VideoNuze Posts

Bright House Networks, the sixth largest cable TV operator in the US, with 2.5 million subscribers, has announced that will use BlackArrow for dynamic video ad insertion (DAI) for on-demand and multi-screen delivery. As viewers continue to embrace both VOD and myriad viewing devices - and operators make more content and TV Everywhere options available - effectively monetizing these streams is becoming more and more essential.

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I'm pleased to present the 236th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week we discuss the demise of two online video businesses that were short-lived, Qplay and Xbox Entertainment Studios. Qplay was founded by 2 TiVo founders and backed by blue-chip venture capitalists, but lasted in the market just 6 months. Colin provides a cogent analysis of the 4 key challenges the company faced, which it couldn't surmount.

Xbox Studios was shut down for completely different reasons, and, as I wrote last week, it is just the latest lesson in how difficult it is to create high-quality, long-form content.

Listen in to learn more!

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One of the highlights of the recent Video Ad Summit was a session including Jackie Kulesza, SVP, Director, Video, Starcom MediaVest and Adam Shlachter, Head of Media Activation, Digitas LBi, focused on the NewFronts, Upfronts and future of video ad budgets. The discussion was driven by Jim Nail, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research.

Adam and Jackie provided a wealth of insights into how video ad buying has evolved at their agencies and how they believe the market will work down the road. They provide perspectives on the NewFronts, where video ad budgets are being sourced from, how clients' strategies are changing and much more. For anyone looking for the agency perspective on online video advertising, it's a very worthwhile 35 minutes.

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At last month's Video Ad Summit, mobile video was a big topic of conversation. Kicking off the day, eMarketer's principal analyst, David Hallerman, walked the audience through his firm's online video ad forecast, including the mobile component, which it estimates will quadruple to $5.44 billion by 2018, over 44% of of total online video ad spending (the full forecast is available for complimentary download here).

Later in the day, Jim Spencer, president and founder of Newsy (an ad-supported mobile video news app acquired earlier this year by E.W. Scripps) led a spirited panel on how media and technology companies are keeping up with mobile video's surging adoption. Joining him on the session were Ashish Chordia (founder & CEO, Alphonso), Jason Krebs (head of sales, Maker Studios), Rebecca Paoletti (CEO and co-founder, CakeWorks LLC) and Canaan Schladale-Zink (VP, Sales North America, Sizmek).

Videos of each of the sessions follow below.

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I'm pleased to present the 235th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up this week, Colin recaps how well the recently wrapped-up World Cup did with live-streaming. As Colin notes, the final game delivered 1.8 million concurrent live viewers. Also interesting was how mainstream streaming mid-day games seemed to become. Unlike March Madness games, which have always been streamed in the workplace somewhat surreptitiously, World Cup streaming seemed completely acceptable.

Continuing our sports theme, we then turn to a WSJ article this week which revealed that the NBA is seeking to double the approximately $930 million per year in TV rights fees it receives from Disney/ESPN and Time Warner/Turner when these deals expire after the 2015/2016 season.

If the NBA were to succeed, and gain $2 billion or so in fees, that would translate into around $20 per year for each of the approximately 100 million U.S. pay-TV subscribers (even more when you factor in the pay-TV operator's retail margin).

The dirty little secret of these super-expensive sports deals is that ALL subscribers pay - whether you're a fan or not - meaning the "sports tax" on non-fans is getting bigger all the time. With escalating pay-TV bills, the big question is whether non-fans will become heavier cord-nevers and cord-cutters.

Listen in to learn more!



Click here for previous podcasts

Click here to add the podcast feed to your RSS reader.

The VideoNuze podcast is also available in iTunes...subscribe today!

Microsoft will close down its Xbox Entertainment Studios (XES) as part of a broader, 18,000 employee headcount reduction it has announced. I, for one, am not surprised by this outcome. A year-and-a-half ago, at the D: Dive Into Media conference, I watched an interview with Nancy Tellem, head of XES (and former head of CBS Entertainment) and Yusuf Mehdi, Xbox's chief marketing and strategy officer, that left me wondering whether the company really understood what role it wanted original programming to play or how it would be differentiated.

Basic questions on whether originals would be included in the current subscription service or cost extra, whether they would be ad-free or ad-supported, exclusive to Xbox or available elsewhere and more were essentially left unanswered, creating a very unfocused vibe. But, since it was still relatively early days for XES, I was inclined to cut them some slack.

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Connecting with consumers has become harder than ever for brands. Fortunately, online video has opened up a whole new opportunity for brands to act more like publishers than advertisers, doing more storytelling than just advertising. A prime example of a brand that recognized this and developed a winning branded entertainment strategy is Quiznos, which launched "Toasty.TV," a destination for original and curated video.

Toasty.TV hit it big with its first original video, "House of Thrones," a hilarious mashup between Netflix's "House of Cards" and HBO's "Game of Thrones" generating almost 1.6 million views to date. In this case study presented at the recent Video Ad Summit, Quiznos' VP of Advertising and Marketing Chris Ruszkowski and agency partner Moz Miraba from Windowseat, detail the strategy behind Toasty.TV, how it reached its core millennial audience and the specific results it has driven.

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Watching online video on connected TVs is now completely mainstream, as evidenced by Hulu noting that 62% of its views are on connected TVs. This powerful trend makes delivering immersive HTML5 video ad experiences to connected TVs and pay-TV set-top boxes an imperative for advertisers to accomplish their reach and frequency goals.

At the recent Video Ad Summit, Active Video demo'd how they're solving this problem, by rendering ads in the cloud and then delivering them - with full interactivity - to any type of set-top box. In the demo, ads from American Express and L'Oreal illustrate how it works. The Active Video presentation followed one by Quiznos, showcasing their "Toasty.TV" campaign, which would be a perfect fit for a living room experience.

watch the demo