Video just got brighter: Brightcove raises $59.5 million

Brightcove announced this morning a Series C round of financing totaling just under $60 million. This could help Brightcove start to grow at a more rapid pace and attempt to capture a good percentage of the $775 million to be spent on video advertising this year.

From the Brightcove blog:

Brightcove welcomes several new investors -- major institutional funds Maverick Capital, Brookside Capital, AllianceBernstein, as well as two new strategic investors, The New York Times Company and Transcosmos (a leading online media and technology company in Japan).  In addition to these new investors, all of our existing investors also participated in this financing round, including General Catalyst Partners (the Cambridge-based VC where I incubated Brightcove), Accel Partners, Allen & Company, AOL, The Hearst Corporation, and IAC/InterActiveCorp.

If the Google/YouTube deal was any indication, 2007 is clearly going to be a major year for online video, and also a year of consolidation as many of the hundreds of online video startups seek a place in the new ecosystem.  We also expect 2007 to be a year where established media companies make more bets, and continue to partner with leaders they can trust and who are well aligned with their desire to maintain choice and control over how their video is used online, while also empowering consumers.

No doubt Jeremy is right. This year we will see a large amount of consolidation in the video space and across the online channels overall. Small players who have innovative ideas will be gobbled up by the larger players and the larger players will jockey for position in what will be a very crowded market. Place your bets now.