Posts for 'Mobile Video'

If you’re like me, then you’re watching more and more video on your smartphone and you’re also starting to see more video ads. That’s because brands are waking up to the opportunity mobile video represents. To help illustrate some of the payoffs from mobile video ads, Videology has published a new white paper and case studies with 3 different advertisers who have recently had success.

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Facebook announced off-the-charts Q2 ’16 earnings yesterday, including $2 billion in net income, double what it was just 6 months ago. Monthly active users increased to 1.71 billion, with 1.1 billion using Facebook daily.  From a standing start in mobile just 4 years ago, Facebook generated $5.2 billion or 84% of its quarterly ad revenue from mobile.

There is no question that Facebook has thoroughly conquered mobile. But, far from sitting on its laurels, Facebook is evolving in many ways and over the past year video has become an ever-bigger part of Facebook’s story. Earlier this year, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s Founder, Chairman and CEO, highlighted the role that video is playing in delivering more engaging experiences. Then on yesterday’s earnings call Zuckerberg went a step further, stating the company’s goals plainly, “We see a world that is video first with video at the heart of all of our apps and service.”

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Mobile video is growing fast, but monetizing it fully is a work in progress. At the recent Video Ad Summit, participants on the “Capitalizing on Mobile as the First Screen” session included Justin Fadgen (VP, Business Development, Beachfront Media), Kevin Hein (U.S. Industry Lead, Technology and Telecom Vertical, Facebook), Manny Puentes (Chief Technology Officer, Altitude Digital) and Blake Sabatinelli (GM, Newsy) with Anna Bager (SVP, Mobile and Video, IAB), moderating.

Particular challenges for mobile video that the panelists raised included ad/video load times, a limited window to gain the viewer’s attention, standardized measurement, consistent user experiences and the growing role of data. The panelists also discussed the opportunities and challenges around distributed video models on social platforms and how much effort is required to optimize each, among other topics.

The conversation balanced perspectives from the advertiser, publisher, platform and technology perspectives really well. Mobile video has gained a lot of usage, but it’s clear that it’s still early days in fully monetizing it.

Watch the video now (41 minutes, 23 seconds).

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News Corp. announced this morning at Cannes Lions the availability of a new viewable vertical video ad for mobile devices that can be bought initially on The Sun and The New York Post. The ad is an outstream format against vertical video content, plays only when in view and can be scrolled past. The ad appears with audio off, which viewers can toggle on. Viewability is measured by Moat per MRC standards.

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I'm pleased to present the 326th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Mobile video is poised to explode over the next 5 years, according to new forecasts from Cisco (which I wrote about here) and Ericsson (which Colin wrote about here). In today’s podcast, Colin and I dig into the highlights.

When you step back, it’s pretty incredible how dominant video and smartphones have become in driving network investments for both wired and wireless carriers. Viewers’ expectations that they can watch video whenever, wherever and however they want has become THE main theme in growing network capabilities. Colin also explains specific technologies being deployed by mobile carriers to support the upcoming data explosion.

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Stre.am, which has offered free mobile live-streaming to consumers, is looking to help brands and media companies capitalize on the live-streaming craze by introducing Stre.am Enterprise.

CMO Will Jamieson told me that that two distinguishing features are that Strea.am Enterprise provides a full solution so that content providers can incorporate their live-streams into their own web or mobile properties. In addition, Stre.am has built its own media server that uses RTMP, so it can deliver live streams with sub two-second latency, critical in mobile gaming / eSports apps.

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Ooyala has released its Q4 ’15 Global Video Index, finding that mobile video now accounts for 46% of views. That’s up slightly from the 45% Ooyala reported in Q3 ’15 and 44% it reported in Q2 ’15, suggesting that mobile viewing share may be starting to plateau. Smartphones still dominate mobile viewing, driving 6x the share of tablets. For the second quarter in a row, 69% of all videos watched on smartphones were under 10 minutes.

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GfK MRI has released results of a new study analyzing the amount of time nearly 6,000 smartphone users spend on different activities, finding that just 2% of time is spent watching video. Phone calls and texting are tied for first with 22% of time spent, followed by email and social media (both 10%). Overall GfK’s category of “Entertainment,” which includes web surfing, music, games, video, shopping and reading, accounted for 22% of time spent.

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Cisco has released its 10th annual Visual Networking Index, forecasting that video will account for 75% of global mobile data traffic by 2020, up from 55% in 2015. The U.S. is forecast to have the highest level of mobile video at 77% of mobile data traffic, a 49% annual growth rate from 2015.

Globally, mobile data will account for 367 exabytes of data per year, an 8x increase from 44 exabytes in 2015. The growth is driven by an increase in the number of mobile users and smart mobile devices and plus faster network speeds. Cisco estimates that by 2020, 5.4 billion people, or 69% of the global population, will have mobile phones, eclipsing the 5.3 billion that have electricity and the 2.2 billion that have landlines.

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The latest evidence that wireless carriers will fuel a boom in unlimited mobile video viewing came this morning with AT&T announcing a new plan that gives new and existing AT&T wireless subscribers who already have or who add either DirecTV or U-Verse TV service unlimited video on their smartphone for $100/month. Options are available for adding more smartphones and tablets for additional fees. AT&T also said it was the “first of many integrated video and mobility offers the company plans to announce in 2016.”

