VideoNuze Posts

Many analysts will be looking past Facebook’s Q4 ’16 earnings, which will be reported later today, for reassuring signs of how the company will continue its blazing revenue growth in 2017 and beyond. Over the past couple years, there has been no other company (except possibly Google and Apple) that has benefited financially more from the shift to mobile lifestyles.

Facebook’s 1.8 billion monthly active users in Q3  ’16 were 93% mobile. And 97% of the company’s $7 billion in Q3 ’16 revenue, which was up 56% vs. Q3 ’15, was advertising-based. Clearly Facebook has become a mobile advertising machine.

But trees don’t grow to the sky; the number of global mobile users is slowing and Facebook’s ability to include more ads in users’ newsfeeds is reaching its limit. As a result, Facebook has messaged that revenue growth will soften. Clearly Facebook needs a next act, and so over the past 6-9 months Facebook executives, including CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, have repeatedly signaled that the company intends to be “video-first.”

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Comcast has announced that its Xfinity TV app is now available for beta use on certain Roku streaming devices and Roku TVs, with broad rollout planned for later this year. The partnership was initially unveiled in April, 2016. The Xfinity app for Roku is the first deployment of the Xfinity TV Partner Program, which Samsung also joined.

The “TV as an app” model means that Comcast subscribers will be able to get full access to linear and on-demand content plus DVR functionality via Roku, without having to take a Comcast set-top box, a first for the cable company. Comcast has positioned the Xfinity TV app on connected devices as beneficial for subscribers who want choices in how they access their subscriptions. The screen shot below shows a clean implementation reminiscent of what Comcast X1 users already see.

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I’m pleased to present the 355th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week we discuss four topics that caught our attention and we wrote about: research from GFK MRI that 30% of U.S. millennials are now “cordless” (here), Netflix’s move into reality TV programming (here); Google enabling YouTube ad targeting based on users’ searches (here) and the new chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai (here). We dig into all of these topics and discuss their implications.

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Extreme Reach has released a new e-Book, “Video Ad Streaming: A Simple Change that Will Set a New Industry Standard,” highlighting the inefficiencies of current cross-screen video ad fulfillment and urging a modern approach with ad creative centrally managed and accessible.  

The e-Book identifies the core problem of siloed TV and video workflows, which result in TV ads that are widely used online to be duplicated and re-formatted repeatedly. All of this causes major delays in getting the right ad to the right place at the right time.

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T-Mobile is continuing its attack on AT&T by introducing a bonus of one free year of Hulu for AT&T customers who switched to T-Mobile under a prior offer where they received a free year of DirecTV Now. T-Mobile has been sniping at DirecTV Now’s sketchy service since it launched, so its new offer amounts to a make-good for customers who made the switch, but may have ended up feeling underwhelmed by DirecTV Now.

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Brightcove has published a manifesto highlighting ad-supported online video’s challenging economics and proposing improved viewing experiences, ad optimization and reduced operational complexity as critical solutions. While observing that online video usage has clearly “crossed the chasm” to become a mainstream experience, the manifesto notes that “the extreme concentration of ad dollars among a few mega companies” (citing Morgan Stanley research that 85% of incremental spending goes to Google and Facebook) will ultimately mean fewer content options.

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New research from GfK MRI reveals that 30% of US millennials (18-34 year-olds) are cord-nevers or cord-cutters (dubbed "cordless"), almost double the rate (16%) of Boomers, the next generation up. In all, millennials account for 43% of the cord-never population.

No surprise, cordless millennials are focused on online video alternatives, saying they spend 65% of their time using these services. Conversely, Boomers said they spend just 36% of their time with online video services and 56% with linear TV. Millennials’ favorite services included YouTube, Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, with others including Crunchyroll, Twitch and Adult Swim also scoring highly.

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