VideoNuze Posts

While at NATPE, I did a video interview with Ezra Cooperstein, COO of Fullscreen, one of the biggest multichannel networks (MCNs), with 27 million unique viewers and 358 million videos viewed in December, per comScore. Ezra explains exactly how MCNs' currently add value to YouTube creators, how the business is changing to more of a studio model, what the company is doing internationally and key trends for 2014, among other topics.

The edited interview is below and runs approximately 7 minutes.

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Online video platform Kaltura has raised $47 million, bringing its total capital raised to date to approximately $100 million. The round was led by new investors SAP Ventures, Nokia Growth Partners, Commonfund Capital and Gera Ventures, along with participation from existing investors. Kaltura plans to use the new funding for product development and to expand internationally in Brazil, Mexico, China, Japan, Australia, Singapore and Korea.

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Nielsen released its latest Digital Consumer Report yesterday, finding among things, that 52% of broadband-only homes in the U.S. are in the 18-34 age range. Nielsen notes this group accounts for fewer than 5% of total U.S. households, but believes it's important to understanding the future digital living room. Nielsen said 80% of this group owns game consoles and 41% tablets, both twice the rate of traditional TV households.

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CBS Local Digital Media announced yesterday that its web sites and mobile apps drew a record 56.8 million unique visitors in January, up 37% vs. January, 2013, and 12% higher than the previous best month of April, 2013. Mobile is now up to 48% of total visits, and accounted for 27.1 million uniques, up 109% vs. January, 2013. There were also 30 million video clips viewed in January.

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Extreme Reach has closed its $485 million acquisition of DG's TV ad business, approximately 6 months after announcing the deal. Extreme Reach's CEO and co-founder John Roland told me this morning that all DG customers are being transferred to Extreme Reach's cloud-based delivery platform. The combined company will have $270 million in revenues and 750+ employees.

As John explained, while the short-term tactical benefit of the deal is to gain significant scale in the core business of delivering TV ads to over 7K different broadcast TV stations in North America, the  longer-term, more strategic play is to better position Extreme Reach for the fast-approaching era of multi-screen advertising.

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I'm pleased to present the 213th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. Today we focus on Amazon, which is already an important player in video, and is poised to become more so. Among the topics we discuss:

- plans to increase the price of its Prime service (and the role of expensive video licensing in driving this)

- the possibility video could be split off from Prime and become a more pure competitor to Netflix and others

- the many roles that video advertising could play as part of a new deal with FreeWheel

- why an Amazon connected TV device (widely rumored) would be highly strategic

- whether Amazon will enter the pay-TV business (as has also been widely rumored)

- the role of Amazon's original online productions

All in all, Amazon is circling the video space in many different ways, with potential to be quite disruptive. It's still very early in the game for Amazon and 2014 could be a big year. We'll see how it plays out.

Listen in to learn more!

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While at NATPE last week I did a short video interview with Mike Wiese, director of branded entertainment for JWT New York. In the interview Mike talks about how clients are approaching branded entertainment projects, how these align with traditional paid advertising, how one of his clients, Macy's, is succeeding and where branded entertainment is heading in 2014.

The edited interview is below and runs 5 minutes, 47 seconds.

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Yesterday, FreeWheel quietly announced that it's powering video ads for Amazon. Though the announcement was light on details, anytime Amazon moves into a new space, as it's doing with video ads, it's noteworthy. I spoke to Doug Knopper, co-CEO of FreeWheel, who noted this is the company's first customer that isn't a pure media company, underscoring for him how  ubiquitous video and video advertising are becoming.

Though under tight constraints from Amazon about what he could say, Doug emphasized that, as with all Amazon initiatives, the focus is on creating a better customer experience. In FreeWheel's release, Lisa Utzschneider, Amazon's VP of Global Ad Sales positioned video ads as a discovery vehicle, helping customers learn about related products.

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