VideoNuze Posts

One of the highlights of the recent Video Ad Summit was the keynote conversation with David Cohen, Chief Investment Officer at Universal McCann. David is one of the foremost digital thought-leaders in the advertising industry and oversees billions of dollars of client spending.

In the interview with me, David shared his insights across a range of topics, including how the proliferation of platforms and data is driving a much more complicated landscape, exponentially multiplying how to connect with audiences. David sees the big challenge as re-aggregating today’s fragmented audiences so advertisers can deliver messages at scale.

David says there’s no silver bullet for addressing this, but believes data and measurement are the key pathways. With advertisers demanding more flexibility, David sees the TV upfront process as becoming antiquated, with spending shifting to routes that require lower initial commitments and more room to adapt. He says there’s no “must-buy” in TV any longer, with many digital alternatives now available.

In the interview David also touches on video pricing, how measurement challenges are holding back spending, why SVOD is driving declines in linear TV ratings, why pay-TV unbundling is coming, millennials’ expectations, how programmatic is impacting cross-channel video advertising, why lack of premium inventory continues to be a challenge for online video, how UM’s own measurement solution works and how it’s organizing itself to devote more resources to campaign optimization.

We wrap up with David sharing his thoughts on 4 major video providers and what’s ahead in the next 12 months.

Watch the interview now (37 minutes, 45 seconds)

With binge-viewing becoming a mainstream activity, there’s more and more energy being devoted to understanding the behavior and how to profit from it. The latest comes from video optimizer Conviva, which has published a white paper, “Binge Watching: The New Currency of Video Economics,” detailing findings from a survey of 750 binge-viewers between the ages of 25-36.

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Mobile video is now up to 42% of all online video viewed and is poised to surpass 50% later this year, making it a top priority for advertisers. So our Video Ad Summit session, “Small Screens, Big Opportunities: Why Mobile Video is Skyrocketing,” was one of the most timely discussions in the day-long program.  

The session explored how mobile video fits with cross-screen strategies, why mobile video durations are shortening, why 15-second ads dominate on mobile but are changing, what role Facebook and Snapchat are playing in mobile video advertising, why there’s more data in mobile video than in desktop video, whether mobile video will move from the horizontal to the vertical format and lots more.   

The session included Mike Berkley (Head of Product, Viacom), Dan Colarusso (Executive Editor, Digital, Reuters), Rachel Pasqua (Head of Mobility, MEC North America), Frank Sinton (CEO, Beachfront Media), with Michael Sebastian (Reporter, AdAge) moderating.

Watch the session video now (30 minutes, 18 seconds)

I'm pleased to present the 280th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up this week, we discuss binge-viewing’s soaring popularity, most recently illustrated by a new study from TiVo, which found 92% of respondents saying they had binge-viewed at some point. (TiVo defines binge-viewing as watching more than 3 episodes of a series in a day.)

No surprise, Netflix dominates, with 66% of binge-viewers saying they use the service to watch their favorite shows. Interestingly, respondents said that half of their binge-viewing occurs alone, reflecting the broader trend of how personalized and fragmented TV has become given the broad range of options.

Supporting that concept is data from Twitch, the live-streaming gaming site that Amazon acquired, showing that 21 million viewers watched its E3 coverage, more than double the level of 2 years ago. There was a peak of 840K concurrent viewers, 16 times as big as E3’s attendance. The popularity of Twitch, and soon YouTube Gaming which will be huge as well, both illustrate how live-streaming gaming is peeling audiences away from traditional TV viewing.

Listen in to learn more and happy July 4th!

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These are complicated times for video content providers, with more opportunities to monetize their video inventory and partner with advertisers, yet more complexity as well. How to succeed in this rapidly evolving environment was the topic of our Video Ad Summit panel, “Modernizing the Monetization of Video: The Content Provider’s Perspective.”

The session included Lorne Brown (Founder & CEO, Operative), Sean Holzman (Chief Digital Revenue Officer, Bonnier), Stephano Kim (SVP, Ad Operations & Chief Digital Strategist, Turner Broadcasting), David Morris (Chief Revenue Officer, CBS Interactive) and Lisa Valentino (Chief Revenue Officer, Conde Nast Entertainment), with Tom Herman (CEO, DashBid) moderating.

The wide-ranging discussion touched on various topics including how campaign success metrics are changing, why performance and engagement are paramount, how content providers are creating their own data management platforms and selectively exposing their first-party data, why the consumer is really in the driver’s seat, the role of branded entertainment, the challenges of moving to a direct-to-consumer approach at scale, ad-blocking and much, much more.

Watch the session video now (32 minutes, 36 seconds)

The leadoff session at the recent Video Ad Summit focused on the topic of whether TV and video advertising are converging or diverging. In other words, are advertisers going to opt for converged, multiscreen campaigns that incorporate TV, or is ad spending a zero sum game with advertisers shifting spending from TV to video?

With tens of billions of dollars of annual TV and video ad spending, obviously this is a pressing question. Scott Ferber, Chairman and CEO of Videology, kicked off the session with a compelling presentation that made the case for convergence, with data playing a key role in making this happen.

Then Scott moderated a discussion with Andrew Feigenson (Managing Director, Digital, Nielsen), Kris Magel (Chief Investment Officer, Initiative U.S.), Melissa Roberts (GM, Enterprise Solutions, FreeWheel) and Brian Wieser (Senior Analyst, Pivotal Research Group). The group dug into the convergence-divergence question from all angles.

Watch the session video now 42 minutes, 33 seconds

I'm pleased to present the 279th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Change is everywhere in the video and TV industries and this week 6 different news items hit our radar, which Colin and I think illustrate how quickly things are moving. In today's podcast we discuss each of them and why we think they're significant.

The items include continued falling linear TV ratings as measured by Nielsen, Hulu distributing Showtime, new research showing that Netflix's audience is size larger than those of broadcast TV networks, Tennis Channel's converged TV Everywhere-OTT model, HBO premiering 2 new shows on Facebook and Ooyala's new data showing that 42% of video views are now on mobile.

(note: Colin wanted to clarify one point - when citing Netflix viewership, he said it was 10 million hours streamed per quarter when it's actually 10 billion hours)

Listen in to learn more!

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