Posts for 'AVOD'

This week we discuss the logic of Amazon shutting down Freevee, which Adweek reported, and Amazon denied. We see a number of pros and cons to the move. Meanwhile Nielsen said that YouTube was once again the number one streaming service used on CTVs, ahead of Netflix and everyone else. This was the twelfth month in row for YouTube and we explore the reasons behind it.

Finally the rumor mill is swirling that Peacock and Paramount+ may combine forces, and we dig into how it would benefit both entities.  

Listen to the podcast to learn more (25 minutes, 26 seconds)

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Yesterday was VideoNuze’s third annual Connected TV Advertising PREVIEW: 2023, which featured 22 senior executives on 5 sessions.

Below are links to each of the session recordings along with descriptions of each session and speakers. There are many great insights about CTV advertising and what’s ahead as it evolves to full-funnel capabilities, FASTs continue to expand, the UX for both advertisers and viewers is reinvented and publishers invest heavily in delivering innovative experiences for viewers.

Thanks again to all the 22 speakers, and especially to CTV PREVIEW’s four amazing partners, Beachfront, PadSquad, Roku and Wurl.

Enjoy!

[VIDEO] Welcome to Connected TV Advertising PREVIEW 2023

[VIDEO] The Big Picture: Trends and Opportunities in CTV in 2023

[VIDEO] Is CTV’s Future at the Bottom of the Funnel?

[VIDEO] Interview With TMB’s President and CEO Bonnie Kintzer

[VIDEO] CTV UX Innovation – The 2023 Roadmap

[VIDEO] FASTs – Road to Gold or Road to “SLOW?”

The following video was recorded at VideoNuze’s third annual Connected TV Advertising PREVIEW: 2023 virtual on February 28, 2023.

Welcome to Connected TV Advertising PREVIEW 2023 virtual
Connected TVs and streaming are transforming the TV and advertising industries. CTV has become the hottest corner of the advertising business, forecast by eMarketer to grow another 27% in 2023 to $27 billion, in the U.S. alone. All in the face of significant economic headwinds. Yet, we are still in the very early innings of the CTV era.  

This afternoon’s program will explore topics including:

- Key macro trends and opportunities in CTV in 2023

- How/when CTV advertising will be optimized for the bottom of the “purchase funnel,” which will in turn attract huge buckets of ad spending

- If the proliferation of FASTs might lead to “SLOW” (SVOD Losses On the Way)

- How CTV UX innovation (in both content and ad formats) is driving new value for viewers and advertisers.

- How Trusted Media Brands (TMB), as a traditional publisher that includes a portfolio of digital-first brands, is successfully capitalizing on CTV and streaming

Will Richmond – Editor and Publisher, VideoNuze

Five leading OTT services - Hulu, Peacock, Discovery+, HBO Max and Paramount+ - generated $1.3 billion in 2021 ad spending, according to MediaRadar, an ad intelligence platform.

MediaRadar also found that 5,530 advertisers ran ads on the 5 services and it calculates that spending on these streaming services accounts for just 3% of total digital ad spending per month.

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Tubi streamed 3.6 billion hours in 2021, a 40% increase over 2020, with 56% of its viewers unreachable by advertisers through linear TV and 27% of them unreachable through other free AVOD services. 71% of Tubi’s viewers don’t subscribe to a pay-TV services. Tubi’s median viewer age is 39 years old, 16 years younger than non-streamers, with 2 out of 3 viewers age 18-54 years old.

All of the data is from Tubi’s newly released report, “The Stream: 2022 Audience Insights for Brands” which explains key trends in consumer behavior with streaming and the impact that ad-supported streaming is having. The report draws research from multiple third-party sources, proprietary Tubi data and results of a survey of 6,000+ consumers fielded by MarketCast. The report highlights the value of AVOD for advertisers and how it complements linear TV.

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Welcome to this week’s edition of Inside the Stream, the podcast where nScreenMedia’s Chief Analyst Colin Dixon and I take listeners inside the world of streaming video.

