VideoNuze Posts

It may be 155 years-old, but Macy's marketing approach is thoroughly modern, as the company has fully embraced mobile and digital technologies to drive its business. In a fireside chat at the VideoNuze 2012 Online Video Advertising Summit, Macy's SVP, Marketing Innovation and Integration, Joe Feczko explains how Macy's sees itself as an entertainment brand, and how it is pushing further into video and branded content.

One initiative in particular that has paid off is the use of QR codes linked to videos about products. Joe said usage has jumped from 15K during the test phase to 750K this past season. Macy's is also leveraging its relationships with celebrities and the new program "Fashion Star" for more interactivity with target customer segments. Joe provides a compelling look inside how an established brand is using all of today's technology tools to keep up with a changing retail landscape.

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The Viacom-DirecTV carriage dispute has taken another odd turn, as full, current episodes of The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert are once again available at their respective sites and at Hulu. Given that digital distribution and its effect on Viacom's networks' linear ratings is a core issue in the negotiations, and that last week Viacom removed some of its networks' show from the web, the renewed availability of Comedy Central's stars Stewart and Colbert are hard to understand.

In fact, if you want a good chuckle, see the screen grabs below - when each of last night's episodes play, there is a message across the bottom of the page that reads "DIRECTV HAS DROPPED COMEDY CENTRAL. DON'T MISS YOUR FAVORITE SHOWS. CALL DIRECTV AT 1-800-531-5000." Hello?? I'm not missing my favorite shows - I'm watching them right now online, just above this urgent message! And by the way, I'm getting them for free, just after they originally aired, and fully on-demand. Does this make sense to you? Right, me neither.

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One of the great visions of online video advertising is the ability to precisely target certain audiences with personalized ads. However, realizing that vision is not so simple given all the variables in play, plus the expense of generating custom creative. This is where Eyeview, a video ad technology provider, believes it has cracked the nut. At the recent VideoNuze 2012 Online Video Advertising Summit, Tal Riesenfeld, Eyeview's co-founder and VP of Business Development, presented on how Eyeview works and gave examples of successful recent campaigns for Mazda, Expedia and Ace Hardware that it has powered. It's a fascinating look at the future of online video advertising.

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One of the big side effects of the current Viacom-DirecTV and Dish-AMC carriage disputes has been a renewed questioning of the durability of the traditional multichannel TV bundle by many industry observers. But while outsiders and consumers may be looking for the pay-TV industry to reinvent the way it packages and prices its services,  attending the NECTA cable industry conference last Friday was yet another reminder of how committed the industry is to preserving the multichannel TV model.

To be fair, for many households (particularly heavy viewers), multichannel service is optimal and a great value. But consumers aren't monolithic, and it's time for the pay-TV industry to get real about multichannel's limits. Operators' main approach continues to be promoting an entry level tier of digital TV that has grown ever more expensive (moderator Bruce Leichtman pegs the mean monthly spending on multichannel TV service at $78.63, 7% higher than in 2011). This has, in turn, created a well-documented affordability issue for the industry.

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At the recent VideoNuze 2012 Online Video Advertising Summit, eMarketer's principal analyst David Hallerman presented data on the state of the online video advertising market. While bullish about its prospects for growth, one of David's clear message was that TV advertising isn't going away any time soon, and in fact the growth of ad dollars TV will experience over the next 5 years will actually be greater than online video's.

In David's presentation, he explains the key factors he believes will hinder or help online video's growth. No surprise, one of the most important is unified measurement. Overall, David sees online video advertising as being complimentary to TV advertising. At the end of the session I join him on stage for 10 minutes of Q&A.

Note: David's slides are available for download here.

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Back at the Cable Show, I got a demo of what has to be the coolest product (err, prototype) I've seen in a long while: "Surfaces," a wall-sized interactive TV created by pay-TV technology provider NDS. Consisting of six huge LCD screens, running entirely in a HTML5 on a Chrome browser with 4K resolution video and controlled via an iPad, Surfaces is unlike any TV experience you've ever seen.

In addition to recording the demo, I interviewed NDS' CTO Nick Thexton about the Surfaces prototype, when consumers might actually be able to buy one, and what NDS' goals were in creating it. It's a pretty remarkable glimpse into what TVs in the future could ultimately look like. Enjoy.

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I'm pleased to be joined once again by Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group, for the 139th edition of the VideoNuze-TDG Report podcast.

Breaking with tradition, we're posting this week's podcast a day early to share our thoughts on Aereo's big legal victory - the decision by U.S. District Judge Judith Nathan to deny the broadcast networks' request for a preliminary injunction to block Aereo's service. As Colin and I agree, though the broadcasters have promised to pursue an appeal, for now it's a very significant milestone for Aereo, as it validates the company's assertion that the Cablevision precedent should hold.  

Our discussion focuses on the ruling's implications. Certainly it opens up a whole new option for pay-TV operators to avoid paying hundreds of millions in retransmission consent fees by either partnering with Aereo or developing comparable technology (patent issues notwithstanding) to deliver broadcast programs. It also opens up opportunities for OTT providers to potentially beef up their services in partnership with Aereo. While Colin sees Aereo as offering some benefits for the broadcasters, I view the ruling as key setback to their strategy to develop a secondary revenue stream.

The ruling also comes in the context of two other significant developments - the decision by DirecTV to drop Viacom's networks and the news that Netflix's usage surpassed 1 billion hours in June. Both underscore the impact that evolving consumer behaviors are having on the relationship between pay-TV and online video delivery. The Aereo decision scrambles that dynamic even further. No question, we are living in very interesting times.

Listen in to hear all of the details.

Click here to listen to the podcast (23 minutes, 17 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

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

A new report being released today from London-based video ad technology provider Videoplaza, and research firm IHS Screen Digest adds to the case that broadcasters must diversify into IP-based delivery of their content to multiple devices in order to achieve continued growth. The report, "A Future for TV: IP-delivered Video Advertising in a Connected World" presents new data on adoption of connected devices by TV and PC households in North America and Western Europe, share of ads now being delivered by non-PC devices and video ad loads by device, among other data.

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