There’s a good chance that if you’re a regular Lost Remote reader, you’ve used a Clearleap-powered product.
The Georgia-based company was founded in 2007, just as networks and cable providers began to make available to consumers TV Everywhere (TVE) and Video on Demand (VOD) options. Clearleap has helped HBO, Verizon, Time Warner, and Scripps deliver content via multiplatform solutions and have helped them monetize these solutions.
Last November, the company raised a $20 million round of funding to expand into the Latin American and European markets – both markets will prove to be extremely valuable to content creators and distributors in the next 10 years. When Netflix released its Q2 earnings report in July it announced that it will be launching in Germany, France, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, and Luxembourg, and that its launch into these markets “with over 60 million broadband households will significantly increase our European presence and raise our current international addressable market to over 180 million broadband households, or 2x the number of current U.S. broadband households.” Like Netflix, Clearleap and its customers have a lot of territory to cover.
For more on Clearleap and its role in the proliferation of VOD and TVE, we spoke with CEO Braxton Jarratt.
Lost Remote: How is Clearleap helping to usher in the future of TV?
Braxton Jarratt: The growth of multiscreen viewing over the past 5-10 years has made it clear that the future of TV lies in TV Everywhere and OTT. This fundamental shift in the way we watch TV has caused the landscape to become incredibly fragmented, requiring complex infrastructures to manage, prepare and deliver content to a growing number of platforms. Anyone that has ever watched Food Network on their PC or HBO On Demand, for example, has interacted with Clearleap’s technology. By simplifying the complex processes on the back-end to make these services work, Clearleap is helping content owners and service providers accelerate their multiscreen offerings, ushering in a mainstream multiscreen environment where any and all content is available whenever and wherever we want.
LR: How is VOD and TVE a boon for advertisers and networks alike?
Jarratt: Companies like Clearleap are making TV Everywhere both possible and profitable. While the DVR was a worst nightmare for advertisers and networks, allowing consumers to skip through commercials, delayed viewing through TV Everywhere and VOD has continued to grow, providing a new revenue stream. More consumers are watching on-demand content than ever before – sometimes days, weeks and even months after a linear program airs. The use of Dynamic Ad Insertion (DAI) is still in its infancy, but there’s so much more we can do to make it an essential advertising tool for monetizing delayed viewing.