IMDb TV, Amazon’s free ad-supported streaming TV service has issues with how the advertising experience is implemented. There is a lot of ad repetition and randomness of ad insertion. This creates a jarring experience for users, and is somewhat incongruous because a show on IMDb TV like “Mad Men” has built in ad breaks from its original broadcast that aren’t being used.

Colin and I discuss why these issues exist, and further, why they’re not uncommon among other FAST services. Some of the issues are quite thorny and don’t lend themselves to quick resolution. Still, we’re both optimistic long term that they will be resolved, and we’re also optimistic about IMDb TV’s likelihood of success. Its ownership by Amazon means eventually there will be strong targeting and lower funnel, actionable ads (Colin actually saw one like this for a hair dryer).

A programming note - join us on Zoom for a live version of Inside the Stream on Dec. 15th at 2:30pm ET / 11:30 am PT. We’ll be discussing the top stories of 2021 and doing live audience Q&A. It’s free - join us!

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Welcome to this week’s edition of Inside the Stream, the podcast where nScreenMedia’s Chief Analyst Colin Dixon and I take listeners inside the world of streaming video.

On Comcast’s Q3 ’21 earnings call, management was vague about how Peacock is performing. In Corporate America, not highlighting numbers is typically a sign that things are not going as well as hoped and/or the numbers are not as impressive, comparably speaking, as those of competitors. A round of speculation about Peacock’s performance and what might happen next has ensued.

On this week’s podcast, Colin and I try to explain what we think is happening. The hard truth for Peacock is that it came to market very late and that it is competing against well-funded and highly aggressive competitors which are spending heavily on originals and on promotions - a commitment that Comcast/NBCUniversal have not publicly committed to match. Another issue - at least relative to Paramount+/Showtime, which gained 4.3 million subscribers in Q3 - is that Peacock doesn’t include NBC’s linear feed, and also doesn’t specialize in mature content, which has a strong draw. These two benefits (and “Star Trek”) have no doubt helped Paramount+/Showtime. Yet another issue is that popular NBC programming continues to be available in Hulu.

All of these factors, and others, are limiting Peacock’s appeal. As if that wasn’t enough, Comcast has mixed incentives related to Hulu, because it still has a 30% stake that is getting more valuable by the day, as Netflix stock hits new highs. Comcast is financially disincented from harming Hulu by pulling programming to help Peacock (all of this would have been moot if only Comcast had acquired Hulu when it had the chance back in 2018). Comcast has missed out on billions in additional revenue and value creation.

In short, Comcast/NBCU are now facing a dilemma with Peacock that can be boiled down to: Go Big or Go Home. Either commit to spending what's required to compete effectively (either at the AVOD or SVOD level), or recognize Peacock is going to keep treading water and will likely never break out. It’s a tough decision, but it reflects the penalty late entrants face, especially when squaring off against competitors like Netflix, Amazon, Disney, HBO Max, etc.

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(Reminder - if you are a listener of The VideoNuze Report podcast, please update your feed per below to the new Inside the Stream feeds which have been available for a couple of months....we don't want to lose you as a listener as we complete this transition!)

Welcome to this week’s edition of Inside the Stream, the podcast where nScreenMedia’s Chief Analyst Colin Dixon and I take listeners inside the world of streaming video.

Colin has just released an in-depth white paper on the free ad-supported streaming TV (“FAST”) market, underwritten by Verizon Media, and on today’s podcast he shares his key takeaways and assumptions (note, I have not yet had a chance myself to review the paper which is free to download).

The paper also includes Colin’s forecast for FAST services’ advertising revenues in the U.S. alone. Colin has built his model with both a top-down industry analysis and a bottoms-up review of FAST services including logging ad pod durations, frequency, fill rates, etc, and consulting with numerous industry leaders. Colin sees FASTs generating $2.1 billion in ad revenue in the U.S. in ’21, increasing to $4.1 billion in ’23, though he notes he may be erring on the conservative side.

