VideoNuze Posts

The explosion of online video viewership is presenting pay-TV operators and broadband ISPs with big challenges and opportunities managing all of the increased traffic across their networks. To help address these, Akamai is introducing new capabilities in its Aura Network Solutions line of operator content delivery network (OCDN) technologies. The goal is to help operators deliver traffic more flexibly and cost effectively while also opening up potential new business models such as TV Everywhere.

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CNN and BuzzFeed are partnering to create a new YouTube channel called "CNN BuzzFeed" to break original news online. The channel will feature current and archived CNN video and like all BuzzFeed content, is targeted to a younger, social media savvy audience.

CNN BuzzFeed will capitalize on two of the most important attributes of today's online video landscape: short-form and syndication. Last week, data from ad manager FreeWheel showed that "Digital Pure-Play" content providers grew their video views by 47% year-over-year (with 84% of their views coming via syndication to 3rd-party sites), while views from long-form "Linear + Digital" providers (e.g. broadcast and cable networks) decreased by 8%.

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Tickets are still available for the June 4th VideoNuze 2013 Online Video Advertising Summit in NYC. 5-pack and 10-pack group discounts are also available for additional savings. And note that for startups/students, there's a special $195 ticket to make the event more affordable. Contact me for the discount code.

We have an awesome program featuring 44 speakers on over a dozen different sessions. We'll be covering the full gamut of hottest topics in online video and advertising such as how to connect with today's always-on audience, the art and science of targeting, the NewFronts and Upfronts, connected TVs, programmatic video ad buying, how to monetize on-demand video, and much more.

Thanks to all 18 industry-leading companies that are supporting this year's Video Ad Summit: Premier Partners Adap.TV, Adobe, Akamai, TubeMogul, ValueClick and YuMe; Headline Partners Altitude Digital, AOL, BlackArrow, Collective, Innovid, LiveRail, VideoHub and Videology, plus Branding Partners EXPO, Extreme Reach, Mixpo and Real Media. All of them will have representatives at the event and it will be a great opportunity to engage with them.

Don't delay - register now!

I'm pleased to present the 181st edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. This week we discuss the newly-unveiled Xbox One and its TV integration.

As I wrote earlier this week, Xbox One is very slick, but because it's not tightly integrated with pay-TV set-tops, it can't access on-demand and DVR programming. That means even with an Xbox One, complexity will remain in the living room. Colin notes that even the original Google TV box had better integration (with Dish TV, although it was  sub-optimal), and it still failed.

That leads Colin to believe that Xbox One will succeed as a gaming device, but he's skeptical that it will have broad appeal outside that community due to its high price and competitive options from Roku and others. I agree; though Xbox One clearly improves the live TV viewing experience, given today's changing viewer behaviors toward on-demand, it is far from being the "ultimate all-in-one home entertainment system" Microsoft says it is.

Listen in to learn more!

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There's a lot of excitement about online, ad-supported access to TV programs (accessible on the TV networks' own sites or via Hulu), but a new study from ad manager FreeWheel being released this morning shows that in reality, short-form content and 3rd-party syndication are the workhorses of online video advertising.

For the first time, FreeWheel breaks down its data by "Linear + Digital" content providers (i.e. TV networks like Fox, NBC, etc.) and Digital Pure-Play (online-only content providers or aggregators like VEVO, AOL, etc. that mainly focus on short-form content). FreeWheel found that video views grew 30% in Q1 '13 vs. a year earlier, driven by a 47% increase in views from DPPs, which offset a surprising decline of 8% by L+Ds. The data is based on 16 billion video views in Q1.

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Yesterday Microsoft introduced its long-awaited new Xbox console, dubbed "Xbox One" and positioned as a "the ultimate all-in-one home entertainment system."

Watching company executives demo Xbox One, it was immediately apparent how slick the device's gesture and voice controls are, particularly for navigating live TV and other features. For many buyers, these - along with Xbox One's gaming-related advances will be very compelling.

But for those looking for a living room device that supports their on-demand oriented viewing, interest in niche specialized programming, affinity toward mobile interfaces/apps, or all of the above, Xbox One doesn't appear to break any new ground. In this sense, Xbox One is less about being a disruptor of today's TV ecosystem than about improving its use.

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New industry data compiled by Leichtman Research Group shows that broadband ISPs that account for 93% of the U.S.  market added over 1.1 million subscribers in Q1 '13, nearly 6 times the 194K pay-TV subscribers that were added in the period by pay-TV operators that account for 94% of the market.

Broadband subscriber additions have outstripped pay-TV's for years, but the 6x ratio is more than double the average of 2.8x from the prior 2 years. The 194K pay-TV additions in Q1 were down 56% vs. the 445K added in Q1 '12, while the 1.1M broadband additions were off 15% from the 1.3M in each of the prior 2 years.

On the surface the data suggests that cord-cutting - a shift from viewing video via pay-TV to via broadband - may finally be taking hold. But while LRG's Bruce Leichtman has indeed found an uptick in his calculations of cord-cutting (up from .2% of U.S. homes to .4%-.5%), he sees a far more nuanced picture of what accounted for Q1's swing, plus lots of uncertainty going forward.

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Tremor Video's VideoHub technology has received Media Rating Council (MRC) accreditation for its video viewability metric and 4 of its other metrics. The accreditations are another milestone for online video advertising in moving from a "Wild West" to delivering assured campaign data to advertisers, agencies and content providers. MRC is an independent industry organization focused on validated audience measurement services.

The 5 VideoHub metrics that MRC has accredited are as follows:

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