Brightcove Powers Syndicated Player Initiative for UK Broadcaster, Five

Broadband video publishing solutions provider, Brightcove, and UK commercial terrestrial broadcaster, Five, announced an initiative, Monday, that they say will allow Five's viewers to embed ad-supported full episodes of their favorite TV shows on their Web sites, social network profiles and blogs. The initiative makes Five the first UK broadcaster to syndicate full episodes of popular programs for catch-up viewing on third-party Web sites, the companies say. Five claims that the initiative will enable it to expand its distribution of long-form, ad-supported content online and will generate additional advertising income.

According to Brightcove and Five, the first Web sites to benefit from their deal will be Five's own sites--including Five.tv and FiveFWD, a car- and gadget-themed site that targets young males--and the broadcaster's partner sites. The companies say that their syndicated player initiative "will be widely available later this year," allowing both consumers and third-party professional Web sites to add embeddable video content. "Five's syndicated player initiative significantly extends the reach of our online video programming in a way that is secure, high-quality, and generates additional advertising revenue," Paul Thornton-Jones, Five's digital controller, said in a prepared statement. "With Brightcove, Five has been able to launch the ambitious catch-up online video offering in a very short amount of time, despite the complex distribution and monetization requirements."

According to Brightcove, the Five syndicated player initiative employs the full range of capabilities offered by its platform, including "deep customization" of player design and functionality, and integration with a broad set of advertising, content-management and geo-location technologies. Because the average length of video content offered under the initiative will "reach" 45 minutes, Brightcove says that Five will leverage multiple cue-point targeting to place in-stream advertising in long-form online video programming. According to the companies, the syndicated player initiative is built on Adobe Flash and will be capable of reaching over 98% of Internet users.

The syndicated player is the latest broadband video initiative to be launched under the auspices of an agreement between Brightcove and Five that was signed last year and that also sees the broadcaster using the US company's platform to publish and distribute ad-supported video--including the shows "Five News with Natasha Kaplinski," "Milkshake!" and "Neighbours"--across its online properties.

In other Brightcove news: The company announced Monday that JS-Kit--a company which specializes in tools that allow integration of social features into Web sites and which is a member of the Brightcove Alliance (note: Brightcove bills the latter as a "global ecosystem" of technology and distribution partners that have integrated with its broadband video platform, as well as solution providers that are using its platform to build customer Web sites and video applications)--has used the Brightcove 3 player framework to integrate into a standard Brightcove video player template the ability for viewers to leave comments. Comments can be configured in four ways: integrated with the Compact template, integrated with a tabbed template, integrated with a single video playlist, or integrated with a single video. According to Brightcove, video publishers can deploy this capability "without writing a line of code." JS-Kit's platform also includes Web-based moderation and management tools, the company says.