VideoNuze Posts

I’m pleased to present the 393rd edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

It’s been a big week for executive changes in the SVOD world. Hulu’s CEO Mike Hopkins is departing to become chairman of Sony Pictures Television. Randy Freer, president and COO of Fox Networks will take over as Hulu’s new CEO. Colin and I both think Hopkins accomplished a lot in his four years at Hulu and we review the company’s progress. Still, the SVOD space is more competitive than ever and Hulu has a range of challenges ahead of it.

Speaking of executive changes, Amazon Studios is undergoing a brain drain, with its head Roy Price leaving due to sexual harassment charges followed by 3 other senior executives. Amazon Studios was already under pressure to create blockbuster programming and these management changes would seem to only increase the pressure. We dig into what’s happening at Amazon.

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Have you watched any of the first two games of the World Series? If you have, then you’ll undoubtedly agree that YouTube TV, the fledgling skinny bundle, is owning the games so far. Their branding is everywhere - behind home plate, on dugout walls and rails, on the outfield wall, on the end-of-inning scoreboard, on Fox’s “presented by” branding graphic, etc.

And all of that is on top of a 2-minute ad that played immediately prior to the first pitch in game 1, which cleverly started and ended with a live feed of the pre-game action on a mock living room TV (oddly, that 2 minute ad isn’t available in YouTube TV’s own YouTube channel). However a separate 30-second ad YouTube TV has also been running is (see below).

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Hulu announced yesterday that CEO Mike Hopkins will depart after four years running the company. Hopkins is heading to Sony Pictures Television where he’ll become chairman. Taking over as Hulu CEO will be Randy Freer, currently the president and COO of Fox Networks Group and a Hulu board member. Fox is one of the main owners of Hulu.

Hopkins leaves Hulu with a strong record of accomplishment, but with many challenges still looming. He joined Hulu in October, 2013 just a couple of months after the company’s owners reversed course, deciding to invest another $750 million rather than sell it outright.

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It’s a good day for video tech providers with Israeli roots as Wibbitz has announced a $20 million Series C funding and Connatix has raised a $15 million Series A round. The Wibbitz round was led by Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, with participation from The Weather Channel, The Associated Press, TF1 and existing investors NantMobile, lool Ventures and Horizons Ventures and brings total funding to $30.8 million. The Connatix round was led by Volition Capital.

While the companies have different value propositions, they’re both playing to the broader industry trends of enabling publishers to enrich their properties with more video, which creates more opportunities for video advertising.

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A reminder that all paid registrants for our 3rd annual SHIFT // Programmatic Video & TV Ad Summit on Wednesday, November 29th in NYC will be entered to win 1 of 3 Roku Ultra 4K streaming players, generously provided by Roku. The Ultra is Roku’s top-of-the-line player featuring support for 4K, HD and HDR. I’ve been using one for a while and it’s amazing.

The SHIFT program is coming together really nicely and once again it promises to be the highest-impact conference for anyone in the industry who is focused on programmatic video and TV. Programmatic approaches, which rely on data and automation, already account for billions of dollars of annual TV and video ad spend and are poised for further rapid growth.

Still, there are many issues swirling around programmatic, including viewability, fraud, labor intensity and supply chain complexity. At SHIFT we’ll be digging into all of these along with the big opportunities programmatic creates.

Our two keynoters, Mike Rosen, EVP, Portfolio Sales and Strategy, NBCUniversal and Jon Stimmel, Chief Investment Officer, Universal McCann will provide invaluable insights into how their companies are approaching programmatic. There are dozens of executive speakers set to participate across panel discussions, research presentations, fireside chats and more, which I’ll be sharing shortly.

In the meantime, early bird registrants save $100, with all registrants eligible to win one of the 3 Roku Ultra 4K Streaming Players. Further discounts are available on 5-packs and 10-packs. Startups and students can register for a reduced $245 ticket (contact me for the code).

I hope you’ll join us for this must-attend day of learning and networking!

Learn more and register now!

I’m pleased to present the 392nd edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Netflix reported another strong quarter earlier this week, adding 5.3 million subscribers, and also forecasting an increase in its content spend in 2018 to $7-8 billion. On today’s podcast we discuss the results and what’s ahead.

Despite Netflix’s successful quarter, Colin and I both observed some ambiguity on the part of its executives in explaining what actually drove the subscriber additions. Overall industry momentum, original content, or both? It’s not clear.

What is clear however is that with Netflix now up to 109 million global subscribers, we’ve moved into a phase where there’s Netflix and there’s everyone else. No other company has close to Netflix’s global footprint or content budget. To put the content budget alone in context, in 2018 it will likely be 3-4x of what mighty HBO spends. Size clearly has its advantages.

Colin and I explore what this all means for the industry going forward.

Listen in to learn more!
 
Click here to listen to the podcast (22 minutes, 48 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts.

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

Adobe Primetime and The Diffusion Group have released new research, finding among other things, that the NFL is the most popular sport to live stream on digital devices. The research surveyed 2,000 U.S. consumers, revealing viewership trends for live sports viewers or “LSVs” - adult broadband users that watch televised live sports on any screen including PCs, TVs, smartphones or tablets.

The survey found that 37% of LSVs watch live sports on non-TV devices, with PCs used the most (cited by 27%), followed by smartphones (17%) and tablets (14%). Across all 3 of these devices, the NFL is the most popular of all sports. On PCs NFL is watched by 66% of LSVs, followed by Summer Olympics (59%) and NBA basketball (59%). On smartphones, NFL is watched by 70% of LSVs, then NBA (59%) and college basketball (52%). On tablets NFL is at 67%, followed by NBA (62%) and major league baseball (61%).

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