VideoNuze Posts

Please save the date for VideoNuze’s next Connected TV Advertising Summit (Virtual) on the afternoons of June 9th and 10th. Registration is complimentary.

Connected TVs (CTVs) and streaming are the most important catalysts driving change in TV and video industries. In the U.S. alone over 80% of households now have at least one CTV, with many having two or more CTVs.
 
With viewership surging during the pandemic and ad-supported streaming services proliferating, eMarketer is forecasting that CTV advertising in the U.S. will jump to $18.3 billion in 2024, up 61% from 2021.
 
The CTV Ad Summit (Virtual) will bring together senior executives from ad buyers, content providers, technology companies and other stakeholders. The two afternoons of high-impact learning will include one-on-one interviews, panel discussions and research presentations with fresh, actionable data. Once again, the CTV Ad Summit will be the most focused, in-depth conference of the year on CTV advertising.

If the future of your business is tied to the growth and success of CTVs, the CTV Ad Summit (Virtual) is a must-attend event.

Many thanks to our Gold partners Beachfront, Extreme Reach, Mediaocean, Roku and Xandr. To learn more about sponsorship opportunities please contact me.

Back in December, 2019, before the pandemic upended everything, I speculated that Netflix would launch an ad-supported tier in 2020. Subscriber growth in the U.S. was slowing in 2019 and there was reason to believe that in Q1 ’20 Netflix might lose subscribers in its UCAN (U.S. + Canada) region.

A lower-priced ad-supported tier would have multiple benefits: reducing churn, revenue growth/diversification by tapping into the white hot connected TV ad market, a way to compete with new lower-priced streaming entrants, new growth story for investors, etc. The key challenge was that Netflix had for years said it had no interest in an ad-supported tier; it wanted to stick to its ad-free brand identity and user experience.

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Welcome to the 552nd edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up this week Colin and I discuss recent data from Strategy Analytics showing that globally, a record 109 million connected TV devices were bought in Q4 ’20. For the full year of 2020 over 305 million CTV devices were bought, another record. Amazon had the highest market share.

But user experiences across different CTVs still vary, including the presence of traditional grid guides and other content navigation which impact viewer choices. Colin provides a couple of tangible examples of how searching for content can yield sub-optimal results. We explore why this is the case and what might be done to change things.
 
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More than 120 million U.S. viewers streamed YouTube or YouTube TV on a connected TV last December, according to a blog post yesterday from Neal Mohan, YouTube’s Chief Product Officer. That’s up from 100 million per month that YouTube last revealed in June, 2020 at its Brandcast presentation during the NewFronts. Mohan reiterated that while mobile is still the most popular way to consume YouTube content, CTV is the fastest-growing.

Mohan also said that in December over 25% of logged-in YouTube CTV viewers in the U.S. watched over 90% of their YouTube content on CTV.  Mohan quoted comScore data that 41% of all ad-supported streaming watch time occurs on YouTube, which makes YouTube by far the biggest CTV player.

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A record 109.1 million connected TV devices (smart TVs, streaming sticks and boxes, and game consoles) were sold globally in Q4 ’20, according to research firm Strategy Analytics. That was up 9% from the 100.3 million CTV devices sold in Q4, ’19 and up 34% from the 81.5 million sold in Q3 ’20. Amazon led with 12.1% market share for the first time, edging out Samsung, which fell to second with 10.9% share. Following Samsung were Sony (8.2%), Nintendo (7.7%), LG (5.9%) and Roku (5.8%).

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Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) has integrated technology from ad server Flashtalking via API which will help streamline work flows and campaign optimization across linear and online video. Integrating with the CTS Ad Management Platform will centralize linear and online video creative management. Richard Nunn, VP/GM of Advertiser Solutions at CTS said in a briefing that the integration would provide insights on the performance of campaign creative in online video channels to drive greater ad personalization in linear viewing.

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Disney+ now has over 100 million subscribers, just 16 months since launching. The update was provided by Bob Chapek, CEO of The Walt Disney Company in his remarks at the annual shareholder meeting this afternoon.

The growth of Disney+ since its launch has been meteoric: 10 million at the end of launch day on November 19, 2019, 28.6 million in February, 2020, 50 million in April, 2020, 73.7 million in September, 2020 and 86.8 million in December, 2020. The most recent update Disney provided was 94.9 million subscribers as of January 2, 2021.

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Welcome to the 551st edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Vizio filed to go public this week and it’s looking to take a page out of Roku’s playbook. Vizio’s business is dominated by sales of TV sets today, but it wants to ramp up its Platform Plus segment which includes its advertising and data business. Colin and I discuss the opportunity and also what challenges Vizio will face (note, this is not investment advice).

Switching topics, discovery+ accounted for 19% of SVOD signups in the U.S. in January, marking a very strong start for the new streaming service. Looking ahead, we explore whether discovery+ will be able to maintain this pace, and also retain these new subscribers.
 

Listen in to learn more!

Click here to listen to the podcast (24 minutes, 14 seconds)

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The VideoNuze podcast is also available in Apple podcasts, subscribe today!