Under New Management, Brightcove VP Phil Green Talks New Chapter, Reimagined Platform
Today, video platform and solutions provider Brightcove announced what a company press release described as a “bold new chapter in its evolution” that integrates proprietary AI tech from Bending Spoons, which completed its acquisition of the venerable OVP in February 2025. “Reimagining its platform to meet the evolving needs” of its media and enterprise customers, Brightcove’s revamped approach highlights Ultra HD live streaming, a native recommendation engine, and a pilot virtual event platform.
Brightcove also plans to expand its AI-powered toolset with enhancements like automated metadata and captioning, multilingual dubbing, intelligent video clipping, and smart content analysis for targeted advertising.
Streaming Media queried Phil Green, Vice President, Media & Strategic Accounts at Brightcove about the company’s recent evolution and how its acquisition by Bending Spoons has impacted its approach.
What does this new phase under Bending Spoons ownership mean for Brightcove’s long-term direction?
Under Bending Spoons, we’re taking Brightcove’s 20-year legacy of video innovation and enhancing it with a fresh, forward-looking perspective. Our long-term direction remains anchored in building a best-in-class, intelligent video engagement platform that our customers— including some of the biggest names in media, entertainment, sports, commerce, finance, technology, retail, and real estate—can trust to deliver measurable business impact.
Specifically, we’re doubling down on what Brightcove does best (reliability, performance and scale), while introducing a new layer of intelligence and agility with Bending Spoons’ proprietary AI technology. This will empower us to move faster and innovate more boldly while staying deeply aligned with the evolving needs of both our Media and Enterprise customers.
You mentioned a reimagined product strategy. What are the main areas of focus going forward?
Everything we do is focused on driving meaningful results for our customers either through increased revenue and engagement or cost reduction via more efficient products and workflows (or both).
With this in mind, we’ve structured our product strategy around Innovation and Quality of Experience, two strategic pillars that reflect deep insights gathered through collaboration with over 50 customers across industries, geographies, and use cases.
On the innovation side, we’re expanding our platform with high-impact features like ultra-HD live streaming, a native recommendations engine and a pilot for a native webinar and virtual event platform. We’re also integrating advanced AI capabilities such as automated metadata generation, multilingual dubbing, intelligent video clipping, and smart content analysis for precise ad targeting.
At the same time, we’re investing in enhancing our customers’ quality of experience, refining the core platform with enhancements like vertical video support, animated thumbnails and a comprehensive UX/UI revamp. These improvements are designed to streamline workflows, boost engagement, and make the platform more intuitive and enjoyable to use.
What is Bending Spoons’ AI technology and how is it being applied within the Brightcove platform?
Bending Spoons has a successful track record of vertically integrating their AI technology stack into leading products such as Remini, Evernote and Meetup, serving over 200 million monthly active users. Within Brightcove, we’ll leverage AI in a purpose-built, deeply integrated, and customer-centric way, applying AI technology across the video lifecycle, from content creation to delivery and monetization.
As with the broader strategy, each application is tied to a clear business outcome for our customers. We’re using it to power features like predictive buffering, adaptive bitrate optimization, automated captioning and translation, and intelligent content recommendations. Because we own the entire stack, we can deliver these capabilities faster, with better support and tighter integration than any third-party solution could offer.
Are there specific customer use cases where the impact of AI will be felt most immediately?
Speaking with our customers, we’re confident there’s widespread interest in our expanded AI suite. While we can’t name specific customers, I can provide an overview of how different customer groups are already thinking about integrating the technology into their workflows:
- For both Media and Enterprise customers the main need is to automate their video workflows through better metadata management for improved content discoverability and more powerful video analytics.
- Media companies with a strong regional presence are looking to leverage content localization as they expand into new markets.
- Sports organizations and publishers want to rapidly repurpose content across different channels and devices with smart clipping tools.
- Global enterprises with high accessibility standards are seeking solutions for captioning and translation to reach all their markets
- Plus, enterprises looking to improve product discovery are turning to personalized content journeys to better guide their customers and highlight their offerings.
We considered all of these use cases—and many more—when developing our AI suite. As always, the focus is to drive continuous impact for our customers.
You referenced conversations with over 50 customers. What themes or needs stood out most in those discussions?
