VideoNuze Posts

I'm pleased to present the 268th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

HBO Now launched this week and after giving it multiple tryouts, I'm very impressed. As we discuss, and as I've written previously (here, here and here) I think HBO Now is going to be a big winner, and is going to gain subscribers well beyond the 10 million broadband-only households that HBO CEO Richard Plepler relentlessly says are its target market.

In particular, I think entertainment-focused, budget-minded and younger viewers will find HBO Now very attractive (especially in combination with Netflix and other OTT services). Inevitably this will accelerate cord-shaving, cord-cutting and cord-nevering.

Colin agrees and shares his own HBO experience this week, using it via Sling TV. This is not HBO Now, but rather HBO content integrated into Sling TV (including the linear feed). Colin reports it too was a mostly positive experience. The ability to access HBO via a "skinny bundle" creates still further pressure on the traditional pay-TV model.

All in all, Colin and I believe HBO Now will become a key driver of change in the pay-TV industry. The HBO Now storm is blowing in; just how much havoc it will wreak in the industry is the big open question.

Listen in to learn more!

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YouTube is poised to be the next major content provider to join the great subscription VOD land grab for consumers' video spending. Per a Bloomberg report yesterday, YouTube has sent a letter to its content creators sharing its intention to launch an ad-free subscription service, though neither the price nor launch date was specified. Content creators would keep 55% of subscription revenue based on their pro rata viewership.

Plans for a YouTube subscription service were initially mentioned by its CEO Susan Wojcicki last October at the Code Mobile conference.

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Boston-based YouTube ad buying platform Pixability has raised an $18 million Series C round, led by new investors Jump Capital and Edison Partners, with participation from existing investors. The new funds will be used for product development and international expansion. The company has raised $28 million to date.

Pixability's core capability is enabling brands and agencies to create and manage data-driven video ad campaigns targeting specific audiences within YouTube channels. This is extremely valuable because while YouTube's massive user base is very attractive to brands and agencies, the site's diverse content makes it virtually impossible to understand how to optimize YouTube ad spending.

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Strategy Analytics has released the results of a new survey which validate Amazon's decision to bundle Prime Instant Video with free 2-day shipping in its Amazon Prime service. Although Prime members say they're more likely to subscribe to Prime for the shipping benefit than for the videos, once they have the Prime service, they watch the  videos almost as they much as they use their Netflix subscriptions.

The survey revealed that 59% of U.S. Amazon Prime members used Instant Video in the past month, almost at parity with the 63% of Prime members that used Netflix. Overall, the survey found that 36% of Prime members only used Instant Video, almost equal to the 40% that only use Netflix, and the 23% that use both. The 40% of Netflix-only's are clearly a huge target for Amazon to pursue as it builds out the Prime Video benefit.

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Yesterday provided us with 2 excellent examples of how OTT is changing the video landscape and how the pay-TV ecosystem is struggling to adapt. The first example was the second straight LA Dodgers' opening day in which the majority of LA fans were not able to watch the game because SportsNet LA doesn't have deals with most of the area's pay-TV operators. The second example was the $785 million write-down announced by Viacom to cover the costs of an expected "strategic realignment."

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Roku has introduced a number of new ways to search its growing selection of content. A new "Roku Feed" feature initially allows users to follow in-theater movies and be notified when they become available for streaming and at what price. The feature is valuable because movies are fragmented over multiple streaming services, making it nearly impossible for viewers to know when or where movies they missed in-theater appear online.

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I'm pleased to present the 267th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up this week, Colin shares highlights from a new study from Conviva showing how important video quality is, and how low viewers' tolerance for subpar experiences have become. Conviva's survey of 750 millennials found that just 25% will continue watching an inferior stream for 4 minutes or longer, and just 16% will even bother trying on a second device if their experience on the first device they tried was sub-par. Colin observes the stakes are getting ever-higher for content providers as more viewing goes multi-screen.

We then shift to discussing mobile live-streaming, which I wrote about yesterday. I'm excited about both Meerkat and Periscope, and we discuss 3 different high-potential use cases for mobile live-streaming. It's going to be a lot of fun to see what both amateur broadcasters as well as content providers/brands do with Meerkat and Periscope.

Listen in to learn more!

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!

For the past couple of weeks, it's been nearly impossible to avoid the media coverage around 2 new mobile live-streaming apps, Meerkat and Periscope (which Twitter acquired back in January). But a lot of what I've read has focused on ginning up a winner-take-all battle between these 2 nascent apps. As a result, the bigger story here has been missed - that we may be seeing the early days of another important new video category.

Having played with both Meerkat and Periscope over the past week, I've become pretty convinced that mobile live-streaming, while still very raw-feeling, has a lot of potential across numerous personal and professional applications, both spontaneous and scheduled.

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