I’m pleased to present the 463rd edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

The SVOD industry’s dynamics are harder than ever to predict now that Disney+ plans to come to market with a robust content offering priced at just $7 per month. So for example while Netflix reported a strong Q1 ’19, when Colin looks ahead to how Q4 ’19 or Q1 ’20 will shape up for Netflix given omnipresent promotion of Disney+ that’s coming, he sees an adverse impact on domestic subscriber additions.

We discuss how significant the impact could be not just on Netflix but also on Apple TV+ which will come to market in late ’19 too, but have a much less competitive content offering vs. Disney+. A key question is how low must Apple TV+’s price now be to compete?

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Video adtech provider Beachfront will enable pay-TV operators to monetize their set-top box video on demand (VOD) viewing with ads sourced from programmatic video ad buyers. The move effectively bridges 2 worlds that have been mainly separate - traditional pay-TV VOD and real-time, dynamic digital ad demand.

Chris Maccaro, CEO of Beachfront, told me in an interview that in talking to various pay-TV operators and TV networks, under-monetization of VOD viewership remains a pain point, with up to half of all views not monetized optimally or at all. By enabling a select group of programmatic ad buyers to access this inventory, Beachfront is creating incremental VOD revenue.

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The biggest piece of news from last week’s Disney+ mega event was certainly the reveal of the service’s rate: just $7/month, or $70/year, and its implications for competitors, most notably Apple TV+.

Back in September, 2017, just after Disney CEO Bob Iger announced Disney was shifting its strategy toward a direct to consumer (DTC) model, and gave a preview of the massive trove of Disney/other content that would be included, I wrote that success for the service would be highly dependent on its price.

Would Disney+ be priced on the lower end of market expectations (I speculated about $10/month) to achieve strong adoption like Netflix has? Or would it be priced on the higher end (say $20-$25/month) in a market “skimming” approach like what HBO Now has followed? Given the money Disney would be foregoing in third-party distribution fees by going DTC, there was huge conflicting pressures on the pricing decision.

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I'm pleased to present the 462nd edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Colin and I both shed a tear this week as YouTube TV raised its rate to $50/month (up $10 for those currently paying $40/month and up $15 for those like Colin and me who were grandfathered at the original $35/month price - a whopping 43% increase).

While Colin says he wasn’t surprised, I actually was. There’s been a huge window for YouTube TV to grab market share as other virtual pay-TV operators raised their rates and/or scaled back promotions. But Google has obviously decided it was done heavily subsidizing YouTube TV. Colin and I discuss the implications of the move and how the “new normal” in virtual operators’ rates will likely reduce cord-cutting.

Then we switch gears with Colin sharing his takeaways from NABShow - focusing on AI, cloud and live.

Listen in to learn more!

 
Click here to listen to the podcast (23 minutes, 20 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

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The VideoNuze podcast is also available in iTunes...subscribe today!