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–Signs Deals with Bebo, Meebo, RockYou, Slide, Veoh, Gruner + Jahr
–Helps Power Showtime’s 2008 Primetime Emmys Campaign

Broadband video publishing services provider, Brightcove, has
announced plans to support Google’s new contextual advertising
technology for broadband video, AdSense for Video, which is currently
in beta. The company says that its participation in the AdSense for
Video beta program will provide its customers with “additional and
complementary” advertising opportunities.

AdSense for Video–which serves ads based both on the content of a
piece of broadband video and on the context of the Web page within
which that video appears–is billed as giving media publishers the
ability (beyond their own direct ad sales) to target tailored in-stream
overlay ads from Google’s large base of advertisers. According to
Google, it allows publishers and content providers to control which
videos are paired with which ads and when those ads play in each
video. The company claims that AdSense for Video’s in-video and text
overlay ad format does not disrupt the viewing experience. “Video and
rich media continue to account for an increasingly large segment of
online content–Brightcove customers alone reach 130 million unique
users a month across thousands of Web sites,” Chris Johnston, director
of ad product management at Brightcove, said in a prepared statement.
“Brightcove’s support of Google’s AdSense for video beta is
particularly important because it combines a vast ad network with the
market-leading Internet video publishing platform–ultimately creating
a new and powerful, consumer-friendly monetization opportunity for
news and entertainment programmers worldwide.” AdSense for Video
is currently being offered to a selection of Brightcove customers in
limited beta release; and the company says it plans to make the service
available to all its customers later this year.

In other Brightcove news:

• The company has signed distribution partnerships with new media
  companies, Bebo, Meebo, RockYou, Slide and Veoh. “Our distribution
  partners represent the fastest-growing segments of the social Web and
  hold enormous potential for our media customers to grow online
  audiences and scale their advertising inventory,” Brightcove chairman
  and CEO, Jeremy Allaire, said in a prepared statement. “To date, taking
  advantage of viral promotion and distribution through online
  communities has been tricky business for media companies who want
  to maintain control over the brand experience and advertising sales.
  Using our Internet TV platform to manage and monetize this
  distribution answers these dual requirements of reach and control.”
  Brightcove describes the new deals as enabling “an exciting array of
  high-quality, premium video content…to be viewed on Bebo channels,
  shared through viral widgets from RockYou and Slide on Facebook and
  MySpace, included in instant messaging activities on Meebo, and
  viewed in full-screen at Veoh’s Internet television portal.” It also claims
  that a number of high-profile media companies–including VBS.tv and
  The Weather Channel–are “already planning to tap into” the new
  distribution partnerships. (Note: the first Brightcove customer to
  provide programming to Bebo users as a result of Bebo’s new
  partnership with Brightcove is the UK’s largest commercial
  broadcaster, ITV. The broadcaster is offering a series of “channels” on
  Bebo, each devoted to a specific program, and featuring embeddable
  clips and such interactive and community features as blogs, forums,
  and polls.)

• The company has been tapped by CBS-subsidiary, Showtime
  Networks, to assist with the latter’s 2008 Primetime Emmy campaign.
  Brightcove and Showtime have built a customized Web site where
  voting members of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences can
  view full seasons of Showtime’s original series (Showtime claims to be
  the first network to make entire seasons available to Academy members
  over the Internet). The site launched February 15th, and will be
  available to qualified Academy members throughout the June balloting
  and final August judging phases of the Emmy Awards. The site uses
  Brightcove’s Brightcove Show technology, a broadband video
  application that is billed as delivering an instant, full-screen, broadcast-
  quality viewing experience through standard Web browsers. Eligible
  ATAS members access the site (sho.com/foryourconsideration) through
  a password that was mailed to them together with a brochure and select
  episodes of Showtime series under consideration on three DVD’s (last
  year, Showtime mailed ATAS members 20 DVD’s). At launch, the site
  offered complete current seasons of “Weeds,” “Dexter,” “Brotherhood,”
  “Californication,” and “The L Word.” Shows scheduled to premiere
  after the launch–including “The Tudors Season 2,” “Tracey Ullman’s
  State of the Union,” “This American Life Season 2,” and “An American
  Crime”–are being made available on the site in conjunction with their
  broadcast premieres. According to a Showtime spokesperson, one of
  the reasons the programmer is using broadband video for its Emmys
  campaign is to “eliminate the enormous amount of packaging which
  has inundated members and ultimately ends up in our landfills.” Their
  collaboration on Showtime’s broadband video Emmys campaign is part
  of a broader partnership between Showtime and Brightcove, that will
  also see the latter powering broadband video on the programmer’s
  official Web site, sho.com.

• The company has secured its first major media customer in Germany:
  Gruner + Jahr, which claims to be Europe’s largest magazine publisher
  (note: Brightcove’s other European magazine and newspaper publisher
  customers include Emap, Guardian News & Media, IPC Media,
  Telegraph Media Group, and Hachette Filipacchi UK). G+J will use
  Brightcove’s broadband TV platform to publish and distribute
  ad-supported video through its various Web sites, and says it plans to
  expand the amount of news and entertainment video it offers.