VideoNuze Posts

I’m pleased to present the 478th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

We lead off this week discussing Roku’s strong Q2 ’19 results, including a 36% increase in player unit sales, which the company said was the highest in the growth in the past nine quarters. The results bucked industry research from Parks that Colin and I were just expressing surprise at on last week's podcast, which said streaming media player sales were leveling off. On top of brisk player sales, Roku continues to dramatically expand its platform revenues, which include ad sales and OS licensing.

Data from Conviva and Pixability this week provides additional evidence of connected TV’s rising viewing share. Finally this week, we explore the dynamics behind a recent Comcast Spotlight report showing TV usage increasing.

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Video ad spending remains strong on the biggest social platforms, while connected TVs are gaining, according to a new Pixability survey of ad agency executives. 90% of agencies are running video ad campaigns on Facebook, followed by 88% on YouTube and Instagram. Hulu was fourth with 80%. Roku was at 58%, ahead of Twitter (42%) and Snapchat (36%). Amazon Fire TV lagged at 27%. Linear TV is used by 76% of ad executives surveyed.

All platforms look poised for continued success with 63% of agency executives saying they’ll increase video ad spending in 2020 by 1-10%, and another 20% saying they'll increase spending by over 10%.

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Streaming video hours were up 130% in Q2 ’19 vs. Q2 ’18 according to Conviva’s new State of the Streaming TV Industry report. Connected TVs led with 143% growth, followed by mobile (up 109%) and PC (up 75%). CTVs also led with 28.8 minutes of watch time per play, followed by PC with 15.1 minutes and mobile with 12 minutes.

Overall, CTVs accounted for 54% of all viewing hours in Q2 ’19, followed by mobile (23%), PC (14%) and others (8%). Roku continues to dominate the CTV category, with 43% of time viewing. Fire TV was a distant second at 18%, followed by Apple TV at 10% and Xbox at 9%.  Roku also had the highest year-over-year growth rate in viewing hours, at 173%, with Fire TV next at 145%, and then Apple TV at 129%.

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I’m pleased to present the 477th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Colin and I were both following new industry data out this week. First, Parks Associates shared insights on the streaming media player market, which surprised both of us as having essentially flatlined since last year, with Roku and Amazon now having 70% combined market share. By contrast, Colin notes that recent comScore data showed smart TV sales continuing to grow strongly.

Then we shift to reviewing data from a new global survey released by Limelight Networks, showing the U.S. leading 8 other countries with 42% daily streaming and downloading activity. The survey also revealed that nearly 82% of 26-35 year old respondents are streaming or downloading on a weekly basis.

We also provide a little commentary upfront on AT&T’s plan to drop the DirecTV Now name, since we just speculated on AT&T’s video plans on last week’s podcast.

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42% of Americans stream and download movies and TV shows daily, more than viewers in any other country. This is among the key findings of Limelight’s newly released “State of Digital Lifestyles 2019” report, which surveyed 4,500 users across 9 countries. Only India was close in daily movie and TV consumption, with 41.4% streaming and downloading. The country with the lowest daily consumption was France with 21.2%, followed by Singapore with 26.8%.

On a global basis 26-35 year olds are the biggest consumers, with 51.4% downloading and streaming on a daily basis, and 81.7% doing so on a weekly basis. Consumers over 60 years old had the lowest consumption, with just 15.2% downloading and streaming on a daily basis.

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I’m pleased to present the 476th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

AT&T had a tough Q2 in video, with a losses of 778K traditional subscribers (DirecTV plus U-verse) and 168K DirecTV Now subscribers. In today’s podcast we discuss AT&T’s road forward from here in video which rests on 3 pillars: traditional DirecTV and AT&T TV and HBO Max, neither of which has launched yet. In the podcast we discuss the  pros and cons of each and what impact they’ll likely have in the market.

In short, AT&T has lots of strong video assets but it’s not quite clear how the puzzle pieces will be put together to create competitive differentiation. What is certain though is that with loss of nearly a million video subscribers in Q2 and a huge debt load to reduce, there is significant urgency for AT&T to figure it all out.

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Click here to listen to the podcast (22 minutes, 58 seconds)

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What a difference a year makes. In July ’18 when AT&T reported its Q2 earnings, its vMVPD DirecTV Now gained another 325K subscribers. It was the fourth consecutive quarter of 300K+ additions and DirecTV Now was setting the pace of growth for the nascent vMVPD industry that in turn was offsetting traditional pay-TV losses.

Flash forward to this morning’s Q2 ’19 AT&T earnings and the DirecTV Now narrative has changed dramatically. In Q2 ’19, DTV Now lost 168K subscribers, reducing its quarter end total to 1.3 million subscribers. Looking back over the past year, DTV Now peaked with 1.86 million subscribers at the end of Q3 ’18 when it eked out a 49K addition.

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