Posts for 'Advertising'

Last Tuesday was VideoNuze’s CTV x AI virtual conference, bringing together 18 speakers across 5 sessions. On today’s podcast we highlight the top takeaways from the conference from the consumer, advertiser and content provider perspectives. All of the session videos are available for on-demand viewing.

It is still early days for understanding the eventual impact of AI on CTV, but the speakers provided an array of insights of what’s happening already, and what’s likely in the future.

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Last Tuesday was VideoNuze’s CTV x AI PREVIEW: 2025 virtual which featured 18 senior executives on 5 sessions in 1 high-impact afternoon.

 Below are links to each of the sessions along with descriptions of each session and its speakers.


[VIDEO] Understanding Consumers’ Experience with AI and Entertainment

[VIDEO] Exploring How AI is Influencing CTV’s Effectiveness

[VIDEO] AI’s Capabilities Bring Benefits to CTV

[VIDEO] Interview with Paramount Global’s EVP, CTO and Head of Multiplatform Operations Phil Wiser

[VIDEO] How CTV and AI are Creating Breakthrough Experiences

Many thanks to our 3 generous partners FreeWheel, Mediaocean and Wurl!

Enjoy!

The following video was streamed at VideoNuze’s CTV x AI PREVIEW: 2025 virtual on February 25, 2025.

[VIDEO] Understanding Consumers’ Experience with AI and Entertainment
 
New research on consumers’ awareness and experience with AI and entertainment. Plus insights about CTV, advertising and viewership trends.

Jon Giegengack – Founder and Principal, Hub Entertainment Research

The following video was streamed at VideoNuze’s CTV x AI PREVIEW: 2025 virtual on February 25, 2025.

[VIDEO] Exploring How AI is Influencing CTV’s Effectiveness
Learn how AI is influencing CTV advertising’s effectiveness, including audience targeting, planning, optimization and measurement. What are the current opportunities and the long-term potential for AI to drive incremental value in CTV for both advertisers and streaming services?

• Bob Bress – VP, Head of Data Science, FreeWheel
• Brad Epperson – AWS WW Business Development Lead for Monetization (Media, Entertainment, Games and Sports)
• Jordan Greene – Co-founder and Chief Media Officer, Alpha Precision Media
• David Nyurenberg – Director, Digital Video Product Development & Innovation, Rain the Growth agency
• Jason Wiese – EVP, Strategic Insights and Measurement, VAB (moderator)

The following video was streamed at VideoNuze’s CTV x AI PREVIEW: 2025 virtual on February 25, 2025.

[VIDEO] AI’s Capabilities Bring Benefits to CTV
How is AI being implemented to benefit the CTV marketplace and what might be expected going forward? What are the new capabilities AI is enabling that add meaningful value to CTV?
 

• Gerry D'Angelo - Senior Advisor, Marketing & Sales, McKinsey & Company
• Asaf Greiner – GM, Protected by Mediaocean 
• Natasha Potashnik – Head of Data, Research & Measurement, Vevo
• Kevin Weigand - VP, Partnerships, Video & Audio, dentsu Media US Investment Solutions
• Colin Dixon - Founder and Chief Analyst, nScreenMedia (moderator)

The following video was streamed at VideoNuze’s CTV x AI PREVIEW: 2025 virtual on February 25, 2025.

[VIDEO] Interview with Paramount Global’s EVP, CTO and Head of Multiplatform Operations Phil Wiser

Learn how media companies, including Paramount, are approaching AI and its ability to drive CTV and streaming opportunities.

• Phil Wiser – EVP, CTO and Head of Multiplatform Operations, Paramount Global
• Will Richmond – Editor and Publisher, VideoNuze (interviewer)

The following video was streamed at VideoNuze’s CTV x AI PREVIEW: 2025 virtual on February 25, 2025.

[VIDEO] How CTV and AI are Creating Breakthrough Experiences
This session will focus on AI’s transformative impact on content and contextual advertising experiences delivered to connected TVs. What are the key innovations driving breakthrough personalization, relevance and value?

• Peter Crofut – Vice President, Business Development – Agencies & Brands, Wurl
• Albert Lai – Global Strategic Industry Leader, M&E, Google Cloud
• Bharad Ramesh – CEO & Co-Founder, Aqxle AI
• Marilois Snowman – Founding Partner and CEO, Mediastruction
• Peter Csathy – Chairman, Creative Media (moderator)

Peacock subscribers held steady at 36 million from Q3 to Q4, though up from 31 million a year ago. Importantly Peacock’s quarterly loss declined from $825 million in the year ago quarter to $372 million this quarter. Elsewhere at Comcast, the company lost 139K broadband subscribers in Q4, worse than the 34K loss a year ago.

We also discuss Fox’s increase in Super Bowl ad rates to $8 million, and new data showing how FAST apps built into the TVOS are garnering more attention.

