VideoNuze Posts

FreeWheel’s Council for Premium Video has published a new report, “The Evolution of Streaming,” which outlines streaming’s rise over the past decade and describes four attributes that need to be addressed to fully unlock video advertising’s potential. These include Scale and Unification, Audience Targeting, Quality, Viewability and Fraud, and Audience Measurement.

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I’m pleased to present the 542nd edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.  

Keeping with tradition, on today’s podcast, our last of the year, Colin and I discuss our top 10 video stories of 2020. This was certainly a year unlike any we’ve all experienced, and many of our top 10 reflect how Covid has accelerated underlying industry trends.

Colin and I have had lots of fun discussing all of the industry’s highlights each week - thanks for listening in!

Enjoy!

Click here to listen to the podcast (30 minutes, 12 seconds)

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The VideoNuze podcast is also available in Apple podcasts, subscribe today!

HBO Max is live on Roku devices, a day after Roku and WarnerMedia came to terms on an agreement. The HBO Max app can be downloaded from the Roku channel store and users can subscribe to HBO Max, which costs $15 per month. Roku users already subscribing to HBO will be automatically upgraded to HBO Max and can use their existing login information.

The Roku-WarnerMedia deal comes after a months-long stalemate between the companies and while terms were not disclosed, it makes lots of sense for both. For HBO Max, Roku’s estimated 46 million active users were a huge hole in its addressable audience. Missing Roku’s user base would have meant that promotions like “Wonder Woman 1984” coming on Christmas Day to HBO Max (and theaters) would have been under-optimized.

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Peacock announced a savvy move yesterday, tiering access to “The Office” when it moves to Peacock on January 1st from its current home on Netflix. Peacock said that seasons 1-2 will be available for free, with ads, but that seasons 3-9 will only be accessible on its Peacock Premium (with ads, $5/month) and Peacock Premium Plus (without ads, $10/month) tiers. Paying subscribers will also get access to longer “Superfan Episodes” which are extended cuts with previously unseen footage, starting with season 5.

The tiered approach makes a ton of sense. Signing up for free is a no-brainer for existing fans who want continued access and will follow “The Office” from Netflix to Peacock. That will help drive up the number of Peacock signups which last week stood at 26 million. For now, this is the only metric Peacock is publicly reporting; it hasn’t yet revealed how many paying subscribers there are.

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When I originally gave Disney+ a test run a little over a year ago, following its launch, I wrote that “Disney+ is a Winner.”  Then, when Disney announced this past February that Disney+ had already accumulated 28.6 million subscribers, I wrote “Now It’s Really Official: Disney+ is a Winner.”

So what to say after last week’s Disney Investor Day, where it was announced that Disney+ is now up to a staggering 86.8 million subscribers? How many different ways can you say something is a winner? What seems more relevant is that Disney+ is likely to keep on winning, for years to come, totally transforming the Walt Disney Company, the streaming market and the broader media and entertainment industries.

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I’m pleased to present the 541st edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.  

This week Colin and I discuss the recent activation of a Showtime channel within the free Pluto TV service. Showtime and Pluto TV are both part of ViacomCBS and in this case Showtime is tapping into free streaming to drive more subscriptions and higher brand awareness. Colin sees it as part of a larger trend toward “virtual linear TV” channels that streaming offers and a potential alternative to free trials that SVOD services have long used.

Listen in to learn more!

Click here to listen to the podcast (20 minutes, 18 seconds)

Explore all previous podcasts

Add the podcast feed to your RSS reader.

The VideoNuze podcast is also available in Apple podcasts, subscribe today!

Connected TV’s ad impression share remained steady in Q3 2020 compared with Q2 2020 according to Extreme Reach’s new Video Benchmarks Report which is based on ad serving data from the company’s AdBridge platform.

CTVs accounted for 39% of impressions in Q3 ’20, essentially flat vs. 40% in Q2 ’20 and 37% in Q1 ’20. However CTV impressions were down from their peak of 51% share in Q3 ’19. Extreme Reach noted that the share reflects a “wide variety of strategies” for how its clients use CTV. The span includes clients who allocate as much as 72% of their impressions to CTV and others that focus on desktop and mobile.

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