VideoNuze Posts

It turns out that where's there's smoke there isn't always fire. If you were to believe the media's rampant attention to cord-cutting, you'd think it was poised to skyrocket. But new research from Bernstein reveals that while there's interest in cord-cutting among actual pay-TV subscribers, their plans to actually do so are quite minimal.

In the first of a series of focus groups of pay-TV subscribers, held in New York City, Bernstein surfaced a variety of reasons why pay-TV is stickier than a lot of people may like to believe. Even those participants who had identified themselves as "highly likely to cut the cord in the next 6 months" concluded that doing so would not be advantageous. Practically all the participants currently subscribe to OTT services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon.

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TubeMogul and Videoplaza, an Ooyala company, have announced a partnership to build a premium programmatic ad marketplace, which will enable brands, agencies and trading desks that use TubeMogul's buying platform to access inventory from international broadcasters and publishers that use Videoplaza's sell-side programmatic solutions Karbon and Konnect.

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A reminder that early bird discounted registration is open for the 5th annual VideoNuze Online Video Advertising Summit on Tuesday, June 16th in NYC. All early bird registrants will be entered to win a 55-inch TCL Roku TV, graciously provided by Roku.

There is a ton going on in online video advertising, and the Ad Summit will dive deeply into all of the hottest topics such as programmatic, viewability, convergence, mobile, branded entertainment, innovation and much more. The Ad Summit will once again be a must-attend day of learning and networking with industry leaders from brands, agencies, content providers, technology companies and others in the ecosystem. Last year's Ad Summit drew over 420 attendees, featuring 40+ speakers.

There are 10 terrific industry-leading companies on board so far as sponsors, including Premier Partners DashBid, FreeWheel and Pixability, Headline Partners Altitude Digital, LiveRail/Facebook, Ooyala, Teads.tv and TubeMogul plus Branding Partners Brightcove and Roku. I'm grateful for their generous support!

Learn more and register now!

In last Friday's podcast, Colin and I covered a lot of ground in assessing HBO Now's opportunities and risks. One of the points I raised, which I believe deserves much more attention in understanding HBO Now's disruptive potential, is how it threatens pay-TV's multi-billion dollar "sports tax" on non-fans.

I've been writing about the sports tax - how non-fans effectively subsidize the cost of super-expensive sports networks such as ESPN and regional sports networks (RSNs) that they don't watch - for almost 5 years now. In a back-of-the-envelope analysis I did following a panel I sat on with Mark Cuban back in 2011, I estimated the annual tax on non sports fans amounted to at least $2 billion per year (4 years later, it's now much higher).

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I'm pleased to present the 264th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. In today's podcast we dig into HBO Now's big opportunities and big risks.

Colin and I agree that HBO has made a pretty aggressive bet with HBO Now. It is reasonably priced at $15/month and includes HBO's full library of original and licensed content. HBO partnered exclusively with Apple at launch, gaining the company's halo, and quite possibly very significant promotional support TBD (not to mention diverting from its traditional pay-TV operator partners).

Importantly, HBO Now gives viewers their first-ever opportunity to access HBO's iconic content without first having to subscribe to an expensive pay-TV service. This "buy-through" has effectively capped HBO's growth, while Netflix zipped past it. We explain why we believe this flexibility has potentially significant consequences for non-sports fans, in turn impacting both cord-cutting and cord-nevering.

There are so many fascinating angles to the HBO Now move. We cram in as much as we can, and will certainly be revisiting it as HBO Now launches in April.

Listen in to learn more!

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Verizon and Sony are both on deck with new OTT services poised to launch shortly, according to new reports over the past couple of days. Both companies have previously stated their intentions to pursue new video services, but haven't been specific about their timelines or anything else.

That is beginning to change, as Verizon announced yesterday that AwesomenessTV will provide 200+ hours of original content for its forthcoming service, via 2 channels, one targeted to teens and the other to young millennials. The channels will include scripted and unscripted series along with DreamWorksTV animated short-form content.

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Looking to benefit from the rising tide of mobile device usage, video ad tech provider Teads.tv has extended its inRead video ad format (also called "outstream") to mobile via a new SDK.  With the new SDK, content providers can place inRead video ads within their mobile apps. The format's big differentiator is that it runs against text articles, slideshows and news feeds, essentially unlocking tons of new high-quality inventory for lucrative video ads.

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