Thanks to our sponsor this week, Looper Insights. Click to access their new report, “Streaming Forward: Trends Shaping Digital Entertainment in 2025.” Colin has the QR code on his site to scan for the report as well.

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Walmart has closed its $2.3 billion acquisition of VIZIO. As Colin and I discuss on this week’s podcast, there are many opportunities that the deal creates. We focus on a few, including Walmart extending WatchFree+, driving new CTV ad revenue and also broadening the availability of one-click buying and attribution.

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Disney’s fiscal Q4 results confirmed a broader industry trend that ad-supported subscribers are driving growth for streaming services. Disney’s CEO Bob Iger said 60% of new DTC subscribers are on the ad tier, with 37% and 30% of US and international subscribers, respectively, now on the ad tier.

Related, Netflix said earlier this week that 70 million monthly users are reached via its ad-supported plan, up from 22 million in January. It also said over 50% of new subscribers in countries where an ad tier is available sign up for it. Colin and I discuss the reasons viewers are choosing ad-supported plans.

Related, we also explore new Gracenote data showing the disproportionate amount of SVOD titles on Amazon Prime Video.

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Four topics for this week’s podcast:

First, Disney+ and Hulu are no longer available for sign up in Apple’s App Store. As we discuss, this feels like a move by Disney to preserve margins, though at the expense of some of its subscribers losing the advantages of unified billing and integrated search/discovery. It also means less competition for Amazon, which is already the dominant distributor of third-party streaming services.

Next, IAB Tech Lab this week announced an initiative to help standardize emerging CTV ad formats. We’re confident it will help more advertisers move spending into the channel.

Third, Fubo is boldly offering premium services on a standalone basis, not requiring a base subscription plan. Fubo aims to be a “super aggregator” and is breaking from pay-TV operators’ traditional approach of enabling access to premium services only for subscribers. It’s a sign of the times, with viewers requiring flexibility and it seems like a savvy play by Fubo to keep viewers engaged with its app.

Last, a variety of streaming services are partnering with grocery chains and delivery apps, which both of us think makes a lot of sense to reduce churn and cost per acquisition. We expect to see more partnerships going forward.

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Four topics for this week’s podcast:

Last week IAB released its new 2024 advertising outlook report based on a survey of media professionals. CTV advertising was at the top of expected gains, revised upward from a 14.5% lift vs. 2023 in IAB’s prior report to 18.4% now. It’s another positive sign for CTV ads and we discuss how big a role political ad spending is playing.

Next up, Comcast’s president shared insights about NBCU’s position in movies and PVOD which were relatively upbeat. While NBCU has had a strong year, as we review, movies still face stiff headwinds.

Third, Charter and AMC signed a new distribution deal that gives many Charter TV subscribers access to the ad-supported version of AMC+. While the deal averts a blackout like the one happening with DIRECTV and Disney currently, Colin and I question whether the deal is sufficiently forward-looking for AMC.

Finally, Colin explains the significance of Amazon introducing TVs that support the NextGen TV standard.

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Disney reported a $47 million operating profit in its direct-to-consumer (DTC) segment in its fiscal third quarter 2024. The profit comes one quarter earlier than Disney had forecast. The $47 million profit reverses a $517 million loss in the year ago quarter.

While the optics of the profit are indeed positive, in this week’s podcast Colin and I do a deep dive into the profit’s true quality and sustainability. Doing so reveals a fragile picture. First, there are issues about how much of Disney+’s recent subscriber gains are in fact due to the Charter deal, which by some accounts hasn’t been terribly successful in driving active subscribers. Meanwhile, Hulu’s been moving sideways for a while, and there’s no longer transparency about ESPN+’s subscriber count.

Another issue is Disney+’s falling average monthly revenue per paid subscriber which declined further in Q3. It’s noteworthy because Disney’s CFO ascribed it partially to Disney+’s lower-priced ad tier. Yet Hulu actually reported higher average monthly revenue per paid subscriber due to higher ad revenue. So there are some contradictory signals.

Meanwhile, Disney’s aggressive bundling, at deep discounts, may bode well as a longer-term churn-buster, but will almost certainly pressure near-term DTC profitability. Then there’s Disney+’s price increase, which will kick in soon, concurrent with a broad rollout on limiting password sharing. This double whammy is likely to lead to some subscriber losses.

From analyzing the the Q3 financial statement, it’s clear Disney+ and Hulu were still unprofitable in the quarter. It was actually ESPN+ that turned the DTC segment green. But as I detail, further analysis reveals an unusual jump in ESPN+’s quarterly profit level and profit margin vs. a year ago, suggesting Disney may have done a one-time reallocation of expenses from ESPN+ to ESPN that cannot be replicated in future quarters. Speaking of one-time events, Disney may still owe Comcast another $5 billion for the Hulu buyout (it’s not clear if that would hit the DTC line or another).

