VideoNuze Posts

I'm pleased to present the 326th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Mobile video is poised to explode over the next 5 years, according to new forecasts from Cisco (which I wrote about here) and Ericsson (which Colin wrote about here). In today’s podcast, Colin and I dig into the highlights.

When you step back, it’s pretty incredible how dominant video and smartphones have become in driving network investments for both wired and wireless carriers. Viewers’ expectations that they can watch video whenever, wherever and however they want has become THE main theme in growing network capabilities. Colin also explains specific technologies being deployed by mobile carriers to support the upcoming data explosion.

Listen now to learn more!

Click here to listen to the podcast (23 minutes, 10 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

Click here to add the podcast feed to your RSS reader.

The VideoNuze podcast is also available in iTunes...subscribe today! (note the link has been updated)

Video ad tech provider Genesis Media has introduced Trending Topics, enabling advertisers to capitalize on temporary traffic spikes in particular web content. As Genesis Media’s CEO Mark Yackanich explained to me in a briefing, Trending Topics provides unique opportunities to advertisers to hop onto surges in web content triggered by hot cultural events, even before they’ve been detected by Google, Facebook or other sources.

Trending Topics leverages Genesis Media’s core competencies in web content monitoring and analysis. The company is scanning for web content that has the highest velocity, or rapid movement, in page views. Genesis Media then marries this data to its proprietary Page Attention Rank (PAR) which measures users’ attention, retention and time spent to create an index revealing which trending pages represent unusually high value for advertisers based on their objectives.

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The 6th annual VideoNuze Online Video Advertising Summit in NYC is coming up next Tuesday, June 14th, with over 400 executives from throughout the ecosystem already signed up to attend, once again making the event a premier day of networking.

The program is also now finalized, with 50 speakers appearing on 13 sessions including keynote interviews, fireside chats, panel discussions and presentations that cover the most important topics in online video. A ton of hard work has gone into curating the program and optimizing each session’s particular focus. All of this means that the Video Ad Summit will be a top-notch day of learning for all attendees.

The conference’s over-arching theme is the convergence between online video and TV. Two sessions to highlight will occur in the morning. The first, “Reaching Audiences at Scale: Will TV Succeed in the Digital Age” will examine the fast-changing landscape for TV advertising, with major competitors like YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat and others offering advertisers unprecedented scale (see today’s WSJ interview with YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki for more). Lorne Brown, founder and CEO of Operative (who’s also leading the NAB’s Digital Committee) will moderate, with Adam Gerber (ABC), Mike Germano (VICE Media), Melissa Kihara (Xaxis) and Bob Toohey (Verizon Digital Media) participating.

Then, following the morning break, the next session, “Optimizing Video Ad Targeting Through Data and Analysis” will dig deeply into how TV networks are investing heavily in data to enable their inventory to be more targeted and valuable. The session will also explore how networks are enabling holistic, targeted campaigns across their TV and online video properties, and across devices. Mike Chapman, Managing Director at Accenture Strategy (who co-authored the ABC study on TV advertising ROI, released during this year’s upfronts) will moderate, with Gabe Bevilacqua (Viacom), Denise Colella (NBCU), David Ernst (Discovery), Mark Gall (Alphonso) and Vikram Somaya (ESPN) participating.

Together, these sessions are going to provide fantastic insights into the intersection of TV and video advertising and what TV networks, as the biggest source of premium programming online, are doing to remain competitive.

Learn more about the Video Ad Summit and register now!

Cisco has released the 11th edition of its Visual Networking Index (VNI), forecasting that video will account for 85% of North American Internet traffic by 2020, the highest of any geographic area. Video traffic in North America will grow at a compound annual rate of 21%.

Globally, video-related traffic will account for 82% of Internet data, up from 70% in 2015. In a briefing, Thomas Barnett, who oversees the VNI, characterized video as the “king of all content.” In fact, video dwarfs every other Internet application, with the second biggest - web/data usage - representing just 14.4% of traffic in 2020, a fraction of video’s 82%.

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Seeking to further educate the market about the benefits of outstream video advertising, ad tech provider Teads has unveiled a first-of-its-kind programmatic outstream accreditation program for ad agencies and trading desks.

Teads was a pioneer in outstream ads, which are video ads that play against non-video inventory. Given the high expense of creating premium video content and its scarcity, outstream ads have become a hugely popular way for premium publishers to monetize their content.

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I'm pleased to present the 325th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

It’s been nearly 5 years since the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson was published, in which Jobs said “I finally cracked it,” referencing a next-generation TV he envisioned. But despite incessant rumors since of Apple’s plans to reinvent TV, the reality is more sobering: Apple seems to be completely stymied in video and TV.

Sure, there’s iTunes and there’s a new Apple TV, which appears to be selling reasonably well, and soon an original TV show. But when you consider how Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, Comcast, Snapchat and others have innovated and flourished in video and TV over the last 5 years, Apple’s progress seems pretty modest by comparison.

In today’s podcast we explore why Apple seems to have become an also-ran in video. We’re both surprised at this turn of events given Apple’s vast resources, superior design capabilities and omnipresent devices (see more of Colin’s thoughts here). Perhaps the famously secretive Apple has a video surprise just ahead, but from our current vantage point, Apple looks like it will just continue to fade further behind the leaders.

Listen now to learn more!

Click here to listen to the podcast (23 minutes, 5 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

Click here to add the podcast feed to your RSS reader.

The VideoNuze podcast is also available in iTunes...subscribe today! (note the link has been updated)

New research from GfK shows that SVOD services may be hitting subscribers’ limit on willingness to pay, in turn crimping the potential for future rate increases. GfK found the average willingness to pay was $10.82/month for Netflix, $9.10/month for Amazon, $9.96/month for Hulu ad-free and $5.01 for Hulu ad-supported.

Adding to the pricing pressure, GfK also found that cost was the most important attribute in picking an SVOD service, cited by 75% of respondents. The second most cited attribute was “availability of specific programs” (69%) followed by “availability of new movies” (68%).

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