Video and live streaming are essential tools for businesses of all kinds. In the past year, live streaming experienced 99% growth in the number of hours watched. Use in digital marketing continues to increase with 85% of businesses saying they use video now, and twenty percent used it for the first time in 2019. If your business is looking to add, or to increase, your use of video, one of the first decisions you need to make is what platform you’ll use to stream and host your content. Many of the larger, most popular ones are free, which can be great for specific uses. There comes a point though, when you’ll want more options, control, bandwidth or storage than these services can provide. That’s when the benefits of white-label video platform become important.
Simply put, “white label” is a term that refers to something without branding. For example, videos posted or streamed from YouTube will have the YouTube logo on the player. The same goes for other free services. A white label video platform provides a blank player and the tools for you to add your own branding (if you choose). When people watch your content, they will associate your business with the content, and not the service you used to host or stream it.
Brand identity isn’t the only advantage. Every free service comes with some limitations, but not all of them are the same. Some offer unlimited cloud hosting, but you’re limited on the quality you can stream. Others limit how much storage you can use but support full 4K streaming. It’s a complicated landscape. The services may be free, but you’re likely spending time (and time is money) creating or converting video to meet their requirements. Switching away from these sites offers you the chance to save time and money. Below are some more reasons why.
If you haven’t heard the horror stories of live streams being shut down or video being taken down without warning, you can find them for yourself in any support forum of the major free services. We all realize copyrighted content can’t be used without permission and those pirated copies of the latest blockbuster deserve to be pulled down. But what if you own the copyright or follow fair use rules? You can still be taken down and all the work and planning you’ve put into a livestream can be thrown away in an instant. There is no warning and often no explanation given—when you finally find someone to ask. When you stream or host with free services they are obligated to “protect” content and do so using automated algorithms, sometimes followed by human review. If your content is taken down and is reviewed by a human you might have a chance to get it back, but your audience is already gone.
In addition, paid services generally don’t monitor the content in the same automated way because they are not social media platforms like most free services. They are companies offering a technological solution for streaming and hosting video content. It’s your responsibility to ensure your content meets all legal requirements. Likewise, what you do with your video is your prerogative (so long as it meets content standards spelled out in the terms of service). Your content is less likely to removed because there is usually a human involved in the review process. This stems from the fact you are a customer with the company, and not one of a billion accounts using a free service.
Like most things free, a free platform is too good to be true. Instead of a monthly fee, you pay for it by allowing advertising on your content. You have no control over what that advertising is either. It could be for your competitor, or something totally unrelated to your content. In the first case, you may lose customers. In the second case, you may still lose customers if the ads drive them away from watching. If you’ve spent any time watching sites like YouTube you’ll probably have noticed the ads come before the content and after, but now also will appear in the middle of a video with no attention paid to where a natural break might occur. Some ads are no longer skippable, so your audience might stop watching (if they ever started).
You’ve likely worked hard to produce the video you’re sharing or livestream you’re producing. Do you really want to give someone else the control to interrupt you and potentially affect your business?
With a white-label video platform, there are no limitations on where you place your video. If you want it on your website homepage, you can place it there. If you want to put it behind a paywall, you can do that too. The player you use is customizable so you can offer the exact viewer experience you want.
While many free services offer options for embedding video on external sites, they often only let you adjust a few aspects of the player like height and width. In addition, the service will probably display “related” videos at the end of yours to lure viewers away from your website. In other cases, the embedding technique is old and clunky and may not work at all. Some don’t let you embed the video anywhere.
One of the principle ways free services can support so much content is because they have limits on what you can upload or stream. For video hosting they can limit file size, bitrate, playing time, or support only certain video formats. For live streaming, they can limit resolution, bitrate, stream time or the number of viewers.
Business demands are always changing. Your video needs aren’t and won’t always be the same either. For example, a marketing company may want to show its latest creative effort in full 4k, but their quarterly video event only in standard HD. You can’t get this flexibility with a free service with limitations.
It’s clear that free services are not free, you just pay for them in less obvious ways. But if you’ve invested in creating video for your business, isn’t it worth using a white label video platform that lets you maintain control and ownership of your content? White label video streaming platforms, like Zidivo.com, can cost as little as £20/month. These affordable solutions are designed to offer businesses like yours all the options and support you need to be successful.
Video is unavoidable in business today. It is simply one of the most convenient and comprehensive ways for businesses to share content for both internal and external means. Events, product demos, internal meetings, employee training and more, all lend themselves to video as a medium, whether businesses offer video live or on-demand. For a business to implement video campaigns and use video to benefit their operations, they need a dedicated enterprise video platform that has the features to support their needs.
