VideoNuze Posts

Microsoft will close down its Xbox Entertainment Studios (XES) as part of a broader, 18,000 employee headcount reduction it has announced. I, for one, am not surprised by this outcome. A year-and-a-half ago, at the D: Dive Into Media conference, I watched an interview with Nancy Tellem, head of XES (and former head of CBS Entertainment) and Yusuf Mehdi, Xbox's chief marketing and strategy officer, that left me wondering whether the company really understood what role it wanted original programming to play or how it would be differentiated.

Basic questions on whether originals would be included in the current subscription service or cost extra, whether they would be ad-free or ad-supported, exclusive to Xbox or available elsewhere and more were essentially left unanswered, creating a very unfocused vibe. But, since it was still relatively early days for XES, I was inclined to cut them some slack.

continue reading

Connecting with consumers has become harder than ever for brands. Fortunately, online video has opened up a whole new opportunity for brands to act more like publishers than advertisers, doing more storytelling than just advertising. A prime example of a brand that recognized this and developed a winning branded entertainment strategy is Quiznos, which launched "Toasty.TV," a destination for original and curated video.

Toasty.TV hit it big with its first original video, "House of Thrones," a hilarious mashup between Netflix's "House of Cards" and HBO's "Game of Thrones" generating almost 1.6 million views to date. In this case study presented at the recent Video Ad Summit, Quiznos' VP of Advertising and Marketing Chris Ruszkowski and agency partner Moz Miraba from Windowseat, detail the strategy behind Toasty.TV, how it reached its core millennial audience and the specific results it has driven.

watch the case study

Watching online video on connected TVs is now completely mainstream, as evidenced by Hulu noting that 62% of its views are on connected TVs. This powerful trend makes delivering immersive HTML5 video ad experiences to connected TVs and pay-TV set-top boxes an imperative for advertisers to accomplish their reach and frequency goals.

At the recent Video Ad Summit, Active Video demo'd how they're solving this problem, by rendering ads in the cloud and then delivering them - with full interactivity - to any type of set-top box. In the demo, ads from American Express and L'Oreal illustrate how it works. The Active Video presentation followed one by Quiznos, showcasing their "Toasty.TV" campaign, which would be a perfect fit for a living room experience.

watch the demo

Sling Media has introduced 2 new boxes, the "M1" (which replaces the prior 350 model) and the "SlingTV" (which replaces the prior 500 model). In my opinion, the former, priced at $150, is the more intriguing of the two, as it represents a renewed push by Sling to establish a market for a dedicated TV Everywhere appliance (i.e. a device dedicated solely to extending a pay-TV subscriber's access to live and recorded content).

I don't believe there's any other product in the market that is as narrowly focused on this opportunity as the M1 is. With the M1, Sling is basically echoing the pay-TV industry's strategy for giving subscribers remote, mobile device-based access to their programming. But with pay-TV operators and networks themselves rolling out TV Everywhere apps themselves (e.g. HBO GO, WatchESPN, etc.), it's logical to ask why anyone would feel compelled to buy an M1.

continue reading

Nielsen is touting momentum for its mobile Online Campaign Ratings (OCR), citing adoption by over 20 different agencies, content providers and video ad platforms including Adap.tv, AdColony, BrightRoll, Collective, Defy Media, Digitas LBi, Drawbridge, Evolve Media, Freewheel, GroupM, Innovid, LiveRail, Lotame, Rocket Fuel, Rhythm NewMedia, Torrential, Tremor Video, TubeMogul, Twitch, Vdopia, Verve, Videology and YuMe.

continue reading

At the recent Video Ad Summit, I sat down with Rahul Chopra, News Corp's SVP/global head of video and Chief Revenue Officer of Storyful, which was recently acquired. Rahul has been a key executive behind the Wall Street Journal's highly successful online video strategy and implementation.

As Rahul explains, the Journal is now producing 150 hours of video per month, delivering 50 million streams across 35 different platforms. Content is created from every one of its international bureaus, which is released and promoted on a 24-hour cycle to match audience interests.

From an ad sales perspective, Rahul details how video is now part of a holistic go-to-market approach which advertisers are responding to. Inventory has been sold out for a long time and CPM are still rising and are very strong (Rahul would only share the numbers with me privately, but they are eye-popping).

watch the video

Get beyond the standard headlines by attending the 2014 Reel Video Summit, which will be held July 24-25 at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco.

The ReelSummit brings together hundreds of executives from brands, agencies, content providers and technology companies. For example, this year’s keynote speakers include:

Jim Louderback, General Manager of Discovery Digital Networks;

Jeroen “JW” Wijering, creator of the incredibly successful JW Media Players;

Jonathan Perelman, GM of Video & VP Agency Strategy at BuzzFeed;

Jon Klaff, Head of Media Solutions, Brand Activation Team at Google/YouTube.

This year’s Reel Video Summit schedule has been expanded to a two-day summit featuring insights from the foremost influencers in video marketing, video advertising, and video analytics/results. Attendees can expect candid discussion from leading experts about how they’re succeeding and the key challenges that remain.

continue reading

One of our early sessions at the recent Video Ad Summit was "TV is Video, But is Video TV?" which included Doug Knopper (Co-CEO, FreeWheel), Peter Naylor (SVP, Ad Sales, Hulu), Fred Santarpia (EVP, Chief Digital Officer, Conde Nast Entertainment) and Dan Suratt (EVP, Digital Media and Business Development, A+E Networks), with me moderating.

The question is highly relevant as it influences how ad spending will evolve and how pay-TV's value proposition will be perceived given the proliferation of online originals. Our panelists offer a range of perspectives, with some consensus that if it's long-form, high-quality, rights-managed and brand-safe online video, there's no practical difference vs. TV. One data point that Peter shares - that 62% of Hulu's content is now viewed on connected TV devices - underscores how mainstream online video viewing has become.

watch the session video