly competitive market.

What are your thoughts on the OVP market?  I look forward to reading your comments.

Sincerely,
Ben