VideoNuze Posts

Please save the dates for VideoNuze’s inaugural Connected TV Advertising Brand Suitability Summit (virtual) on the afternoons of November 16th and 17th.

As we all know, connected TV advertising is exploding. eMarketer estimates that in 2021, in the U.S. alone, CTV advertising will exceed $13 billion, and will more than double, to over $27 billion in 2025. Other analysts are forecasting even faster growth.

But there are still many challenges for CTV advertising to achieve its full potential. One of the most significant challenges over the past several years has been “brand safety” - advertisers’ discomfort with having their brands associated with anything but premium, “brand-safe” content. This is a topic we’ve explored deeply at prior VideoNuze CTV Ad Summits.

Beyond the traditional conversations about and solutions to brand safety, there is a more recent focus on “brand suitability” in CTV advertising - how advertisers can optimize their adjacency to particular premium video content, according to specific performance metrics. “Suitability” is a critical evolution in industry vocabulary because it moves the conversation from negative associations of “safety,” to instead focus on the positive nature of appropriate advertising.

Integral to the topic of brand suitability is Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I). Increasingly, advertisers and agencies recognize that advertising campaigns and the professionals who create and execute them must reflect society’s diversity and its evolving values. Brand building is becoming more purposeful around advancing equity, inclusion and representation. As CTV advertising gains a larger share of both linear TV and digital ad spending, it is poised to play a more important role in brand suitability and DE&I.

For all of these reasons, the time is now right for a first of its kind industry event that is 100% focused on brand suitability and safety in CTV advertising along with the integral role of DE&I. This is VideoNuze’s Connected TV Advertising Brand Suitability Summit’s mission. An opportunity for the industry’s top thought-leaders to convene and dig into all aspects of this complex, vital topic. Through a highly curated program of keynotes, research presentations, interviews and panel discussions, attendees will immerse themselves in all the key issues and how they’re being addressed through modern approaches and solutions.

I’m planning for the CTV Advertising Brand Suitability Summit to feature significant involvement from large ad agencies and advertisers who are leading in both CTV advertising and DE&I. I’m really proud to share that I will be directing 10% of all paid sponsorship revenue to agency partners, or their designated affiliates, to advance their DE&I initiatives. I’m also really excited that a number of the industry’s leading companies have already committed to be sponsors of the CTV Advertising Brand Suitability Summit. Based on my initial outreach, I’m anticipating this event will be very well-received across the industry. If you would like to learn more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact me.

Please visit the CTV Advertising Brand Suitability Summit’s website for more information and registration. I'll have a lot more information to share in the coming weeks. I’ll also be sharing VideoNuze’s full 2022 event plan, which will build on 15 years of successful online video and CTV events that have been attended by thousands of industry professionals. Next year will feature at least three compelling CTV advertising events, including one in the first quarter.

For now, please save November 16th and 17th for what I hope will be two high-impact afternoons of learning and networking.

VideoNuze readers know that I’ve long been bullish on Amazon Channels, the program Amazon provides to distribute SVOD services. Amazon offers these services access to its massive audience and comprehensive delivery infrastructure, while retaining a share of the monthly subscription revenue for itself. For SVOD services, Amazon Channels is an attractive and highly tempting way to quickly scale up their subscriber base. For Amazon, it’s yet another way to bolster its presence in the media business, generate high-margin revenue and leverage its reach and tech capabilities.

But an experience I’ve had over the past few days has highlighted the execution challenges SVOD services encounter when partnering with Amazon Channels and more broadly, the downside of third-party distributor relationships at a time when building direct-to-consumer bonds is more important than ever.

On the last night of vacation this past Friday with extended family, we decided to watch “A Few Good Men” after dinner. A quick search revealed it was available on AMC+ which itself could be subscribed to either directly or through Amazon Channels. I chose the latter route (why not, Amazon already has my credit card, etc.). With a couple clicks on the Roku TV, I started my 7-day free trial to AMC+ and we were watching the movie. Easy, easy.

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(Reminder - if you are a listener of The VideoNuze Report podcast, please update your feed per below to the new Inside the Stream feeds which have been available for a couple of months....we don't want to lose you as a listener as we complete this transition!)

Welcome to this week’s edition of Inside the Stream, the podcast where nScreenMedia’s Chief Analyst Colin Dixon and I take listeners inside the world of streaming video.

Colin has just released an in-depth white paper on the free ad-supported streaming TV (“FAST”) market, underwritten by Verizon Media, and on today’s podcast he shares his key takeaways and assumptions (note, I have not yet had a chance myself to review the paper which is free to download).

The paper also includes Colin’s forecast for FAST services’ advertising revenues in the U.S. alone. Colin has built his model with both a top-down industry analysis and a bottoms-up review of FAST services including logging ad pod durations, frequency, fill rates, etc, and consulting with numerous industry leaders. Colin sees FASTs generating $2.1 billion in ad revenue in the U.S. in ’21, increasing to $4.1 billion in ’23, though he notes he may be erring on the conservative side.

If you’re interested in the FAST market and especially how it relates to AVOD, Colin’s paper is a must to download. Colin’s also eager to refine his model further, so please feel free to share your feedback directly with him.

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(Reminder - if you are a listener of The VideoNuze Report podcast, please update your feed per below to the new Inside the Stream feeds which have been available for a couple of months....we don't want to lose you as a listener as we complete this transition!)

Welcome to this week’s edition of Inside the Stream, the podcast where nScreenMedia’s Chief Analyst Colin Dixon and I take listeners inside the world of streaming video.

