VideoNuze Posts

As of year-end 2016, 22% of the 100 million U.S. homes that subscribe to broadband did not also subscribe to a pay-TV service. That’s up from 9% of the 85 million U.S. homes that subscribed to broadband but did not also subscribe to a pay-TV service in 2011. Over the course of 2016 alone, the rate of broadband homes subscribing to pay-TV declined from 82% to 78%, resulting in 22 million broadband homes without pay-TV at the end of last year, compared with 8 million in 2011.

The data comes from a new report from The Diffusion Group, “Life Without Legacy Pay-TV: A Profile of U.S. Cord Cutters and Cord Nevers” that has just been published.

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Mobile ad platform AdColony has released results from a number of clients’ recent ad campaigns using its “Instant-Play HD Vertical Video” format. Across the campaigns the format delivered an 89% average video completion rate and a 10% average engagement rate. Clients included UFC, a premium cable TV network, a global consumer tech platform and various Fortune 500 brands. The vertical video ads were inserted across popular mobile apps.

AdColony’s Instant-Play HD format, which is integrated with mobile apps via an SDK, includes a “Dynamic End Card” feature that gives advertisers a way to creatively engage users with a rich experience that includes the ability to swipe, tap, watch, purchase and access more content (samples can be found here).

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Mobile accounted for 54% of video views globally in Q4 ’16, up from 46% in Q4 ’15, according to Ooyala’s latest Global Video Index, which tracks hundreds of millions viewers from its 500+ customers around the world. Underscoring mobile’s fast adoption, mobile views were 17% as recently as 2013; Ooyala projects mobile in Q1 ’17 will hit nearly 60% of views, a nearly 4x increase.

As always, smartphones accounted for the lion’s share of overall mobile viewing and in Q4 ’16, they also accounted for virtually all of mobile’s growth. In Q4, smartphones racked up 47% of views, with the remainder on tablets. While smartphones’ share grew by 8 percentage points just in 2016, tablets lost almost a percentage point.

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Here’s a Monday morning brain teaser to consider: is there any rhyme or reason for which TV networks are being included in skinny bundles like Sling TV, DirecTV Now, YouTube TV and soon Hulu? If there is, it’s hard to discern what it is. In fact, the composition of skinny bundles is getting more puzzling all the time.

For instance, last Friday, Hulu announced that it had reached a distribution deal with A+E Networks for its forthcoming skinny bundle. The deal followed previously announced ones with Hulu’s corporate parents Fox, Disney and Turner, plus CBS. But just a couple weeks ago, when YouTube TV was announced, it didn’t include A+E Networks (nor Turner, Viacom, Discovery, AMC or Scripps), though it did include CBS, Disney, Fox and NBCU.

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I’m pleased to present the 361st edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week Colin and I discuss TiVo’s 16th quarterly Video Trends Report, which we both covered this week (here and here). We agree that the pay-TV industry has painted itself into a high-cost corner. The consequences of this are increases in cord-cutting, cord-shaving and adoption/use of SVOD, reduction in perception of per channel values and budding interest in new skinny bundles.

All of this is bad news for the industry and the report illustrates the specifics of each of these trends.

The report is available as a complimentary download here.

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Connected TV device penetration and usage are continuing to grow according to new data from Nielsen as of January 31st. Overall, Nielsen found that 23% of TV homes now own an Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, Google Chromecast or Roku, up from 19% in June, 2016. Nielsen didn’t specify the exact share for each device, only saying that Roku and Apple TV have the highest penetration, with Fire TV and Chromecast following.

In addition to the “big 4,” another 11% of TV homes have other brands of connected TV devices or have their computers/tablets/smartphones connected to their TVs.

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TiVo has released its 16th quarterly Video Trends Report (previously published by Digitalsmiths, which was acquired by TiVo in 2014) and the key takeaway is that pay-TV’s high cost is creating huge industry vulnerability that is already showing up in increased cord-cutting/cord-shaving and higher penetration and use of SVOD services. It also looks possible that interest in skinny bundles could be fueled by their low cost compared to traditional pay-TV.

TiVo found that in Q4 ’16, 17% of respondents didn’t subscribe to a pay-TV service, and of this group, 19.8% cut the cord in the last 12 months. No surprise, “price/too expensive” was the top factor influencing respondents’ decision to cut the cord, cited by 80.1% of them. But in second position was using a streaming service such as Netflix/Hulu/Amazon, which was cited by 48.3% of respondents.

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There is an unmistakable trend taking hold in the wireless industry: video is quickly becoming bait for big carriers to lure and retain subscribers. All 4 of the biggest U.S. carriers have not only launched unlimited data plans, which are being explicitly promoted for video viewing, but in addition 3 of the 4 (T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon) are also tying in aggressive discounts on video services. As I wrote recently, all of this carrier activity will drive more widespread mobile video use.

The start of the trend can clearly be traced to November, 2015 when T-Mobile launched its Binge On program, which now allows users to watch 120+ video services without impacting the user’s data plan. T-Mobile upped the ante in late 2016 by offering AT&T subscribers who switched to T-Mobile a full year of DirecTV Now for free (a $420 value). In January, T-Mobile further tweaked AT&T by adding a free year of Hulu for these subscribers because of the launch problems DirecTV Now experienced.

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