VideoNuze Posts

The 6th annual VideoNuze Online Video Advertising Summit in NYC is coming up next Tuesday, June 14th, with over 400 executives from throughout the ecosystem already signed up to attend, once again making the event a premier day of networking.

The program is also now finalized, with 50 speakers appearing on 13 sessions including keynote interviews, fireside chats, panel discussions and presentations that cover the most important topics in online video. A ton of hard work has gone into curating the program and optimizing each session’s particular focus. All of this means that the Video Ad Summit will be a top-notch day of learning for all attendees.

The conference’s over-arching theme is the convergence between online video and TV. Two sessions to highlight will occur in the morning. The first, “Reaching Audiences at Scale: Will TV Succeed in the Digital Age” will examine the fast-changing landscape for TV advertising, with major competitors like YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat and others offering advertisers unprecedented scale (see today’s WSJ interview with YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki for more). Lorne Brown, founder and CEO of Operative (who’s also leading the NAB’s Digital Committee) will moderate, with Adam Gerber (ABC), Mike Germano (VICE Media), Melissa Kihara (Xaxis) and Bob Toohey (Verizon Digital Media) participating.

Then, following the morning break, the next session, “Optimizing Video Ad Targeting Through Data and Analysis” will dig deeply into how TV networks are investing heavily in data to enable their inventory to be more targeted and valuable. The session will also explore how networks are enabling holistic, targeted campaigns across their TV and online video properties, and across devices. Mike Chapman, Managing Director at Accenture Strategy (who co-authored the ABC study on TV advertising ROI, released during this year’s upfronts) will moderate, with Gabe Bevilacqua (Viacom), Denise Colella (NBCU), David Ernst (Discovery), Mark Gall (Alphonso) and Vikram Somaya (ESPN) participating.

Together, these sessions are going to provide fantastic insights into the intersection of TV and video advertising and what TV networks, as the biggest source of premium programming online, are doing to remain competitive.

Learn more about the Video Ad Summit and register now!

Cisco has released the 11th edition of its Visual Networking Index (VNI), forecasting that video will account for 85% of North American Internet traffic by 2020, the highest of any geographic area. Video traffic in North America will grow at a compound annual rate of 21%.

Globally, video-related traffic will account for 82% of Internet data, up from 70% in 2015. In a briefing, Thomas Barnett, who oversees the VNI, characterized video as the “king of all content.” In fact, video dwarfs every other Internet application, with the second biggest - web/data usage - representing just 14.4% of traffic in 2020, a fraction of video’s 82%.

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Seeking to further educate the market about the benefits of outstream video advertising, ad tech provider Teads has unveiled a first-of-its-kind programmatic outstream accreditation program for ad agencies and trading desks.

Teads was a pioneer in outstream ads, which are video ads that play against non-video inventory. Given the high expense of creating premium video content and its scarcity, outstream ads have become a hugely popular way for premium publishers to monetize their content.

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I'm pleased to present the 325th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

It’s been nearly 5 years since the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson was published, in which Jobs said “I finally cracked it,” referencing a next-generation TV he envisioned. But despite incessant rumors since of Apple’s plans to reinvent TV, the reality is more sobering: Apple seems to be completely stymied in video and TV.

Sure, there’s iTunes and there’s a new Apple TV, which appears to be selling reasonably well, and soon an original TV show. But when you consider how Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, Comcast, Snapchat and others have innovated and flourished in video and TV over the last 5 years, Apple’s progress seems pretty modest by comparison.

In today’s podcast we explore why Apple seems to have become an also-ran in video. We’re both surprised at this turn of events given Apple’s vast resources, superior design capabilities and omnipresent devices (see more of Colin’s thoughts here). Perhaps the famously secretive Apple has a video surprise just ahead, but from our current vantage point, Apple looks like it will just continue to fade further behind the leaders.

Listen now to learn more!

Click here to listen to the podcast (23 minutes, 5 seconds)

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The VideoNuze podcast is also available in iTunes...subscribe today! (note the link has been updated)

New research from GfK shows that SVOD services may be hitting subscribers’ limit on willingness to pay, in turn crimping the potential for future rate increases. GfK found the average willingness to pay was $10.82/month for Netflix, $9.10/month for Amazon, $9.96/month for Hulu ad-free and $5.01 for Hulu ad-supported.

Adding to the pricing pressure, GfK also found that cost was the most important attribute in picking an SVOD service, cited by 75% of respondents. The second most cited attribute was “availability of specific programs” (69%) followed by “availability of new movies” (68%).

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Online video and TV advertising are converging as viewers increasingly watch long-form content - entertainment, news and sports - on multiple devices. How this convergence is actually happening and the key challenges that remain are a critical focus of our 6th annual VideoNuze Online Video Advertising Summit, coming up 2 weeks from today, on Tuesday, June 14th in NYC.

Two of our sessions will directly address convergence, one from the opportunities standpoint and the other from the challenges standpoint. Our opening session, “Convergence Realized: Why TV and Video are Now Inseparable” will set the stage for the day, by exploring strategic drivers behind convergence such as fragmenting viewership, advertisers’ interest in efficient, cross-platform campaigns, the unifying role of data, etc.

Videology’s Managing Director, North America Tim Castree will share a short presentation with the latest data, and then moderate a session with David Bickford (Head of TV Sales & Multi-Platform Group Director, Bloomberg Media), Jon Heller (Co-Founder and Co-CEO, FreeWheel), Nick Johnson (SVP, Digital Ad Sales Strategy, Turner Ad Sales) and Paul Williamson (Chief Investment Officer, Publicis Media Exchange - U.S.).

Even as the convergence opportunities are sizable, so too are the challenges, with many moving pieces, manual inefficiencies and disjointed workflows. So the afternoon companion session, “How to Move Video Ads at the Speed of Today,” will dig into these and other challenges, as well as explore current solutions.

The session is moderated by Prohaska Consulting’s Steve Grubbs and includes Peter Olsen (EVP, National Ad Sales, A+E Networks), John Roland (CEO and Co-Founder, Extreme Reach) and Mitch Weinstein (SVP, Director of Ad Operations, IPG Mediabrands). Expect to come away from both sessions with an improved understanding of how convergence is playing out and what still needs to be done.

In addition, there are 11 other sessions planned at the Video Ad Summit, which features 50 speakers in total. All of the most important industry topics will be explored, with convergence as the over-arching theme.

Review the whole program and register now!

I'm pleased to present the 324th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Earlier this week provided a synopsis of a fascinating article in Vulture describing the massive changes that big SVOD providers have brought to the TV production business. The most startling statistic is that the number of scripted TV shows has soared from 36 in 2005 to over 400 in 2015.

In today’s podcast we discuss the consequences of this explosion and speculate on whether all of this is sustainable, or whether a bubble has been created, and if so, what might cause it to burst. Colin is more optimistic that current production volumes can continue, while I’m more skeptical simply because SVOD business models are still in flux.

Another dimension to the value of more TV shows is how important both stacking rights for current seasons and access to back catalogs are becoming for the existing ecosystem. With VOD, binge-viewing and time-shifting all on the rise, there appears to be an emerging consensus on broader availability of TV shows. We explore all of this as well.

Listen now to learn more!

Click here to listen to the podcast (23 minutes, 1 second)

Click here for previous podcasts

Click here to add the podcast feed to your RSS reader.

The VideoNuze podcast is also available in iTunes...subscribe today! (note the link has been updated)