VideoNuze Posts

Akamai has launched Akamai Media Acceleration, a new content delivery technology which boosts the quality of over-the-top video, as well speeds up video game and software downloads. In a briefing, Alex Balford, senior product marketing manager, media, told me that Media Acceleration was developed in order for Akamai customers to deliver broadcast TV quality OTT experiences to viewers, whose expectations continue to rise.

Alex said that Media Acceleration addresses the last mile connection from the edge of Akamai’s own network to the viewer’s device. It uses an emerging technology standard called “Quick UDP Internet Connections” or “QUIC,” to detect and overcome congestion or latency, including in the viewer’s in-home WiFi network.

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Teads, which pioneered the outstream video ad format that has been widely emulated, is being acquired by Altice, the multinational telecom provider.  The purchase price is up to 285 million Euros, or approximately $307 million, with 75% paid at closing and the remaining 25% based on Teads’ 2017 revenue performance. Teads’ Executive Chairman Pierre Chappaz and CEO Bertrand Quesada will continue leading Teads.

For Altice, which previously acquired and combined 2 large U.S. cable TV providers Cablevision and Suddenlink over the past 2 years, creating the 4th-largest player in the industry, the Teads deal is a bid to increase its advertising footprint, which the company said will be 700 million Euros or nearly $650 million per year.

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“Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner explained how Netflix’s and Amazon’s international distribution capabilities are changing the TV industry’s economics as well as mitigating domestic viewership fragmentation, in an interview he did with Videology’s Chairman and CEO Scott Ferber at the company’s “Full Frontal 2017” event on March 8th.

It’s no secret that both Netflix and Amazon are aggressively promoting their SVOD services in approximately 200 different countries around the world. But Weiner explained how having their own international distribution footprint distinguishes them from other networks, enabling them to pursue projects with the intention of globally distributing the programs without the necessity of having partners.

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I’m pleased to present the 362nd edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

It’s no secret that we’re all using all kinds of connected devices these days to consume video. To help illustrate just how mainstream a behavior this has become, this week Colin and I review data from a number of recent research reports that have hit our radar. The takeaway is that consumers are taking advantage of the myriad choices they now have. See how your own video consumption aligns with the key trends.

Listen in to learn more!
 
(Note, we had a little problem with audio quality which we’ll hopefully fix for next week)

Click here to listen to the podcast (22 minutes, 10 seconds)
 

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As of year-end 2016, 22% of the 100 million U.S. homes that subscribe to broadband did not also subscribe to a pay-TV service. That’s up from 9% of the 85 million U.S. homes that subscribed to broadband but did not also subscribe to a pay-TV service in 2011. Over the course of 2016 alone, the rate of broadband homes subscribing to pay-TV declined from 82% to 78%, resulting in 22 million broadband homes without pay-TV at the end of last year, compared with 8 million in 2011.

The data comes from a new report from The Diffusion Group, “Life Without Legacy Pay-TV: A Profile of U.S. Cord Cutters and Cord Nevers” that has just been published.

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Mobile ad platform AdColony has released results from a number of clients’ recent ad campaigns using its “Instant-Play HD Vertical Video” format. Across the campaigns the format delivered an 89% average video completion rate and a 10% average engagement rate. Clients included UFC, a premium cable TV network, a global consumer tech platform and various Fortune 500 brands. The vertical video ads were inserted across popular mobile apps.

AdColony’s Instant-Play HD format, which is integrated with mobile apps via an SDK, includes a “Dynamic End Card” feature that gives advertisers a way to creatively engage users with a rich experience that includes the ability to swipe, tap, watch, purchase and access more content (samples can be found here).

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Mobile accounted for 54% of video views globally in Q4 ’16, up from 46% in Q4 ’15, according to Ooyala’s latest Global Video Index, which tracks hundreds of millions viewers from its 500+ customers around the world. Underscoring mobile’s fast adoption, mobile views were 17% as recently as 2013; Ooyala projects mobile in Q1 ’17 will hit nearly 60% of views, a nearly 4x increase.

As always, smartphones accounted for the lion’s share of overall mobile viewing and in Q4 ’16, they also accounted for virtually all of mobile’s growth. In Q4, smartphones racked up 47% of views, with the remainder on tablets. While smartphones’ share grew by 8 percentage points just in 2016, tablets lost almost a percentage point.

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Here’s a Monday morning brain teaser to consider: is there any rhyme or reason for which TV networks are being included in skinny bundles like Sling TV, DirecTV Now, YouTube TV and soon Hulu? If there is, it’s hard to discern what it is. In fact, the composition of skinny bundles is getting more puzzling all the time.

For instance, last Friday, Hulu announced that it had reached a distribution deal with A+E Networks for its forthcoming skinny bundle. The deal followed previously announced ones with Hulu’s corporate parents Fox, Disney and Turner, plus CBS. But just a couple weeks ago, when YouTube TV was announced, it didn’t include A+E Networks (nor Turner, Viacom, Discovery, AMC or Scripps), though it did include CBS, Disney, Fox and NBCU.

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