VideoNuze Posts

Underscoring once again how unpredictable the online video space is, Twitter has emerged as the unlikely winner of the rights to stream NFL Thursday Night Football (TNF) games for the 2016-2017 season. Just yesterday I wrote that with Facebook and Apple bowing out, the bidding likely came down to Amazon, Verizon and Google, with Verizon the most likely winner for a variety of reasons.

On the one hand, Twitter’s interest in streaming the TNF games makes sense, as recently returned CEO Jack Dorsey has publicly stated that a top 2016 priority is live streaming, including leveraging its Periscope product. The 10 TNF games give Twitter a marquee property to highlight live streaming, which complements Twitter activity around all games. And Twitter already had a deal in place with the NFL for highlight clips.

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Late Friday afternoon, Bloomberg reported that Facebook had dropped out of the bidding for streaming rights to the NFL’s Thursday night package. That news followed Recode’s report from last month that Apple had also withdrawn. With two of the most likely candidates now gone, the only digital players remaining who are both big enough to afford the deal and for whom it potentially makes enough strategic sense are likely Verizon, Google and Amazon (I’m excluding Yahoo since its own instability almost certainly precludes a bid).

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Integral Ad Science will provide its video viewability targeting segments to AudienceScience for inclusion in the company’s Helios Advertising Enterprise Advertising Software, the companies announced today. AudienceScience clients will be able to build campaigns that include specific video viewability levels based on Integral Ad Science’s data.

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I'm pleased to present the 316th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

It seems like a week doesn’t go by these days without a new SVOD service being announced or launched. For example, this week Fullscreen said it would launch its “fullscreen” SVOD service on April 26th, while comedian Kevin Hart and Lionsgate announced a new video/games service.

In today’s podcast, Colin and I discuss these ventures, as well as Redbox’s planned SVOD service, NBCU’s Hayu (“hey you”) reality SVOD startup, Cinedigm’s CONtv, Vessel and YouTube Red, all in the context of the crowded SVOD landscape.

We’re both convinced that ultimately viewers won’t subscribe to more than a handful of SVOD services, meaning many of these new ventures won’t ever achieve scale. To support our SVOD analysis, we use the framework I posted a year ago with 9 key criteria. I continue to believe it is a valuable tool to add rigor when comparing services.

Listen now to learn more!

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Another day, another new SVOD service. Yesterday, Fullscreen said that April 26th would be the launch date for its “fullscreen” $4.99/month ad-free SVOD service which had been teased last fall. Fullscreen is targeting 13-30 year-olds with 800+ hours of content that will include films plus scripted and unscripted online originals and exclusives from YouTube stars like Grace Helbig, Shane Dawson, Hannah Hart and Jack & Dean.

Like Vessel and YouTube Red, two other SVOD services based on exclusive or windowed YouTube creator content, fullscreen is another test case for millennials’ willingness-to-pay for content that they’re long accustomed to getting for free (putting aside the differentiators of earlier access and exclusivity).

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The program for the 2nd annual NABShow Online Video Conference on April 18th and 19th in Las Vegas, which VideoNuze is producing, is now complete and features 50 speakers participating on 14 different sessions.

Our day 1 keynote speaker is Neal Mohan, YouTube’s Chief Product Officer and SVP, Google, who will discuss the company’s future in virtual reality, mobile and putting content in context. Our day 2 keynote is Michael Paull, VP, Digital Video at Amazon, who I will interview about the company’s video strategy, OTT industry trends and its recently launched Streaming Partners Program.

In addition to these 2 sessions, we’ll have new research presented by Brett Sappington of Parks Associates on OTT adoption and churn and Howard Horowitz of Horowitz Research on the role of broadcast content in today’s multi-platform environment.

And we have dozens of other speakers from companies including Adobe, Akamai, AOL, BBC Digital, Brightcove, CBS Interactive, Comcast, Conde Nast, DataXu, Ellation, Facebook, Google, Gracenote, MLBAM, Operative, Roku, Synacor, Videology, Verizon, Vimeo, Whistle Sports and more.

It promises to be an action-packed program covering many of the hottest industry topics. You can save $100 on registration now by using this link. Don’t miss out, register now!

Online video advertising is booming but the vast majority of what we all see are still repurposed TV ads. That has created a huge new problem of monitoring and complying with the ads’ commercial usage rights. Non-compliance can result in significant fines from unions such as SAG-AFTRA, ACTRA and others that represent talent who appear in ads.

To address this growing problem, video ad tech provider Extreme Reach launched TRUST Tags (Talent and Rights Usage Safety Tracking) last August. Extreme Reach’s CEO John Roland told me in a recent briefing that over 180 agencies and advertisers are now using the TRUST tag, which is free, and that the company has just launched its first ad campaign to raise awareness for TRUST.

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