VideoNuze Posts

Near the top of my personal list of confusing industry terms is "mobile video." Does it mean watching on a smartphone? A tablet? Both? Does it mean using a wireless carrier's network (e.g. Verizon, AT&T) or a WiFi network or both for access? Does it mean watching while out of home (and if so, where?) or at home? And what content is watched - live? on-demand? short-form? long-form? genre? The list goes on and on. Mobile video is truly one of the most confusing and misunderstood industry terms around.

And that's why recent data from Leichtman Research Group, a well-respected media research firm founded by a former colleague of mine, Bruce Leichtman, really caught my eye. In its 7th annual "Emerging Video Services" survey, of 1,240 adults age 18+, LRG found that of those who said they watched video on their mobile phone in the past month, 63% said they usually watch at home. More striking, of those who watched video on their iPad, tablet or eReader in the past month, 89% of them said they usually watch at home.

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Following is a contributed post by Mio Babic, who is the founder and CEO of iStreamPlanet, the leader in live linear streaming solutions including the soon to be released Aventus live video workflow solution.

Multiscreen Live Linear - Consumer Values and Perceptions
by Mio Babic

Recently iStreamPlanet partnered with The Diffusion Group to better understand the opportunity in delivering a multiscreen live linear experience to multiple devices. As digital media innovators it’s easy for us to get excited about moving the technology forward, and while we see 24/7 live linear streaming as the next step in the OTT evolution, we wanted to verify that we are creating technology for an experience that consumers desire, and therefore profitable for our customers in the media industry.

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Live streaming is continuing to get a lot of mind share these days from both content providers and technology companies. The latest example in the latter category is Brightcove, which yesterday introduced in beta the Brightcove Video Cloud Live, a module to support live streaming across multiple devices.

A key part of Video Cloud Live is the recently announced Brightcove Zencoder Live Transcoding service, which provides live transcoding as a scalable API. This obviates the need for content providers to purchase and maintain their own hardware for encoding live events. This in turn reduces cost and complexity of running live events, making them far more feasible to offer to viewers. The Zencoder service also produces multiple adaptive bitrate streams so that users on various devices get the right stream for them.

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Early bird discounted tickets are only available until this Friday for the VideoNuze 2013 Online Video Advertising Summit on Tues, June 4th in NYC. In addition to the early bird, for startups/students, there's a special $195 ticket to make the event more affordable. Contact me for the discount code. Also as an extra bonus to sign up by Friday, all early bird registrants will be eligible to win a Samsung 40-inch Smart TV, presented by VideoHub.

The 3rd annual Video Ad Summit is a must-attend event for anyone in or around the online video / advertising industries. We have over a dozen sessions with nearly 40 speakers from agencies, publishers and technology providers including YouTube, GroupM, CBS Interactive, Nielsen, NBCU, Digitas, Viacom, LG, Scripps, Time, AOL and many others who will share insights on all of the key industry topics. As with prior Video Ad Summits you can expect to come away with valuable insights and data, plus lots of new relationships. The past 2 years we've had 300+ attendees.

Thanks to all 18 industry-leading companies that are supporting this year's Video Ad Summit: Premier Partners Adap.TV, Adobe, Akamai, TubeMogul, ValueClick and YuMe; Headline Partners Altitude Digital, AOL, BlackArrow, Collective, Innovid, LiveRail, VideoHub and Videology, plus Branding Partners EXPO, Extreme Reach, Mixpo and Real Media. All of them will have representatives at the event and it will be a great opportunity to meet them and learn about their products and services.

Learn more and save on early bird registration!

The click-through rate for in-stream video ads served by PointRoll in 2012 was .62%, four times higher than for mobile ads (.15%) and rich media ads (.14%) served. The data is part of a new benchmark study comparing 2012 ad performance to 2011. The interaction rate for in-stream video ads was 5.7%, compared with 4% for rich media and .96% for mobile.

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ABC will enable live-streaming of its programs through its iOS app, moving beyond an on-demand only programming model for the first time. The "Watch ABC" live feature will no doubt please a subset of the people who have downloaded the ABC app 10 million times to date and who still value live viewing. But Watch ABC will also likely puzzle and irk some users when they discover they must be authenticated as a pay-TV subscriber in order to access the live stream.

In fact, requiring authentication for Watch ABC is just the latest evidence of TV Everywhere's tightening grip on broadcast TV. Another recent example was NBC making large portions of last summer's Olympics available only to authenticated pay-TV subscribers. In addition, Fox has maintained an 8-day exclusive window for pay-TV subscribers for almost 2 years.

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Following is a contributed post by Frank Sinton who is the CEO and founder of Beachfront Media, a video solutions platform for publishers, advertisers, and enterprises. Previously, he worked for Sony Pictures Entertainment as executive director of architecture.

Video Apps, Devices, and Fragmentation: How to Navigate the Maze
by Frank Sinton

Fragmentation has long been an issue in the mobile industry. Even with the advent of the smartphone era, it’s still a problem. Take these stats from a recent report by app analytics company Flurry:

"Suppose you’re an app developer who wants to ensure that your app is optimized to function well on 80% of the individual connected devices currently in use (e.g., my iPad, your Windows phone). How many different device models (e.g., Kindle Fire HD 8.9" Wi-Fi, Galaxy S III) do you think you need to support? 156. Maybe you’re okay with having your app optimized for only 60% of active devices. That still means that you need to support 37 different devices. Even getting to 50% means supporting 18 devices, as shown below. If you’re a large or particularly thorough app developer, reaching 90% of active devices will require supporting 331 different models."

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I'm pleased to present the 179th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. Yesterday, YouTube confirmed that it will offer content partners the ability to charge for subscriptions. In what its calling a pilot program, 53 subscription channels are being launched, some from established brands like UFC, PGA, National Geographic and Jim Henson, and many more from less well-known content partners.

In this week's podcast Colin and I discuss whether this is a big deal or not. Colin's more bullish than I am, seeing it as a very important piece in the YouTube puzzle, adding to existing advertising, rental and purchase monetization options.

I agree it's smart move by YouTube, but I don't think it's a game-changer. While I see this as the right thing to offer content partners - especially those with huge audiences on YouTube - this is akin to "freemium" type option that will require partners to very clearly differentiate the incremental content available in their subscription tiers in order to convert a small percentage of their free viewers to monthly subscribers.

A complicating factor is that for many users, YouTube subscriptions will be on top of - not a substitute for - already expensive pay-TV monthly bills. Then there's also a Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon or other SVOD subscriptions which already make a claim on finite entertainment dollars too. Lastly, YouTube is perceived as a "free" site by many, so it will take significant promotion by channels to persuade users to pay.

Bottom line: YouTube is doing right by its content partners in offering this capability, but it's up to the content partners themselves to make it successful. My guess is for most partners, advertising will continue to dominate their YouTube-related revenue for a long time to come.


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