VideoNuze Posts

Everyone knows that online and mobile video consumption is soaring, as tablets, mobile devices and connected TVs proliferate, but new data from Ooyala helps quantify things. According to its Q4 2011 Video Index report, released this morning, viewership on these devices doubled from Q3 '11 to Q4 '11. This is being driven by users clicking "play" more often when presented with video choices and then watching longer as well.

Tablets led with 22% growth in quarter-over-quarter growth in time watched per play. Connected TV and game consoles led in engagement (as measured by completion rate per video viewed), with viewers completing 47% of videos. Tablets were second with 38%, followed by desktop and mobile. Videos longer than 10 minutes added up to 57% of the viewership time on connected TVs and gaming consoles, while on desktops it was just 25%.

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Technology provider RAMP is announcing this morning that ABCNews.com and CNBC.com are now using its web closed captioning solution, and that it has made a number of enhancements in order to better meet the needs of customers. For those not familiar with web closed captioning, the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act signed in Oct. 2010 mandates that by the end of 2012, all video originally aired on broadcast or cable TV networks, which is then delivered online, must include closed captions.

As RAMP's CEO Tom Wilde explained to me last week, the act has created huge new challenges for TV networks because when captioned on-air video is passed from the broadcast team to the digital team for online delivery, there's no adequate workflow to keep the caption file in synch with the video. The situation becomes even more complicated when a full-length video is sliced up into shorter online-only clips.

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Online video and social media have become Super Bowl advertisers' new best friends, extending the ROI of expensive game buys to new levels. Helping quantify the impact, a new study by Kantar Video reveals that over $11.1 million in "earned media" (essentially incremental free online views) has been generated by all Super Bowl advertisers in the first 3 days following the game, from over 148 million total views. Viewership of this year's Super Bowl ads is up 267% vs. last year.

The top 10 ads alone accounted for $8.6 million of the total, providing an average of $862K in earned media per ad, or about a quarter of the $3.5 million each ad cost to run during the game. Viewership of the top 10 ads for the first 3 days is over 95 million views. Honda's Ferris Bueller spoof, "Matthew's Day Off," has gained the most earned media, approximately $2.3 million, from over 14.7 million online views.

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I'm pleased to be joined once again by Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group, for the 120th edition of the VideoNuze Report podcast, for Feb. 10, 2012. In this week's podcast we discuss Nielsen's new Cross-Platform Report for Q3 2011 and its implications for the broader TV industry.

Among the key findings in the report are that pay-TV households dropped slightly overall from Q3 '10 to Q3 '11, with cable homes decreasing to the benefit of telco and satellite. This has been happening for years as newer providers enter the market with aggressive offers. Nielsen also found that the number of "broadcast-only" with broadband homes increased significantly. In addition, a NY Times analysis of Nielsen data found that for viewers in the 12-34 age range, TV viewership per day decreased from Q3 '10 to Q3 '11 by six to nine minutes per day.

This and other Nielsen data underscore what we all know intuitively and from our personal experiences and anecdotes: individual behaviors are changing as new video alternatives and other choices for how we spend time (e.g. social media, video games, etc.) have exploded. All of this contributes to changing perceptions of pay-TV's value. Beyond Nielsen, Colin cites TDG's own data about Netflix users' interest in downgrading their pay-TV service, which jumped from 16% in 2010 to 32% in 2011. Colin believes this shows that for some, online is viewed as a bona fide alternative to pay-TV. Between the Nielsen and TDG data, it's clear that the TV and video landscape is in the early stage of significant change.

Listen in to learn more!



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A+E Networks will use FreeWheel's Monetization Rights Management system to manage video ads running against its content consumed on Apple iOS mobile devices, the companies announced this morning. A+E will be able to deploy video ads on its own mobile properties as well as those of third-party syndication partners. FreeWheel gives A+E the ability to manage ad sales rights, forecast inventory, determine ad loads in specific commercial breaks, and monitor performance, among other things.

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The 2012 presidential election is already in full swing, and in early primary states that's meant a barrage of TV ads from well-funded candidates. But with viewer behaviors shifting away from traditional TV, the Internet has become an increasingly important way of reaching voters. And with online video usage surging, the latest battleground is how to leverage this new medium to their advantage. Enter the new "Jivox Political Ad Kit," an interactive, multi-screen, social media-enabled product from video ad technology provider Jivox.

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There's little subtlety in Adap.tv's current placeholder web site that asks the question, "What does it take to destroy the inefficiencies in TV and video advertising?" Unlike other online video ad technology providers who are positioning themselves to complement the current TV ad buying process, Adap.tv is looking to blow up the traditional approach, replacing it with what CEO/founder Amir Ashkenazi's calls a "programmatic" technology-based alternative. Last week I caught up with Amir to learn more about Adap.tv's mission, and also how it landed as the number 2 video ad provider (just behind Hulu) in comScore's December, '11 ranking, with over 1.1 billion ads served.

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The first-ever streaming Super Bowl attracted over 2.1 million unique viewers, who consumed 78.6 million minutes. That surpassed NBC's expectations, according to Kevin Monaghan, SVP, Business Development and Managing Director of Digital Media at NBC Sports Group, who said that usage increased throughout the game and peaked in Q4 during the Giants' final touchdown drive. According to Omniture and mDialog data, it was the most-viewed live-streamed single game ever.

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