VideoNuze Posts

The latest evidence that wireless carriers will fuel a boom in unlimited mobile video viewing came this morning with AT&T announcing a new plan that gives new and existing AT&T wireless subscribers who already have or who add either DirecTV or U-Verse TV service unlimited video on their smartphone for $100/month. Options are available for adding more smartphones and tablets for additional fees. AT&T also said it was the “first of many integrated video and mobility offers the company plans to announce in 2016.”

Wireless carriers’ capped data plans have meant that subscribers needed to meticulously monitor their usage as they watched data-intensive video in order to avoid costly overage charges and also to aggressively search out WiFi hotspots. As wireless carriers have migrated to unlimited text and talk, data has become a key source of incremental, usage-based revenue.

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As wireless carriers ramp up promotion of unlimited data and video viewing, mobile is poised to account for a bigger share of video viewing. As a result, understanding how mobile video will be fully monetized is becoming a more critical topic. The recent SHIFT // 2015 Programmatic Video & TV Ad Summit featured a session on programmatic’s role in mobile video advertising.

As the panelists explained, programmatic is a really good fit for mobile in a lot of ways, including that mobile generates a lot of actionable data, mobile inventory can be volatile due to unexpected viral hits or weather events rendering traditional upfront sales sub-optimal, and that there’s a long tail of publishers that don’t necessarily have direct sales teams. The session explored all of these topics and others such as the technical challenges of delivering mobile programmatic video campaigns, the impact of VAST 4.0, how data is being used to drive improved campaign results and more.

The panelists included Jeremy Hlavacek (VP, Programmatic, The Weather Company), Brian Rifkin (Co-founder and SVP, Video Sales, JW Player), Chip Schenck – VP of Programmatic Sales and Strategy, Meredith), Frank Sinton (CEO, Beachfront Media) and Gavin Dunaway (Editor, US, AdMonsters) as moderator.

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I'm pleased to present the 305th edition of the VideoNuze podcast  and the first of 2016, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week we dig further into Netflix’s rollout to 130 additional countries and more specifically, the implications of its “content globalization” experiment that I wrote about yesterday. We discuss the pros and cons of the company’s “produce locally, distribute globally” approach. With Netflix’s viewer data, I continue to believe the company has a big opportunity to leverage its international reach in ways we’ve never seen before. It also has a potentially powerful competitive differentiator.

However, Colin points out a few gotchas, including that Netflix is only deploying in 20 languages, the single price of the Netflix global player means it will be very expensive in lower-wage countries and the risk that government censors in some countries may intervene given some of Netflix’s racier programming. These are all great points, and will make it even more interesting to see how the international expansion goes.

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In watching the press conference with Netflix’s CEO Reed Hastings and Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos that followed the company’s CES announcement yesterday that it was expanding to 130 additional countries, the most significant thing that struck me is that Netflix is pursuing the biggest-ever experiment in content globalization. Depending on the results, there will be profound implications for all players in the video value chain.

First, it’s important to clearly understand Netflix’s content globalization initiative. In the press conference, Hastings and Sarandos emphasized that the company’s focus is on investing in original content and retaining global distribution rights (this is a big departure from the “House of Cards” strategy where co-investors got the global rights in order for Netflix to mitigate its financial exposure).

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Eager to unlock the full value of their audiences, premium publishers are tapping into programmatic, using data and a variety of tools. At the recent SHIFT // 2015 Programmatic Video & TV Ad Summit we dedicated a session to exploring how this is all unfolding. Among the topics discussed was how programmatic aligns with direct sales, the evolving role of measurement, how to aggregate across all platforms and much more.

The session included Trent Anderson (Senior Director, Client Solutions, FreeWheel), Jason Barnett (Head of Programmatic, Teads.tv), Jason DeMarco (Director, Programmatic and Audience Solutions, A+E Networks) and Jana Meron (VP, Programmatic & Data Strategy, Business Insider), with Tim Hanlon (Managing Director, FTI Consulting) moderating. Follow the link below to watch the session video (31 minutes).

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Online video platform JW Player announced a $20 million Series D round today from existing investors Greycroft Growth, Greenspring Associates, Cueball Capital and e.ventures. JW Player’s CEO and co-founder Dave Otten told me that with the new round the company has raised a total of $46 million, though approximately $11 million of the Series C round was used to buy out prior shareholders.

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Yesterday, Variety broke the news that Yahoo has shut down its Yahoo Screen video site/app, dispersing its content throughout the broader Yahoo site. Yahoo Screen was a marquee initiative of company CEO Marissa Mayer, so its demise surely signals the end of Yahoo’s video ambitions. Despite Yahoo Screen’s stellar mobile design, it ultimately fell victim to a completely incoherent content strategy. Yahoo Screen’s failure provides lots of lessons for other video providers scrambling these days to find their place in an increasingly noisy landscape.

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Happy New Year and welcome to 2016. Changes in video advertising will continue to accelerate this year. To help understand the big themes and some of the particulars, I’m pleased to share videos of both keynote conversations from last month’s SHIFT // 2015 Programmatic Video & TV Ad Summit. The morning keynote guest was Donna Speciale, president of Turner Ad Sales (interviewed by Matt Prohaska) and the afternoon keynote guest was Lou Paskalis, SVP, Enterprise Media Executive, Bank of America (interviewed by Michael Kassan).

Each session is approximately 30 minutes, and I promise that watching them both is well worth an hour of your time, providing insights from both the buy and sell sides of video advertising. The big unifying themes are 1) Video/TV advertising is shifting to an audience-based approach, 2) Data and programmatic are enabling far more precise targeting, in turn driving up the value of viewer attention and ad inventory and 3) The viewer experience is poised to improve with fewer interruptions and more well-developed brand stories.

More specifically, Donna discusses, among other things, the extensive data investments that Turner is making, how advertisers and agencies are evolving to converge linear TV and digital buying, Turner’s plan to cut ad loads in half on truTV by Q4 ’16 and how to capitalize on mobile. Lou discussed, among other things, why mass advertising and the reach/frequency model is being replaced, the 3 biggest challenges facing marketers, how BofA is integrating data from across its business segments and why he believes GE is the most effective content marketer today.

Together, Donna’s and Lou’s insights provide an excellent strategic roadmap for where the industry is heading and what key challenges lie ahead. As you’re thinking about your 2016 priorities, I highly encourage you to watch their videos and learn from them.

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