Posts for 'Devices'

In another sign of how important connected TVs are becoming for ad-supported content, supply-side platform SpotX announced this morning that it is offering advertisers enhanced audience measurement for ad campaigns on connected TV devices using Nielsen data.

Advertisers will be able to measure the unduplicated and incremental reach of their campaigns across SpotX campaigns on CTV alongside their traditional linear TV ads. Campaign measurement will include data on reach, frequency and GRPs of CTV ads. The Nielsen data will also be used for insights on CTV ads relative to desktop and mobile ads as well as linear TV.

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Some good news this morning for advertisers and content providers trying to navigate the shift from linear TV to on-demand viewing on connected TV devices. Roku has released data from research it did with MAGNA, IPG Media Lab and 4 advertisers (Applebee’s, H&M, McCormick and Truvia), finding that video ads run on Roku were 67% more effective per exposure in driving purchase intent than those on traditional broadcast and cable TV.

The study also found that to drive comparable brand lift, only 7 exposures were needed on Roku, vs. 10 on linear TV. Also interesting is that advertising on Roku appears to have a halo effect, with consumers considering brands that ran video ads on Roku to be twice as innovative as those just on linear TV.

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I’m pleased to present the 416th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Netflix reported its Q1 ’18 results earlier this week and once again the performance was very strong, with revenue up 43% and average paid streaming subscribers up 25% to 125 million globally. Colin and I discuss what’s driving the company. With 55.1 million paid U.S. subscribers at the end of Q1, it’s possible that Netflix will hit 60 million by the end of 2018, which is the low end of the range of 60-90 million the company has long said it believed it could achieve.

We then turn to discussing Amazon’s new deal with Best Buy for its “Fire TV Edition” smart TVs, which were announced earlier this week. We agree that the move is yet another aggressive step in Amazon’s goal to dominate both the living room and whole home. Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos also announced this week that Prime has hit 100 million subscribers with video continuing to drive acquisition and retention. Colin and I both see Amazon expanding further by launching a skinny bundle pay-TV service sometime in 2018.

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Amazon is making a major push into smart TVs, with rival Best Buy as an unlikely partner. The companies announced that Best Buy will introduce more than ten 4K and HD “Fire TV Edition” TVs from Toshiba this summer and in-house brand Insignia later this year. Best Buy has had a deal with Roku for its Insignia line, which will now end. Amazon has had a Fire TV Edition model with Element that is being discontinued.

The new Fire TV Edition TVs will be sold exclusively in Best Buy physical stores, on BestBuy.com and from Best Buy as a third-party seller on Amazon.

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Yesterday I produced the Online Video Program at the NABShow in Las Vegas. It was a great day of learning, with 30+ speakers on 8 sessions focusing on the rise of OTT. There were many highlights, but to be brief, below I’ve summarized 5 soundbites that hit my radar:

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I’m pleased to present the 414th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

DVDs have been fading for years now, as viewers shift to streaming alternatives. This week marked another milestone in that evolution as Oppo, which made high-end DVD players, announced it was shutting down its manufacturing. Colin shares the statistics on DVDs’ decline and how inexpensive smart TVs and connected TV devices that support both UHD/4K and HDR have gained share.

However, the downside of streaming UHD/4K content is that it uses up a ton of bandwidth. Colin shares his personal story of almost exceeding his 1 TB/month data cap and the math behind how easy it is to do that when consuming UHD/4K content. He also explains the challenge of controlling the quality of what stream is delivered and how to overcome it.

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Comcast is continuing to add programming choices to its X1 set-top boxes, this morning announcing that the Sling TV international app will be made available. Sling TV international offers live and on-demand streaming of over 395 different networks, spanning 21 different languages. Pricing starts at $10 per month and new users can sign up on X1.

The addition of Sling TV international follows Comcast adding Netflix, YouTube, Pandora and NPR One to X1 over the past 6 months. Because X1 has a broadband connection and can run apps, it’s critical to Comcast’s strategy of bridging online content with traditional TV content. Late last year Comcast also announced deals with AMC and FX to offer subscription, ad-free services from both networks, exclusively for X1 subscribers.