If you’re interested in the FAST market and especially how it relates to AVOD, Colin’s paper is a must to download. Colin’s also eager to refine his model further, so please feel free to share your feedback directly with him.

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Welcome to this week’s edition of Inside the Stream, the podcast where nScreenMedia’s Chief Analyst Colin Dixon and I take listeners inside the world of streaming video.

SVOD providers have been the dominant force in creating original TV shows for streaming, but as the recent NewFronts underscored, AVOD services like Roku, Crackle, Tubi and many others are also forging ahead with their own originals.

On today’s podcast Colin and I discuss why it’s strategic for AVODs to pursue originals, how they’ll differentiate at a time when SVOD productions are increasingly lavish, what impact lighter ad loads will have and how these originals will be available - solely on-demand or also in free ad-supported TV / FAST? It’s still quite early and there are lots of questions to consider.

(Note: Colin will be moderating a session titled “FASTs + AVOD = Big Opportunity” at next week’s Connected TV Ad Summit virtual, with executives from Tubi, A+E Networks, Digitas and Wurl, which includes discussion of originals and ad loads. Complimentary registration!)

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Wurl’s CEO Sean Doherty explains why he’s super optimistic about ad-supported streaming in a 10-minute video interview below. Wurl powers distribution for almost 900 ad-supported streaming channels, with active users up 45% in Q1 and ad impressions up 428% from Q1 ’20 to Q1 ’21. The company added 30 new employees so far in 2021 and is looking to double its headcount this year.

One of the main reasons Sean is so bullish on streaming is the changing behavior of younger viewers who expect unconstrained access to their chosen content. Traditional TV and advertisers need to be more in synch with these expectations. To break through, AVOD services need to provide compelling content and improve their monetization.

Hear more from Sean at VideoNuze’s CTV Ad Summit virtual on June 9th and 10th, on the session “FAST + AVOD = Big Opportunity,” with A+E Networks, Tubi and Digitas. Registration is complimentary and you can win a Roku TV and Streaming Soundbar.

Watch the interview now!

If you were one of the 14,000 attendees of last week’s NewFronts presentations, a central message that you couldn’t miss was that streaming has become an essential way for advertisers to reach 18-49 year olds. The coveted age group, which has long been the bread and butter for TV networks, is rapidly shifting its video consumption behaviors, and NewFronts presenters wanted ad buyers to know that they can either follow the eyeballs or risk losing access to this huge cohort.

Presenters expressed the message in different ways, but here are a few that caught my attention:

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Yesterday, CNBC reported that HBO Max’s upcoming ad-supported tier will be priced at $9.99 per month, a $5 per month discount vs. $14.99 per month for its existing ad-free service. The $5 differential is mostly in line with the approach other subscription services with an ad-supported tier, such as Hulu, Peacock and Paramount+ have taken and is therefore unsurprising.

But there are still many interesting questions about the HBO Max ad-supported tier and how it will be positioned relative to the ad-free tier. One big one is which content will actually carry ads, and which won’t. At AT&T’s recent investor day, WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar said “We will not be having advertising inside the HBO original series.” Does “inside” mean that only mid-roll ads are off the table, but pre-rolls and post-rolls will be ok? Or does it mean no ads for HBO original series, period? If the latter, does it imply that Max originals are going to be the main content that will have ads?

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More than 120 million U.S. viewers streamed YouTube or YouTube TV on a connected TV last December, according to a blog post yesterday from Neal Mohan, YouTube’s Chief Product Officer. That’s up from 100 million per month that YouTube last revealed in June, 2020 at its Brandcast presentation during the NewFronts. Mohan reiterated that while mobile is still the most popular way to consume YouTube content, CTV is the fastest-growing.

Mohan also said that in December over 25% of logged-in YouTube CTV viewers in the U.S. watched over 90% of their YouTube content on CTV.  Mohan quoted comScore data that 41% of all ad-supported streaming watch time occurs on YouTube, which makes YouTube by far the biggest CTV player.

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