Bitmovin, an online streaming video technology company, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $25 million in Series C funding.
The San Francisco startup had previously raised $62.3 million through seed, Series A and Series B rounds.
Bitmovin powers online video providers including Discovery Plus, FuboTV, DAZN, BBC, RTL, RedBull Media House, Globo, Cand The New York Times. The company, which has over 400 global clients, is the platform that provides the instantaneous video from any device.
Bitmovin CEO and founder at Stefan Lederer said that the company will use the new funds to address three main technology areas—encoding , universal player support and viewer-behavior analytics.
“We will continue to optimize compression technologies and bandwidth for premium VOD encoding, such as premium cinema content, as well as increasing routes to monetization for live video services.”
Bitmovin will also add support for new consumer devices and provide new ways to monetize online video services through subscription, ad-supported and transactional models.
“First, we will extend our capabilities for device testing through the addition of long-running automated tests (four-plus hours) and a framework for embracing customer streams into our testing environment,” Lederer said in an email. “Second, we will expand our advertising capabilities through the integration of advertising frameworks, such as the Roku Advertising Framework (RAF) and client-side ad capabilities on tvOS. Third, we will launch the next major version of our mobile SDKs (version 3), which will enhance the developer experience and support for the latest mobile technologies on both iOS and Android.”
And with regard to analytics the company “will be developing a POC for a new feature that provides additional information around error codes and messages and expedites the identification of root causes of errors.”
Lederer added that since the company launched in 2013 the online video streaming market has grown by “at least 10 times.”
“More consumers than ever prefer to watch content on any device and at any time rather than in linear programming,” says Lederer. “This trend is further fuelled by advances in connectivity and consumer electronics, along with innovation in streaming technologies.”
Bitmovin saw 174% growth in the number of broadcasting clients opting for OTT over 2020. Due in part to the pandemic, the company experienced a 118% increase in video play with 220% more minutes watched, and a 380% growth in network traffic of video on the internet. This significant increase in demand for high quality video and large resolution video on big screens—smart TVs, game consoles, Apple TV, Roku—put a burden on internet service providers, which Bitmovin says resulted in a 15% slowdown on the average bandwidth available to viewers.
“As a direct result of Bitmovin’s investment in advancing these areas, the company has enabled tier-one media companies to reclaim upwards of 60% of their streaming bandwidth,” Lederer said. He would not name the tier-one media outlets that reclaimed streaming bandwidth.
The technology company also reports new growth-market opportunities have increased by 180% in areas such as online fitness, learning, worship, e-commerce, and others.
“Online customer interaction went from being a tangential offering to an existential service for many businesses in these industries during the pandemic,” Lederer. “With in-person interaction limited, they had to find ways to offer customers valuable offerings over video. The fitness industry is a great example. Although in normal times, the customers of fitness centers and yoga studios would strongly prefer to take classes in person, they were eager to continue their classes online with the in-person option all but eliminated during COVID-19. Suddenly, those businesses were expected to provide smooth, clear, consistent video on par with global streaming media companies from any device. Their customers simply wouldn’t tolerate disruptions to their customer experience.”
