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MLB: Mobile Use of Our Content Will Exceed Online Within 12-18 Months
At the recent ELEVATE conference, Noah Garden, EVP, Revenue for MLB Advanced Media forecasted that MLB's page views from mobile devices will exceed those from online within the next 12-18 months. Mobile has become a huge growth driver for MLB, rising from just 8% of use in 2008 to 37% last year as smartphones and tablets have exploded. In addition, Noah said that MLB is on pace to sell 2 million subscriptions to its MLB.tv and mobile services this year, up from last year's 1.5 million. MLB has launched 100 million streams of games this year, up 47% vs. last year.
Noah's comments came during a session I moderated with him and Mike Gaffney, CRO of video ad platform Auditude (full video after the jump). The session focused on how premium content providers are using both paid and ad-supported strategies to fully exploit the value of their content, rather than looking it the options as one or the other. As Noah said, "we want to be on any device that has a plug and a battery" to reach all targeted consumers with MLB.tv equally. Since MLB has been one of the key leaders in online/mobile video distribution, its initiatives are widely followed in the industry.
Categories: Mobile Video, Sports
Topics: Auditude, ELEVATE, MLB
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Guess Which Sports Property Had the Most Unique Viewers in May (Hint: It's Not Yahoo, ESPN, MLB or SI)
Here's a interesting tidbit from comScore's Video Metrix - the top sports property in May, as ranked by unique viewers, wasn't any of the names you'd expect (e.g. Yahoo Sports, ESPN, MLB, SI, etc.), but rather a little-known, four year-old start-up named CineSport. As the chart below shows, CineSport generated 13.1 million unique viewers in May to top the list (CineSport was actually number one in April too, and has been so periodically before as well). How CineSport is generating so much viewership says a lot about how online video is creating unexpected new opportunities for those with clever approaches. Last week I caught up with CineSport's CEO and founder Gregg Winik to learn more.
Categories: Sports, Syndicated Video Economy
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comScore: YouTube's Time Per Viewer In May Tops 5 Hours, More Than Next 5 Sites COMBINED
comScore released its May 2011 U.S. online video rankings today which once again illustrated the extent to which YouTube remains the 800-pound gorilla of the online video market. For the first time, YouTube's time spent per viewer during the month exceeded 5 hours, coming in at 5 hours, 11 minutes. That reflects nearly 2.2 billion viewing sessions generated from over 147 million unique viewers (83.5% of all Americans who watched any online video in May).
Looked at another way, YouTube's 5 hours, 11 minutes of viewership is more than the next 5 properties ranked had during the month, combined. The number 6 property, Microsoft's sites, had 46.5 million visitors for the month, less than a 1/3 of YouTube's, and 252 million viewing sessions, just 1/9 of YouTube's (see below). Hulu is the only property remotely close to YouTube in viewing time per user, racking up 3 hours, 38 minutes per viewer in May from 196 million viewing sessions. But Hulu had 28.5 million unique viewers in May, less than 1/5 of YouTube's.
Categories: Advertising, Aggregators
Topics: comScore, Hulu, YouTube
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VideoNuze Report Podcast #100 - Cable Show Review - June 17, 2011
Categories: Cable Networks, Cable TV Operators, Podcasts
Topics: Cable Show, Netflix
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Test 4
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Comcast's CEO Roberts Downloads 23 Episodes of 30 Rock in 1.39 Minutes at 1Gbps
At the Cable Show in Chicago today, Comcast's CEO Brian Roberts showcased the company's ability to deliver 1 gigabit per second throughput by downloading a full season of 23 episodes of 30 Rock in just 1 minute, 39 seconds. Putting the 1 Gbps throughput in context, Roberts noted that back in 1996, delivering 1-2 megabits per second was state of the art, and that as recently as 2007, 100 megabits per second was the limit.
Increasing speed has been a core value proposition of cable's broadband ISP efforts for years. It has taken on even greater importance recently as consumption of high-quality video has soared. An emerging theme in the pay-TV industry is delivering not just on-demand streams, but full lineups of live TV over IP as well. All of this will drive ever-higher consumer needs for bandwidth.
Categories: Broadband ISPs, Cable TV Operators
Topics: Comcast
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@Cable Show: HBO GO Has 2.6 Million+ Downloads, Watch ESPN Has 2 Million+ Downloads
At least two major cable networks, HBO and ESPN, are getting strong traction with their mobile apps not long after launching them. HBO GO, which was unveiled in early May, has already gained over 2.6 million downloads, while Watch ESPN has generated over 2 million downloads since launching in early April. The data was released by Alison Moore, HBO's SVP, Digital Platforms, and by David Preschlack, ESPN's EVP of Affiliate Sales and Marketing in a TV Everywhere session I hosted this afternoon at the Cable Show in Chicago.
Both Alison and David stressed their twin goals of delivering anytime/anywhere experiences to their viewers while also supporting the subscriber authentication, TV Everywhere goals of their main pay-TV distributors. In fact TV Everywhere was, well, everywhere at this year's Cable show, dominating general sessions and informal discussions of the industry's future. Mostly there's broad consensus about how strategic untethering popular cable programming from the set-top box is, although many issues still remain unresolved. Chief among them are measurement, rights clearances and business relationship details.
Categories: Cable Networks, Devices
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Comcast's CEO Roberts to Showcase Xcalibur Platform at Cable Show
As expected, Comcast announced this morning that its CEO Brian Roberts will demo the company's new "Xcalibur" video delivery platform on Thursday
morning at the Cable Show in Chicago. Xcalibur has been in trial in Augusta, GA and is meant to deliver a new, more web-like experience to the TV, complimenting what Comcast has been doing online with Xfinity TV and in mobile with its iOS and Android apps. A new interactive guide will be unveiled as well as "MyTV" which is a central location for storing recordings, favorites and recommendations.
In addition, apps for traffic, weather and social sharing through Facebook will be available. Comcast announced a handful of technology partners - using Intel chips with higher graphics performance for the UI in new set-top boxes, Pace as the first hybrid set-top box manufacturer and wholly-owned subsidiary thePlatform for content management (thePlatform just unveiled yesterday a joint solution with Alcatel-Lucent to deliver similar IP-based video services).
Categories: Cable TV Operators
Topics: Comcast
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