VideoNuze Posts

The early bird discount for the Dec. 4th VideoSchmooze: Online Video Leadership Forum in NYC expires next week.  Early bird tickets are $95, with 5-packs for $430 and 10-packs for $760. As an extra motivator to sign up early, all early bird registrants will be entered to win a TiVo Roamio Plus DVR with Lifetime service, a $1,000 value, generously provided by TiVo.

To say there's a lot going on in the video world these days would be quite an understatement. At VideoSchmooze we'll tackling some of the hottest topics - cord-cutting, SVOD eroding linear TV viewing, online video advertising, sports and TV Everywhere, online originals' impact, the role of data, the rise of connected/mobile devices, millennials' viewing behaviors, new OTT initiatives, best practices, and lots more.

I'm especially excited about our all-star group of speakers and moderators, who will be sharing their insights. In particular, on the opening session, Dounia Turrill, SVP, Client Insights at Nielsen, will be sharing new Q3 '14 Cross-Platform data and Bruce Leichtman, president of Leichtman Research Group, will be providing an update on Q3 pay-TV video and broadband subscribers. No doubt they'll debunk some myths and shed new light on market conditions.

I'm grateful to the Lead sponsors of this VideoSchmooze, Brightcove and Kaltura plus Branding sponsors Digitalsmiths, FreeWheel and Tremor Video, all of which will have executives attending and participating.

With so much happening these days, I expect this will be the highest-impact VideoSchmooze yet. If you're in the video industry and need to really understand the landscape, I highly recommend you join us for this superb morning of learning and networking!

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TV networks around the world are scrambling to deliver their content to multiple screens as viewer behavior continues to shift from scheduled to time-shifted/on-demand. But doing so efficiently is complicated by disparate systems required to set and reset viewing and ad policies. To streamline this process, thePlatform is launching mpx Replay today, which gives TV networks the tools to quickly make available programs for catch-up and start-over viewing across screens.

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Late yesterday Yahoo announced it's acquiring video ad platform BrightRoll for $640 million cash. The deal had been rumored for a while and is the latest in a consolidation trend in the video ad tech space (and larger online video space) over the past year. By my count, since the start of 2014, there have been over 20 different online video acquisitions in the U.S. alone, spanning ad tech, content creation, distribution, search/discovery and mobile.

The BrightRoll deal instantly makes Yahoo one of the leading players in programmatic video advertising, a significant growth area in the industry. Yahoo joins other big media companies that have also entered the programmatic video ad space via acquisition (e.g. Facebook with LiveRail, AOL with Adap.tv, RTL Group with SpotXchange, etc.). With all of these companies now emphasizing programmatic, growth will surely accelerate further.

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This morning President Obama made his strongest endorsement yet for net neutrality, releasing a statement and video (see below) explicitly endorsing the reclassification of broadband services under Title II of the Communications Act, effectively regulating broadband as a utility (note, the change isn't Obama's to make, it's the FCC's, which is an independent agency).

If the FCC did make the change it would be the most significant update to broadband regulatory policy since 2002 when broadband was classified under Title I as a lightly regulated "information service." The change to Title II would mean broadband ISPs would have to adhere to regulations dating back to 1934. In one bit of good news for ISPs, Obama specifically said rates should be excluded from Title II regulation (which means usage-based pricing could still be implemented). Any proposed change is guaranteed to be challenged in the courts by ISPs.

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I'm pleased to present the 249th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week we tackle a topic that has gained a lot of recent attention - whether SVOD services (e.g. Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc.) are starting to bite into broadcast and cable TV networks' ratings and advertising revenues. The mantra from TV network executives and their studio brethren over the past few years has been that SVOD licensing revenue was purely incremental to their ad revenue.

But a slew of Q3 data, including large declines in C3 viewing (especially among under 49 year-olds), flat-to-down TV ad revenues being reported by TV networks and excellent new analysis from researchers at Bernstein, MoffettNathanson and elsewhere suggest that we may actually be at the beginning of structural audience shift from linear/TV to SVOD, with TV advertising dollars leaking over to digital and online video.

This would obviously be significant new challenge for TV networks/studios, all the more so because their own content licensing deals are the key enabler of SVOD services' appeal in the first place - and thus the shift.

It's a fascinating topic with many long-term implications…listen in to learn more!

(And note, we will dig deep into this topic at the Dec. 4th VideoSchmooze NYC in our opening session with Nielsen's SVP, Client Insights Dounia Turrill and Leichtman Research Group's President and Principal Analyst Bruce Leichtman. Register now to save and to win a TiVo Roamio Plus with Lifetime service!)

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The program is now complete for the half-day December 4th VideoSchmooze in NYC (just 4 weeks from today!) and I'm really excited about the lineup of sessions and industry executives participating.

The final session added is "Best Practices for Great Video User Experiences," which will include Bloomberg Media's Global Head of Digital Video Paul Marcum, comScore's SVP, Global Marketing Strategy Anne Hunter, Brightcove's Sr. Director of Digital Media Solutions Mike Green and one more speaker TBD, moderated by Jesse Redniss, co-founder of BRaVe Ventures and formerly SVP of Digital at USA Networks. The session will dig into best practices around content, monetization and viewer engagement.

I'm also pleased to share that NBCU's SVP, Consumer Product Strategy, TV Everywhere Dina Juliano and FreeWheel's Director, Advisory Services Brian Dutt, will join the "Sports' Pivotal Role in Driving TV Everywhere's Adoption" panel, which also includes executives from Comcast and FOX Sports and will be moderated by Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Last but not least, Kaltura's VP, Product Ariel Hitron will join the "TV, Disrupted: Online Originals Hit Their Stride" panel, alongside executives from Fullscreen, Vimeo, DEFY Media and Tubefilter.

Kaltura is also on-board as a Lead sponsor for VideoSchmooze in addition to Brightcove, and Branding sponsors Digitalsmiths, Tremor Video and FreeWheel. I am grateful to all of them for their generous support.

All in all, VideoSchmooze is going to be a jam-packed morning of learning and networking, covering many of the hottest trends in the industry today. If you need to cut through the noisy headlines and find out what's really going on, VideoSchmooze is a must-attend event.

Early bird tickets are $95, with 5-packs for $430 and 10-packs for $760. As an extra incentive, all early bird registrants will be entered to win a TiVo Roamio Plus DVR with Lifetime service, a $1,000 value, generously provided by TiVo.

REGISTER NOW AND SAVE!

Cloud-based encoding company Encoding.com has raised a $3.5 million Series B round led by video infrastructure provider Harmonic, with participation by existing investors. The new round brings to $8 million the total capital raised by the company.  

The investment follows a partnership announced last April between the companies in which Encoding.com integrated Harmonic's ProMedia Carbon transcoding solution. That deal allows content providers and distributors who already use Carbon on-premise to tap into Encoding.com's Carbon deployment to meet transcoding demand spikes.

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