VideoNuze Posts

  • HealthiNation Lands on Roku; Now #3 in Health Vertical Due To Syndication Strategy

    Health and lifestyle video creator HealthiNation is announcing its availability on Roku devices this morning. The move extends HealthiNation's content syndication approach which helped place it third in comScore's Video Metrix ranking of health-related sites last month. HealthiNation racked up 3.1 million unique visitors, putting it ahead of WebMD and Everyday Health, and trailing only 5Min and HealthGuru. As Raj Amin, HealthiNation's CEO told me last week, the company gains the bulk of its traffic through its third-party syndication network of approximately 25 partners.

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  • Vizu Extends Measurement of Video Ads' Brand Lift to VAST/VPAID

    Vizu, an online ad technology provider which measures brand lift, announced an upgrade of its platform yesterday which will give brands and agencies greater insight into the effectiveness of in-stream video ad campaigns, an important step to increasing their spending. With the upgrade, Vizu now supports the VAST/VPAID spec which means Vizu can measure the effectiveness of video ads placed through ad exchanges and real-time bidding platforms as well those bought through direct publisher sales. As Vizu's CEO Dan Beltramo explained to me last week, this is a key step because a significant portion of video ads are already being placed through exchanges and RTB platforms which he expects to grow further.

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  • Amazon Kicks Off Its Kindle Tablet Week With Fox Deal

    Amazon has announced a new licensing deal with Fox that will bring "24," "Arrested Development," "The X-Files," "Ally McBeal," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "The Wonder Years" to its $79/year Amazon Prime service (all of the titles except the latter are already available on Netflix streaming). The Fox deal comes just ahead of a press conference Amazon will hold this Wednesday, in which it is widely believed to unveil a new color Kindle Tablet that will play video and compete head-on with the iPad.

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  • DreamWorks Gives Netflix A Much-Needed Lift, But Not Until 2013

    DreamWorks Animation's new output deal with Netflix gives the beleaguered streaming-only provider a much-needed lift, but unfortunately not until DreamWorks' 2013 movies are released. Under the deal, Netflix may pay up to $30 million per movie, an increase from the $20 million that HBO is believed to have been paying DreamWorks. The press release also notes that some of DreamWorks' catalog movies such as "Kung Fu Panda," "Madagascar 2," "Chicken Run" and "Antz" will also be included over time.  The DreamWorks deal comes on the heels of last week's news that Netflix licensed library programs from Discovery Communications.

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  • New Blockbuster Movie Pass Features DVDs in Starring Role

    Irony was on full display at the Dish Network press conference announcing the new Blockbuster Movie Pass, as the very first benefit CEO Joe Clayton pointed to was access to 100K+ DVDs by mail (with no extra charge for Blu-ray). That's right - despite Netflix's willingness to practically blow up the company in its belief that "streaming is the future," good old Blockbuster is returning to its roots, emphasizing physical media's primacy, at least for now. That Blockbuster was outgunned by Netflix's own superior DVD-by-mail service years ago just adds to the sense that "all that's old is new again."

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  • Netflix Now Conceding Price Hike Is Also Hurting Q3 New Subscriber Acquisitions

    Just when you thought things couldn't get worse for Netflix, here's a tidbit of information that could have significant consequences for the company: in a Q&A session at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia conference on Wednesday (replay here), CFO David Wells conceded that while cancellations due to the price increase announced in July accounted for most of the 1 million downward revision in end of quarter subscribers, the change has also adversely impacted new subscriber acquisitions (though he declined to quantify by how much). I believe this is the first time a Netflix executive has acknowledged a double whammy resulting from the price increase - both higher than expected churn and a slowdown in additions.

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  • Investors Stay Bullish On Video As Vidyo and Visible Measures Raise New Rounds

    Investors continue to be bullish on video-related companies, with news this morning of two more significant financings: Vidyo, an HD video telepresence provider has raised a $22.5 million Series D round (for a total of $97 million since inception), and Visible Measures, a social video advertising and analytics provider, has raised a $13 million Series D round (for a total of $45 million to date). The Vidyo financing was led by QuestMark Partners and the Visible Measures round by DAG Ventures and new strategic partner Advance Publications, parent of Conde Nast and other magazines. Each company's existing investors participated their financings as well.

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  • MyDamnChannel Shows That Persistence Pays When Pursuing Brand Dollars

    MyDamnChannel's CEO Rob Barnett was the featured speaker at last night's Multi-Screen Mix-Up in NYC and his short presentation and Q&A with Tubefilter's Josh Cohen underscored how persistence pays when it comes to pursuing brand dollars. Rob was pretty candid is explaining that in the beginning it was nearly impossible for MyDamnChannel to attract brand attention, so it settled for low-five figure deals to get the ball rolling and develop its content model. Flash forward to today and Rob says he and the team are now getting in to see chief marketing officers at Fortune 500 companies (and sometimes even the CEO himself/herself) to discuss brand entertainment projects.

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