What’s the difference between a business/enterprise and a consumer-grade platform? Essentially, platforms that are designed to back business video hosting and streaming will go further than your average video sharing sites like YouTube or Vimeo. When seeking an enterprise video platform, it should provide a wide range of features to enable complete security, easy management and an abundance of technical support. At Zidivo, we pride ourselves on the professional and reliable set of features and user support provided.
Let’s look at some of the reasons that consumer-grade platforms are not sufficient for business use and what to look for when finding the right enterprise video platform for you.
The first sites that come to mind when a business or individual is planning to share live or on-demand video are usually free options like YouTube and Vimeo. However, while these are free and allow users to access an impressive amount of reach, they are not the best option. Companies looking to use video for internal and external strategies are far better paying to use a platform that ensures complete security and allows the management of access to their content.
Firstly, while free video platforms allow users to adjust privacy settings and make video content ‘undiscoverable’ to the public, this is not 100% reliable. Sharing links can end up in the wrong hands and third parties or hackers can find their way into your videos, which can have detrimental effects on the functioning of a business. If you’re looking to use live streams for internal meetings, company updates, employee training or any other confidential tasks, using a free platform puts your business and staff at risk.
Second, when you upload a video to a site like YouTube, you must accept their terms of use. Some of these terms mean that you as a business lose some of the rights and control over your content. When it comes to sharing sensitive or private material, you don’t want this to be the case. Using a paid platform like Zidivo allows your company to ensure you maintain all the rights over your videos, can choose exactly who has access and how/where you want to share them. Business-oriented platforms like ours offer a number of features to ensure users have complete security and control over their content. There’s no hidden terms or conditions that could potentially put your organisation or brand’s information at risk.
Video is now the easiest and most comprehensive way for large organisations and companies to share and spread information among staff. It can be used to share company updates, provide staff training, make records of internal meetings and far more. With more and more people choosing to work remotely and many businesses now actively supporting this movement, the ability to easily communicate using video platforms is key to keep all employees in the loop. The better the internal communication of a business, the more likely you are to retain staff - a seamless and reliable video platform is the only way to achieve this.
Security is key when it comes to using video as part of your businesses day-to-day and wider operations like training. You need your content to be completely secure and should be able to easily manage who has access to your videos. For example, large organisations can use enterprise video streaming solutions to control who can view certain videos based on IP addresses, domains and locations. For internal communications, you can rely on a dedicated business video platform to protect your streams from potential hackers and implement measures to make sure the right employees have access to your videos.
Video hosting sites for businesses allow you to reduce both costs and time invested. Large businesses can cut costs by offering training programmes through video, without having to invest in training materials and travel to get all the relevant staff in one place. Remote staff can simply be granted access to a webpage that provides their training, making business and employee development incredibly easy to implement.
Using platforms created to suit your needs that offer a range of features means you don’t have to invest time or money in setting up your own network. Zidivo and other paid streaming and hosting sites simply require a consistent monthly fee, tailored to the storage and support you require, in exchange for access to a whole host of video features to benefit internal and marketing strategies.
Consumer-grade and free-to-use sites like YouTube and Vimeo may be tempting, but should anything go wrong when streaming or sharing a video, you will struggle to find the extent of personal support you need. Opting to pay an affordable monthly fee for a business-oriented platform like Zidivo, means you can rest easy knowing there are professional and technical specialists at hand to assist and protect your business’ videos if you run into any trouble. At Zidivo, we understand that although our platform is completely user-friendly, you may need guidance from time to time.
Zidivo offers several features aimed to help businesses share or stream videos and we are always looking for new ways to do so. Here are some of the main features that make us a viable enterprise video streaming solution…
If your business is planning to use video to optimise the running and marketing of your business, a professional and dedicated business hosting platform is essential. The security and reliability offered are simply unmatchable by a free platform that is aimed at individuals looking to share their videos with the public. Get in touch with Zidivo to hear more about the business-focused features we provide and how you can tailor your package to suit the needs and goals of your brand.
While social media may be adequate for individuals looking to build a following and share posts with friends and followers, it falls short for business customers. Social media platforms are not very professional, they are frequently blocked by companies and organisations, and they provide limited benefits in terms of customer experience. If you're a business or other large organisation you need to look at investing in a professional video hosting solution. We've put together a list of 7 reasons why.
If you'd like to know more about professional video hosting and what it can offer your business, just get in touch - our team of streaming experts are always on hand to offer the best advice.