Posts for 'Mobile Video'

A new partnership announced by video ad buying platform AudienceScience and programmatic video supply-side provider SpotXchange aims to accelerate video advertising on the mobile web and in mobile apps. The companies have completed an OpenRTB integration enabling advertisers using AudienceScience’s Helios system to access mobile video inventory that publishers manage using SpotXchange.

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Mobile ad platform Opera Mediaworks has launched Opera House, a creative studio, to help brands and agencies create compelling mobile video ads based on best practices and data. Opera House includes 60+ professionals around the world who will work with brands and agencies to help optimize mobile video campaigns for mobile’s unique features such as the camera, gyroscope, vibration and GPS.

Beyond creative and technical development assistance, Opera will also test the campaigns at increasing scale and across multiple devices to ensure successful launch. Specific ad unit executions could include native video, short-form video and selfie ads.

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Tribune Publishing, seeking to leverage its deep roots in content syndication, has unveiled TCA Video Network, a new multiscreen video syndication service. TCA Video Network is part of Tribune Content Agency, which is a division of Tribune Publishing.

TCA Video Network is powered by Beachfront Media whose founder and CEO Frank Sinton told me that the deal gives Tribune access to the full breadth of Beachfront’s syndication, monetization and mobile app development platforms. Frank emphasized that Beachfront has been fully focused on mobile, which, along with data, are core to TCA Video Network’s strategy.

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Mobile video is now up to 42% of all online video viewed and is poised to surpass 50% later this year, making it a top priority for advertisers. So our Video Ad Summit session, “Small Screens, Big Opportunities: Why Mobile Video is Skyrocketing,” was one of the most timely discussions in the day-long program.  

The session explored how mobile video fits with cross-screen strategies, why mobile video durations are shortening, why 15-second ads dominate on mobile but are changing, what role Facebook and Snapchat are playing in mobile video advertising, why there’s more data in mobile video than in desktop video, whether mobile video will move from the horizontal to the vertical format and lots more.   

The session included Mike Berkley (Head of Product, Viacom), Dan Colarusso (Executive Editor, Digital, Reuters), Rachel Pasqua (Head of Mobility, MEC North America), Frank Sinton (CEO, Beachfront Media), with Michael Sebastian (Reporter, AdAge) moderating.

Watch the session video now (30 minutes, 18 seconds)

I'm pleased to present the 279th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Change is everywhere in the video and TV industries and this week 6 different news items hit our radar, which Colin and I think illustrate how quickly things are moving. In today's podcast we discuss each of them and why we think they're significant.

The items include continued falling linear TV ratings as measured by Nielsen, Hulu distributing Showtime, new research showing that Netflix's audience is size larger than those of broadcast TV networks, Tennis Channel's converged TV Everywhere-OTT model, HBO premiering 2 new shows on Facebook and Ooyala's new data showing that 42% of video views are now on mobile.

(note: Colin wanted to clarify one point - when citing Netflix viewership, he said it was 10 million hours streamed per quarter when it's actually 10 billion hours)

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Ooyala has released its Q1 '15 Video Index, and as with all of its recent reports, the headline is the surging growth of mobile video, whose share is now at 42% of online video views. That's up nearly 5x from the 9% share mobile video recorded in Q1 '13. Ooyala restated its forecast that mobile video will surpass 50% of online video views in Q3 '15, if not sooner.

No surprise, Ooyala cites smartphones as the big driver of mobile video usage, noting that the ratio of smartphone plays to tablet plays has increased from 2:1 in Q4 '13 to 4:1 in Q1 '15. In fact, tablet share has remained constant at 8% during that time. Ooyala cites the rise of larger screen size smartphones (particularly iPhone 6 and 6 Plus) as spurring mobile video adoption and stunting tablet viewing.

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Teads has announced this morning that its "outstream" video ads are now compatible with Apple's iOS for mobile web. Teads' outstream video ad units can be inserted in text articles on the mobile web and begin to play as the user scrolls the page. They stop playing when the user scrolls past them. This results in 100% viewability.

