VideoNuze Posts

I'm pleased to present the 227th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week we dig into the Turner-Comcast deal from earlier this week, under which Turner is providing past seasons' and full current season's episodes to some of its most popular programs to Comcast for viewing on VOD and TV Everywhere.  As I wrote earlier this week, a key enabler of the deal is Turner's ability to dynamically insert ads in the on-demand streams.

Colin and I agree that, to the extent the deal becomes a template for others, it could have a wide-ranging impact on the ecosystem. To date, Netflix and other OTT providers have been able to aggregate huge libraries of past seasons' episodes, which have fueled binge-viewing.

But as advertising in VOD/TVE grows and improves, it could become the financial foundation for operators to gain far greater content rights. That in turn could change the negotiating balance for content and perceptions of pay-TV operators. Colin and I explain what could be ahead.

Listen in to learn more!

(Note also Colin is hosting a free webinar next Tuesday on Fox Sports Go TVE app. Sign up here.)

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

Still on the fence about attending the June 25th VideoNuze Online Video Ad Summit? Well, keep in mind that if you sign up by May 30th, you'll save $100 and you'll be entered to win a $1,000 50-inch Samsung LED Smart TV and a Roku Streaming Stick, generously provided by Innovid. Pretty sweet!

(Note, if you're at an agency or brand, you may qualify for complimentary tickets - contact me to find out)

This will be the 4th annual VideoNuze Ad Summit and once again we have a dynamite group of speakers from companies such as Allstate, Comcast, Conde Nast, Digitas, eMarketer, Forrester, Google, Hulu, Jaguar Land Rover, News Corp., Nielsen, Quiznos, Sporting News Media, StyleHaul, Starcom MediaVest, Weather Company, Xaxis participating, plus many others.

The Ad Summit is a premier day of learning and industry networking. We typically have around 300-350 attendees from around the ecosystem. We'll be taking full advantage of the beautiful outdoor space at our venue, the Midtown Loft & Terrace, featuring spectacular Manhattan views (see pics below).

The Ad Summit is generously supported by 14  industry companies including Title Partners Tremor Video and ILoveVideo.tv/Castaclip; Premier Partner AOL, Headline Partners ActiveVideo, Brightcove, Eyeview, FreeWheel, LiveRail, TubeMogul, Turn and Videology plus Branding Partners Innovid, Mixpo and Optimatic.

Register now and save!

(Note: The Ad Summit is being held during CEWeek, so all registrants get free cross registration to CEWeek's exhibits and free conferences.)

The holy grail for marketers these days is having a video ad go viral. Not only does it provide the brand an enormous amount of free exposure, it also gives the team behind the ad major resume points for having "cracked the code" on making an ad a viral hit. However, the odds of an ad actually going viral are extremely long.

That's why a presentation I attended during IAB's NewFronts Insight Lunch last week, by Richard Kosinski, president of Unruly, really caught my attention. Unruly is a platform for social video marketing that helps agencies and advertisers get their videos watched and shared. Richard shared highlights of a new white paper, "The Science of Sharing 2014," which looked at the social performance of 14 different ads from Super Bowl XLVIII.

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Programmatic video advertising took a small step into the TV world today as Geri Wang, president of ABC Sales, announced a trial this summer involving online video from ABC and ABC Family. The trial is being conducted with FreeWheel's FourFronts Programmatic solution, which will connect a limited number of media buyers with select demand side platforms (DSPs) using buyers' first-party and other data.

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Turner Broadcasting will provide Comcast with VOD and TV Everywhere access for some of its most popular programs across all of its cable networks, under a deal announced this morning. A significant aspect of the deal is that it gives Comcast rights not only to past seasons' episodes, but also to all current season episodes - what's known as "stacking rights." The deal is a big win for Comcast and also underscores the emergence of dynamic ad insertion in VOD/TVE streams as an important new revenue driver.

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Charter Communications has begun rolling out personalized video search and recommendations to its 5 million subscribers, using Digitalsmiths' Seamless Discovery Platform. Billy Purser, VP of Marketing at Digitalsmiths told me that Charter actually began introducing this to its web and Charter TV mobile app users over the past 3 months and has now started rolling it out to subscribers with IP set-top boxes.

The Digitalsmiths search and recommendations are based on the company's Unified Data Service, which structures numerous individual data services (e.g. TMS, Rovi, Thuuz, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, Common Sense Media, etc.). This data is then paired with both implicit (e.g. viewer behavior) and explicit (e.g. viewer ratings).

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The traditional narrative around online/over-the-top video is that it will incent cord-cutting and cord-nevering. But now, in a twist, instead of a looming battle between OTT and pay-TV, it could well be that we're on the brink of a new era of cooperation between the two, which could have profound implications for everyone in the video ecosystem.

Stepping back for a moment, pay-TV operators have always been in the business of improving the delivery of available video and packaging it into bundles. Initially operators distributed broadcast channels and then in the 70's and 80's, with the advent of satellite delivery, operators began bundling "cable" channels as well (e.g. ESPN, MTV, CNN, USA, etc.).

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I'm pleased to present the 226th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. This week we focus on Maker Studios and the broader trend around short-form online video and its appeal to millennials.

The Maker NewFront earlier this week in NYC, which I attended, underscored for me how well the company is differentiating itself from traditional TV. Rather than trying to emulate HBO (as Netflix is doing) or chase Netflix itself (as Microsoft, Yahoo and others pursuing TV projects seem to be doing), Maker is carving its own path, focused on delivering breakthrough short-form content that resonates with millennials.

A key success factor is the creative freedom Maker talent has, allowing authenticity which appeals to millennials. Unvarnished and sometimes wacky, Maker's programming exemplifies how unconstrained the web is for the next generation of talent. Of course a key question is if or how things will change under Disney (whose CEO Bob Iger offered his first public comments on the deal this week).

(Note there's an approximately 5-second dropout in my audio about mid-way through. We're still wrestling with Skype's quality.)

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!