VideoNuze Posts

I'm pleased to be joined once again by Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group, for the 140th edition of the VideoNuze-TDG Report podcast.

In this week's podcast Colin and I discuss NOW TV, which Sky, the big British satellite-based pay-TV operator, launched on Tuesday. Initially the service allows unbundled access to Sky Movies, a collection of around 600 early window movies, on either a monthly subscription or a la carte rental basis. The big breakthrough here is that traditionally Sky Movies was only available if you first subscribed to the basic service, which costs around 60 pounds/month.

Colin views the move as an attempt to re-start growth at Sky, moving the company beyond the approximately 10 million subscribers it has, mainly by appealing to broadband-only households. Clearly in NOW TV's cross-hairs are both Netflix and LoveFilm. More broadly, Colin and I discuss how NOW TV might or might not be a model for U.S. pay-TV operators to consider. I wrote earlier this week that with the cost of pay-TV service continuing to rise and consumers' expectations shifting, it's time for the industry to present more flexible pricing and packaging options to subscribers.

Listen in to learn more.

Click here to listen to the podcast (19 minutes, 36 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

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This summer, England is the epicenter of sports video streaming; a couple weeks ago Wimbledon had multiple online video enhancements, then starting July 27th will be the Summer Olympics, the biggest live streamed sporting extravaganza ever. Sandwiched in between, running today through the weekend, golf takes center stage, as the storied Open Championship from Royal Lytham & St. Annes offers a variety of online video features to immerse golf fans in all the action.

For U.S. viewers, the centerpiece of online viewing will be ESPN's simulcasting of its 73 hours of TV coverage on WatchESPN, including 10 1/2 hours of live play of the first two rounds. Of course WatchESPN is an authenticated TV Everywhere service, so you have to be a pay-TV subscriber to access it (and not all pay-TV providers support it yet either). I've been tuning in this morning and the quality of the video is outstanding. ESPN also has a separate feed for cameras positioned at holes 1 and 18 so you can see all the players come through, plus other "outside the ropes" video and non-video features.

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Dailymotion, the 2nd-largest video portal in the world, is re-launching its Dailymotion Cloud service this morning, bringing further competition to the already crowded online video platform space.

Dailymotion Cloud has been enhanced with features like DRM support for Adobe Flash Access and Microsoft Playready, syndication between it and the consumer-facing Dailymotion.com platform, customizable player designs and streamlined file uploading and encoding. Underscoring that all these features are table stakes for OVPs, in a briefing earlier this week, Roland Hamilton, managing director of Dailymotion US and product head Florent Pajani emphasized that pricing and an all-inclusive approach will be Dailymotion Cloud's main differentiators.

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It may be 155 years-old, but Macy's marketing approach is thoroughly modern, as the company has fully embraced mobile and digital technologies to drive its business. In a fireside chat at the VideoNuze 2012 Online Video Advertising Summit, Macy's SVP, Marketing Innovation and Integration, Joe Feczko explains how Macy's sees itself as an entertainment brand, and how it is pushing further into video and branded content.

One initiative in particular that has paid off is the use of QR codes linked to videos about products. Joe said usage has jumped from 15K during the test phase to 750K this past season. Macy's is also leveraging its relationships with celebrities and the new program "Fashion Star" for more interactivity with target customer segments. Joe provides a compelling look inside how an established brand is using all of today's technology tools to keep up with a changing retail landscape.

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The Viacom-DirecTV carriage dispute has taken another odd turn, as full, current episodes of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert are once again available at their respective sites and at Hulu. Given that digital distribution and its effect on Viacom's networks' linear ratings is a core issue in the negotiations, and that last week Viacom removed some of its networks' show from the web, the renewed availability of Comedy Central's stars Stewart and Colbert are hard to understand.

In fact, if you want a good chuckle, see the screen grabs below - when each of last night's episodes play, there is a message across the bottom of the page that reads "DIRECTV HAS DROPPED COMEDY CENTRAL. DON'T MISS YOUR FAVORITE SHOWS. CALL DIRECTV AT 1-800-531-5000." Hello?? I'm not missing my favorite shows - I'm watching them right now online, just above this urgent message! And by the way, I'm getting them for free, just after they originally aired, and fully on-demand. Does this make sense to you? Right, me neither.

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One of the great visions of online video advertising is the ability to precisely target certain audiences with personalized ads. However, realizing that vision is not so simple given all the variables in play, plus the expense of generating custom creative. This is where Eyeview, a video ad technology provider, believes it has cracked the nut. At the recent VideoNuze 2012 Online Video Advertising Summit, Tal Riesenfeld, Eyeview's co-founder and VP of Business Development, presented on how Eyeview works and gave examples of successful recent campaigns for Mazda, Expedia and Ace Hardware that it has powered. It's a fascinating look at the future of online video advertising.

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One of the big side effects of the current Viacom-DirecTV and Dish-AMC carriage disputes has been a renewed questioning of the durability of the traditional multichannel TV bundle by many industry observers. But while outsiders and consumers may be looking for the pay-TV industry to reinvent the way it packages and prices its services,  attending the NECTA cable industry conference last Friday was yet another reminder of how committed the industry is to preserving the multichannel TV model.

To be fair, for many households (particularly heavy viewers), multichannel service is optimal and a great value. But consumers aren't monolithic, and it's time for the pay-TV industry to get real about multichannel's limits. Operators' main approach continues to be promoting an entry level tier of digital TV that has grown ever more expensive (moderator Bruce Leichtman pegs the mean monthly spending on multichannel TV service at $78.63, 7% higher than in 2011). This has, in turn, created a well-documented affordability issue for the industry.

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At the recent VideoNuze 2012 Online Video Advertising Summit, eMarketer's principal analyst David Hallerman presented data on the state of the online video advertising market. While bullish about its prospects for growth, one of David's clear message was that TV advertising isn't going away any time soon, and in fact the growth of ad dollars TV will experience over the next 5 years will actually be greater than online video's.

In David's presentation, he explains the key factors he believes will hinder or help online video's growth. No surprise, one of the most important is unified measurement. Overall, David sees online video advertising as being complimentary to TV advertising. At the end of the session I join him on stage for 10 minutes of Q&A.

Note: David's slides are available for download here.

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