VideoNuze Posts

Extreme Reach has closed its $485 million acquisition of DG's TV ad business, approximately 6 months after announcing the deal. Extreme Reach's CEO and co-founder John Roland told me this morning that all DG customers are being transferred to Extreme Reach's cloud-based delivery platform. The combined company will have $270 million in revenues and 750+ employees.

As John explained, while the short-term tactical benefit of the deal is to gain significant scale in the core business of delivering TV ads to over 7K different broadcast TV stations in North America, the  longer-term, more strategic play is to better position Extreme Reach for the fast-approaching era of multi-screen advertising.

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I'm pleased to present the 213th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. Today we focus on Amazon, which is already an important player in video, and is poised to become more so. Among the topics we discuss:

- plans to increase the price of its Prime service (and the role of expensive video licensing in driving this)

- the possibility video could be split off from Prime and become a more pure competitor to Netflix and others

- the many roles that video advertising could play as part of a new deal with FreeWheel

- why an Amazon connected TV device (widely rumored) would be highly strategic

- whether Amazon will enter the pay-TV business (as has also been widely rumored)

- the role of Amazon's original online productions

All in all, Amazon is circling the video space in many different ways, with potential to be quite disruptive. It's still very early in the game for Amazon and 2014 could be a big year. We'll see how it plays out.

Listen in to learn more!

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While at NATPE last week I did a short video interview with Mike Wiese, director of branded entertainment for JWT New York. In the interview Mike talks about how clients are approaching branded entertainment projects, how these align with traditional paid advertising, how one of his clients, Macy's, is succeeding and where branded entertainment is heading in 2014.

The edited interview is below and runs 5 minutes, 47 seconds.

watch the video

Yesterday, FreeWheel quietly announced that it's powering video ads for Amazon. Though the announcement was light on details, anytime Amazon moves into a new space, as it's doing with video ads, it's noteworthy. I spoke to Doug Knopper, co-CEO of FreeWheel, who noted this is the company's first customer that isn't a pure media company, underscoring for him how  ubiquitous video and video advertising are becoming.

Though under tight constraints from Amazon about what he could say, Doug emphasized that, as with all Amazon initiatives, the focus is on creating a better customer experience. In FreeWheel's release, Lisa Utzschneider, Amazon's VP of Global Ad Sales positioned video ads as a discovery vehicle, helping customers learn about related products.

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European video ad tech provider Videoplaza announced this morning that it has launched Aunia, a private, invite-only video ad marketplace for Spain's largest broadcasters. Videoplaza Founder and CEO Sorosh Tavakoli told me yesterday that Spain's challenging economic environment and the broadcasters' desire to tap into programmatic revenue motivated the initiative.

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Specific Media jumped into the programmatic video advertising fray today, with a new offering called "Programmatic from Specific Media" that includes real-time bidding. According to Bill Schild, SVP, Global Marketing for Specific, one of the key differentiators is viewability ratings on all inventory, powered by Vindico's Adtricity technology (Vindico is a sister company to Specific, with both owned by Interactive Media Holdings).

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Cisco released its updated Visual Networking Index "VNI," forecasting that mobile video traffic will increase 14-fold from 2013 to 2018 and will have the highest growth rate of any mobile application category. By 2018, mobile video will represent 69% of global mobile data traffic, up from 53% in 2013. Mobile video will account for more than 6 times as much mobile traffic as mobile web/data (11.7%), the next highest category.

By region, the Middle East and Africa will have the highest percentage of mobile video traffic (76%) in 2018 with the highest growth (84% CAGR). Interestingly, North American will have the second-lowest mobile video traffic percentage (67%) and the slowest growth rate (56% CAGR).

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Last week at NATPE I caught up with Brian Bedol, founder and CEO of Bedrocket Media Ventures. Brian is a long-time sports media entrepreneur, having founded Classic Sports Network (acquired by ESPN) and College Sports Network (acquired by CBS). Brian's new venture, Bedrocket, has a tagline "Media for the Post-Cable Generation." It is developing and investing in high-quality multi-platform content. Among its investments are FullScreen, VHX and Tubular.

In the interview, Brian talks about the changing landscape for sports media, including how online provides a direct connection to audiences with no gatekeepers, and also how brands are able to more deeply connect with audiences. He cites examples of how Target and Mountain Dew have done so with Bedrocket properties. Brian also discusses the rising cost of sports programming on pay-TV and potential consequences. He also explains why how multi-platform distribution is the key to success.

The edited interview is below and runs 8 minutes.

Watch the video