What is video hosting and how it can benefit B2B businesses

Remember the good old days when videos were being taped on tapes with video recorders and stored in a cabinet? You had to rewind a video in order to watch it from the beginning and god forbid if uncle Roger accidentally taped his football game over your first baby steps. 🤯 Nowadays, videos can be edited, stored and accessed online, anytime and anywhere. Especially for businesses this offers a lot of benefits and possibilities. In this article we would like to walk you through the more deep-lying reasons why video hosting is a game-changer for your B2B. 

What is video hosting

Okay, first things first - what does video hosting mean? Essentially video hosting is storing and distributing video files online. The options where your videos are placed can be various: using a service, such as a third-party public provider like YouTube, private providers (such as Kinescope ✌), or self-hosting. For most businesses nowadays the most logical choice is usually using a hosting service to save resources and time. 

When it comes to video hosting this means opting for a service provider can allow you to upload and store your videos easily; the host service will also automatically convert the video for you into a suitable format for the end viewer. As we've discussed previously, converting and transcoding are especially important when it comes to sharing content among viewers using different devices and operational systems. Uploading and storing content through a hosting service makes them easy to distribute, modify, convert, playback, secure and access. 

Does a hosting provider ensure speed delivery time?

Absolutely! With hosting providers video files are stored and collected through a content delivery network (CDN) to minimize delivery time. CDN is a trusted companion of a good video hosting provider because it can deliver videos with next to zero latency using optimization algorithms.  

How does a Content Delivery Network work

Using a video host to store your videos for your business seems like the logical thing to do, right? Imagine if you could not only store your videos on one server, but on several connected servers. This would improve the overall security and speed of delivery of your content. This is essentially what a Content Delivery Network does.

A content delivery network is a group of servers distributed at different locations around the world. These groups of servers work together to provide fast delivery of content online. CDNs are designed to improve web performance even further by reducing the time needed to send content to the end user and reduce network latency. Simply put - you don't have to rely on one server when it comes to displaying your content online, but a whole army.   

Giant service providers, such as Netflix, run on a content delivery network as well.

To ensure your videos are not only stored safely, but delivered to the right audience is second - opt for a video host provider with its own CDN. Even if or when this server crashes (it happens once in a while) you will be guaranteed of a maximum uptime, because other servers take over.  

What are the benefits of professional video hosting for your business

Now let’s get to the good part. The benefits of video hosting in combination with a CDN are simple—your content is accessible, quickly delivered, easy to distribute and safely stored on multiple servers. When it comes to other benefits and more advanced features, it is important to know what hosting provider to choose. We gladly share some tips with you.

Public vs. private hosting  

When you run a business it is important to consider where your information and files are stored and what are the privacy features. Think for example about the accessibility and security of your content. When you upload content for your employees only (like HR or training videos), you want to make sure your sensitive corporate information stays where it is supposed to.

When you use a public hosting service the information and data is stored on a third-party cloud provider, such as AWS, G-Cloud or Azure. This means if you run into a problem there will be a chain of people to go through to help you figure out the issue.

With a private provider, on the other hand, you are directly connected to the responsible person in a fast time. If you want your data to be stored in a smaller, local infrastructure - opt for a provider with own (or renting from local) server racks.

Even when your videos are meant for (future) customers, it is apparent all traffic needs to be directed back to your website. When hosting your video on YouTube for example, your traffic needs to be directed back to your website via link. Although this is a whole other topic—all marketers know that the more steps a viewer has to take to greater the change is, you will lose them somewhere along the way. And of course all you want after working on your videos is the traffic to end up where it should be - your website.

Furthermore, you need a video host that is easy to use, compatible and offers advanced features. Whether you upload content to educate your employees or to trigger future customers, engagement is key.  Engagement is a great way to make sure your desired audience is getting the message and, even better, are likely to act upon it. Professional video hosting platforms often offer several functionalities to measure engagement of your viewers per second with advanced analytics. 

Which video hosting platform is right for your business 

How to make the right choice? Here are a few things to consider when choosing the right hosting platform for your needs: 

• Experience: Look for a hosting provider where you can easily upload, safely store and quickly deliver your video content to its end user;
• Benefit from CDN: Even in case of crashing of multiple servers, your content will still be available due to the mechanism of a CDN. When your hosting service has a private CDN you can be assured that the delivery time of the videos will be speedy fast;  
• Opt for a private host: Choosing a ‘private platform’ offers you the possibility to direct all traffic back to your website, instead of the platform, increase engagement and give the opportunity to viewers to quickly find relevant information in your website; 
• Advanced features like analytics: They will help you get insight into your viewer's engagement—which is a major key in completing the purpose of your video; 
• GDPR-compliant: Nothing more important than privacy.

Looking for a head start with a service checking all the boxes mentioned above? Kinescope offers a reliable, private CDN with more than 4 Tb external network capacity, 99,9% uptime and high capacity caching servers. We’re based in the Netherlands and GDPR-compliant.

Want to know more? Schedule a call without obligation to discuss what Kinescope can do for you and your business here or send us a message in the chat. Ready to start? You can sign up below for free - no subscription required.