VideoNuze Posts

Welcome to the 546th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Comcast reported its Q4 and full year 2020 this week and as usual, the divergence between residential video and broadband subscribers was stark. Remarkably, Comcast now has nearly 10 million more residential broadband subscribers (28.3 million) than residential video subscribers (18.9 million). The pandemic furthered the divergence, with 1.9 million broadband subscribers added in 2020 (up 47% vs. 2019) while video subscribers declined by 1.3 million (nearly double the 671K lost in 2019).

Broadband has been Comcast’s core strategy for a while now, and we discuss how Peacock is one of the beneficiaries. Peacock now has 33 million sign-ups and is well ahead of plan. Peacock has also made some strong content moves with “The Office,” “Modern Family,” the WWE Network and some sports coming over from NBCSN which is being closed down.

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The Global Video Measurement Alliance (GVMA) has added four new members, BBC Studios, WildBrain Spark, Digitas and Weber Shandwick. GVMA is an industry coalition backed by Tubular Labs to standardize measurement for digital video viewership and engagement. GVMA uses Tubular Audience Ratings, which measures de-duplicated unique audiences and minutes watched on Facebook and YouTube.

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Streaming viewership on smart TVs spiked by 157% in Q4 ’20 vs. Q4 ’19, according to Conviva’s latest State of Streaming report. Smart TV’s growth far outpaced all other device types and was followed by tablets (up 47%), connected TV devices (up 38%), desktop (up 27%), smartphones (up 19%) and gaming consoles (up 16%). Overall time spent streaming rose by 44% in Q4 ’20 vs. Q4 ’19.

TVs were the big winner in Q4 ’20 with 75% of all time spent streaming accounted for by smart TVs, connected TV devices and gaming consoles combined, up from 71% in Q4 ’19. Smart TVs’ share increased from 9% to 17% in the quarter, while CTV devices dropped from 51% to 49% and gaming consoles dropped from 11% to 9%.

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Peacock has obtained exclusive streaming rights to WWE Network in the U.S. in a multi-year deal, the companies announced today. WWE Network will be added to Peacock Premium on March 18th.

The exact details of the migration plan for WWE Network subscribers weren’t shared. WWE Network has 1.1 million domestic subscribers who pay $9.99 per month. They would be saving half of that because Peacock Premium is $4.99 per month, with ads. Plus these subscribers would also get access to the full Peacock Premium library which is over 30K hours of content.

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Welcome to the 545th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

AVOD services are growing strongly, yet linear TV still accounts for 90% of video ad spending. This week Colin and I discuss a new report from Tubi that details how advertisers can now only reach a sizable share of younger audiences by shifting more spending to AVOD. With AVOD services poised to grow even further in ’21, advertisers will be pressed to reevaluate their spending decisions.

Meanwhile, it’s not just AVOD that’s growing, it’s SVOD too, as Netflix’s Q4 and full year earnings report underscored. Netflix added nearly 37 million subscribers, with international making the biggest contribution. We dig into the highlights of the report, including analysis of differences in Netflix’s results by region.

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Tubi’s new audience report “The Stream: 2021 Actionable Audience Insights for Brands” makes a compelling case that streaming gives advertisers incremental reach to younger viewers and that Tubi itself is a strong complement to linear TV advertising. The broad industry trends are well-understood: for younger audiences especially, cord-cutting is up, linear viewing is down and streaming is soaring. All of this means advertisers are having a harder time reaching younger viewers.

Specifically, Tubi revealed that 48% of its viewers don’t have pay-TV, contributing to Tubi’s growth to 33 million monthly active users in 2020, with 2.5 billion hours streamed across its 30K titles. Importantly, Tubi’s audience is over 20 years younger on average than linear TV viewers. Tubi said that 80% of its streamers can’t be reached via the top 25 cable TV networks, 68% can’t be reached via other AVOD services, and 64% can’t be reached via Fox, Tubi’s parent. Tubi also noted that 84% of its viewers watch Tubi on a connected TV.

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Netflix reported its Q4 and full year results late yesterday, ending 2020 with 203.7 million global subscribers. For the full year Netflix gained 36.6 million subscribers, expanding its base by nearly 22%. Approximately 43% of the year’s gain, or 15.8 million subscribers, came in Q1, as Covid-related sign-ups surged in the last few weeks of the quarter.

In Q4, Netflix added 8.5 million subscribers, beating its forecast of 6 million additions. EMEA was the biggest contributor in the quarter, up 4.5 million subscribers, or about 53% of total. EMEA is Netflix’s second-biggest region, with 66.7 million subscribers, or 32.7% of total. The UCAN region (U.S. plus Canada) remains the biggest region by subscribers and average revenue per subscriber. UCAN accounted for 73.9 million subscribers at year end, or about 36.3% of total. However, UCAN grew by just 860K subscribers in Q4, the lowest of the four regions.

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Paramount+, the new streaming service from ViacomCBS, will launch in the U.S. on March 4th, the company announced today. Paramount+ will also launch in Latin America on March 4th, and in Canada, CBS All Access will be rebranded on that date, though a broader content rollout won’t happen until later in 2021. Paramount+ will also launch in the Nordics on March 25th and in Australia in mid-2021 according to the release.

ViacomCBS will share more details of its streaming strategy at an investor event on February 24th.

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