VideoNuze Posts

Perhaps the biggest question weighing on the pay-TV ecosystem these days is whether younger viewers who have acclimated themselves to a strictly SVOD diet will eventually become pay-TV subscribers or whether they’ll remain “cord-nevers.”

The traditional narrative is that as younger viewers settle down, buy a house, make more money and have kids they’ll end up subscribing to pay-TV just like their parents did. With the booming array of inexpensive OTT substitutes, that expectation has become feeling ever more tenuous.

But a new survey of 1,111 U.S. 18+ year-olds by Clearleap seems to suggest the narrative still has legs, with 91.3% of those over 30 years-old saying they either currently or previously subscribed to pay-TV. That’s a big jump from the 73.5% of 18-29 year-olds that said they have subscribed at some point, which means 26.5% of the age cohort are technically “cord-nevers.” 64.4% of 18-29 year-olds say they currently subscribe to pay-TV while the subscription rate for all respondents to pay-TV was 78.9%.

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Fraud in video advertising is a significant problem causing billions of dollars in losses throughout the industry. To help drive a common understanding and gain consensus around what should be done, last Thursday Videology and White Ops released a valuable new white paper, “Eradicating Bot Fraud: The Path to Zero Tolerance.”

The paper explains all the different causes of video ad fraud, focusing on bots, or non-human traffic, which are considered the most pervasive type of fraud. Bots distort the market because they trigger an ad view even though no human being ever actually saw the ad. Bots are active in all types of video, from long-tail to premium. Videology and White Ops found that a higher percentage of traffic at night contains bots and that users age 65+ are 69% more likely to be hosting bots through an outdated browser.

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Today is the last day to get discounted early bird tickets for the SHIFT // 2015 Programmatic Video & TV Advertising Summit on Tuesday, December 1st in NYC. Early bird registrants save $100 on regular tickets and will be entered to win a 50-inch Sharp Roku TV, generously provided by Roku. Further discounts are available on 5-packs and 10-packs. And, startups and students can register for the reduced $195 ticket (contact me for the code).

SHIFT will feature 45+ industry leaders from ABC, Altitude Digital, Assembly, Bloomberg Digital, comScore, Fox, Havas Media, Hill Holliday, Horizon Media, Magna Global, MediaVest, Meredith, Operative, Razorfish, Roku, SpotX, The Weather Company, TubeMogul, Viacom, Videology VivaKi, Xaxis and others. Donna Speciale, President of Turner Broadcasting Ad Sales, will be our keynote guest, discussing the company’s data and audience-based buying initiatives.

Please join us for this must-attend day of learning and networking!

Learn more and register now!

I'm pleased to present the 298th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

T-Mobile announced something breakthrough earlier this week, with its new “Binge On” program that allows its subscribers to watch unlimited video from 24 different providers without it counting against their data plans. Granted video quality will be a modest 480p or better, but the significance here is that T-Mobile is enabling long-form viewing out of the home, without needing to hunt down a good WiFi connection or risk massive data plan overage charges.

Over 2 years ago, I questioned whether optimistic forecasts for mobile video consumption were realistic given expensive data plans. In fact, research has shown that most “mobile” video viewing actually occurs in the home. But with T-Mobile’s Binge On, it will be fascinating to see if other wireless carriers are compelled to do something similar, which would be a huge boon to video providers. Colin and I discuss the ramifications.

We then turn our attention to SVOD licensing, which is all over the board. Last week, Time Warner said it was going to pull back on SVOD licensing, but earlier this week AMC said it will continue to pursue a one year window. Meanwhile, Time Warner is now rumored to be investing in Hulu, in a deal that would include a content commitment. TV networks and studios are clearly caught between the short term appeal of SVOD revenue vs. the long term concern that it undermines the ecosystem. We dig into the issues.

Listen now to learn more!

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For all the billions of dollars that are now spent on online video advertising, surprisingly little is known about viewers’ reactions and engagement with specific ads, beyond core metrics like view-throughs and click-throughs. To provide far greater insights about ads’ impact, Sticky, a biometric eye-tracking analytics company, is pioneering new approaches combining eye-tracking and facial coding. Jeff Bander, Sticky’s president, recently briefed me and shared data from campaign research it conducted with AOL.

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VideoAmp, a startup focused on optimizing cross-screen video ad campaigns, has raised a $15 million Series A round led by RTL Group, with participation from existing investors. The new funds will be used for product and business development. VideoAmp has raised $17.2 million to date. RTL is already active in the video space, having invested in both SpotX and clypd.

A video ad tech financing like this would have happened on a near-weekly basis just a few years ago, but with investor confusion about the space due to fragmentation (see the LumaScape), as well as uncertain market conditions, VideoAmp’s raise is quite unusual. Yesterday I spoke to VideoAmp’s CEO Ross McCray and its chief business officer, Jay Prasad, to learn more about company differentiators and how it succeeded with the financing.

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