Posts for 'Advertising'

Over 50% of the viewing on Comcast’s Flex streaming TV device is free, ad-supported, according to an update Comcast shared this morning. Comcast didn’t identify viewing shares by specific services, but said four services - Peacock, Xumo, Pluto and Tubi - were “routinely among the most viewed apps on the platform.”

Comcast offers the Flex box for no extra charge to its 31 million Xfinity broadband users and said it had over three million Flex boxes deployed as of March. Flex users also get free access to Peacock Premium, the $4.99 per month ad-supported tier that includes all Peacock content, including all seasons of “The Office” which is Peacock’s most valuable content and gets significant promotion in the app. Comcast also noted its “content forward design that puts free programming front and center.”

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Ad buyers plan to allocate 56% of their video advertising budgets to digital video (CTV, desktop, mobile), with 41% to linear TV (linear TV, addressable, data-driven linear) and 2% to other video, according to IAB’s new Video Ad Spend 2020 & Outlook for 2021 report, which is based on a survey of 350 video advertising decision makers conducted Mary 19th to April 5th. Within digital video, CTV is expected to get the largest share of spending, with 35%, followed by mobile with 33% and desktop with 32%.

CTV is expected to have the strongest growth in 2021, with 35% of respondents planning to increase budgets, followed by data-driven linear TV and broadcast/cable TV (21%) and addressable TV (15%). The primary reasons buyers behind the increase for CTV were “premium/high quality content,” “trusted, brand safe environment” and “targeting.”

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Welcome to Inside the Stream, our weekly podcast with Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia where we take listeners inside the world of streaming video.

Earlier this week Alphabet reported its Q1 ’21 earnings, including $6 billion in advertising revenue at YouTube, a record for the first quarter. In this week’s podcast, Colin and I dig into what drove YouTube’s advertising, which was nearly twice the level of just two years ago in Q1 ’19 and also up 49% from Q1 ’20.

YouTube appears to be benefiting from two strong forces: the shift of ad spending from linear TV to CTV to reach younger audiences, and the desire by advertisers for more measurable, performance-oriented advertising, which YouTube has capitalized on with its TrueView for Action format.

We also spend a little time looking at the over-the-air market and how E.W. Scripps is positioning itself to benefit from the millions of households who still access TV this way.

Many thanks to our inaugural Inside the Stream sponsor Verizon Media. When you have quality connections at scale, you’re truly connected.

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Yesterday, CNBC reported that HBO Max’s upcoming ad-supported tier will be priced at $9.99 per month, a $5 per month discount vs. $14.99 per month for its existing ad-free service. The $5 differential is mostly in line with the approach other subscription services with an ad-supported tier, such as Hulu, Peacock and Paramount+ have taken and is therefore unsurprising.

But there are still many interesting questions about the HBO Max ad-supported tier and how it will be positioned relative to the ad-free tier. One big one is which content will actually carry ads, and which won’t. At AT&T’s recent investor day, WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar said “We will not be having advertising inside the HBO original series.” Does “inside” mean that only mid-roll ads are off the table, but pre-rolls and post-rolls will be ok? Or does it mean no ads for HBO original series, period? If the latter, does it imply that Max originals are going to be the main content that will have ads?

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Registration is complimentary for VideoNuze’s next Connected TV Advertising Summit (virtual) which will be on the afternoons of June 9th and 10th. In addition, all attendees will be entered to win a Roku TV and Smart Soundbar generously provided by Roku.

CTV and streaming have moved to center stage for all buyers and sellers of premium video advertising. Next week’s NewFronts presentations will highlight how viewer behavior is shifting from linear TV consumption via traditional pay-TV to streaming via connected TVs. The consequence is that advertisers need to shift a portion of their spending to reach audiences (especially younger viewers) who can’t be accessed via linear TV any longer.

While the access rationale is compelling, the other piece of the equation is that CTV/streaming give advertisers targeting, measurement and attribution capabilities traditionally associated with digital. This means that CTV/streaming can be used for both branding and performance-oriented campaigns. As advertisers seek better return on ad spend, CTV/streaming’s ability to meet performance KPIs is highly appealing.

We’ll be digging deep into these main themes and related topics at the CTV Ad Summit (program coming soon). You’ll hear from senior executives at ad buyers, content providers, technology companies and other stakeholders. The goal is to help attendees understand how to succeed as the world moves to a CTV/streaming-first approach.  

Many thanks to our Gold partners Beachfront, Extreme Reach, Mediaocean, Roku and Xandr. To learn more about sponsorship opportunities please contact me.

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Welcome to Inside the Stream, our weekly podcast with Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia where we take listeners inside the world of streaming video.

