VideoNuze Posts

I recently caught up with Treepodia’s CEO Tal Rubenczyk to learn more about the company, which provides personalized video marketing solutions to brands of all sizes. Treepodia is based in Israel and has offices around the world. Following is an edited transcript of our interview.

VideoNuze: Explain what Treepodia does.

Tal Rubenczyk:  We create personalized videos from data. Those videos are utilized by top worldwide companies (Kimberly Clark, Office Depot, Pokerstars, QVC and more) to significantly enhance the communication between the enterprise and its clients (as a major step in marketing automation), in advertising and in showcasing products and services.

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I’m pleased to present the 402nd edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week we start by discussing Hulu’s growth to over 17 million subscribers, which it reported earlier this week. Both of us are impressed by the numbers, which makes Hulu a firm #3 in the SVOD market. The key number that we’d like to know is how many new subscribers are taking the ad-supported version, which has dominated in the past.

Hulu’s and SVOD’s growth have come at the expense of viewers owning and renting video, as Colin explains in his review of recent Q4 ’17 DEG data. DVDs fell a whopping 22% vs. Q4 ’16 and rentals were down as well. The only category that grew was SVOD. Related, the dominance of SVOD makes me wonder how Apple is going to monetize its high-profile original TV shows. If Apple sticks with a transactional model it will be facing serious headwinds.

Finally, Colin shares a few thoughts on CES product news from Samsung, LG and Intel.

Listen in to learn more!

 
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It’s been exactly a year since the WSJ reported that Apple was planning to invest in original TV programs and movies. And sure enough, as 2017 unfolded, the company unveiled a plan to spend a $1 billion on programming, hired top Hollywood executives, and announced its first few programs.

Yesterday, Apple continued its streak, with a straight-to-series order for “See” a drama from Chernin Entertainment and Endeavor Content including “Peaky Blinders” creator Steven Knight and “Hunger Games” director Francis Lawrence. That’s on top of 3 prior programs from A-listers Jennifer Anniston, Reese Witherspoon, Steven Spielberg, Bryan Fuller and Ronald D. Moore that were previously announced.

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Hulu announced that it now has over 17 million subscribers including both its SVOD and live TV service. The last time Hulu publicly reported, in May, 2016, it had 12 million subscribers. So the 5 million increase translates to approximately 250K per month. Though Hulu didn’t break out subscribers to its live TV service, which launched in May, 2017, assuming maybe 5-10% of its monthly gains are for live TV, then the traditional SVOD service is adding around 225K to 240K subscribers per month.

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If you find yourself watching a lot of video these days, you’re not alone. According to a new global survey from TiVo, the average viewer now spends almost 5 hours a day with video, including 4.4 hours watching and another 28 minutes searching for something to watch. U.S. viewers lead with 5.1 hours watched per day, followed by Brazil, with 4.7 hours. At 3.3 hours per day, viewers in Germany watched the least.

Despite the headlines around cord-cutting, the survey found that pay-TV remains highly popular, with 87% of U.S. households still subscribing (along with 90% in Western Europe and 96% in LATAM). But the survey notes how viewers are experimenting with new options. 64% of U.S. households now have an SVOD service (60% in Western Europe and 71% in LATAM) while 44% of U.S. have a connected TV device (44% in Western Europe and 59% in LATAM).

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Video ad tech provider SpotX has announced server-side ad insertion interoperability with Amazon Web Services’ Elemental MediaTailor service. This means that content providers which are joint customers of SpotX and AWS Elemental MediaTailor are able to use SpotX’s ad decisioning capabilities to dynamically serve targeted ads, using server-side ad insertion.

With server-side ad insertion (“SSAI”), which is also known as ad stitching, relevant ads are integrated with the content at the server level, providing a better viewer experience as compared with when ads are inserted by the player on the user's device. The latter model often results in buffering as the player transitions between content and ads and vice versa. Buffering is major challenge for content providers because it is the leading cause of abandonment, which in turn diminishes monetization.

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According to new research released today from YuMe and Nielsen, 60% of U.S. homes now have either a smart TV or a connected TV device, with 74% of these owners, or approximately 44% of U.S. homes, using them on a daily basis. Of the 2,410 research participants, 1,465 had a TV connected to the Internet, with 884, or 60% of them using a connected TV device like Roku, Fire TV, etc. and 581 (40%) using a smart TV.

The research also found that smart TV ownership has nearly doubled since 2013. No surprise, the research found that movies and TV shows are the preferred content for large screen TVs, while short-form video is most popular on computers and mobile devices.

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Happy New Year! I’m pleased to present the 401st edition of the VideoNuze podcast, and our first of 2018, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

As is our tradition, we discuss our top trends for the new year. 2017 was extremely busy for the industry and we expect 2018 to be no different. Among our top trends are wireless providers pushing deeper into video, YouTube TV starting to break out among skinny bundles, cord-cutting accelerating and Amazon pursuing many different opportunities to build its video business. We also discuss 4-5 additional trends to watch.

Listen in to learn more!
 
Click here to listen to the podcast (22 minutes, 10 seconds)

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!