VideoNuze Posts

Early bird discounted registration is now open for the 9th annual VideoNuze Video Advertising Summit on Wednesday, May 29th at the Westin Times Square in NYC. By registering early you save $100 and DOUBLE your chances* of winning a 55-inch Roku TV, generously provided by Roku.
 
The Video Ad Summit is the premier event of the year for anyone in the industry seeking insights and data about video advertising, especially the converging worlds of online, traditional TV, mobile and connected TV advertising as well as the broader digital landscape. As always, the program will include a compelling mix of keynotes, panel discussions, fireside chats and research presentations, covering the hottest topics in the industry. Ad Summit speakers always include top industry executives and thought-leaders. Detailed program info will be posted soon.
 
Last year's Video Ad Summit drew over 300 attendees and 50+ executive speakers. The 2019 Video Ad Summit will once again be a must-attend event.
 
I'm excited to have 7 industry-leading companies on board as initial partners, including Title Partner Deloitte Consulting, Premier Partner Extreme Reach, Headline Partners Beachfront Media, Penthera and SpotX, and Branding Partners Brightcove and Roku. I’ll have other partners to share soon.
 
If you'd like to learn more about speaking and partnership opportunities, please contact me.
 
Learn more and register now!
 
(*Early bird registrants get 2 entries for the Roku TV drawing.)

I’m pleased to present the 453rd edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This past Sunday’s Super Bowl set the record for the lowest total score in the Big Game’s history, but it also set the highest record for number of people watching the action via the Internet. According to Colin’s excellent analysis, upward of 7 million people streamed some portion of the game. About 2.6 million did so via CBS and NFL digital properties. But per Colin’s calculations nearly twice as many watched via virtual pay-TV operators, which stream their services over the Internet. We both believe YouTube TV played a leading role.

So while the total TV audience watching shrunk to 98.2 million, its lowest level in over 10 years, the number of people who trusted the Internet to stream the action rose to a new high. We discuss the implications of this and the growing role virtual operators are playing now. We also observe how the Big Game’s advertising roster included SVOD providers and other digital-first companies, a sign of its ongoing superiority in reaching a mass audience.

Listen in to learn more!
 
Click here to listen to the podcast (22 minutes, 36 seconds)

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The VideoNuze podcast is also available in iTunes...subscribe today!

Over the past two days Alphabet released strong Q4 ’18 results and YouTube’s CEO Susan Wojcicki posted her annual letter to its creator community. There was plenty to learn from both, but one thing persisted for yet another quarter - YouTube TV’s performance remained shrouded in mystery. Since its initial launch nearly two years ago, in April, 2017, Alphabet and YouTube executives have been incredibly disciplined about not uttering a word (as best I know) about YouTube TV’s total subscribers, quarterly additions, profitability (or lack thereof) or product roadmap.

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It’s no secret that everyone in the TV advertising business is trying to make ads more data-driven, automated and effective as platforms like Google, Facebook and Amazon double down on their efforts to siphon away TV ad dollars. Videa is one company that is having a real impact, tightly focusing on helping TV broadcast stations become more competitive in the fast-changing ad business. I caught up with Videa’s president Shereta Williams recently for an update.

Videa had a strong 2018 and is closing in on relationships with 600 different stations from all major station owners spanning nearly 160 markets around the U.S., with Shereta adding that the goal is to have 90% coverage by the end of 2019. Through these partnerships Videa gains access to the stations’ full schedule of local inventory across all dayparts in the stations’ primary linear feed, regardless of whether the viewer is accessing over the air, via pay-TV or a virtual pay-TV operator (e.g. YouTube TV, DirecTV Now, etc.). Some virtual pay-TV operators enable dynamic ad replacement or non-linear ads and Videa is not selling those ads. Videa is 100% linear at this time but they aspire to sell across the other streams in the future.

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I’m pleased to present the 452nd edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week’s news that DirecTV Now lost 267K subscribers in Q4 ’18 (a swing from 368K it added in Q4 ’17) raises critical questions about where the virtual pay-TV industry goes from here? As virtual operators’ discounted promotions trail off, prices rise, programming gets rationalized, competition rises and viewers turn to SVOD and ad-supported OTT options, a far more challenging road lies ahead for growing and retaining subscribers.

In this week’s podcast, Colin and I dig into these issues and speculate on whether, 2 years from now virtual operators combined are more likely to have 15 million subscribers or 1 million subscribers? In other words, which direction is this industry really going in? AT&T seems determined to play a key role with the collection of assets it has assembled. But timing and execution are critical to its success.

Listen in to learn more!

 
Click here to listen to the podcast (23 minutes, 16 seconds)

Click here for previous podcasts

Click here to add the podcast feed to your RSS reader.

The VideoNuze podcast is also available in iTunes...subscribe today!

I recently hosted a free webinar on The Future of Live Streaming, with guests Alec Hendry, Senior Director of Technology Convergence at Viacom and Henrik Eriksson, Service Line Manager at Akamai, which presented the webinar which is now available on-demand. Our round table discussion was followed by audience Q&A.

If you or your colleagues are using live streaming as part of your content strategy or are thinking about doing so, I believe the webinar and Alec’s and Henrik’s insights/advice is invaluable.

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Virtual pay-TV operator DirecTV Now lost 267K subscribers in Q4, ’18, per its parent AT&T’s earnings report this morning. DTV Now’s loss contributed to an overall loss of 658K video subscribers (including DirecTV satellite and U-verse) that AT&T sustained in Q4, the biggest in at least 3 years. DTV Now had approximately 1.6 million subscribers at the end of 2018, down from 1.86 million at the end of Q3 '18.

More noteworthy than the overall AT&T video loss is DTV Now’s strikingly quick reversal of fortune. Just one year ago, in Q4’ 17, DTV Now gained 368K subscribers, meaning its Q4 swing was a whopping 635K. Two years ago, in Q4 ’16, DTV Now gained 267K subscribers. For all of 2018 DTV Now gained just 436K subscribers, compared to the 888K subscribers it added in all of 2017. And to put the 2018 additions in perspective, they were mostly all front-loaded, with DTV Now gaining 654K subscribers combined in Q1 and Q2, then dropping to 49K in Q3 and then the loss of 267K in Q4.

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Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about Netflix’s solid Q4 subscriber growth was the company’s ongoing success with a pure ad-free subscription model. Netflix is becoming even more unicorn’ish among big video providers in completely eschewing ads. Virtually every other major video provider (aside from established premium TV networks like HBO, Showtime, etc.) is reliant, at least in part, on advertising (Amazon’s ad-free approach gets an asterisk because of the outsized role Prime/free-shipping still plays - and even Amazon is now integrating ads in various ways, see below).

In fact, though we’re barely a month into 2019, there are signs everywhere of advertising’s growing role in the future of the video industry.

Consider just the following:

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