Ostmodern sees record growth
February 6, 2018
Ostmodern, the OTT and video specialist, has posted record growth for 2017. This has been driven by the signing of six new clients to its portfolio, which already includes some of the world’s most recognised brands, such as the BBC and Channel 4.
To support this growth, Ostmodern bolstered its team with 28 new full-time staff. This momentum will continue in 2018, with further recruitment already planned.
New senior members of staff have included Commercial Director, Stuart Ferreira-Cole, who joined from Ooyala, where he served as Vice President until shortly after the $270m acquisition by Telstra. Ferreira-Cole heads up sales, revenue, marketing and PR for the company. Ostmodern also appointed former Sport England leader Heather Taylor, who brings extensive experience in the strategic development of sport. Taylor will spearhead the expansion of Ostmodern’s sports offering.
Further growth was driven by consolidation in the US market, with the company having recently opened an office in New York. Ostmodern has been selected to launch a suite of next generation OTT products, and is working with US partners on several global sports and entertainment brands.
Ostmodern’s success has been underpinned by a number of further developments to its Skylark API and CMS, the demand for which has risen across EMEA, APAC and the US. In contrast to traditional web CMS products, which are not designed to manage multiple media formats, Skylark has been developed specifically for multimedia storytelling. It enables clients to develop strong business models when offering their audiences video, articles, games, music and e-books.
The expansion also includes the launch of a global agency programme designed to allow customers and partners to create next generation OTT services on top of Skylark’s robust API framework. The first partners are Azoomee, a children’s video, games and audio platform. New partners are to be announced in the coming months.
Skylark has recently been enhanced to provide users with targeted notifications and messages so that clients can personalise their marketing and have more tools to promote content. This year Ostmodern plans to boost Skylark’s curation capabilities further and is launching a pioneering visual storytelling tool that can enrich the user experience with augmented and virtual reality.
“Ostmodern’s approach to developing digital products, which has design, creativity and innovation at its core, is genuinely unique. We were delighted to see such a positive response to our technology in 2017,” said Tom Williams, CEO and co-founder of Ostmodern. “We’re looking forward to enhancing the experience audiences have even further. We will be opening up exciting and unprecedented opportunities for broadcasters and all those who own content.”