VideoNuze Posts

I’m posting this week’s VideoNuze podcast a day early as the first segment focuses on the new Apple TV, which was introduced yesterday.

Colin and I both see the new Apple TV as solid, but not spectacular. In many ways, it’s just catching up to what other devices have been offering: voice search, search across apps and gaming capabilities. The latter could ultimately be Apple TV’s big differentiator if Apple’s legion of developers take advantage of the new “tvOS” operating system SDK to create breakthrough new gaming experiences. We were both intrigued by the new remote with swipe capability, as well.

We then turn our attention to Netflix’s anti-downloading stance, which I dug into yesterday. I find it both perplexing and frustrating, with the company’s explanation not adding up. Colin isn’t initially as convinced as I am that downloading is a killer app, though with a 10-hour flight to Amsterdam today, he’s beginning to realize how much value it would have.
 
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Teads has reported that revenue from its programmatic outstream video ads grew 300% in January-August 2015 vs. the same 8 month period in 2014. Outstream video ads are inserted in text and other content and play when in view by the user. As such, outstream opens up huge new volumes of ad inventory for publishers who don’t have to create expensive video content tin order to access video ad demand.

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It’s been 4 years since Netflix’s “Qwikster” fiasco, in which the company infamously tried to separate its DVD business, eliciting emphatic objections from its subscribers. Netflix offered implausible explanations for its move and ultimately reversed itself. Since then the company has executed flawlessly, expanding its content, extending its international footprint, watching its stock price soar and most importantly, winning back the love of its subscribers.

Thus it is perplexing and frustrating to see Netflix oppose the idea of enabling its content to be downloaded for offline viewing, as an augment to streaming it. Reminiscent of Qwikster, Netflix is offering up bizarre and non-sensical explanations for opposing the download feature that it readily admits its subscribers are hungry for. Further, with Amazon’s expansion of Prime Video downloading to iOS and Android devices last week, it also appears to be a new competitive lever among SVOD providers.

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Last Friday Adobe released its U.S. Digital Video Benchmark for Q2 ’15, showing, among other things, surprisingly stagnant adoption of TV Everywhere over the past 4 quarters. According to Adobe, active viewership of TVE among pay-TV viewers stood at 12.7%, exactly the same rate as in Q3 ’14 (and down a bit from 13.2% in Q1 ’15). However, the Q2 ’15 rate of 12.7% was 19% higher than the 10.7% rate Adobe recorded in Q2 ’14.

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Videology and Nielsen released a case study showing a 6x improvement in brand lift for a group of 9 CPG campaigns as compared with Nielsen’s normative scores from thousands of campaigns using the Nielsen Digital Brand Effect platform. Videology integrated the platform into its player in order to measure the 9 campaigns’ brand lift.

Videology believes better targeting, optimization and fraud protection, at scale, drove the improved results. Videology used an integration with White Ops fraud detection to filter bots and other non-human traffic. It also relied on data from 40 different providers for accurate targeting and enhanced optimization.

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Yesterday pay-TV network EPIX announced a multi-year distribution deal with Hulu that will kick in on October 1st, as EPIX’s current deal with Netflix phases out.

Perhaps most noteworthy here is that in the current Wild West environment where everyone and their brother are launching standalone SVOD services, EPIX has remained disciplined in choosing to instead team up with a large SVOD player (EPIX has a separate SVOD deal with Amazon dating to 2012 as well).

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