Our customers’ needs are central to our product roadmap and these conversations were foundational to the shaping process. We engaged with over 50 customers across industries, company sizes, and geographies to understand their evolving needs and how we might deliver the best possible service.
Three consistent themes emerged: the need for smarter automation, more flexible and effective monetization tools, and a significantly improved user experience. Customers told us they wanted faster content creation, better insights, and more intuitive tools. They also emphasized the importance of continually raising the bar of reliability and performance, especially for live streaming and high-stakes events. These insights directly shaped our dual-focused strategy of Innovation and Quality of Experience to ensure we’re solving real problems.
How are you planning to improve the user experience across your products?
Improving the user experience is a top priority, and we’re approaching it holistically with our customers’ goals and needs in mind.
For example, a recurring piece of feedback we received was to make our tools more intuitive. To address this, we’re rolling out a comprehensive UX/UI revamp that will streamline workflows, reduce friction, and make the platform more intuitive for users at every level. This includes simplified navigation, intelligent defaults, and contextual guidance to help users get more done with fewer clicks. We’re also introducing enhancements like vertical video support, animated thumbnails, and a revamped interactivity layer to boost engagement and content discovery. Our goal with these changes is to make Brightcove both more powerful and simpler to use for our customers regardless of their background or previous experience.
Will any new features or tools be generally available at launch?
While it’s true we’re announcing our roadmap, we don’t think of this as a “launch” as much as the next stage of Brightcove’s evolution—part of an on-going and continuous process of improvement.
To answer the question—items included in our newly defined roadmap will be released progressively in the coming months. These include ultra-HD live streaming for premium viewing experiences, a native recommendations engine to drive viewer engagement, and the first phase of our AI-powered editing suite. We’re also piloting a native webinar and virtual event platform, which will be rolled out more broadly later in the year. Additionally, we’re introducing live streaming server-side ad insertion, giving customers more control and flexibility when monetizing their content. These features are just the beginning of a broader roadmap that will continue to evolve based on customer goals and emerging needs.
How does Brightcove see its position evolving in the current video platform landscape?
Brightcove has always been a leader in the video platform landscape—now our goal is to become a category-defining leader in intelligent video engagement. We feel we’re well positioned to do this: the market is shifting and customers are looking for platforms that combine technical excellence and innovation with a customer-centric approach. Plus, with Bending Spoons’ AI capabilities and product development expertise, we can accelerate our time-to-market for intelligent automation, enhanced video monetization, and streamlined content workflows.
While we intend to move fast, we’ll never compromise on the service that has long been core to Brightcove: outstanding video quality, reliability, scalability and support.
What types of customers or use cases are you most focused on serving with this next phase?
Regardless of the use case, our customer promise is always the same: to provide scalable, intelligent solutions that help businesses achieve their objectives, whether that’s growing an audience, increasing revenue, or improving employee engagement.
With that said, our current customer focus is on the Media and Enterprise sectors.
For Media, we’re building tools that support faster content creation, smarter distribution, and more effective monetization. This includes everything from live streaming enhancements to AI-powered editing and localization.
For Enterprise, we’re enabling organizations to use video more effectively for internal communications, training, marketing, and customer engagement.
Let’s be frank. OVPs have underperformed. Brightcove has great technology and great people. Are you re-imagining the OVP market with a view towards expansion, or attempting to create a blue ocean?
When a sector underperforms, there’s often a temptation to chase a silver bullet or reinvent the entire category. However, I believe that, at the end of the day, what matters most is that we listen to our customers and serve them to the best of our ability.
We’re doing this by:
- Going back to fundamentals to deeply understanding our customers’ workflows and ensuring our platform helps them succeed in managing video and driving their business outcomes
- Focusing on what matters most to avoid gimmicks and focus on building the best possible tools for publishing, engagement, monetization, analytics, and performance. If we don’t excel here, nothing else matters.
- Identifying real AI opportunities that can unlock clear value—whether that’s localizing content, making it more accessible, repurposing it for different platforms and audiences, or automating workflows. Again, this is all based on real customer needs.
- Iterating in a smart way by using our learning today to uncover the next opportunities. Whether this leads to redefining the category or expanding the market isn’t the focus: our focus is on relentlessly improving how we serve our customers every single day.
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