Long-time VideoNuze readers know I've been talking about the trend toward content providers' video being syndicated to third-party publishers' sites for a while now, and judging by comScore's August data, the model appears to be gaining further momentum.
Two of the top 10 video properties - NDN and Grab Media - have syndication as their core business model, while a third - AOL, via its 5Min acquisition, uses syndication to power a significant amount of its views. Meanwhile, YouTube, which is consistently the largest property, leverages embedding for organic syndication, while #4 property VEVO syndicates a lot of its music videos to YouTube. Beyond the overall top 10, as I've written previously, in the sports vertical specifically, syndicators took 2 of the top 4 spots in the first half of '12.
Categories: Syndicated Video Economy
Topics: AOL, Grab Media, NDN, Sharethrough
The Olympics is currently dominating the sports world's attention, but have a look at comScore's first half 2012 data (chart below), and what jumps out is that 2 of the top 4 properties aren't well-known branded destinations, but rather little-known video syndicators, Perform Sports and CineSport.
Perform is #2, with 14.6 million average monthly unique viewers, trailing predictable leader ESPN, which has 20.5 million. And CineSport is #4 with 11.4 million average monthly unique viewers, behind #3 Yahoo Sports, which has 12.4 million. Following them are properties you'd expect to see on any top 10 list: Turner Sports, MLB, Fox Sports, NBC Sports, NFL and CBS Sports.
Categories: Sports, Syndicated Video Economy
It's been a little over four years since I started discussing a concept I called the "Syndicated Video Economy." My thesis was that for content creators to succeed, they needed to distribute their videos to relevant third-parties in addition to their own sites. Only by leveraging syndication would they gain enough scale to achieve an ROI. Flash forward to today, and value of syndication is strong and growing.
One of the companies which is capitalizing on the syndication trend is Grab Media, which in 2011 saw its unique viewers jump from about 7.3 million to about 24 million, the second-fastest growth of an video property according to comScore. Grab works with hundreds of content providers of all sizes and has built a catalog of 800K-900K short videos (usually 3-5 minutes), which it makes available to 140,000 different publisher sites. All of this aggregates to almost 300M video views per month.
Categories: Syndicated Video Economy
Topics: Grab Media
The power of the video syndication model is on full display in the online sports category, where 2 of the top 3 properties in December, 2011 were little known, early stage video syndicators, rather than well-known media brands and sports leagues. As the chart below shows, the #2 slot belonged to CineSport, a company I wrote about 6 months ago, with 15.7 million unique viewers while the #3 position went to Perform Sports, a year-old entrant, with 14.6 million unique viewers. Both trailed ESPN with 24.7 million unique viewers, but were still well ahead of stalwarts like CBS, Turner and Fox. Earlier this week I spoke to Juan Delgado, Managing Director of Perform Americas to learn more about its syndication formula.
Categories: Sports, Syndicated Video Economy
Categories: Syndicated Video Economy
Topics: RealGravity
Categories: Devices, Indie Video, Syndicated Video Economy
Topics: HealthiNation, Roku
Categories: Branded Entertainment, Magazines, Syndicated Video Economy
Categories: Syndicated Video Economy, Technology
Topics: 5Min, LongTail Video, LongTail.tv
Categories: Sports, Syndicated Video Economy
Categories: Deals & Financings, Portals, Syndicated Video Economy
Categories: Branded Entertainment, Syndicated Video Economy
Topics: New York Television Festival
Categories: Aggregators, Syndicated Video Economy
Topics: 5Min, DailyMotion
Categories: Events, Indie Video, Syndicated Video Economy
Topics: 5Min, ActiveVideo Networks, Revision3, TDG, Webinar
Categories: Syndicated Video Economy
Topics: AlphaBird, DailyMotion, Warner Bros.
Categories: Syndicated Video Economy, Technology
Categories: Indie Video, Syndicated Video Economy
Topics: AlphaBird, FremantleMedia
Here's something cool: ClipBlast updated its Facebook app yesterday to now include access to practically all of Hulu's content. ClipBlast's CEO/founder Gary Baker walked me through a demo and I was quite impressed. Once you've added the app, you can favorite certain Hulu shows and they appear as tiles which you can then easily scroll through. It's a huge step forward from Hulu's own mediocre Facebook app. You can also choose video from over 8,500 other sources that ClipBlast offers.
Though I'm personally not a huge Facebook user, the app resonated with me because it makes discovering and sharing video even more powerful as Facebook friends are just a click away. Of course Hulu has offered embedding from the start, but to get almost the whole Hulu library into Facebook, in front of a potential audience of 400 million users is classic "syndicated video economy" thinking. In the SVE, instead of solely trying to bring audience to your content (the traditional media model), efforts are also focused on bringing your content to the audience, wherever they live. All of Hulu's ads flow through as well, so views are still fully monetized. What's missing is full screen viewing, which Gary said is coming shortly.
What do you think? Post a comment now (no sign-in required).
