VideoNuze Posts

What’s a viewer’s willingness to pay in order to have an ad-free video experience? The question is in focus yet again with yesterday’s announcement of YouTube Red, the company’s long-rumored $9.99/month ad-free service. Unfortunately for YouTube Red, in its case, willingness to pay is going to be heavily influenced by the fact that YouTube has arguably the most viewer (and advertiser) friendly video ad model, which will undoubtedly impact interest in paying for YouTube Red.

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Facebook is poised to dominate “social TV” according to a new report from The Diffusion Group, authored by veteran industry analyst Alan Wolk. Social TV is defined as using social media platforms to discuss, comment on, or enhance the television experience.

While Facebook’s importance grows, TDG sees Twitter’s role in social TV declining, though it is still significant today. Two main forces are at work: (1) a continued decline in live viewing, thereby making real-time platforms like Twitter less relevant and (2) a shift from fan-driven social TV activity to paid promotional placements by TV networks.

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AOL has released its 2015 U.S. State of the Video Industry report, finding, among other things, that 91% of media buyers surveyed said they’re now buying some of their online video ads programmatically, up from 53% in 2012. AOL found that 68% of advertisers have either brought programmatic video buying in-house or plan to next year. They’re doing so primarily to achieve greater buying efficiencies and because they’re skeptical of their agencies’ programmatic expertise.

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Magid has released new research commissioned by Watchwith finding that in-program native video ads have higher levels of unaided ad recall and improved brand metrics vs. traditional TV ads.

Watchwith recently unveiled the in-program native ad format which is an interactive overlay placed on a TV program streamed to a desktop, mobile device or connected TV. The ads can be contextually relevant to the underlying program itself using frame-by-frame metadata. Watchwith is positioning these ads as creating new, high-value inventory for TV networks to monetize their streamed TV programs.

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Looking to help publishers tap into high-CPM video advertising, 33Across has launched Real Video outstream and interstitial 15 and 30-second ad units, which can be run against text, image and other non-video inventory (see examples here). The units are sold programmatically and are 100% autoplay and viewable because they appear fully in view for a minimum of 5 seconds before a user is able to close and skip them.

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I'm pleased to present the 294th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Netflix reported its Q3 2015 earnings this week with overall subscriber growth pretty much in line with the company’s forecast. However, net U.S subscriber additions came in at 880K, which was 270K short of the 1.15 million forecast for Q3 this past July in the company’s Q2 earnings report.

It was the weakest Q3 U.S. subscriber growth since 2011, and continued a downward trend over the past 3 years (1.29 million in Q3 ’13, 980K in Q3 ’14). Netflix said gross subscriber additions in the U.S. were actually up year-over-year in Q3 ’15, and that the shortfall was due to “involuntary churn” caused by credit card companies issuing new chip-enabled cards with new account numbers which in turn caused a disruption in recurring billing.

While we have no reason to doubt the veracity of Netflix’s explanation, many analysts, including Colin and me, find it very murky. Credit card companies have pushed back on the rationale, and other recurring merchants have said they haven’t seen any similar problems. We share our concerns and raise the possibility that Netflix may be reaching the saturation point in the U.S. with slower growth ahead (Q4 results will go a long way to addressing this).

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