Brightcove收购独角兽媒体

Brightcove announced today its intent to acquire 独角兽媒体 via a mostly stock offering at an anticipated $49 million purchase price.

"Media companies are struggling to effectively deliver ad-supported video content to a fragmented landscape of platforms, including mobile devices” said Brightcove CEO, 大卫·孟德尔斯新闻稿宣布收购.

独角兽媒体, which is a co-sponsor of the Second Screen Summit being held today in Las Vegas in conjunction with the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2014), has mastered the art of maneuvering around ad blockers via a patented "stitching” technology.

StreamingMedia.com 覆盖这种技术, 叫一次, 差不多就在两年前, when we posited that MSNBC ads and video playback for on-demand content might be getting a "Once over” treatment. Later 信息 confirmed that MSNBC had switched to 独角兽媒体 to deliver content.

独角兽最多提供4,400 customized strings that 覆盖 over 500 different devices, although the company pointed out in our earlier coverage that no more than 100 mobile devices account for about 99 percent of all video content consumed in the marketplace today.

Mendels noted that Brightcove holds the belief that "online video has the potential to surpass traditional TV by offering mass personalization, 卓越的广告定位, and frictionless distribution" but he also notes that media companies are concerned that 2013’s major viewing devices—set top boxes, 连接的客厅设备, and PCs—are keeping pace in the cat-and-mouse game of blocking ads.

"A growing number of PCs have ad-blockers installed,孟德尔说.

Some estimates place the number of ads blocked on a typical PC as high as thirty percent, which accounts for a sizable revenue loss for both static and media-driven ad sales.

"Through the acquisition of 独角兽媒体, Brightcove will empower media companies to address these challenges,孟德尔说.

独角兽媒体’s technology has been expanded over the past two years to cover live stitching, so it’s fairly easy to see where Brightcove could use 这种技术, especially given Brightcove’s purchase of Zencoder in mid 2013.

One technically savvy source noted that the tie-in between Zencoder and Unicorn’s Once, 再加上一个视频.js based player, covers a large part of the ecosystem.

One difference between the Zencoder and 独角兽媒体 acquisitions is the branding and stand-alone nature of the former.

"Brightcove has acquired Zencoder as a business, to operate as an independent product line,“禅宗。博客在2013年7月底指出. "Brightcove is committed to continuing the mission of Zencoder: creating the best suite of API-based media services in the cloud."

相比之下, Brightcove will continue to develop Once—which has 14 patents backing it—but now as a rebranded product called Brightcove Once, 以及独角兽的许多员工, 包括创始人比尔·莱因哈特, 会加入Brightcove团队吗.

"[Once] reduces or eliminates the need for platform-specific ad technology,” Brightcove's 新闻稿 stated, adding that its customers could "reliably deliver live or on-demand video with dynamically customized programming and targeted advertising to the maximum range of devices.”

While pointing out the technical benefits of the Once service, Brightcove was also quick to point out the existing customers that use Once. Unicorn had significant customer traction—including NBC 新闻, 天气频道, and sports giant ESPN—with ongoing revenues, 这9美元是怎么来的.2亿美元现金.9 million shares of Brightcove stock that are part of the total $49.估计购买价格为1亿美元.

看丹·雷伯恩的博客 for his take on the Brightcove-Unicorn acquisition.