VideoNuze Posts

Early bird discounted registration ends this Friday for the 9th annual VideoNuze Video Advertising Summit on Wednesday, May 29th in NYC. Early bird registrants save $100 and DOUBLE their chance of winning a 55-inch 4K Roku TV.*

Over 30 executives from leading companies including Hulu, CBS Interactive, WarnerMedia, eMarketer, Roku, Cheddar, fuboTV, Group Nine Media, Publicis, Pluto TV, Mindshare, Vevo, Ellation, Univision, Essence and many others will share their insights. The program will feature a mix of keynotes, panel discussions, fireside chats, research presentations and case studies, covering the most critical topics in the industry.

Our keynote guest is Hulu’s SVP and Head of Advertising Sales Peter Naylor, who I will interview. We’ll be diving deep into Hulu’s “viewer-first” operating approach and how this has guided the company to successfully innovate in advertising, distribution, original programming, services and more. With Disney as Hulu’s majority owner, the company is poised for even greater success.

I'm excited to have 10 industry-leading companies on board as partners, including Title Partner Deloitte Consulting; Premier Partners Extreme Reach and Telaria; Headline Partners Beachfront Media, Penthera, SpotX, TiVo and Xandr; and Branding Partners Brightcove and Roku. Come meet them!

As always, the Video Ad Summit will be a premier day of learning and networking for industry professionals.

Don’t miss out - learn more and register now!

(*Early bird registrants get 2 entries for the Roku TV drawing.)

I’m pleased to present the 465th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Hulu is in the video industry’s sweet spot. A hybrid ad-supported brand-safe streaming service, now with 28 million subscribers. The best opportunity TV advertisers have to recapture young TV-watching audiences who are the biggest cord-cutters. Disney as its primary owner which itself is all in on streaming, willing to support Hulu’s land grab investments in original programming and marketing. And perhaps the biggest growth driver yet to come: bundling with Disney+ starting later this year.

On this week’s podcast Colin and I talk about all of the above (and a few challenges Hulu still faces).

If you want to learn more about Hulu’s success, come to the 9th annual Video Advertising Summit for my keynote interview with Hulu’s SVP and Head of Ad Sales Peter Naylor!

Listen in to learn more!

 
Click here to listen to the podcast (24 minutes, 15 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

Click here to add the podcast feed to your RSS reader.

The VideoNuze podcast is also available in iTunes...subscribe today!
 

Hulu announced this morning that it has topped 28 million subscribers, with 26.8 million paid and 1.3 million promotional (Hulu operates both ad-supported/ad-free SVOD services and Hulu Live TV but didn’t provide a breakdown). Hulu added 7.5 million paid subscribers in 2018. Viewership also intensified with average time spent per subscriber up over 20% in 2018 and total hours watched per subscriber up 75%. Importantly, 80% of Hulu’s viewing occurs in the living room.

While Netflix has become the market leader in ad-free OTT viewing,  Hulu has become the clear market leader in hybrid ad-supported premium OTT viewing. This is an extremely valuable place to be as cord-cutting accelerates and advertisers seek out viewer-friendly and targetable environments for their TV ad budgets. Hulu made a very smart move earlier this year, actually cutting the price of their ad-supported SVOD service by $2, to $6 per month, which no doubt is continuing to add to subscriber growth. A deal with Spotify announced in March to give Spotify Premium subscribers access to Hulu's ad-supported service is also likely having an early impact.

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I’m pleased to present the 464th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up this week Colin walks us through Nielsen and YouTube data he’s been analyzing that shows how 50-64 year olds are watching OTT video at a pretty significant level. According to his analysis, this group’s viewing could be at least 60% of the level of 18-34 year olds, which have been the main focus of many observers’ attention.

This adoption ties to our second topic which the Q1 ’19 loss of around 83K subscribers by DirecTV Now. Virtual pay-TV operators have a big opportunity to drive OTT viewing on connected TV devices, and Colin and I surmise these are taking up a bigger share of 50-64 year olds’ viewing which is more focused on long-form entertainment and sports. However the DirecTV Now loss shows that different players are benefiting differently from this shift.