Music video provider Vevo has seen connected TV ad revenue jump from 4% of total revenue in Q1 ’20 to 40% of total revenue in Q1 ’21, a 10x increase in just a year. Vevo’s VP of West Coast Sales Andrea Zapata joins us this week to discuss the strategic moves Vevo made to increase its distribution and reposition itself to ad buyers as a music television network in the living room, rather than being mobile-first.

Andrea also dives into how Vevo is curating its programming and analyzing viewers’ behaviors to create moods which advertisers can then use for contextual targeting.

Vevo will be participating in our next Connected TV Advertising Summit (virtual) on June 9th and 10th. Registration is free and you can win a Roku TV and smart soundbar.

Many thanks to our inaugural Inside the Stream sponsor Verizon Media. When you have quality connections at scale, you’re truly connected.

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Extreme Reach is acquiring Australia-based Adstream to create a comprehensive platform that will streamline workflows for global brands activating video campaigns across devices and services. The combined company is addressing pain points for brands that have arisen from the fragmentation of video consumption. There is a lot more complexity because every ad that is served must be properly formatted to deliver an appropriate user experience and tracked so that talent is accurately compensated.

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Welcome to the second edition of the Inside the Stream podcast with Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up we highlight three stories that hit our radar this week: an upgraded Apple TV device possibly in the works, research on growing SVOD subscriptions in the U.S. and TikTok’s new e-commerce ad formats.

Then we dig into our two main topics this week. Colin explains why smart TV manufacturers have strong incentives to support older units given the promise of high-margin ad revenue. I share details of new research showing advertisers and agencies overwhelmingly plan to move spending into connected TV.

Many thanks to our inaugural Inside the Stream sponsor Verizon Media. When you have quality connections at scale, you’re truly connected.

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Ad spending on SpotX’s platform increased by 42% in 2020 vs. 2019, driven mainly by over-the-top/connected TV clients who now comprise almost 70% of overall ad spending on the platform. SpotX said that after a Covid-driven pullback in Q2, platform spending globally grew 70% in Q4 ’20 vs. Q4 ’19. North America is still the dominant territory for SpotX, accounting for 88% of ad spending in 2020, though EMEA and APAC grew by 107% and 66% respectively in 2020 vs. 2019.

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Welcome to the 555th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.  

This week we discuss new data from FreeWheel and Nielsen highlighting gains in connected TV usage. Higher usage directly translates to ongoing CTV advertising revenue gains. One example of how this usage translates was a bullish new forecast from MoffettNathanson which pegs YouTube/AVOD ad revenue growing to $53 billion in the U.S. alone by 2025. MN sees a new “mid-top layer” of the traditional marketing funnel emerging that blends the long-form video experience being driven by CTVs with better targeting and conversion.

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A reminder that VideoNuze’s next Connected TV Advertising Summit (Virtual) will be on the afternoons of June 9th and 10th. Registration is complimentary and all attendees will be entered to win a 50-inch Roku TV and Smart Soundbar generously provided by Roku.

CTVs and streaming have become the top priority for content providers of all sizes, as well as advertisers looking to reach younger cord-cutters in particular. The pandemic and proliferation of ad-supported streaming services has driven CTV usage higher; earlier this week FreeWheel reported that 62% of consumption on devices in the second half of 2020 was on CTVs. eMarketer predicts CTV advertising in the U.S. alone will jump to $18.3 billion in 2024, up 61% from 2021.
 
VideoNuze’s 2021 Connected TV Advertising Summit (Virtual) will bring together senior executives from ad buyers, content providers, technology companies and other stakeholders. The two afternoons of high-impact learning will include one-on-one interviews, panel discussions and research presentations with fresh, actionable data. Once again, the CTV Ad Summit will be the most focused, in-depth conference of the year on CTVs and CTV advertising.

If your business success depends on understanding the future of CTV, the CTV Ad Summit is a must-attend event.

Many thanks to our Gold partners Beachfront, Extreme Reach, Mediaocean, Roku and Xandr. To learn more about sponsorship opportunities please contact me.

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Advertising on YouTube and ad-supported video-on-demand (AVOD) services will grow from approximately $19 billion in 2021 to approximately $53 billion in 2025 in the U.S., a 29% compound annual growth rate, according to a new report from analysts MoffettNathanson. MN sees 67% of the 2025 spending, or approximately $35.5 billion, going to YouTube alone, with other AVOD providers splitting the remaining 33% or $17.5 billion, just about how spending is allocated currently.