Categories: Aggregators, Syndicated Video Economy, Video Sharing
Topics: ClipBlast, Facebook, Hulu
As 2009 winds down, in the spirit of accountability, it's time to take a look back at my 5 predictions for the year and see how they fared. As when I made them, they're listed below in the order of most likely to least likely to pan out.
1. The Syndicated Video Economy Accelerates
My least controversial prediction for 2009 was that video would continue to flow freely among content providers numerous third parties, in what I labeled the "Syndicated Video Economy" back in early 2008. The idea of the SVE is that "destination" sites for online audiences are waning; instead audiences are fragmenting to social networks, mobile devices, micro-blogging sites, etc. As a result, the SVE compels content providers to reach eyeballs wherever they may be, rather than trying to continue driving them to one particular site.
Video syndication continued to gain ground in '09, with a number of the critical building blocks firming up. Participants across the ecosystem such as FreeWheel, 5Min, RAMP, YouTube, Visible Measures, Magnify.net, Grab Networks, blip.TV, Hulu and others were all active in distributing, monetizing and measuring video across the SVE. I heard from many content executives during the year that syndication was now driving their businesses, and that they only expected that to increase in the future. So do I.
2. Mobile Video Takes Off, Finally
When the history of mobile video is written, 2009 will be identified as the year the medium achieved critical mass. I was bullish on mobile video at the end of 2008 primarily due to the iPhone's success and my expectation that other smartphones coming to market would challenge it with ever more innovation. The iPhone has continued its amazing run in '09, on track to sell 20 million+ units. Late in the year the Droid, which Verizon has relentlessly promoted, began making inroads. It also benefitted from Verizon highlighting AT&T's inadequate 3G network. Elsewhere, 4G carrier Clearwire continued its nationwide expansion.
While still behind online video in its development, mobile video is benefiting from comparable characteristics. Handsets are increasingly video capable, just as were computers. Mobile content is flowing freely, leaving the closed "on-deck" only model behind and emulating the open Internet. Carriers are making significant network investments, just as broadband ISPs did. A range of monetization companies have emerged. And so on. As I noted recently, the mobile video ecosystem is healthy and growing. The mobile video story is still in its earliest stages, we'll see much more action in 2010.
3. Net Neutrality Remains Dormant
Given all the problems the Obama administration was inheriting as it prepared to take office a year ago, I predicted that it would not expend energy and political capital trying to restart the net neutrality regulatory process. With broadband ISP misbehavior not factually proven, I also thought Obama's predilection for data in determining government action would prevail. However, I cautioned that politics is a tough business to predict, and so anything can happen.
And indeed, what turned out is that in September, new FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski launched a vigorous net neutrality initiative, despite the fact that there was still little data supporting it. With backwards logic, Genachowski said the FCC would be guided by data it would be collecting, though he was already determined to proceed. In "Why the FCC's Net Neutrality Plan Should Go Nowhere" I argued, among other things, that the FCC is way off the mark, and that in the midst of the gripping recession, to risk the unintended consequences that preemptive regulation carries, was foolhardy. Now, with Comcast set to acquire a controlling interest in NBCU, net neutrality advocates will say there's even more to be worried about. It looks like we can expect action in 2010.
4. Ad-Supported Premium Video Aggregators Shakeout
The well-funded category of ad-supported premium video aggregators was due for a shakeout in '09 and sure enough it happened. Players were challenged by little differentiation, hardly any exclusive content and difficulty attracting audiences. The year's biggest casualty was highflying Joost, which made a last ditch attempt to become a white label video platform before being quietly acquired by Adconion. Veoh, another heavily funded player, cut staff and changed its model. TidalTV barely dipped its toe in the aggregation waters before it became an ad network.
On the positive side, Hulu, YouTube and TV.com continued their growth in '09. Hulu benefited from Disney coming on board as both an investor and content partner, while YouTube improved its appeal to premium content partners and brought on Univision and PBS, among others. Aside from these, Fancast and nichier sites like Dailymotion and Babelgum, there isn't much left to the aggregator category. With TV Everywhere services starting to launch, the opportunity for aggregators to get access to cable programming is less likely than ever. And despite their massive traffic, Hulu and YouTube have significant unresolved business model issues.
5. Microsoft Will Acquire Netflix
This was my long ball prediction for '09, and unless something happens in the waning days of the year, I'll have to concede I got this one wrong. Netflix has remained independent and is charging along with its own streaming "Watch Instantly" feature, now used by over half its subscribers, according to recent research. Netflix has also broadened its penetration of 3rd party devices, adding PS3, Sony Bravia TVs and Blu-ray players, Insignia Blu-ray players this year, in addition to Roku, XBox and others. Netflix is quickly becoming the most sought-after content partner for "over-the-top" device makers.
But as I've previously pointed out, Netflix's number 1 challenge with Watch Instantly is growing its content selection. Though it has a deal with Starz, it is largely boxed out of distributing recent hit movies via Watch Instantly by the premium channels HBO, Showtime and Epix. My rationale for the Microsoft acquisition is that Netflix will need far deeper pockets than it has on its own to crack open the Hollywood-premium channel ecosystem to gain access to prime movies. For its part, Microsoft, locked in a pitched battle with Google and Apple on numerous fronts, could gain advantage with a Netflix deal, positioning it to be the leader in the convergence era. Meanwhile, others like Amazon and YouTube continue to circle this space.