Earlier this week ViacomCBS and Comcast announced a partnership to launch “SkyShowtime,” a new SVOD service launching in 2022 in over 20 European territories with over 90 million homes. On today’s podcast Colin and I discuss why the companies chose to partner, especially since they have incumbent services in Peacock and Paramount+, rather than go it alone.

As Colin explains, the key here is content - both quality and quantity. The minimum size and selection of content required to be competitive in SVOD, especially in Europe, just keeps getting bigger. Colin brings his insights about the European market to our discussion. Importantly, he discusses the critical role that the big local broadcasters play as well as the “30% rule” for locally-produced content.

Another topic we explore is how this partnership signals a further evolution for Comcast from a primarily U.S.-focused company to one where a full global presence may be in the cards longer-term. Another intriguing question Colin raises is why, given the relatively unknown “Showtime” brand in Europe, it was incorporated into the service’s name.

Listen to the podcast (26 minutes, 5 seconds)

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(Reminder - if you are a listener of The VideoNuze Report podcast, please update your feed per below to the new Inside the Stream feeds which have been available for a couple of months....we don't want to lose you as a listener as we complete this transition!)

Welcome to this week’s edition of Inside the Stream, the podcast where nScreenMedia’s Chief Analyst Colin Dixon and I take listeners inside the world of streaming video.

Hollywood is in a deep, dark box of its own making. On this week’s podcast, Colin and I explain why that is and what the implications are.

Earlier this week I wrote about how Matt Damon provided a “Hollywood 101” class in the fundamental economics of why making movies in the $30 million - $70 million budget range has become practically a non-starter in Hollywood (except very rare exceptions like “Stillwater”).

Then Colin shares all the relevant new data from DEG highlighting how SVOD has essentially sucked all the life out of DVD and digital sales and rentals of movies. Now Hollywood is going to exacerbate this trend by shortening the window of time from theatrical release to premiering movies on their own streaming services. This will effectively kill the so-called “Pay-1 window,” depriving studios of yet another once lucrative revenue stream. There are incredibly challenges times coming up for Hollywood studios.

The biggest losers in all of this are us, the moviegoing public. Today’s is not a happy podcast. Neither Colin nor I see any Hollywood endings to this story. But again, life is unpredictable, so you just never know.

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Matt Damon has provided a “Hollywood 101” class on what ails the industry as he’s made the rounds over the last 2-3 weeks in support for his new movie “Stillwater.” Leave it to a Boston guy to articulate Hollywood’s dilemma authentically and succinctly. But before getting to Damon’s nuggets of wisdom, let me share my own (thanks NYNEX Yellow Pages for the classic “Vanity Cases” ads as a reminder/inspiration).

Last month, in “5 Reasons Going to the Movies is Facing an Irreversible Demise,” one of the reasons I cited was that the quality of streaming TV and movies are going in opposite directions (the former is getting better, albeit inconsistently, and the latter is is in a precipitous nosedive). This reason alone would be enough to sink moviegoing over time. On podcasts this summer I have lamented how, despite the reopening, there isn’t a single movie my wife and I have been motivated to see. That has caused us to improvise and reluctantly do other things with our bits of free time (yes, mostly stream).

But last weekend we did see a movie, “Stillwater;” the first time we had entered a theater since pre-Covid. We saw it in Pittsfield, MA at 8:45pm in one of those luxury theaters with the fold down and heated seats. We got there a little early, plunked ourselves into the middle and waited during the trailers and ads for the audience to fill in. But they never did. Not one other person attended. We sat in a theater all to ourselves and got a “private” screening of “Stillwater” for the princely sum of $10 per ticket.

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(Reminder - if you are a listener of The VideoNuze Report podcast, please update your feed per below to the new Inside the Stream feeds which have been available for a couple of months....we don't want to lose you as a listener as we complete this transition!)

Welcome to this week’s edition of Inside the Stream, the podcast where nScreenMedia’s Chief Analyst Colin Dixon and I take listeners inside the world of streaming video.

Earlier this week the FandangoNow and Vudu movie and TV VOD (“TVOD”) rental sites merged. Colin notes that the move didn’t register on many industry executives’ radar (certainly nowhere near the biggest deal of the week, Blackstone’s acquisition of a majority of Hello Sunshine for $900 million). The tiny ripple FandangoNow-Vudu caused isn’t surprising given the sub 5% market share the two sites jointly have.

The far bigger story here, which we explore on this week’s podcast, is the tremendous shift in consumer preferences from buying and/or renting movies/TV shows via TVOD sites, to renting access through SVOD services. Indeed, Colin cites data that the market for buying/renting has collapsed by 50% over the past 6 years. Meantime SVOD has skyrocketed. Simply put, SVOD has crushed TVOD.

Note this shift isn’t just confined to video. The late Steve Jobs long insisted that consumers wanted to own, not rent, their music, going so far as to say in his famous 2003 Rolling Stone interview “I think you could make available the Second Coming in a subscription model, and it might not be successful.” Sorry Steve….in its Q2 earnings report, Spotify alone said it had 365 million monthly active users at the end of Q2, with 165 million of them paying a monthly subscription fee. Apple Music likely has MORE subscribers than that, and the services business is Apple’s most important growth segment. Then there’s YouTube, Amazon and many others.

Sometimes even the greats get things terribly wrong.

Be that as it may, Colin and I explore what all of this means to the future of the purchase/rental model and SVOD. Lurking in the wings as another disruptor is AVOD. As Colin notes, Q2 advertising at Tubi, Pluto and Roku was once again off the charts. As the Hello Sunshine team would surely attest, consumer preferences in video are far from settled.

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