This past March Teads released its mobile SDK allowing outstream ads to run in mobile apps. But until now outstream ads could not run on mobile web in iOS because the device's full screen native player is force-launched, rather than allowing video ads to be viewed in-page.

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I'm pleased to present the 277th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

On today's podcast we dig into the incredible growth in mobile video consumption and how it is impacting content creators and advertisers. Earlier this week I wrote about how Facebook's auto-play and audio-off video, which is mainly consumed on mobile, is influencing the creative process. Colin weighs in with new IAB data showing how pervasive mobile video viewing has become, including how many people are now watching 2 screens simultaneously.

Stepping back, we're in agreement that mobile is really a game-changer for everyone in the ecosystem. The advent of larger screen smartphones in particular has fundamentally changed how these devices are used, making video much more important. Neither of us sees this trend slowing any time soon.

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It's no secret that smartphones and tablets are now nearly ubiquitous, and that more and more video is being consumed on them. For example, Ooyala recently said that 34% of all video plays were on mobile devices in Q4 '14, which was up from 6% just 2 years prior. Meanwhile, YouTube's CEO said last Fall that 50% of its views are on mobile and its head of content said about its product development focus, "It's all mobile, mobile, mobile."

All that mobile video usage is now starting to heavily impact how video is created and monetized. While mobile video has always been shorter-form than desktop, a key creative influence over the past year has been Facebook's insertion of audio-off autoplay video in users' news feeds. Last week Fortune provided a lot of context for what's behind Facebook's 4 billion views per month. Then, in an insightful post, Newsbound's Josh Kalven pointed out how audio-off is leading content creators to adopt readable video formats.

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I'm pleased to present the 273rd edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Since Verizon announced it was acquiring AOL for $4.4 billion earlier this week, there has been a ton of media coverage, with lots of speculation about what the deal means for Verizon going forward. This is at least partly due to the companies doing a relatively poor job of articulating the deal's strategy.

In this week's podcast, Colin and I weigh in as well, focusing mainly on how AOL's video, programmatic and video syndication assets could mesh well with Verizon Digital Media Services, which already provides back-end delivery and monetization to video content providers (see here and here). Combining the two seems like the biggest point of leverage to Colin and me, yet we note that Verizon didn't even mention a VDMS role in any public comments on the deal.

Meanwhile, in a week when the pay-TV industry suffered its first-ever first quarter loss of video subscribers, we also discuss how Verizon seems intent on innovating beyond the traditional multichannel bundle.

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Mobile video advertising is red-hot. According to Opera Mediaworks' new State of Mobile Advertising report, mobile video ad impressions in its network rose to 12.8% of all its impressions in Q1 '15, up from just 2.5% of all its impressions in Q1 '14. Mobile video advertising is also much more profitable than other formats, accounting for 55% of revenue delivered to publishers in Opera's ad network.

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I'm pleased to present the 267th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up this week, Colin shares highlights from a new study from Conviva showing how important video quality is, and how low viewers' tolerance for subpar experiences have become. Conviva's survey of 750 millennials found that just 25% will continue watching an inferior stream for 4 minutes or longer, and just 16% will even bother trying on a second device if their experience on the first device they tried was sub-par. Colin observes the stakes are getting ever-higher for content providers as more viewing goes multi-screen.

We then shift to discussing mobile live-streaming, which I wrote about yesterday. I'm excited about both Meerkat and Periscope, and we discuss 3 different high-potential use cases for mobile live-streaming. It's going to be a lot of fun to see what both amateur broadcasters as well as content providers/brands do with Meerkat and Periscope.

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I'm pleased to present the 266th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Colin starts this week's podcast by sharing his positive reactions to Vessel, the startup from former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, which went live this week. Colin likes the mobile app a lot and thinks Vessel's promotion of a free year of service is a smart approach. In particular, Colin is bullish on Vessel's non-intrusive ad model.

