VideoNuze Posts

Yesterday, Cablevision announced that it has filed suit against Viacom, seeking, among other things, to void a carriage deal it struck just 2 months ago. Cablevision is alleging that Viacom illegally coerced it into carrying 14 of its low-rated cable networks in order to get access to the 8 popular ones Cablevision really wanted.

The most obvious first question to ponder is why would Cablevision agree to a deal in December, only to sue to nullify it in February? Surely the presiding judge will ask something similar. If Cablevision was so perturbed by Viacom's negotiating position, why not bite the bullet and sue then? Another interesting question is that given bundling has been upheld by the courts in the past, what's different this time around?

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Note: Today I'm pleased to welcome VideoNuze's latest contributor, Stewart Schley. Stewart has been writing about media and telecommunications subjects for more than 20 years for publishers including CED magazine, Multichannel News, Paul Kagan Associates and One Touch Intelligence.

Ooyala 2012 Video Index: Tablet-Based Viewing Times Continue to Rise


by Stewart Schley

Video’s leap to tablets continues to impress, and not just when it comes to short-form content. Ooyala’s new Global Video Index 2012 illuminates a rising role for tablets in playing long-form content. Ooyala's data shows that in Q4 '12, 63% of total viewing time on tablets was for videos longer than 10 minutes, up from 46% in Q1 '12.  Nearly one-third of time spent watching videos on tablets in Q4 ’12 was for those an hour or longer.


The numbers suggest users are becoming increasingly comfortable watching full-length TV shows, movies and other long-form content on tablets, a finding that has implications for television networks and other content providers that want to extend their viewership to the small screen. Among playback devices Ooyala tracks, only connected TVs and game consoles had a higher percentage of long-form video viewing (81.7%) in Q4. PCs clocked in at 57%, and smartphones at 43.6%.

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Aereo announced this morning that it has expanded service to 19 million residents in 29 counties in the New York City metro area, moving Aereo beyond the 5 boroughs. The move is part of Aereo's nationwide expansion to 22 additional markets throughout 2013.

In addition, Aereo took the wraps off its first consumer marketing initiative, with executions emphasizing its live, DVR and portability features. The ads will be placed on billboards, phone kiosks and main transit points in NYC. Importantly, they each carry the company's tagline: "Live TV. Online. No Cable Required." which pointedly positions the company as a cord-cutting option (see below for an example), as I explained recently would happen.

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I'm pleased to present the 168th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. Today we start by discussing Akamai's new Ad Integration Services, which enables cloud-based video ad insertion, in partnership with mDialog.

This approach has multiple benefits including improving the user experience which extends view times. Colin notes that recent data from Conviva, for example, shows that a 1% increase in buffering results in 8 minutes of lost viewing time, which in turn means a loss of 2 ad breaks. Conviva estimates in 2012 this adds up to $2.2 billion in lost ad revenue globally, and by 2017, it could be $20 billion. Clearly improving the viewer experience has a significant payoff.

We then transition to talking about improvements in video discovery. Colin shares takeaways from his interview this week with Jeremy Toeman, CEO of Dijit (Next Guide), which recently acquired Miso. And I share observations on the new web version of Fanhattan, which launched in beta yesterday.

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Video discovery app Fanhattan has launched its web site today in beta, offering the same convenient way to find a TV program or movie through one simple interface. Until now Fanhattan has only been available as an iOS app. Fanhattan's key value proposition is that it eliminates the complexity of searching across multiple services. This problem is only worsening for users as more video comes online and aggregators gain and lose rights over time.

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Israeli startup Wochit launched yesterday, seeking to mass-produce near real-time video news bites that will be distributed across the web to sites hungry for high-quality video and additional revenue.

Company CEO and co-founder Dror Ginzberg told me that Wochit's algorithms monitor hot topics that are trending online via social media. Then source video from content partners like Reuters and Getty Images is mined to quickly create short videos. The videos themselves can focus on general headline news, specific topics, geographic areas, etc. and include voice-over narration (see examples here).

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In an interview at NATPE, Chase Norlin, CEO of AlphaBird, shared details of how the company helps content providers acquire and monetize audiences. Chase explains that whereas most ad tech companies are focused on the buy side of the advertising equation, AlphaBird is solely focused on the publisher side. Through a series of 5 acquisitions, AlphaBird has built a suite of solutions that span video, search and display (it's most recent acquisition, of Australia's Volt Media, was announced last week).

Chase details the company's thesis that the web is moving from text to rich media to video. However, the biggest challenge that video providers have today is in building their audiences, and then monetizing them. This reflects Chase's belief that video is still in the early days, and he anticipates lots of consolidation down the road. Advertisers will continue to be drawn to online video as it provides an unprecedented level of targeting and ROI.

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Betsy Morgan, currently president of TheBlaze (Glenn Beck's media company) and former CEO of The Huffington Post and SVP of CBS Interactive, has a highly informed perspective of today's video landscape. And in a recent interview I did with Betsy at NATPE, she doesn't mince words, observing, among other things, that "all of the burdens of legacy media really suck" and that "advertising will be disrupted first" and that "cable still has enormous value."

In her role at TheBlaze, Betsy is on the front lines of defining a new kind of cross-media, personality-driven media company. TheBlaze has a free, ad-supported online property, a subscription service called TheBlaze TV that has 300K members (who pay $9.95/mo) and a distribution deal with Dish Network which it hopes to emulate with others. Betsy explains how in the new video landscape, there's no longer a one-size fits all model; rather what's needed is a flexible approach that serves consumers however and whenever they want to access content.

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