VideoNuze Posts

Below is the replay of the complimentary video webinar I did on April 2nd with Brightcove's Executive Chairman, Jeremy Allaire, "Sizing Up the Apple TV Opportunity."

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Teads.tv, a French ad tech provider, has an interesting solution to the scarcity of premium video ad inventory: enable premium text-based web pages to carry video ads as well. In-page video ads and rich media units have been around for a while for a similar purpose, but Teads.tv's "InRead" unit is a different approach that I believe nicely balances advertiser concerns about viewability and performance with publisher/user concerns about experience.

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Yesterday's victory by Aereo in federal appeals court is certain to have at least one consequence: it will put retransmission consent fees into the spotlight. For those unfamiliar with "retrans" as it is known, these are fees that broadcast TV networks and stations have negotiated from pay-TV operators. Much like the fees pay-TV operators pay to carry cable TV networks (e.g. MTV, USA, ESPN, etc.), retrans allows operators to carry broadcast networks.

Retrans fees are already a billion dollar plus revenue stream for broadcasters and by some estimates, could be a multiple of this in several years. Broadcasters see the payments as vital to keeping them on parity economic footing with cable networks. Conversely, operators see retrans as a broadcast subsidy, effectively inflating their already bloated programming costs. Retrans has been at the heart of most of the blackout battles between broadcasters and operators over the last several years.

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No April Fool's joke: this is the final reminder that tomorrow (Tuesday) I'll be doing a complimentary video webinar, "Sizing Up the Apple TV Opportunity," with Brightcove's Executive Chairman Jeremy Allaire at 1:30pm ET.

The hottest rumor in the video industry is that Apple will launch a TV and/or TV-like device (beyond the current Apple TV puck). But beyond the hype and speculation, Jeremy and I both believe there's compelling strategic logic; a device that is properly conceived could well be a game-changer with wide-ranging consequences. In this webinar we'll dive into the details, and leave plenty of time for audience Q&A. We don't have any agenda or inside knowledge; we just thought it would be fun and timely to share thoughts and have a discussion on this topic.

For anyone whose business would be impacted by an Apple television/device, it should be well worth your time.

Complimentary registration here

Follow the discussion and submit questions via Twitter at #SizingUpAppleTV

I'm pleased to present the 173rd edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. This week we focus on the rising cost of content to pay-TV operators and the rising quality of content found online.

In a post yesterday, Colin validates pay-TV operators' complaints about programming costs, noting, for example, that at Comcast they rose from 34% of video revenue in '08 to 40% in '11 (at Time Warner Cable they were 41% and at DirecTV they were 45%). As we discuss, these escalating costs are eating into operators' profit margins as subscriber rate increases haven't kept pace. As VideoNuze readers know, sports is a major culprit in all of this, though entertainment networks have raised their own rates as well.

Against this backdrop, the quality of content available online is improving markedly. For example in just the past couple of weeks, we've seen Netflix announce another new series, with the producers of The Matrix films and Babylon5, Amazon Studios announce new shows "Betas," "Zombieland" and "Sarah Solves It" and Crackle a second season of "Chosen."  Further, anime network Crunchyroll disclosed it's now up to 200K paying subscribers, TheBlaze (Glenn Beck's online video network) is raising $40M. Even the BBC, one of the most traditional TV networks, announced it will be premiering shows on its iPlayer.

In short, the quality of programming online is getting better all the time, while the cost of content to pay-TV operators is escalating, in turn putting pressure on subscriber rates. All of this means viewership patterns are bound to change and with the broader video industry.

Reminder: sign up for "Sizing Up Apple TV" a free video webinar, next Tuesday, April 2nd featuring Brightcove's Jeremy Allaire and me.
    
Listen in to learn more!

Click here to listen to the podcast (18 minutes, 57 seconds)

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Early bird discounted registration is now open for the VideoNuze 2013 Online Video Advertising Summit on Tuesday, June 4th in NYC. This will be the 3rd VideoNuze Ad Summit; last year, 350+ executives from around the video ecosystem of content providers, agencies, brands, technology companies and others attended.

I'm especially delighted to announce that 13 industry-leading companies are on board as sponsors. These include Premier Partners Adap.TV, Akamai, Auditude (Adobe), TubeMogul, ValueClick and YuMe; Headline Partners Altitude Digital, BlackArrow, Collective, Innovid, LiveRail and Videology, plus Branding Partner EXPO. All of these companies play critical roles in the dynamic online video advertising world and I am incredibly grateful that they've decided to be a part of the Ad Summit.

This year's Ad Summit will occur just after the Digital Content NewFronts and during the traditional TV upfronts. It's a time of year when advertisers and media buyers are scrutinizing their choices and deciding how best to reach their target audiences with tens of billions of dollars of spending. These decisions are more complicated than ever as audiences are fragmenting, content choices proliferating, and viewing devices multiplying. The opportunities to reach and engage audiences are more numerous than ever.

And this is why I believe the Ad Summit is so valuable. It's an immersive day of learning and networking with industry leaders from around the ecosystem. Through a series of presentations, panels, fireside chats and demo's, attendees gain strategic insights, useful data and practical lessons. For anyone who needs to understand the online video ad business and the broader tectonic shifts underway in video, it's a must-attend event.  I'll be sharing more about our amazing group of speakers and sessions in the coming weeks.

I hope to see you on June 4th!

Today contributor Alan Wolk provides a hands-on review of Aereo. Alan is Global Lead Analyst at KIT digital. He frequently speaks about the television industry in general and second screen interactions in particular, both at conferences and to anyone who'll listen. Recently named as one of the "Top 20 Thinkers In Social TV and Second Screen" Alan is one of the main architects behind the award-winning KIT Social Program Guide and writes about the television industry at the Toad Stool blog. You can find him on Twitter at @awolk

If you are interested in contributing to VideoNuze, please contact me!

Aereo: The Hands-On Review
by Alan Wolk

I’ve been testing out Aereo for the past two weeks (see video below), ever since they expanded their service area to include the entire New York metropolitan area. I tested it at home where I have a blazing fast 50 Mbps FIOS connection using both their new Roku app and my iPad 3, and outside the house, where I rely on a Verizon Wireless iPhone 5 with 4G service. (Well, when 4G is available, that is.)

Interface: The interface on the iPad and iPhone are fairly similar. There aren’t that many channels:  Aereo has fleshed out the over-the-air offering with iON and a couple of foreign-language offerings, but most users are going to be looking for content from the Big 4 networks and PBS.

On the Roku app, the channels are arranged in Roku’s linear filmstrip layout, so that getting from one end to the other is quite a hassle.

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Video management platform provider Ooyala is introducing several new features today to make online and mobile video more accessible and pervasive across devices. The new features include Hook (a mobile video playback app for Android), XTV Connect (to bridge mobile video to any connected TV) and Ooyala Discovery Guide (to create live/VOD program guides). Below I describe each in more detail and explain their respective importance.

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