VideoNuze Posts

I'm pleased to present the 205th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Colin is in London this week and shares observations on the intense battle for broadband subscribers in the U.K. BT has been aggressively laying fiber in a bid for broadband subscribers. It recently spent about 1.4  billion pounds on soccer rights to supply its BT Sport channels. Colin says BT has seen lift in both broadband and pay-TV subscribers as a result. One wonders whether Google could try something similar here in the U.S. by bidding for NFL and other rights somewhere down the road?

Speaking of the NFL, it and Major League Baseball were in the news this week for filing a brief with the Supreme Court urging review of broadcasters' challenge to Aereo. The leagues basically asserted that if Aereo is deemed legal, more of their games will migrate to cable, which of course has been happening anyway. Meanwhile Aereo's lead investor Barry Diller said this week he could see a 35% adoption rate for Aereo long-term, primarily driven by millennials. This would be hugely disruptive if it were to happen.

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There are all kinds of videos available online these days, but, according to a recent survey by the NY Times Consumer Insights Group, those that entertain are still the most popular for frequent viewers. 78% of survey respondents who watch online video several times per month cited "entertains me/enjoyable" as the reason they watch online video, followed by "makes me laugh" (71%). In third place was "learn something new" (64%).

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Content recommendation provider Taboola, which I've been tracking since its early days, is now on a $100 million annual revenue run rate, according to co-founder and CEO Adam Singolda, whom I spoke to yesterday. It's the first time Taboola has revealed its revenue profile, and Adam also said the company has also been cash flow positive for several months.

Taboola got its start helping content providers generate more video views on their sites by analyzing their own videos and the sites' users' behaviors and then adding a strip of recommended videos to help recirculate traffic. It then expanded by providing those recommendations to an ever-growing publisher network. In December, 2011, it applied the same underlying predictive technology to article recommendations and also began distributing these through its network. Adam said there are now over 1 million articles and videos, which are recommended 3 billion times/day.

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Premium video is being more widely distributed over IP networks due to TV Everywhere initiatives. While this means improved viewer satisfaction and new revenue for pay-TV operators, it also means dramatically higher risks of piracy. It's an issue I hear about often and am constantly trying to understand better. A new white paper from software provider Civolution does a nice job of describing the issues and framing potential solutions. It is available for free download here.

According to a recently released study by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and Nielsen, multi-screen advertising will grow from 20% of advertisers' budgets today to nearly 50% in the next three years. While 48% of respondents said they believe multi-screen campaigns are very important in effectively delivering marketing messages, almost twice as many (88%) believe that these types of campaigns will be very important in three years. 

One of the biggest issues for multi-screen advertising is measurement due to a huge gap between existing measurement approaches and how respondents would prefer to measure integrated multi-screen campaigns. 71% of survey respondents said they use a variety of metrics specific to individual screens, but 73% said they would prefer to use just one set of metrics across all screens.

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The all important holiday shopping season is about to kick off for retailers, and as always, consumers will be deluged with offers. This year, to distinguish its promotions and drive sales, Toys R Us is using a video ad solution dubbed "Black Friday Booster" from video ad tech provider Eyeview to deliver personalized deals to individual customers. On Friday, Oren Harnevo, Eyeview's CEO and co-founder, shared more about Black Friday Booster and how local retailers benefit.

Black Friday Booster builds on Eyeview's core capability of personalizing video ads at scale. To create the Toys R Us campaigns, Eyeview uses 3rd party data from various sources, offline purchase data from providers like Neustar and Datalogix, plus its own local geographic data to configure specific ads for viewers. The ads not only contain the promotional offers, but the specific location of closest store(s). Oren said other retailers will also be using the Black Friday Booster solution this holiday season but he wasn't able to share specific names.

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There's still time to buy tickets for VideoSchmooze: Online Video Leadership Forum, on Tues. morning, Dec. 3rd in NYC. Individual tickets are $135, but you can save with 5-packs for $575 and 10-packs for $1,000.

A highlight of this 10th VideoSchmooze will be our opening session with two of the best video analysts around - Craig Moffett from MoffettNathanson LLC and Bruce Leichtman from Leichtman Research Group. I've known Craig and Bruce for years and they are both walking encyclopedias of insights/data about the video industry and consumers' changing viewing behaviors. It's a privilege to have them together and I'm confident it will be an extremely high-impact 50 minutes drilling into what's really happening in the video ecosystem.

Our subsequent sessions will cover all of the hottest areas in online video today such as OTT, TV Everywhere, cord-cutting, mobile video, devices, online video advertising, online originals and much more.

Tons of great executives from companies throughout the ecosystem are already registered, ensuring this VideoSchmooze will be a fantastic learning and networking opportunity.

The lead sponsors for this 10th VideoSchmooze are FreeWheel, Synacor, thePlatform and Undertone, with branding sponsors Clearleap, Unicorn Media and VideoHub. I look forward to seeing you at VideoSchmooze on Dec. 3rd!

LEARN MORE AND REGISTER NOW!
 

I'm pleased to present the 204th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

We start off this week discussing the latest Hulu rumor, that it is seeking a closer alignment with pay-TV operators for Hulu Plus. Colin and I both like the possibilities here, though we recognize numerous obstacles. From a user experience standpoint, the idea of finding all of a TV show's episodes in one place - from pilot to last night's -resonates with me and would be a huge step forward from today's silo'd worlds of SVOD/OTT and VOD/TV Everywhere.

Colin points out too that Hulu's owners are already key programming suppliers to pay-TV operators, giving Hulu a better shot at partnering than, say Netflix, has. Last but hardly least, Hulu's new CEO Mike Hopkins most recently ran distribution for Fox Networks, so his expertise is perfect for figuring out how to get Hulu Plus carriage with pay-TV operators.

We then shift to discussing the launch today, of Amazon Studios' first original, "Alpha House" starring John Goodman. While we're uncertain about its critical reception, we do believe that, given originals' strategic role supporting Prime, it's the first step of an aggressive agenda. Amazon is cleverly combining data, wisdom of the crowds and traditional TV skills to select which originals to pursue.

Listen in the learn more!

Click here to listen to the podcast (18 minutes, 42 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!