Finally, and at the risk of piling on, just over the horizon in fiscal ’25 loom big payments for Disney to the NBA for its new rights deal and an earnings drag as the new Venu Sports JV (potentially) ramps up. Note, an early Venu write-off is equally likely.

Add it all up and it’s clear to us that the quality and sustainability of Disney’s first quarterly DTC profit are quite fragile.

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Comcast reported Q2 ’24 results this week, including an update on Peacock, which cut its loss to $348 million in the quarter from $639 million a year ago. Peacock’s subscriber count increased from 24 million in Q2 ’23 to 33 million at the end of Q2 ’24, but that was actually down a million from the end of Q1 ’24. 

In this week’s podcast we discuss whether and when Peacock will turn the corner and become a scaled, profitable streaming service. Peacock is betting big on expensive sports to deliver, with the Olympics kicking off tonight, and a new multi-billion dollar NBA deal to be announced soon, validating our call for Peacock to "Go Big or Go Home" back in November, 2021.

Peacock was a very late entry to the streaming game, and according to MoffettNathanson, has lost at least $8 billion over the past 14 quarters. Colin and I explain why we aren’t convinced sports can carry the weight of Peacock’s turnaround, and agree that only time will tell. 

We then switch gears to discuss Netflix’s Q2 earnings and the company’s lagging ad-tier performance, which surprises both of us a bit. Veteran podcast listeners will recall that back in October, 2022 Colin and I expressed our optimism about the pending impact of paid sharing and the ad-tier. The former has been a monster success for Netflix, based at least partly on the expert execution of its rollout. The ad tier remains a work in progress but we remain confident Netflix will figure it out. 

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Antenna’s research has become a go-to source for streaming industry executives trying to understand the fast-evolving landscape. In this exclusive interview, Antenna’s Co-Founder and CEO Jonathan Carson discusses details behind the firm’s recently-released “State of the Subscriptions” report. Jonathan is an ad industry veteran with particular expertise in research and monetization, as well as a longtime friend.

Three weeks ago Colin and I did a podcast on the publicly available report, and Antenna itself did a short webinar about it two weeks ago. But this interview explores data that hasn’t been publicly released, so listeners gain access to brand new insights and data that Antenna hasn’t previously shared.

The interview provides a fascinating window into four drivers in streaming today: the shift to adoption of ad-supported SVOD tiers, the role of bundling, the anemic penetration of annual SVOD subscriptions and consumers’ acceptance to date of SVOD price increases. We finish up with Jonathan sharing his views of the industry going forward.

The interview with Jonathan is a must-listen for all industry participants. Together with our interview with leading Wall Street analyst Michael Nathanson two weeks ago, they are a blockbuster doubleheader of insights, helping all of us truly understand what’s happening in the streaming industry today.

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We’re excited to have top Wall Street media analyst Michael Nathanson join us this week. Michael and his partner Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson are the “one-two punch” of the TV, streaming and broadband industries. Their analyses and insights are widely considered best in class. Michael is an old friend, and we’re so pleased to have him join us in this exclusive, must-listen interview.

Among the many topics we cover: the recent decline in CTV CPMs due to Amazon’s market entry and why the new inventory will be digested, the competitive dynamics in the broader CTV/AVOD market, YouTube’s massive scale and Michael’s prediction that YouTube TV will be the pay-TV market leader in two years with 10 million subscribers, FAST’s potential, legacy media’s abysmal $30B cumulative loss on DTC services in the past 5 years, why streaming’s future will be driven by advertising and why the “unit value” of advertising is poised to soar due to AI and finally, the biggest potential surprise in the next year.

Anyone who wants to understand what’s really happening in the TV/streaming industries will find this exclusive interview invaluable.

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Antenna has released its new “State of Subscriptions” report, which is full of data and insights addressing some of the most pressing topics in the streaming industry.

On this week’s podcast, we dig into some of the report’s key takeaways about how annual subscriptions aren’t gaining much traction with viewers, why streaming bundles are already succeeding, the surprising degree to which subscribers are accepting price increases, the ascendancy of ad-supported tiers and more.

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This week we interview Roku’s Head of Ad Marketing Jordan Rost and MAGNA’s EVP, Intelligence Solutions Kara Manatt, about their companies’ new research - "From Power On to Power Off" - about viewers’ content discovery journeys and the role of CTV Home Screen advertising. A key takeaway of the research is that almost half (44%) of streaming sessions begin with the viewer browsing, rather than knowing what they want to watch.

That opens up a huge content discovery opportunity on the home page, which dovetails with advertisers (especially streaming services) desire to gain awareness and action. We discuss this dynamic and other findings from the research about viewers’ mindsets and receptivity to ads along with how home page ads are already being executed.

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