Ooyala In Deal To Power Broadband Video For Telegraph Media Group, Replacing Brightcove

Broadband video platform provider, Ooyala, announced Wednesday that Telegraph Media Group (TMG), which publishes the UK newspaper, The Daily Telegraph and its Web site, telegraph.co.uk, has chosen its platform to power its broadband video offerings. The deal--which sees Ooyala replacing rival Brightcove as TMG's broadband video platform provider--also calls for Ooyala to work with TMG's recently launched digital business unit, the Euston Project, to develop new technologies for the delivery and consumption of online media. According to Ooyala, members of its technical team will begin working out of the Euston Project's facilities next week.

TMG claims to reach over 30 million unique users and deliver over a million hours of broadband video each month. Ooyala says that its partnership with TMG will enable the latter to "set new standards within the industry by delivering a higher quality and more personalized consumer experience, creating greater efficiencies in news content management and providing advertisers with increased consumer insight." By switching to Ooyala's platform and leveraging its real-time analytics, the company claims, TMG--which saw a "dramatic" rise in broadband video consumption last year--will be able to provide its audience with highly targeted video content at a "market leading" speed. Ooyala, which is based in Silicon Valley and maintains offices in London, bills its platform as enabling media companies to manage, deliver, syndicate, analyze and monetize their video content, and as incorporating an analytics engine that lets clients see in real time how their video and its advertising are being consumed. "Telegraph Media Group has led its commercial rivals in online news for 15 years," Ooyala president and CEO, Jay Fulcher, said in a prepared statement. "Faced with the challenges of making online video profitable, the company has recognized that the key to successfully monetizing content lies in having better consumer insights. We are excited to be partnering with such a forward-thinking company and look forward to building technologies that will enable the news industry to better monetize and expand their global media footprint." Ooyala says it plans to invest "heavily" this year in expanding its European operations: last fall, it raised $10 million in third-round funding which it said it would use primarily for an "aggressive" expansion plan that would see it targeting the European market (see the article published on itvt.com, October 12th).