VideoNuze Posts

Connected TVs and set-top box delivered VOD now account for 49% of ad views on premium video, according to FreeWheel’s Video Monetization Report for Q2 ’17. That’s a small bump from the combined 48% they accounted for in Q1 ’17, but a huge increase from the combined 1% back in Q2 ’13.

In Q2 ’17, connected TVs drove 29% of ad views, up from 23% in Q2 ’16 while STBs drove 20% of ad views up from 17% a year earlier. Coincidentally, Roku, which has the largest share of the connected TV market and priced its initial public yesterday, has said that advertising and other “platform revenues” will be critical to its growth going forward.

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TiVo has released its Q2 ’17 Video Trends Report, finding among other things that satisfaction with the value of pay-TV among subscribers noticeably increased over the prior quarter even as price remains a major concern, and a driver of cord-cutting.

TiVo found that 31.2% of subscribers said they’re “very satisfied” with the value of their pay-TV service, up 7.5 percentage points vs. Q1 ’17 and 11.6 percentage points over the past 2 years. Another 52.9% of subscribers said they’re “satisfied,” roughly flat with Q1 ’17. Respondents saying they’re “unsatisfied” dropped 6.9 percentage points vs. the prior quarter to 15.9%.

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NBCU is enabling clients to buy national TV ads using a self-serve programmatic TV approach. The new private market arrangement is powered by technology provider 4C. NBCU already works with AOL, TubeMogul and Videology to enabling programmatic buying of its ad inventory. The first client using the self-service approach is Target, which will be able to meld its first-party customer data with NBCU’s own audience data to target certain viewers with ads.

Target’s agency of record is GroupM’s Essence, which is where Adam Gerber, formerly SVP of Client Development and  Communications at ABC, was recently appointed SVP of Investment for North America.

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PeopleTV is aggressively pursuing its ad-free, OTT strategy by leveraging its well-known People brand, deep intellectual property and innovative original programming. PeopleTV is the new brand for the People/Entertainment Weekly (PEN) brand that was launched a year ago. Susanne Mei, PeopleTV’s GM, told me in a briefing that “PEN” didn’t have any inherent meaning to its target audiences, so to simplify things, the network has adopted the PeopleTV brand though ET content will remain integral to the content strategy.

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I’m pleased to present the 388th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Colin was at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC) in Amsterdam for much of the past week and on today’s podcast he shares some of his top observations. These include how TV networks are moving online, how blended subscription/ad-supported business models are being used, and the role of artificial intelligence, among others.

We then shift to review recent research I’ve written about (here and here) from Adobe, Limelight and Pew quantifying how younger viewers are embracing streaming services at the expense of pay-TV. Of course this isn’t a new trend, but it is clearly accelerating.

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Can an entertainment-centric skinny bundle succeed? That question will be answered soon when a new service including TV networks from Discovery, Viacom, AMC, A+E and Scripps launches, according to a recent WSJ report. The service will be called “Philo” which is the same name as the technology provider that will power it.

Skinny bundles have received a huge amount of attention over the past couple of years as a lower cost approach the pay-TV industry is using to retain would-be cord-cutters. However, skinny bundles have faced the vexing question of whether to include expensive sports networks in their offers, which in turn pressure already minuscule profit margins.

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A new survey from SintecMedia indicates that a majority of TV executives believe their organizations are either not well prepared to sell advanced TV and digital video ads in one streamlined process (35%), or aren’t sure about their ability to do so (29%). Conversely 41% felt that their organizations are very well prepared to do so.

The new data comes as viewers, especially younger ones, are shifting their consumption to online in record numbers. Consequently, the need to reach audiences across screens, however they may be watching, is critical. That a combined 64% of executives are either not sure or not confident in their ability to sell cross screen ads in a streamlined manner is a worrisome data point.

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