The two big countervailing forces for how premium video gets distributed in the future are TV Everywhere, which seeks to maintain the traditional, closed ecosystem, and the over-the-top consumer device-led approach, which seeks to open it up. It's hard not to see both Netflix and Microsoft playing a major role.
What do you think? Post a comment now.
Categories: Advertising, Aggregators, Broadband ISPs, Deals & Financings, Mobile Video, Regulation, Syndicated Video Economy
Topics: Apple, AT&T, Fancast, FCC, Hulu, iPhone, Joost, Microsoft, Netflix, Veoh, Verizon, YouTube
EveryZing is changing its name to RAMP, and positioning itself around "Content Optimization." Ordinarily a name change signals a change in strategic or product direction, but in this case, as CEO Tom Wilde explained to me last week, the re-naming is neither. The change to RAMP unifies the company name with its platform name (plus descriptive extensions), and completes the evolution of the company as a consumer destination originally named PodZinger.
I've been bullish on RAMP since my original post on the company in February '08, in which I detailed how RAMP married online video to the ubiquitous consumer search experience, addressing the chronic need for improved video discoverability. RAMP did this by using core technology to extract metadata for any type of video, audio, text and image and then organizing related content onto search engine-friendly topic pages that grouped related content.
RAMP has continued to build out its platform since then, unveiling its "chromeless" MetaPlayer in Oct '08 that creates "virtual clips" so users can navigate to just the scene they're looking for, while content providers can maintain their existing business rules. Then earlier this year RAMP released "MediaCloud," which moved the metadata extraction process into the cloud, giving content providers the ability to manage the metadata themselves and deeply integrate it into their workflow and larger content publishing activities.
As metadata has become recognized as the currency underpinning content discovery and monetization, RAMP has added large customers, such as NBCU (also its lead investor), FOX, Meredith Publishing and others. RAMP's capabilities to handle all media types (video, audio, text and images) has become increasingly important as content providers realize that mixing and matching different assets is now required to provide audiences with the best experience. For the most advanced publishers, the days of siloing off video or audio are in the past.
In its new white paper, RAMP articulates well the fundamental shifts happening in the media business: the move away from "containers" (e.g. a magazine, album or newspaper) into content "objects" that users find, share and self-organize online; the trend toward syndication, where brand success is more about proliferating content everywhere on the web than attracting users to a specific destination site; the opportunity for content providers to enhance their monetization through dynamic contextual targeting rather than by simply selling eyeballs. Addressing these and other elements effectively is what RAMP calls content optimization.
Many of the themes RAMP espouses align with what I've been describing for a while now as the "Syndicated Video Economy." I only see these themes accelerating in importance as the supply of video escalates, devices proliferate and social media grows. With its flexible, SaaS platform that integrates well into other 3rd party content management and publishing platforms, I expect RAMP will continue to succeed as content providers become more sophisticated about how to operate online.
What do you think? Post a comment now.
Categories: Syndicated Video Economy, Technology
In a quick call yesterday with FreeWheel Co-CEO and Co-Founder Doug Knopper, who was on his way to NYC for tonight's VideoSchmooze, he told me that the company is poised to manage 1 billion video ads next month, all against premium video streams.
In addition, FreeWheel has now been integrated by AOL, MSN and Fancast, among others, with Yahoo testing currently and ready to go live soon. It looks like the major portals are being encouraged to integrate with FreeWheel's Monetization Rights Management system by the company's premium content customers. The benefit to the content providers is better control and monetization of their ad inventory across their portal distribution deals. The portal activity comes on top of FreeWheel's recently-reported implementation with YouTube, allowing the site's premium content partners to sell and insert ads against their YouTube-initiated streams.
FreeWheel is another great example of the Syndicated Video Economy (SVE) I've frequently talked about. Doug says FreeWheel's progress is proof that the SVE is really "hitting its stride."
It is hard though to put FreeWheel's 1 billion number into perspective. One way of thinking about it is comparing it to the data that comScore reported for August '09 for the top 10 video sites. Assuming only 5-10% of YouTube's views are from its premium partners and maybe half of Fox Interactive's are (due to MySpace's user-generated videos being included in its 380M streams) the top 10 video providers would account for about 3.5B videos. If each video had an average of 2 ads (which is a decent assumption when averaging short clips vs. full programs), then the top 10 video sites would account for about 7B video ads.
Relative to the top 10 then, FreeWheel's 1B ads managed look pretty healthy. To get a fuller picture, you'd also have to consider how many premium streams are in the 12B+ video views that fall outside of comScore's top 10 video sites, and how many ads run against those. If anyone has any ideas for how to determine these numbers, I'd love to hear them.
What do you think? Post a comment now.
Categories: Advertising, Portals, Syndicated Video Economy, Technology
Topics: AOL, Fancast, FreeWheel, MSN, Yahoo, YouTube