VideoNuze Posts

Advertising on YouTube offers a ton of potential, but remains a complicated endeavor, creating friction for prospective buyers. To simplify things, Pixability is introducing v3 of its platform, which aims to optimize YouTube TrueView ads by enabling programmatic management of AdWords for Video buying. Bettina Hein, Founder and CEO of Pixability and Andreas Goeldi, CTO, demo'd the new features for me, explaining how they create new value for YouTube advertisers.

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The video ad tech consolidation trend continues on, with the latest deal seeing Ooyala acquire London-based Videoplaza for an undisclosed sum. The deal comes just 2 months after Ooyala itself was acquired by the big Australian telecom provider Telstra, which was a previous investor. Jonathan Wilner, VP, Product at Ooyala, told me in an interview that these are just the first 2 steps in Telstra's broader ambition to help content providers better monetize their video, particularly by using data.

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If your head is still spinning from last week's HBO/CBS/potential cord-cutting news, then buckle up, because here's another doozy that seems ripe to be right around the corner: a partnership deal between Netflix and Comcast. You heard that right - two companies that have been sniping at each for years now have a perfect moment to strike a partnership deal with significant upside to both.

First, as far as the deal itself, it would roughly follow the template Netflix has already established with large pay-TV operators in Europe and smaller ones in the U.S. All those deals' details aren't known, but at a minimum they include operators integrating Netflix's app into their IP-based set-top boxes'/devices' UI, certain co-marketing arrangements, and some type of revenue sharing by Netflix (i.e. one-time new subscriber bounties and/or ongoing revenue sharing).

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I'm pleased to present the 246th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

HBO's big OTT announcement generated massive coverage this week. Following my initial 8 reactions I shared on Wednesday, in today's podcast, Colin and I hash out whether HBO OTT will be a seismic event (as many people want to believe) or whether it will be a complete dud.

Given the scarcity of details HBO shared, it's still a lot of guesswork. But Colin and I do our best to frame things, including the all-important questions of what content will be included in HBO OTT and what the price point will be.

These decisions put HBO executives in an extraordinarily sensitive position. It's no exaggeration to say HBO OTT has the potential to reshape HBO's future as well as its parent company Time Warner and more broadly, the contours of the entire TV, Hollywood, OTT and sports industries. Note however, that "potential" is the epically operative word here.

Listen in to learn more!

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Between HBO's OTT announcement yesterday and CBS's this morning, there're intensifying buzz that the demise of pay-TV, with its expensive multichannel bundles, may finally be upon us. But here's a contrarian thought: what if all of the SVOD activity we're already seeing - plus more that's sure to come - is actually very good news for pay-TV? Before you scoff at me as a head-in-the-sand pay-TV defender, stop and consider the following.

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HBO has dropped a bombshell, announcing plans to launch a standalone over-the-top service in the U.S. in 2015. The announcement was extremely short on details, except to say it was targeted to the 80 million U.S. homes that do not currently subscribe to HBO. Here are my 8 quick reactions to the news. Many more thoughts to follow as more details are released.

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Early bird discounted registration for the next VideoSchmooze: Online Video Leadership Forum, on Thursday morning, Dec. 4th in NYC is now open. This will be the 11th VideoSchmooze and once again the morning will be packed with top notch learning and networking with 250+ industry executives. Early bird tickets are $95, with 5-packs for $430 and 10-packs for $760.

All early bird registrants will be entered to win a TiVo Roamio Plus DVR with Lifetime service - $1,000 value, generously provided by TiVo. As an owner of a Roamio Plus (plus virtually every other connected device), I can attest this is the best of all of them, providing integrated pay-TV and VOD via CableCard, Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube, AOL and much more, in addition to 6 tuners, storage for up to 1,000 hours and best of all remote streaming/downloading.

I'm still finalizing the full program, but I'm excited to share the opening session will be an interview with two of the industry's top researchers, Dounia Turrill, SVP, Client Insights at Nielsen (who oversees, among other things, the company's quarterly Cross-Platform Report, the industry benchmark for understanding viewer behaviors) and Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst at Leichtman Research Group, whose broadband, pay-TV and OTT research are widely followed and quoted).

Dounia and Bruce will share specific data and insights from their research, helping to demystify key industry trends and what to expect ahead. As always, this opening session will be a great stage-setter for the rest of the morning.

Then we'll dive into TV Everywhere, but through the lens of sports, which have been the most critical driver of adoption. What lessons have been learned and how can TVE be spread to other programming? Colin Dixon will moderate, joined by panelists Clark Pierce from FOX Sports and Vito Forlenza from Comcast (others to follow).

I'll be sharing details on additional sessions soon. I'm grateful for the support of Lead sponsor Brightcove and Branding sponsors FreeWheel and Tremor Video for this VideoSchmooze (other sponsor opportunities still available, so contact me). The video industry is undergoing unprecedented change, making VideoSchmooze a must-attend event for executives who need to be in the know!

I look forward to seeing you on Dec. 4th!

Underscoring the dramatic shifts occurring in millennials' TV viewing behavior, a new survey from comScore has found that millennials (18-34 year-olds) now use digital platforms for 1/3 of the time they watch original TV programs. That's double the 16% of time 35-54 year-olds spend using digital platforms for TV program viewing, and triple the 10% of time for those over 55 years-old.

For all 3 age groups, computers were the preferred digital platform by a significant margin - 19% for millennials, 10% for 35-54 year-olds and 6% for 55+. Smartphones and tablets trailed in single digits for all 3 groups. Just 55% of millennials said they "typically" watch TV programs on traditional TV, vs. 70% for 35-54 year-olds and 83% for 55+.

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