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Video supply-side platform Beachfront is expanding its partnership with cybersecurity provider WhiteOps to also ensure fraud-free connected TV video ad inventory. WhiteOps specializes in bot detection and human verification. The new CTV collaboration is focused in particular on mid-tail and long-tail video. Beachfront said last November that CTV ad requests jumped to over 2 billion in Q3 '17, with a completion rate of 97% and viewability of 100%.

Connected TVs are one of the hottest areas of online video, as consumers rapidly adopt the devices and smart TVs to be able to access OTT video. While CTVs were initially used mainly to access ad-free SVOD services, ad-supported services have gained share recently. eMarketer estimates there were 168 million connected TV users in the U.S. at the end of 2017, which will rise to 194.4 million by 2021.

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I’m pleased to present the 408th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Roku reported a strong Q4 ’17 holiday quarter this week as it continues to transition to an ad-based business model driven off its 19 million+ active users. Roku is in the middle of all of the industry key trends and Colin and I discuss the company’s results and how we see the business going forward.

We then turn to how HBO and Showtime have been revitalized by OTT delivery. 2017 results show how both traditional networks are using direct-to-consumer and new online distribution models to make their programming more easily accessible to viewers and achieve record subscribership. Their success is a textbook example of how OTT is shaking up longstanding industry norms.

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Roku reported a very strong holiday Q4 ’17 yesterday, with revenue increasing 28% to $188.3 million from $147.3 million in Q4 ’16. Roku turned in its most profitable quarter ever, with net income of $9.5 million, up from $3.4 million a year ago. Active accounts increased 44% to 19.3 million, with streaming hours up 55% to 4.3 billion hours in Q4.

Digging deeper, it’s clear that Roku is continuing its transition to an OTT ad business, built on its installed base of Roku players and Roku TVs. The company’s “Platform revenue” which includes both content distribution and advertising, accounted for $85.4 million, or 45% of total Q4 ’17 revenue, as compared with Q4 ’16 when it was $37.3 million, or 25.3% of revenue. Within Platform revenue, advertising generated 75% of the total, compared to less than two thirds a year ago.

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I’m pleased to present the 402nd edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week we start by discussing Hulu’s growth to over 17 million subscribers, which it reported earlier this week. Both of us are impressed by the numbers, which makes Hulu a firm #3 in the SVOD market. The key number that we’d like to know is how many new subscribers are taking the ad-supported version, which has dominated in the past.

Hulu’s and SVOD’s growth have come at the expense of viewers owning and renting video, as Colin explains in his review of recent Q4 ’17 DEG data. DVDs fell a whopping 22% vs. Q4 ’16 and rentals were down as well. The only category that grew was SVOD. Related, the dominance of SVOD makes me wonder how Apple is going to monetize its high-profile original TV shows. If Apple sticks with a transactional model it will be facing serious headwinds.

Finally, Colin shares a few thoughts on CES product news from Samsung, LG and Intel.

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It’s been exactly a year since the WSJ reported that Apple was planning to invest in original TV programs and movies. And sure enough, as 2017 unfolded, the company unveiled a plan to spend a $1 billion on programming, hired top Hollywood executives, and announced its first few programs.

Yesterday, Apple continued its streak, with a straight-to-series order for “See” a drama from Chernin Entertainment and Endeavor Content including “Peaky Blinders” creator Steven Knight and “Hunger Games” director Francis Lawrence. That’s on top of 3 prior programs from A-listers Jennifer Anniston, Reese Witherspoon, Steven Spielberg, Bryan Fuller and Ronald D. Moore that were previously announced.

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According to new research released today from YuMe and Nielsen, 60% of U.S. homes now have either a smart TV or a connected TV device, with 74% of these owners, or approximately 44% of U.S. homes, using them on a daily basis. Of the 2,410 research participants, 1,465 had a TV connected to the Internet, with 884, or 60% of them using a connected TV device like Roku, Fire TV, etc. and 581 (40%) using a smart TV.

