VideoNuze Posts

Late yesterday, Fox retracted its $80 billion proposed acquisition of Time Warner. The combination of a recalcitrant Time Warner, falling Fox stock price and need to significantly sweeten the deal all clearly deterred Rupert Murdoch from further pursuit.

From my perspective, this is a good outcome for Fox. Why? Because the deal was mainly premised on certain key assumptions about the pay-TV business that, in reality, are unlikely to play out as Fox hopes. It was dubious that Fox was ready to pay $80 billion for Time Warner and not even gain any entry to new growth markets, but that was basically the case.

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Here's further evidence of video's rising importance for marketers seeking to build relationships with consumers: a survey of 1,000 American consumers and 500 marketers by Levels Beyond, a video content management provider, found that 59% of consumers are likely to watch a brand video when they visit a web site and 40% prefer watching a video vs. reading the same information. For millennials, 51% prefer watching a video to reading content.

As far as the types of video consumers like, 67% chose "how-to or instructional," followed by "comedy or spoofs" (42%), "product/informational" (34%), "micro-documentaries" (33%) and "animations/infographic videos" (30%).

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Late last week, Visible Measures released its quarterly Branded Video Report for Q2 '14, finding that branded videos were watched 2.8 billion times, an increase of over 50% vs. Q2 '13. The big driver of the record quarterly views was the World Cup, with videos related to it accounting for 19%, or almost 555 million of the views.

Nike was by far the biggest winner of World Cup related branded videos, with nearly 259 million True Reach views during the quarter, 84% of which were from its eight World Cup videos. Nike wasn't even an official World Cup sponsor, but its videos received 2.5x the 103.7 million views of adidas, which was the official sponsor and landed the brand in 3rd place for the quarter.

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I'm pleased to present the 237th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week we dive deep into the question of whether YouTube is indomitable or vulnerable to new competitors. Colin observes that the 45% revenue split YouTube keeps has opened the door for everyone from Vessel (former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar's startup) to Yahoo to others to approach YouTube stars about better deal terms. Major MCNs like Maker Studios (acquired by Disney) and Fullscreen (rumored to be acquired by Otter Media) are expanding beyond YouTube with their own properties.

However, I don't see much changing with the revenue split, except maybe the largest players getting improved terms. For both established and startup content providers, YouTube offers unparalleled audience reach, publishing tools and monetization. I offer a few examples as proof of YouTube's power: PewDiePie (which now has an astounding 29 million subscribers), Vice News (a pure YouTube news channel now able to take over the NYTimes.com's masthead ad) and Sorted Food (a British startup that has gained 870K+ subscribers on YouTube and now tops its Food category).

For all of these content providers and tons of others, YouTube provides an open, flexible distribution platform unlike anything before it in the media business. Ad splits will continue to be a bone of contention, but YouTube is poised to only get stronger going forward.

(Related, Colin has a complimentary new white paper on how to win and retain OTT customers available here.)

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European broadcast and entertainment giant RTL Group has bought a 65% stake in online video ad platform SpotXchange for $144 million, plus an earnout based on performance and an option to buy the remaining 35%. SpotXchange will continue to operate as an independent company, with CEO Mike Shehan saying that funds will be used to accelerate growth, particularly in Europe.

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Cloud-based online video publishing company thePlatform has partnered with Verizon Digital Media Services to help drive multi-screen video delivery for pay-TV operators and content providers. Under the deal, VDMS services have been integrated with thePlatform's mpx video management system, forming a solution that will be jointly sold. The primary benefit is streamlined online video workflow which can be managed from a unified console.

Key to the integration is Verizon's single-format video acquisition and distribution capability, which is primarily attributable to VDMS's acquisition of upLynk last November. upLynk enables content to be encoded one time, with the resulting adaptive stream working across all devices, thereby reducing complexity. upLynk complements the EdgeCast content delivery network which Verizon also acquired late last year.

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As devices continue to proliferate, reaching viewers across multiple screens is becoming an imperative for advertisers. At the recent Video Ad Summit, one of our sessions focused on how advertisers are beginning to do this and what challenges remain. Participants included Larry Adams (Mindshare), Josh Chasin (comScore), Rob Holmes (Comcast), Chuck Parker (Brightcove), Katie Seitz (Tremor), with moderator Jeff Lanctot (Mixpo).

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There's a ton of activity in programmatic ad buying against online video, which is now starting to reach TV inventory as well. In a session at the recent Video Ad Summit, Chris Smith, VP, Emerging Media at Turn and John Holmes, Partner at Sq1, explained how they are beginning to automate TV ad buying using programmatic tools and based on users' digital behaviors.

Chris and John presented 3 short case studies demonstrating how this works with cable and satellite operators, along with some of the results. While they both admit it's still very early days for programmatic TV, it's clearly a trend that's starting to develop.

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