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VideoNuze Report Podcast #75 - Sept. 17, 2010
Daisy Whitney and I are pleased to present the 75th edition of the VideoNuze Report podcast, for September 17, 2010.
Daisy gets us started this week, adding detail to her New Media Minute in which she discusses the range of hyper-local online news and advertising initiatives currently underway from companies such as AOL, ESPN, NY Times and NPR. Daisy offers her assessment of the pros and cons of this area which has gained a lot of recent attention.
Speaking of advertising, we then chat about my post from earlier this week, "YouTube Gets Center Stage in Google's New 'Watch This Space' Ad Campaign" which I believe is the first time that Google has heavily promoted the attractiveness of its display ads and more specifically video advertising on YouTube for major brands. With Google TV coming soon and a new head of content partnerships, Google is on the march to the living room.
Click here to listen to the podcast (16 minutes, 2 seconds)
Click here for previous podcasts
The VideoNuze Report is available in iTunes...subscribe today!Categories: Advertising, Podcasts
Topics: Google, Local, Podcast, YouTube
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Google Poaches Key Netflix Executive to Run Content Partnerships
Here's an interesting executive change: Google has apparently nabbed Netflix VP, Digital Content Acquisition Robert Kyncl to be its new VP, Content Partnerships. AllThingsD.com is reporting the move, though neither side has confirmed. The Google role has been open since David Eun moved over to AOL as President of Media last February.
Assuming the move is true, it would be a key step forward for Google - and more specifically YouTube - in gaining access to premium content. Kyncl would bring not just his relationships with Hollywood, but an insider's
understanding of the economics behind all of Netflix's streaming deals with partners such as Epix, Warner Bros., Universal, ABC, Starz and others. That kind of credibility and insight would be a huge boon to YouTube, which has made some progress with premium content providers (e.g. Univision, WWE, etc), but has still had trouble breaking through. Google certainly has the stature to be a major distributor of premium content, but actually getting things done in Hollywood is notoriously tricky for outsiders.
Categories: Aggregators, People
Topics: Google, Netflix, YouTube
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5Min Expands Reach With Dailymotion Partnership
5Min, a leader in online video syndication, will distribute its 200K lifestyle and how-to videos to aggregator Dailymotion, in a partnership deal announced this morning. For 5Min and its content partners, Dailymotion with its 66
million monthly unique visitors, offers a huge additional audience. For its part, Dailymotion gets a curated library of premium quality content across 21 categories such as sports, health, travel, games and others. A quick check of Dailymotion today indicates the 5Min integration is not yet live.
5Min has been an early leader in video syndication, using its "VideoSeed" technology to understand publishers' text pages and then contextually match relevant content to them, from content partners like IGN, Hearst, Meredith, Scripps and others. Premium content providers have been attracted to work with 5Min because it drives significant incremental viewership of their videos beyond their own destination web sites.
Categories: Aggregators, Syndicated Video Economy
Topics: 5Min, DailyMotion
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Hulu Opening Development Center in Seattle
Hulu is opening a development center in Seattle by the end of the year, according to a blog post by Richard Tom, VP, Platform Technology this
morning. According to the company's job section it's currently recruiting for 27 open positions, with most in its LA office and a half dozen in China. As the company scales up in Seattle, it sounds like the number of recruits will grow.
Tom notes in his post that almost half the LA development team has some experience in Seattle, and given CEO Jason Kilar came from Amazon, the move makes sense. There's also a huge technical community in the area, lead of course by thousands of current and former Microsofties. One lure for prospective employees will no doubt be stock options; Hulu is rumored to be exploring an IPO later this year. I've been skeptical of the timing given the uncertainty that remains in both Hulu's ad and subscription models, but given the excitement over online video, Hulu could find a receptive market.
As a side-note, Hulu CTO Eric Feng recently left Hulu to become technical advisor to Al Gore at the venture firm Kleiner Perkins.
Categories: Aggregators
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Are Pay-TV Providers Getting Hit By a Perfect Storm in Q3?
The U.S. pay-TV industry, which as a whole lost multichannel video subscribers for the first time in Q2 '10, may be heading for a soft 3rd quarter as well. As Multichannel News reported yesterday, Time Warner Cable's CFO Rob Marcus said at a conference this week that Q3 "video net losses are pacing ahead" of where they were in Q3 '09. He attributed the downturn to recession-related factors of high unemployment, high home vacancy rates and slow new home formation. Though that's a fair explanation, it's only one element in a perfect storm pay-TV operators now find themselves battling.
Aside from the above recession-related matters, pay-TV operators are also up against belt-tightening that's rooted in basic household economics. As Craig Moffett at Sanford Bernstein pointed out in a note last weekend, in the past 25 years, cable and satellite spending has increased from 1/2 of 1% of discretionary spending to 1.4%, a growth rate that's triple other household discretionary line items.
Categories: Cable TV Operators, Satellite, Telcos
Topics: Sanford Bernstein, Time Warner Cable
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Conviva Raises $15 Million for Global Expansion and R&D
Conviva, whose software monitors and helps improve the quality of streaming video, has raised a $15 million Series C round intended for global expansion
and R&D. The round was led by GGV Capital with participation from existing investors Foundation Capital, New Enterprise Associates and Pelion Venture Partners. Conviva has raised $44 million to date.
As I described last February, Conviva's software runs alongside the content provider's video player, sending "heartbeat" reports every 10 seconds about each user's video stream. This data is mashed up in real-time, so that if a problem exists, its exact nature is understood quickly and reliably. When a video isn't playing correctly, the issues can range from buffering to CDN congestion to local broadband ISP failures to other problems. Conviva says it has found that at least 25% of all streams have some issue which disrupts the user experience.
Categories: Deals & Financings, Technology
Topics: Conviva, GGV Capital
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YouTube Gets Center Stage in Google's New "Watch This Space" Ad Campaign
Last Thursday Google announced a new ad campaign promoting its display advertising opportunities called "Watch This Space." Having seen it in action for the first time, on the AllThingsD.com web site the last 2 days, it is clear that Google is giving YouTube center stage in this campaign. It's the first time I'm aware of that ad opportunities on YouTube have been so heavily promoted and I believe signals the growing importance of YouTube in Google's overall ad business.
The 300x600 Google ad unit (see below) expands to show 3 clickable tabs:
Categories: Advertising, Aggregators
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PlayOn Upgrades to Allow Streaming to iPad
PlayOn has upgraded its software to allow its Premium users to stream video from their PC to their iPad using either 3G or WiFi networks. The upgrade adds to PlayOn's HTML5 solution for streaming to the iPhone and iPod Touch announced in August. As a result PlayOn users can now access their own
media files plus lots of premium streaming content when out-of-home. This is akin to what Sling enables except with PlayOn there's no hardware purchase or rental required. Jeff Lawrence, CEO of MediaMall Technologies, the company behind PlayOn, gave me a quick update recently.
The PlayOn software runs on the PC and streams to DLNA-compliant supported devices such as the major gaming consoles and digital set-tops like Moxi, Netgear's EVA2000 and others. After a 14-day trial, pricing is either one-time $80 or annual ($30 for first year and $20/year thereafter). Jeff wouldn't share the exact number of paying subscribers, but did say PlayOn is getting 1,000-3,000 downloads per day and is converting approximately 30%, so it sounds like it might be gaining 300-1,000 paid users per day (I'm guessing it's probably at the low end, and I don't know the churn rate).
Categories: Devices
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