The research also found that smart TV ownership has nearly doubled since 2013. No surprise, the research found that movies and TV shows are the preferred content for large screen TVs, while short-form video is most popular on computers and mobile devices.

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Seeking to move beyond connected and smart TVs, Roku has announced its Whole Home Entertainment Licensing Program aimed at expanding into audio products. The program is meant to allow third-party manufacturers to build smart soundbars and smart speakers to connect to Roku TVs via Roku Connect software that runs in the home. Roku said that TCL is its lead OEM partner and will unveil its first device at CES (TCL is one of the original Roku TV OEMs as well).

In addition, Roku also intends to introduce the Roku Entertainment Assistant, which will be a free update to the Roku operating system. Both the assistant and the Roku Connect software will be launched this fall. The assistant will allow users to navigate Roku devices with voice commands and play audio even if the Roku TV isn’t even on. The assistant looks like it will be positioned as an alternative to Amazon’s Alexa, which has become an early leader in voice navigation.

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I'm pleased to present the 400th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

In this week’s podcast Colin and I discuss our top 10 online video stories of 2017. It’s been another incredibly busy year with tons of industry innovation and progress. As always, it has been a lot of fun to analyze all of this and report on it. Let us know what you think of our choices, whether you agree or disagree!

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Unless there’s some big news, this will be my last post for 2017.

Happy Holidays to all!

SpotX has revealed that ad spending on its platform for OTT inventory increased by 18x for the 12 months ending October 2017. SpotX defines OTT inventory as including broadcast-quality inventory from TV networks, pay-TV operators and other live, linear and VOD streaming services delivered via connected TVs, desktop and mobile. SpotX said the portion of ad budgets spent on OTT inventory increased from 8% in Oct. ’16 to 26% in Oct. ’17, with 30% expected by end of the year.

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I’m pleased to present the 396th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. Many thanks to Brightcove, this week’s podcast sponsor. Brightcove will be presenting insights on server-side ad insertion at our SHIFT Programmatic conference on Nov. 29th.

First up, we explore the potential of Philo, the entertainment-oriented skinny bundle that launched earlier this week. For $16 per month, it’s relatively inexpensive, but neither Colin nor I see it as a game-changer for its backers. Key issues are lack of marquee entertainment networks, completion from other skinny bundles and a glut of high-quality entertainment programming from big SVOD providers.

We then dig into Roku, which reported its first quarterly results as a public company last week. We’re both impressed with how Roku is transitioning from a pure OEM device maker to a licensing and media company focused on online video advertising. By growing its installed base of Roku owners, which in turn supports its ad business, Roku is in the early stages of building a nice flywheel. We discuss both the potential of its model and possible risks.

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It’s no secret that connected TV devices have made huge gains in the U.S., with penetration at 60% of homes or more depending on the research source. But whereas these devices were initially used mainly for streaming Netflix and other ad-free SVOD services, evidence is building that viewers are also now using these devices to watch ad-supported video, in turn driving a huge expansion of ad inventory.

For example, Roku has been saying for a while that Netflix’s share of overall Roku users’ watch time has been steadily decreasing, with ad-supported channels gaining.  And today, Beachfront Media, a video supply-side platform, said that it saw a huge jump in CTV ad requests to over 2 billion in Q3 ’17. Beachfront works mainly with mid-tail and long-tail video providers like WatchMojo, Newsy and Crunchyroll.

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Connected TVs and set-top box delivered VOD now account for 49% of ad views on premium video, according to FreeWheel’s Video Monetization Report for Q2 ’17. That’s a small bump from the combined 48% they accounted for in Q1 ’17, but a huge increase from the combined 1% back in Q2 ’13.

In Q2 ’17, connected TVs drove 29% of ad views, up from 23% in Q2 ’16 while STBs drove 20% of ad views up from 17% a year earlier. Coincidentally, Roku, which has the largest share of the connected TV market and priced its initial public yesterday, has said that advertising and other “platform revenues” will be critical to its growth going forward.

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