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Inside the Stream: Amazon Rules Streaming Video Distribution; Comcast is Indifferent
Bloomberg’s Screentime 2024 conference in LA offered opportunities to hear directly from a variety of industry executives about their companies’ streaming initiatives and results (all video interviews here). Colin and I were especially interested in interviews with Comcast’s Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts and Amazon’s SVP of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios Mike Hopkins.
As we discuss, the interviews highlight the companies’ divergent future as premium video distributors. Amazon is ascendant, having become by far the dominant distributor of third-party streaming services in the US. Meanwhile, Comcast, long the biggest cable TV operator in the US, has seen cord-cutting erode its subscriber base.
However, as Roberts articulates, Comcast is using its formidable broadband presence and Peacock to re-position the company for future success. Meanwhile Hopkins underscores how Amazon’s vast resources allow it to invest aggressively in technologies like AI to continually improve the viewer experience and partner value proposition.
Listen to the podcast to learn more (31 minutes, 55 seconds)
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Topics: Amazon, Comcast, Podcast
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The Essential Role of Authenticated Audiences in CTV Advertising
Thursday, October 17, 2024, 2:57 PM ETPosted by:Budi Tanzi
Vice President of Product, ExperianConnected TV (CTV) is a leading platform in digital advertising, combining the precise targeting of digital ads with the broad reach and storytelling power of traditional TV. This creates an immersive experience that offers full-funnel marketing results. As consumer time spent watching CTV has doubled over the past five years and linear TV viewing patterns have shifted, advertisers now see CTV as essential for reaching and engaging audiences.
Categories: Advertising
Topics: Experian
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Inside the Stream: Can Google TV’s New Features Increase Its Market Share?
In August Google announced its new Google TV Streamer device along with feature updates for all Google TV devices. To learn more about all of this, Rob Caruso, who leads product management and user experience for Google TV, joins us for an in-depth Q&A.
Rob is especially excited about two features: smart home integration and deeper integration with Google Photos. The former is an extension of the controls in the Google Home app. The latter is part of a trend Rob describes as “ambient computing” with the opportunity to use Gen AI to create new imagery and collections of images on Google TVs.
In addition to these features, we also discussed Freeplay, its newly-named its FAST service, how AI is being used for personalized content recommendations and much more. As Rob describes, Google is in a position to both address mainstream user needs with smart TVs, while also pushing the boundaries to introduce new features and see what new use cases emerge.
It will be interesting to follow how these new features impact Google TV’s market share in smart TVs.
Listen to the podcast to learn more (37 minutes, 48 seconds)
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Inside the Stream: Antenna’s CEO Dives Into New Research on Specialty SVOD
We’re pleased to welcome Antenna’s CEO and co-founder Jonathan Carson back to Inside the Stream for an exclusive interview about the firm’s new State of Subscriptions research focused on specialty SVOD services.
Antenna’s research has become a key source of industry intelligence and we’re excited to share that Jonathan will be a regular quarterly guest on Inside the Stream going forward, providing exclusive insights and detail on the firm’s ongoing research.
For this week, Jonathan dives into why the specialty SVOD category, which is still much smaller than premium SVOD, is actually growing at a far faster rate. Speciality SVOD is a highly fragmented category, and Antenna is tracking the progress of over 100 different streaming services.
We discuss particular services like AMC+, Crunchyroll and Hallmark+ and specialty SVOD’s churn profile. We also explore the fact that 58% of specialty SVOD subscriptions happen through Amazon Channels and what the implications of that are. We also touch on the interplay between specialty SVOD and FAST services which are closely linked. And lots more…
Listen to the podcast to learn more (40 minutes, 51 seconds)
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Topics: AMC, Antenna, Crunchyroll, Podcast
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Inside the Stream: New Google and Roku Streamers, Disney+ Paid Sharing Launches and More
Four topics for this week’s podcast:
Both Google and Roku announced new streaming media devices this week, with Google launching its Google TV Streamer, which is positioned as the “next generation of Chromecast,” and Roku releasing an updated version of its Roku Ultra. As we discuss, these are two companies at far ends of the TV OS battle, with Google somewhat surprisingly still a laggard, and Roku still a leader.
Next up, Disney+ officially launched its paid sharing globally, following its announcement earlier this year. Disney+ is clearly hoping to emulate the success Netflix had following its rollout of paid sharing, though as we detail, there are important differences between how Disney+ is executing that could lead to much different results.
Then we discuss a newly announced initiative by Whip Media to bring more transparency to FAST viewership across channels. While this would be a step forward, as Colin explains there are critical challenges to making this a reality.