However, Colin is less certain about Vessel's odds of success, noting that YouTube's response is a major wildcard. I agree and observe that while Vessel is very impressive, it's also a big test case for users' willingness-to-pay for first window access to content. There's a lot to like about Vessel, and ample reason to believe millennials will like the model, but only time will tell.

Speaking of YouTube, it's becoming increasingly apparent that Facebook is poised to become YouTube's main competitor in the long-run. As I wrote yesterday, this week at Facebook's F8 developer conference, the company unveiled key updates, geared especially for premium publishers, that will bring a lot more high-quality content onto the platform. Colin and I dig into each of these and also discuss a big remaining missing piece - pre-roll ads against videos posted on Facebook.

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Verizon and Sony are both on deck with new OTT services poised to launch shortly, according to new reports over the past couple of days. Both companies have previously stated their intentions to pursue new video services, but haven't been specific about their timelines or anything else.

That is beginning to change, as Verizon announced yesterday that AwesomenessTV will provide 200+ hours of original content for its forthcoming service, via 2 channels, one targeted to teens and the other to young millennials. The channels will include scripted and unscripted series along with DreamWorksTV animated short-form content.

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Looking to benefit from the rising tide of mobile device usage, video ad tech provider Teads.tv has extended its inRead video ad format (also called "outstream") to mobile via a new SDK.  With the new SDK, content providers can place inRead video ads within their mobile apps. The format's big differentiator is that it runs against text articles, slideshows and news feeds, essentially unlocking tons of new high-quality inventory for lucrative video ads.

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Ooyala has released its Q4 '14 Global Video Index, once again showing the powerful rise in mobile as a preferred viewing platform for online video. A record 38% of video views in December, 2014 occurred on mobile devices, up from less than 18% in December, 2013. For the full fourth quarter of '14, mobile accounted for 34% of video views.

When it released its Q3 Global Video Index in December, '14, Ooyala forecasted that mobile video's share will cross 50% industry-wide by Q3 '15. Since 2011, mobile's share of video plays has increased 16-fold.

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Mobile lifestyles are becoming more prevalent, mobile devices are getting better and mobile video content choices are exploding. No surprise then, that with lots more mobile video viewing happening, mobile video advertising is booming. A recent check-in call with Frank Sinton, CEO of Beachfront Media, confirmed this, and he also shared insights on key challenges that remain.

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Over the past week, I've been spending a little time each day with Snapchat's recently launched "Discover" feature. In case you missed it, or are not a Snapchat user (as I wasn't), Discover is an area of in Snapchat's mobile app featuring icons from 11 different media companies. Behind each icon are innovative, slickly packaged sets of short videos and text stories, perfectly suited for attention-challenged mobile users (see short video below).

It's not immediately clear why a social network like Snapchat, known mostly for enabling ephemeral selfie photos and videos by its addicted young female audience (my 14 1/2 year-old daughter among them), believes it's strategic to partner with mostly mainstream media companies (note, not a single YouTuber) to offer this type of service. Perhaps advertising potential? Or driving deeper user engagement? Or broadening its mission? Or all of the above?

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I'm pleased to present the 259th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up this week, we discuss mobile video's explosive growth. Cisco's new forecast puts mobile video's share of overall mobile traffic at 72% by 2019, up from 55% in 2014. Mobile video will account for 17.4 exabytes out of the 24.3 exabytes that cross global mobile networks in 2019. We dig into the contributing factors.

Next up, this week saw the long-expected announcement from FCC chairman Tom Wheeler of net neutrality rules for broadband ISPs. The proposed reclassification to Title II follows President Obama's strong recommendation. While I agree that broadband is now a lifeline service, to me this still feels like a solution in search of a genuine problem. Colin disagrees and thinks Title II is the right move. We also discuss the prospects for approval of the Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger in light of the new regulations.

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