Video technology provider Kaltura has acquired interactive personalised video start-up Rapt Media for an undisclosed amount. Rapt Media’s interactive branching video technology is ideal for personalised marketing, customer education, recruitment, learning and educational video experiences. Viewers are guided through different video paths depending on their behaviour or selection at each level.

The acquisition follows a successful partnership and integration in 2017 among companies – and several joint customer wins including Eli Lilly and Thomson Reuters – and solidifies Kaltura’s role as the leading global provider of interactive video capabilities.

Rapt Media’s roster of customers – including Mercedes, EMC Dell, Alight Solutions, and eBay- will now become Kaltura customers and get access to Kaltura’s wide range of video solutions.

Rapt Media, which was founded in 2011 and raised $12m (€10.3m) in funding, offers customers interactive video technology for a range of uses cases. These include:

• For marketing/sales/customer education, viewers are led through a video experience that is personalised to their choice, and is interactive and engaging, creating an emotional commitment to the choices and lengthening the viewing time
• In education, students can follow learning paths that are personalised to their level, where their actions, responses and choices influence their learning path. Learning experience becomes more relevant and effective.
• For onboarding and recruitment, HR managers can create fun and engaging compatibility videos, welcome videos, training materials, and more, allowing for a highly personalised and customised experience for each viewer, accelerating hiring and onboarding

“What an honour it is for our vision and technology to be recognised by a video technology powerhouse like Kaltura,” declared Erika Trautman, CEO and founder of Rapt Media. “I am excited that Rapt Media customers can now benefit from Kaltura’s wide range of video solutions and easily expand their video strategy to support any use case that may arise today and in the future.”

As Kaltura expands the breadth of its solutions for learning and development as well as customer education and marketing, Rapt Media’s branching video tools are a natural addition to the company’s existing range of video engagement capabilities, including its Interactive Video Quizzes, Editing Tools, In-Video Calls-to-Action, and more.

”We are excited to acquire Rapt Media and incorporate its unique video-branching technology into our portfolio of video solutions for any organisation,” said Ron Yekutiel, chairman, CEO, and co-founder of Kaltura. “Video is the most engaging medium, and videos that are personalised and interactive make for the most lean-forward and engaging experiences of them all.  As the leading provider of video solutions for any organisation, we are leading the charge in video interactivity and personalisation and investing heavily (and acquiring) in the areas of smart video analysis, analytics, and AI tools. Our goal is to automate the real-time creation of personalised video and extraction of rich metadata, to optimise their delivery at the right time to the right audience, and to offer them the most engaging video experience”.

”Using tools like Rapt Media’s branching videos, video experiences become personalised stickier and more compelling. We are seeing growing demand for these types of video experiences from customers who are looking to better engage their own employees, with content, information and learning, as well as to better engage external viewers, prospects, customers and partners. Rapt Media’s technology is a great fit for both, especially when combined with Kaltura’s enterprise-grade video solutions,” added Michal Tsur, Kaltura Co-founder, President and General Manager of Enterprise and Learning.

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