BroadbandTV, a Vancouver-based media-tech company that creates, distributes, manages, and monetizes video content, has reported several new company milestones, including that it has reached 575 million unique viewers each month.
“Our ‘people bottom line’ is as important as our financial one.”
-Shahrzad Rafati
The company claimed that it is now second to Google in unique viewership and called itself the largest media company in terms of total monthly watch-time. In addition to receiving 38 billion video views every month, its total annual video viewership has increased at a compound annual growth rate of 102 percent between the fiscal years 2014 to 2018, with a total of 405 billion video views in 2018.
“With unprecedented growth and an unwavering commitment to profitability, we continue to lead our peer group in all key measures, including unique viewers and watch-time,” said Shahrzad Rafati, founder and CEO of BroadbandTV. “We’re building one of the most successful media technology companies in the world from the West Coast of Canada, and despite all that we have achieved, this is really just the beginning.”
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The company’s revenue has seen a 927 percent growth between the 2014 fiscal year and the 2018 fiscal year, amounting to a compound annual growth rate of 79 percent over the four-year period. BroadbandTV said it is looking to grow its revenue streams and has built monetization arms within the business. Its current streams include advertising video on demand, SaaS, mobile apps, e-commerce, subscription video on demand, and licencing. Last year, BroadbandTV launched a new business division dedicated to building original games and apps with digital content creators.
“My goal has always been to build a quadruple bottom line business, an organization that measures success not just based on financial performance but also employee, social, and environmental KPIs,” said Rafati. “At [BroadbandTV], our ‘people bottom line’ is as important as our financial one.”
BroadbandTV was founded in 2005, before Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion. Within four years, the NBA became a client of BroadbandTV, which spurred other media conglomerates like A&E and Sony to follow suit. Last year, the company partnered with US public broadcaster PBS to manage fan-uploaded content on YouTube for shows like Nova, Frontline, and Nature.
In June 2013, the company received a $36 million private placement from RTL Group, which marked the largest private placement into an internet media company in Canada since 2007. BroadbandTV experiences much of its traffic internationally, particularly in French, Arabic, and Russian markets. In 2017, BroadbandTV launched in several East Asian and Middle Eastern markets, including Singapore, South Korea, Egypt. It now actively operates in 10 languages and 29 countries.