Listen in to learn more!

 
Click here to listen to the podcast (23 minutes, 37 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

Click here to add the podcast feed to your RSS reader.

The VideoNuze podcast is also available in iTunes...subscribe today!

Reminder that early bird discounted tickets are still available for the 9th annual VideoNuze Video Advertising Summit on Wednesday, May 29th at the Westin Times Square in NYC. On top of saving $100, you also double your chances* of winning a 55-inch Roku 4K TV, generously provided by Roku.
 
The Video Ad Summit is a must-attend event for anyone in the industry interested in a deep dive into video advertising, especially the converging worlds of online, traditional TV, mobile and connected TV advertising as well as the broader digital landscape.

Over 30 executives from leading companies including Hulu, CBS Interactive, WarnerMedia, eMarketer, Roku, Cheddar, fuboTV, Group Nine Media, Publicis, Pluto TV, Mindshare, Vevo, Ellation, Univision, Essence and many others will share their insights. The program will feature a mix of keynotes, panel discussions, fireside chats, research presentations and case studies, covering the most critical topics in the industry.

Last year's Video Ad Summit drew over 300 attendees; the 2019 Video Ad Summit will once again be the premier video-focused event of the year.
 
I'm excited to have 10 industry-leading companies on board as initial partners, including Title Partner Deloitte Consulting; Premier Partners Extreme Reach and Telaria; Headline Partners Beachfront Media, Penthera, SpotX, TiVo and Xandr; and Branding Partners Brightcove and Roku.
 
Learn more and register now!
 
(*Early bird registrants get 2 entries for the Roku 4K TV drawing.)

I’m pleased to present the 463rd edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

The SVOD industry’s dynamics are harder than ever to predict now that Disney+ plans to come to market with a robust content offering priced at just $7 per month. So for example while Netflix reported a strong Q1 ’19, when Colin looks ahead to how Q4 ’19 or Q1 ’20 will shape up for Netflix given omnipresent promotion of Disney+ that’s coming, he sees an adverse impact on domestic subscriber additions.

We discuss how significant the impact could be not just on Netflix but also on Apple TV+ which will come to market in late ’19 too, but have a much less competitive content offering vs. Disney+. A key question is how low must Apple TV+’s price now be to compete?

Listen in to learn more!
 
Click here to listen to the podcast (22 minutes, 48 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

Click here to add the podcast feed to your RSS reader.

The VideoNuze podcast is also available in iTunes...subscribe today!
 

Video adtech provider Beachfront will enable pay-TV operators to monetize their set-top box video on demand (VOD) viewing with ads sourced from programmatic video ad buyers. The move effectively bridges 2 worlds that have been mainly separate - traditional pay-TV VOD and real-time, dynamic digital ad demand.

Chris Maccaro, CEO of Beachfront, told me in an interview that in talking to various pay-TV operators and TV networks, under-monetization of VOD viewership remains a pain point, with up to half of all views not monetized optimally or at all. By enabling a select group of programmatic ad buyers to access this inventory, Beachfront is creating incremental VOD revenue.

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The biggest piece of news from last week’s Disney+ mega event was certainly the reveal of the service’s rate: just $7/month, or $70/year, and its implications for competitors, most notably Apple TV+.

Back in September, 2017, just after Disney CEO Bob Iger announced Disney was shifting its strategy toward a direct to consumer (DTC) model, and gave a preview of the massive trove of Disney/other content that would be included, I wrote that success for the service would be highly dependent on its price.

Would Disney+ be priced on the lower end of market expectations (I speculated about $10/month) to achieve strong adoption like Netflix has? Or would it be priced on the higher end (say $20-$25/month) in a market “skimming” approach like what HBO Now has followed? Given the money Disney would be foregoing in third-party distribution fees by going DTC, there was huge conflicting pressures on the pricing decision.

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