VideoNuze Posts

Fox will have broadcast rights to NFL Thursday Night Football for the next 5 years in a deal that is reportedly worth over $3 billion. That would work out to an average of $60 million per game, up from the $45 million NBC and CBS paid per game over the past 2 years and up from the $37.5 million CBS alone paid in 2014 and 2015. The broadcasts will be presented by Bud Light.

The deal gives fresh credence to the idea that “live sports are TV’s firewall” against changing viewer behaviors and the rise of SVOD. The “firewall” concept has been around for years now and has driven the exorbitant rise in sports rights and the multi-billion dollar “sports tax” that pay-TV subscribers who are not sports fans pay each year.

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I’m pleased to be hosting the NABShow’s Online Video Program once again this year, on Tuesday, April 10th in Las Vegas. This is the 4th year I’ve put this program together and as always the goal is to make OVP a high impact day of learning for attendees about all the critical industry issues.

We have a great group of sessions coming together including a keynote (TBD), panel discussions and new research to be presented by Parks Associates’ Brett Sappington. I’ll have a lot more details in the coming weeks.

If you’re already planning to attend NABShow, please plan to stop by North Hall (room TBD) for OVP. If you’re on the fence about attending NABShow, you can save $100 on registration now by using this link and code EP02. Don’t miss out, register now!

I’m pleased to present the 404th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week we’re joined by Henry Embleton, who is the Head of Ad Products and Revenue at Ellation, which owns the Crunchyroll (focused on anime) and VRV (focused on aggregation and pronounced “verve”) streaming services. Ellation itself is wholly owned by Otter Media, the JV of AT&T and The Chernin Group, as of earlier this week. Together the services have over 2 million registered users.

Henry walks us through how he is optimizing the video ad experience on the services by extensively testing different models. As with all ad-supported services, Henry is looking to balance ad loads with viewing time and satisfaction. He relies on 2 key metrics, Minutes per User and Revenue per Hour to guide the testing.

Henry explains what he’s learned from his testing so far and what he’s still exploring. He also talks about which devices are working best and how all of his work supports the SVOD part of the business. Henry offers a ton of fascinating insights about how online video ad models are working and how to optimize them.

Listen in to learn more!
 
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Brands are poised to ramp up their use of live-streaming video in 2018, according to the 2018 Live Video Streaming Benchmark Report, released by Brandlive and IBM Cloud Video. 84% of respondents said that live-streaming video is either important, very important or a top priority in their 2018 marketing mix, comparing favorably with the 86% of who said the same about pre-recorded video.

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In a first, IBM’s Watson Media will enhance the Grammy awards’ digital workflow and user experience with artificial intelligence. IBM Watson Media has partnered with The Recording Academy, which hosts the Grammys and produces the full digital experience. According to David Mowrey, Head of Product and Development at IBM Watson Media, AI will be used to augment the Academy’s teams in order make the digital user experience more immersive than ever. The 60th annual Grammy Awards are coming up on January 28th.

Specifically, Mowrey said that Watson Media will be used to index video from the red carpet pre-show, by tagging celebrities and topics in real-time. Watson will also enrich photos from the red carpet with metadata such as name, position and facial dominance. Watson Media is providing a web-based tool that Grammys editors can use to build galleries of videos and photos to present to users.

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Netflix hit a grand slam in Q4 ’17, adding a total of 8.3 million global subscribers, the biggest in the company’s history and up 18% compared to 7.05 million added in Q4 ’16 and a forecast of 6.3 million. Domestically, Netflix added 1.98 million vs. 1.93 million in Q4 ’16 and ahead of the 1.25 million forecast. Internationally, Netflix added 6.36 million vs. 5.12 million in Q4 ’16 and above the forecast of 5.05 million. Netflix executives did not break down regional results, instead saying performance was “strong across the board.”

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On two separate sessions at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview conference last week, NBCUniversal’s Chairman, Advertising and Client Partnerships, Linda Yaccarino and CBS’s President and Chief Advertising Revenue Officer Jo Ann Ross made forceful cases that TV is still highly relevant for advertisers and its impact is essential in the overall marketing mix.

It’s no secret that TV networks are fighting a pervasive media narrative that traditional TV viewing is becoming anachronistic for younger audiences in particular, ad-free SVOD viewing is dominating and big digital platforms like Google and Facebook offer improved ROI to advertisers through targeting.

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