track and analyze viewers’ usage patterns in real time; a personalization system that suggests new content based on what viewers just watched; and perhaps most importantly, monetization software, including paywalls and controls for inserting and tracking advertisements such as pre-roll, post-roll, and banner ads.
Much of this tech is also available from Ooyala competitors such as Brightcove, Move Networks, a Comcast subsidiary called The Platform, and open-source software maker Kaltura. But Lepe and Knapp say Ooyala designed its platform with studios and corporate brands in mind, a strategy that has helped to attract big customers such as ESPN, Miramax, Bloomberg, Telstra, Virgin Media, News Corp., Yahoo Japan, and NetMovies (the Netflix of Brazil).
The three ex-Google founders—Knapp and the Lepe brothers—brought in former Agile Software CEO Jay Fulcher to run the company in 2009, and so far they’ve raised $79 million in venture funding, with Sierra Ventures, Rembrandt Venture Partners, CID Group, and Telstra Applications and Ventures Group as the biggest backers. The company has 230 employees and continues to grow.
In Knapp’s view, the big mistake most video hosting companies have made—and the reason there isn’t more premium video on the Internet already—is thinking of online video as a new market. “If it were a green field, we could approach it as a classic tech company and simply offer bigger scale and lower unit economics,” he says. “You do see a few online-only media companies able to operate this way—if you are Machinima [which distributes short-form video entertainment for video gamers] it is all new revenue, since there is no offline business.” But for most media companies, Knapp says, online video is additive, meaning it’s not worth the bother unless it can bring in revenue comparable to existing licensing and distribution deals.
What’s truly new today is that consumers want to watch shows on their tablets, PCs, and smartphones, not just on their TVs. “The consumer doesn’t care about the medium, they just care about the access,” says Knapp. “This means it’s not a new market, it’s simply the existing video industry evolving and expanding across more screens. But to support the existing industry we have to be able to better monetize. There is that old analogy of analog dollars turning into digital pennies. We’re getting it back up to dimes or quarters.”
To really understand everything Ooyala can do to increase online video revenue, you need to look at ESPN, one of its flagship customers and the one that’s probably making most aggressive use of the company’s technology. Disney-owned ESPN shares over a billion video streams per month online, according to Bismarck Lepe.
Last year, the company ditched Disney’s own in-house video hosting system in favor of Ooyala’s content management system and player software, which loads videos faster at higher playback quality. The sports network has used the Ooyala system to do things like breaking down college football games into “top play” lists that fans can view during or after a game, and creating a lineup of video highlights from the Winter X Games for delivery via Shazam’s mobile app.
ESPN also makes full use of Ooyala’s personalization service, which analyzes a viewer’s history and follows every video with customized suggestions. “With most publishers, I finish a video and then I’m on my own, or maybe they give me something that’s loosely curated, but it has nothing to do with what I watched today or what I have seen before,” says Knapp. “That is a huge missed opportunity. With ESPN, when I finish one video they give me 10 seconds to pick which of four customized options I like the best.” Requests for follow-up videos are up 40 percent since ESPN implemented the recommendation engine, Bismarck Lepe says.
Of course, every online video ESPN shows comes with ads—that’s sort of the point. Ooyala is able to apply its data-gathering and testing tools to help the network figure out how many ads it can safely show. That number might vary based on the individual viewer. With a brand-new visitor, or one who has never clicked on an ad, it’s better to show fewer ads for fear of annoying them, Knapp says. But with a diehard sports fan who’s watching his 600th video, or for someone who has engaged with ads in the past, it’s probably safe to insert more ads—they’re hooked and they’re going to stick around.
“The question is, how many ads are consumers willing to sit through?” Knapp says. “How much is it worth to them, and how do we strike that balance?” Using Ooyala’s technology, ESPN has been able to