Finally, we circle back to a report last Friday about remarks from Netflix’s co-CEO Greg Peters concerning the possibility of the company leaning into live sports. Peters said “never say never” about live sports and with nearly 280 million global subscribers, Netflix would have an immediate impact.
Listen to the podcast to learn more (32 minutes, 34 seconds)
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Topics: Disney+, Google, Netflix, Podcast, Roku
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Inside the Stream: YouTube Revamps CTV App and Enhances AI Features
In concert with its Made on YouTube event, YouTube unveiled a slew of innovations aimed at enhancing creators’, viewers’ and advertisers’ experiences. Potentially the most high impact is a revamp of its CTV app which will offer “immersive previews” of creator content, modeled on best practices of SVOD apps like Netflix. Creators will also be able to customize how they categorize and organize their episodes in the app. With CTV accounting for at least 40% of YouTube’s views, optimizing the CTV app is critical.
YouTube also updated a number of relatively new AI-powered tools, including “Dream Screen,” which generates backgrounds in YouTube Shorts and a 6-second clip generator, both using Veo, which is DeepMind’s video AI technology, plus a refreshed Inspiration Tab to help brainstorm new video ideas.
Also new is the launch of Communities which allows engagment within the creator’s channel, pulling into YouTube discussions already happening in other social platforms. The feature builds on commenting, which has long been available in YouTube.
YouTube also confirmed broad availability of Pause ads, long in use by others like Hulu, which are likely to get a strong reception.
Many of the features are described in this post.
Listen to the podcast to learn more (33 minutes, 4 seconds)
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Inside the Stream: IAB Raises CTV Ad Outlook; Movies’ Headwinds, Charter-AMC+ Deal; Amazon-NextGen TV
Four topics for this week’s podcast:
Last week IAB released its new 2024 advertising outlook report based on a survey of media professionals. CTV advertising was at the top of expected gains, revised upward from a 14.5% lift vs. 2023 in IAB’s prior report to 18.4% now. It’s another positive sign for CTV ads and we discuss how big a role political ad spending is playing.
Next up, Comcast’s president shared insights about NBCU’s position in movies and PVOD which were relatively upbeat. While NBCU has had a strong year, as we review, movies still face stiff headwinds.
Third, Charter and AMC signed a new distribution deal that gives many Charter TV subscribers access to the ad-supported version of AMC+. While the deal averts a blackout like the one happening with DIRECTV and Disney currently, Colin and I question whether the deal is sufficiently forward-looking for AMC.
Finally, Colin explains the significance of Amazon introducing TVs that support the NextGen TV standard.
Listen to the podcast to learn more (33 minutes, 1 second)
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Topics: Amazon, AMC, Charter Communications, IAB, NBCU, Podcast
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Inside the Stream: Disney’s DIRECTV Dispute Highlights Its Reduced Customer Focus
Last weekend Disney blacked out all of its networks on DIRECTV as the carriage agreement between the two companies expired without a new one being reached. These types of disputes are common in the pay-TV industry, and there’s always a lot of jawboning and finger-pointing, making it difficult to understand the exact proposals and counter-proposals.
What seems indisputable is that Disney is pushing for a continuation of its longstanding approach to bundling all of its networks together, perhaps with some additional flexibility for DIRECTV. With ESPN’s high cost, that means the bundle price to DIRECTV is elevated, even as cord-cutting accelerates. It also means DIRECTV would keep paying for a bunch of smaller channels most of its subscribers don’t watch. None of this is especially friendly to viewers.
The irony of course is that even as Disney is pushing for bundling with traditional distributors like DIRECTV, Disney is separately part of the Venu Sports JV which unbundles its (and Fox’s and Warner Bros. Discovery’s) sports networks and packages them into a new streaming offering. Venu’s launch is now up in the air due to Fubo TV winning a preliminary injunction against it.
Stepping back, as we observe, Disney is also pursuing a variety of other moves that also suggest reduced customer focus. The primary example of this is the latest round of Disney+ price increases that this time are coupled with a crackdown on password sharing - an approach completely counter to how Netflix wisely executed its password limit. Even though Disney eked out a profit in its DTC segment in the latest quarter, Colin and I believe these moves will put a lot of pressure on Disney+ subscriber numbers in the coming quarters.
(Outside of the streaming space, Disney also recently and embarrassingly insisted, and then reversed, its position in the case of a woman who died from an allergic reaction to food at Disney World, with Disney initially insisting her husband lost his rights to sue the company because he signed up for Disney+.)
Listen to the podcast to learn more (33 minutes, 29 seconds)
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Topics: DirecTV, Disney, Disney+, Podcast, Venu Sports