Wireless carriers’ capped data plans have meant that subscribers needed to meticulously monitor their usage as they watched data-intensive video in order to avoid costly overage charges and also to aggressively search out WiFi hotspots. As wireless carriers have migrated to unlimited text and talk, data has become a key source of incremental, usage-based revenue.

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As wireless carriers ramp up promotion of unlimited data and video viewing, mobile is poised to account for a bigger share of video viewing. As a result, understanding how mobile video will be fully monetized is becoming a more critical topic. The recent SHIFT // 2015 Programmatic Video & TV Ad Summit featured a session on programmatic’s role in mobile video advertising.

As the panelists explained, programmatic is a really good fit for mobile in a lot of ways, including that mobile generates a lot of actionable data, mobile inventory can be volatile due to unexpected viral hits or weather events rendering traditional upfront sales sub-optimal, and that there’s a long tail of publishers that don’t necessarily have direct sales teams. The session explored all of these topics and others such as the technical challenges of delivering mobile programmatic video campaigns, the impact of VAST 4.0, how data is being used to drive improved campaign results and more.

The panelists included Jeremy Hlavacek (VP, Programmatic, The Weather Company), Brian Rifkin (Co-founder and SVP, Video Sales, JW Player), Chip Schenck – VP of Programmatic Sales and Strategy, Meredith), Frank Sinton (CEO, Beachfront Media) and Gavin Dunaway (Editor, US, AdMonsters) as moderator.

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I'm pleased to present the 298th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

T-Mobile announced something breakthrough earlier this week, with its new “Binge On” program that allows its subscribers to watch unlimited video from 24 different providers without it counting against their data plans. Granted video quality will be a modest 480p or better, but the significance here is that T-Mobile is enabling long-form viewing out of the home, without needing to hunt down a good WiFi connection or risk massive data plan overage charges.

Over 2 years ago, I questioned whether optimistic forecasts for mobile video consumption were realistic given expensive data plans. In fact, research has shown that most “mobile” video viewing actually occurs in the home. But with T-Mobile’s Binge On, it will be fascinating to see if other wireless carriers are compelled to do something similar, which would be a huge boon to video providers. Colin and I discuss the ramifications.

We then turn our attention to SVOD licensing, which is all over the board. Last week, Time Warner said it was going to pull back on SVOD licensing, but earlier this week AMC said it will continue to pursue a one year window. Meanwhile, Time Warner is now rumored to be investing in Hulu, in a deal that would include a content commitment. TV networks and studios are clearly caught between the short term appeal of SVOD revenue vs. the long term concern that it undermines the ecosystem. We dig into the issues.

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More evidence today that viewers are turning to their mobile devices to watch online video. However, it appears that monetization is lagging.

A new report from JW Player finds that 36% of viewing is done on mobile devices (30% on smartphones and 6% on tablets). Despite this, JW found that just 10% of video ads are delivered in an HTML5 mobile-compatible format. JW believes the key issue is that 60% of ads are delivered using VPAID, which is Flash-only and not  supported on iOS devices.

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Ad agency holding company Publicis Groupe has signed on for a year-long commitment to go90, AOL’s new millennial-focused mobile video service. Publicis’ clients will have a 3-month exclusive on ad inventory starting in Q4 ’15. AOL and Publicis did not disclose the size of the commitment, but the WSJ reported it’s worth $50 million and includes 10+ Publicis clients.

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Ooyala has released its Q2 ’15 Global Video Index, once again highlighting the shift toward mobile video viewing. For Q2 ’15, Ooyala found that 44% of online video views occurred on mobile devices, up from 42% in Q1 ’15 and 27% in Q2 ’14. Ooyala forecasts mobile viewing will surpass 50% of online video views by the end of 2015 if not sooner.

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Vdopia’s “Chocolate” programmatic mobile video marketplace, which launched last October, has experienced a 172% increase in ad spend from Q1 ’15 to Q2 ’15. Vdopia said that Chocolate served 12 billion mobile video ad auctions per month in Q2,  a 110% increase vs. Q1. Chocolate had a 97% increase from Q1 to Q2 in mobile web ad auctions and a 195% increase in mobile in-app ad auctions.

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I'm pleased to present the 286th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

The past couple of weeks have brought into stark relief the tectonic changes happening in the video and TV industries. Linear ratings are way down, audiences are fragmenting to on-demand sources,  pay-TV subscriber losses are up and advertisers are shifting their spending.

In this week’s podcast, Colin and zero in specifically on the huge shifts occurring in TV and video advertising. Advertisers’ priorities and buying processes are fundamentally moving toward more flexible, data-driven approaches. I explain why programmatic video/TV and mobile video ads are surging, looking at recent results from TubeMogul and SpotXchange as key evidence (see here and here for more). We also get into why advertising-supported VOD could have a bright future.
 
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Supply-side video ad platform SpotXchange released new data this morning highlighting huge growth in mobile video advertising and private marketplaces by premium publishers.

SpotXchange said it experienced 800% growth in mobile video ad spending in the first half of 2015 vs. the first half of 2014 as mobile accounted for 19% of total spending on its platform vs. just 4% a year ago. There’s almost certainly more rapid growth ahead, as recent data from Ooyala revealed that 42% of all video views in Q1 were on mobile, with 50% expected later this year. eMarketer is forecasting mobile video will account for $2.62 billion or 34% of the $7.8 billion expected to be spent on online video ads this year.

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