VideoNuze Posts

Final bidding was scheduled to close last Friday in the Hulu sale process, with the list of potential buyers apparently narrowed to DirecTV, Chernin Group/AT&T and Guggenheim Digital Media. According to various reports (here and here), Hulu's active owners Disney and Fox (Comcast is a passive owner) have been insisting on a number of content licensing related deal points.

Hulu's next-day access to its 3 broadcast owners' hit shows has always been the heart of the company's value proposition. But a lot has changed in the online video landscape since Hulu was initially formed in March, 2007. As a result, in my view, there are at least 3 key reasons Hulu's owners are justified in bargaining hard over content licensing rights: the importance of TV Everywhere, the growth of well-funded over-the-top licensees and the potential of online video advertising. Following, I delve into each.

continue reading

Remarkably, it's already been 4 years since the CEOs of Time Warner and Comcast unveiled the concept of TV Everywhere in a high-profile press event. Since then numerous successful services have launched (e.g. HBO GO, WatchESPN, etc.), yet the prevailing consensus - which I agree with - is that TV Everywhere hasn't yet been adopted at nearly the level anticipated.

I've written in the past about the 5 key things I believe are holding back TV Everywhere and 1 of them is "authentication" - the process of verifying a user and providing rights to watch programming covered by their subscription. Picayune as it might seem at first blush for pay-TV subscribers to remember and input their user name and password to be authenticated, it has turned out to be a genuine barrier to adoption.

That's why Comcast's announcement yesterday of "Home Pass" which auto-verifies and logs in dual Comcast video and broadband subscriber when accessing Xfinity TV (the company's branded TV Everywhere initiative) is significant. Rather than fumbling for their credentials, users can simply visit the Xfinity portal and begin watching nearly instantly.

continue reading

These days everyone has their own favorite device on which to consume video. While improved convenience is great for content providers and advertisers, the resulting fragmentation also causes huge headaches developing for multiple devices.

In a session at the recent Video Ad Summit, executives from Adobe, AOL, Scripps and TheBlaze shared their insights on the challenges and opportunities of surging video consumption across devices, how to generate an ROI and what it all means for advertisers.

The video is below and runs 22 minutes, 14 seconds.

Watch the video

TVs connected to the Internet - whether through set-top boxes, game consoles, Blu-ray players and/or as Smart TVs - are one of the hottest trends in the video landscape. Connected TVs allow viewers to have all of the traditional lean-back, long-form experiences they're accustomed to, but with online video/over-the-top's benefits of convenience and selection. Connected TVs crack open pay-TV operators' grip on TV delivery and give advertisers new opportunities to engage audiences.

Nonetheless, it is still early in connected TVs' evolution, and at the recent Video Ad Summit, we dedicated a session to debunking 5 key myths that have grown up around connected TVs and video advertising. Moderator Tom Morgan, CEO and co-founder of Net2TV, led a discussion of these myths with executives from LG, Media Storm and YuMe, which was based on thought-leadership from YuMe (full presentation available here).

The video is below and runs 30 minutes, 21 seconds.

Watch the video

For many viewers, a pre-roll ad is just a 15 or 30-second interruption before the content plays. But now advertisers can make their pre-rolls full-blown interactive experiences with multiple engagement opportunities. At the recent Video Ad Summit, Patty Everett, Associate Media Director at Turner Media explained how, using a sample campaign to illustrate her points in discussion with Jack Flanagan from Innovid.

In the session, Patty details how an interactive pre-roll for Cartoon Network's Hall of Game awards drove awareness, voting and ultimately tune-in. Patty also explains the key challenges in developing interactive pre-rolls and what advertisers need to do to succeed. Advertisers and publishers looking to get more out of their pre-roll will get great insights.

The video is below and runs 13 minutes, 20 seconds.

Watch the video

Though online video has become a hugely popular source of on-demand video for consumers, it's not the only one available. Pay-TV operators have invested heavily in deploying their own on-demand systems through set-top boxes, which have gained strong acceptance. Comcast, for example, now reports 400 million on-demand sessions per month with about 40K TV show episodes and movies available.

However, when it comes to monetization, there's a significant difference between pay-TV VOD and online video. Whereas online video advertising has developed a robust ecosystem that will drive around $4 billion in revenue this year, pay-TV VOD advertising is nascent, as it has suffered from years of underinvestment.

More recently, though, companies like BlackArrow have developed dynamic ad insertion (DAI) capabilities for VOD, which have been deployed to around 30 million homes. In a fascinating discussion at the June 4th Video Ad Summit, Ashley Swartz from Furious Minds led a deep dive discussion of pay-TV VOD DAI and its relationship to both TV and online video with executives from BlackArrow, Comcast and OMD. For anyone trying to better understand these platforms and their monetization potential, the discussion provides great learning and insights.

The video is below and runs 31 minutes, 22 seconds.

Watch the video

Beachfront Media, which last month announced its Beachfront.iO mobile video ad platform, is introducing a new interactive video unit, enabling features to drive deeper brand engagement (see samples here). Advertisers can select up to 4 different calls to action to add to their pre-roll ad, including Facebook/Twitter links, click-to-call buttons, map-it functions and links to app store for further downloads and others. A "skinned final screen" is also available for enhanced branding.

continue reading

SVOD services like Netflix, Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime Instant Video are all the all the rage these days and a core part of their popularity is their ever-expanding library of TV series. No question, binge-viewing a TV season or series on an SVOD service is now one of life's little pleasures.

In SVOD's wake, one technology that always seems to get overshadowed is the DVR. But, according to data from NPD, watching TV shows on DVRs is actually more than twice as popular as watching them on SVOD services like Netflix. When asked how they watched TV shows in Q1 '13, viewers cited DVR/TiVo 42%, and SVOD 16%. As seen in the chart below, DVR/TiVo was in third place, after linear viewing on the TV network itself.

continue reading