VideoNuze Posts

I'm pleased to be joined once again by Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group, for the 144th edition of the VideoNuze-TDG Report podcast. In this week's podcast Colin and I first discuss Google's recently-announced changes to how its search results are determined. Google will now factor in instances of copyright infringement to demote bad actors in its results. Colin sees the change as due to Google's interest in deepening relationships with Hollywood, where YouTube's business is increasingly pointing. However, there has been some dispute about just how much impact Google's change will have on results in YouTube.

Next up we discuss the idea of Apple building set-top boxes for the cable TV industry, which the WSJ wrote about yesterday. I add some further detail to my post ("Apple to Make Cable Set-Top Boxes? Not. Going. To. Happen.") which Colin mostly agrees with, however noting that Apple could add real value to cable's anemic VOD navigation. It's been fun to read all the coverage of the Apple-cable development; I'm clearly among the strongest skeptics. Perhaps I'm missing something big here, though I don't think so. Listen in to learn more!


Click here to listen to the podcast (19 minutes, 53 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

The VideoNuze-TDG Report podcast is available in iTunes...subscribe today!

(as noted in the podcast, we were each using new microphones this week and Colin's audio setting is a little low; we'll adjust next week)

At the VideoNuze Online Video Advertising Summit in June, we had a great panel on best practices in online video advertising, which included Darren Feher, President and CEO of Conviva, Beth Lawrence, EVP, Ad Sales, The Weather Channel, Ravi Pahilajani, Associate Media Director, Razorfish, Aleck Schleider, VP Product Vertical, Videology and moderated by Larry Thomas of Latergy.

The session video is embedded below:

The Wall Street Journal's lead story this morning is that Apple is meeting with large U.S. cable operators about building an Apple set-top box that would deliver cable programming and other content. Typical of all rumors relating to Apple, no credible source is cited (just "people familiar with the matter") and an Apple spokesman declines to comment. My take on this? Barring cable industry executives taking complete leave of their senses, the likelihood of this actually happening is next to zero.

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Since Q2 '11, when the pay-TV industry lost video subscribers for the first time, there has been a debate raging over the impact of "cord-cutting." Flash forward a year, and anyone hoping for some clarity on this critical question would arguably be even more confused. Read certain media coverage of the pay-TV industry's Q2 '12 results and you'd conclude cord-cutting was gaining traction; read others and you'd conclude it wasn't. A key reason for the murkiness: somehow over the past year the definition of "cord-cutting" has become very squishy.

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NBC was justifiably crowing late yesterday that the London Olympics was the most-watched TV event in U.S. history with 219.4 million viewers, but a more profound long-term takeaway from this year's games is that digital distribution of most of the competitions did not seem to hurt tape-delayed on-air viewing at all.

That was not a foregone conclusion, and given the billions in broadcast rights fees it paid, NBC made a sizable bet that with most competitions live-streamed and available on-demand, audiences would still tune in during ad-rich, prime-time hours, despite already knowing (or having seen) the results. The impact of digital distribution could have gone wrong, driving lower prime-time ratings, creating disgruntled advertisers and embarrassing NBC Sports executives. The fact that it didn't buttresses the argument that for sports in particular, digital delivery is a compliment, not a substitute, for on-air.

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Visible Measures, which provides video analytics and operates the Viewable Media video ad network, has raised another $21.5 million, led by DAG Ventures and including existing investors. The funds will be used to drive adoption of the company's products.

Visible Measures' CEO Brian Shin said that the company will achieve 300% revenue growth in 2012, for the second year in a row. That strong growth is aided by the April, 2011 launch of Viewable Media, the company's video ad network that is based on its core analytics platform. Viewable Media differentiates itself as performance-based and positions video ads as content that users can choose from on publishers' web pages. The company said that over one hundred brands and agencies have adopted Viewable Media since launch.

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Six months in the making, HuffPo Live has launched this morning, seeking to define a new online programming format at the intersection of live-streaming video, news coverage and community involvement. Unlike other news outlets that have primarily relied on re-purposing on-air broadcasts, or on creating online segments featuring their own reporters, HuffPo Live is looking to transform its huge base of active readers/commenters into participants in live-streamed, topical discussions. As a result, HuffPo Live is being positioned as not just a "video network," but more broadly as a "platform for engagement."

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I'm pleased to be joined once again by Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group, for the 143rd edition of the VideoNuze-TDG Report podcast. In this week's podcast Colin and I discuss the prospects for Google Fiber, and specifically whether incumbent pay-TV operators and broadband ISPs should be "very, very afraid," as a report from industry analyst SNL Kagan asserted earlier this week.

Google's innovative spirit and willingness to spend heavily on Google Fiber is terrific, but as I said last week, I think its big challenge will be penetrating beyond a core early adopter audience. While uncapped gigabit broadband service is indeed compelling, more mainstream audiences will weigh its benefits against the costs of its missing features, being a guinea pig for an unproven service and increasing their monthly bills for TV and phone service, among other things.

In a sense, Google Fiber feels to me a little bit like Time Warner's Full Service Network pilot in Orlando in the mid-90's, with its high deployment costs, disruptive innovation, untested consumer premise equipment, lack of scalability and massive hype. That's not to say Google Fiber will end up like FSN as a complete flameout, but it's still not clear to me what the real impact of the project is going to be. I think incumbent operators need to be vigilant, but there's no real cause for fright, at least not yet anyway. Colin is a bit more bullish on Google Fiber, though I suspect that's because he's so enticed by the idea of a having a gigabit connection himself (being the early adopter that he is!).

Click here to listen to the podcast (20 minutes, 2 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

The VideoNuze-TDG Report podcast is available in iTunes...subscribe today!