MN characterizes the YouTube/AVOD ad spending as a new “mid-top layer” of the traditional marketing funnel, sitting below top-of-funnel brand advertising traditionally dominated by TV spending which MN forecasts will stay roughly flat by 2025 at around $70 billion. It sees total top-of-funnel spending declining from $108 billion in 2021 to around $99 billion in 2025. Below the YouTube/AVOD layer is middle-of-the-funnel digital/social media (except search) which will increase from an estimated $64 billion in 2021 to an estimated $137 billion in 2025, a 21% CAGR.

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Connected TVs accounted for 62% of ad views on devices in the second half of 2020 according to the latest version of FreeWheel’s U.S. Video Marketplace Report, up from 50% in the first half of 2020. However, FreeWheel reclassified ad views from IP apps on pay-TV operators’ set-top boxes to be included in CTVs for the first time. FreeWheel didn’t break out the number or percent these views accounted for.

The reclassification contributed to STB ad views declining from 23% in H1 ’20 to 14% in H2 ’20. The combination of CTV and STB increased from 73% of ad views in H1 ’20 to 76% in H2 ’20. Desktop increased from 11% to 16% of ad views during the period while mobile declined from 15% to 8%.

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Global programmatic CTV ad spending increased 2.2x from Q1 ’20 to Q4 ’20, according to the new CTV Ad Supply Trends Report from Pixalate, an ad fraud and marketing compliance platform. Pixalate estimates that 78% of U.S. households were reachable with programmatic CTV ads in Q4 ’20, up from 50% in Q4 ’19.  Separate, eMarketer has said that programmatic CTV ad spending in the U.S. was $4.36 billion in 2020 and will jump to $6.73 billion in 2021.

Geographically, Latin America experienced the fastest growth in programmatic CTV ad spending in 2020, up 317% from Q1 to Q4. North America was next (up 123%), followed by Asia-Pacific (up 106%) and EMEA (up 56%).

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At its ONE21 developer conference this morning, NBCUniversal announced plans to launch its NBCU Audience insights Hub, which will contain all of its first-party audience data. The “proprietary data clean room” will give authorized partners permission to run restricted queries across their and NBCU’s audience data without exposing users’ personally identifiable information.

Using the NBCU data, partners will be able to discover overlaps in their audiences to drive better targeting and cross-platform campaign planning. Partners will gain access to NBCU’s linear TV APIs and certified reach measurement models to improve efficiency and effectiveness. NBCU plans to add to its measurement capabilities so that partners can do their own self-service multi-platform attribution. The clean room framework is being powered by Snowflake and VideoAmp is the first measurement partner to be integrated.

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Back in December, 2019, before the pandemic upended everything, I speculated that Netflix would launch an ad-supported tier in 2020. Subscriber growth in the U.S. was slowing in 2019 and there was reason to believe that in Q1 ’20 Netflix might lose subscribers in its UCAN (U.S. + Canada) region.

A lower-priced ad-supported tier would have multiple benefits: reducing churn, revenue growth/diversification by tapping into the white hot connected TV ad market, a way to compete with new lower-priced streaming entrants, new growth story for investors, etc. The key challenge was that Netflix had for years said it had no interest in an ad-supported tier; it wanted to stick to its ad-free brand identity and user experience.

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More than 120 million U.S. viewers streamed YouTube or YouTube TV on a connected TV last December, according to a blog post yesterday from Neal Mohan, YouTube’s Chief Product Officer. That’s up from 100 million per month that YouTube last revealed in June, 2020 at its Brandcast presentation during the NewFronts. Mohan reiterated that while mobile is still the most popular way to consume YouTube content, CTV is the fastest-growing.

Mohan also said that in December over 25% of logged-in YouTube CTV viewers in the U.S. watched over 90% of their YouTube content on CTV.  Mohan quoted comScore data that 41% of all ad-supported streaming watch time occurs on YouTube, which makes YouTube by far the biggest CTV player.

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Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS) has integrated technology from ad server Flashtalking via API which will help streamline work flows and campaign optimization across linear and online video. Integrating with the CTS Ad Management Platform will centralize linear and online video creative management. Richard Nunn, VP/GM of Advertiser Solutions at CTS said in a briefing that the integration would provide insights on the performance of campaign creative in online video channels to drive greater ad personalization in linear viewing.

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Welcome to the 551st edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Vizio filed to go public this week and it’s looking to take a page out of Roku’s playbook. Vizio’s business is dominated by sales of TV sets today, but it wants to ramp up its Platform Plus segment which includes its advertising and data business. Colin and I discuss the opportunity and also what challenges Vizio will face (note, this is not investment advice).

Switching topics, discovery+ accounted for 19% of SVOD signups in the U.S. in January, marking a very strong start for the new streaming service. Looking ahead, we explore whether discovery+ will be able to maintain this pace, and also retain these new subscribers.
 

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