Posts for 'Advertising'

I’m pleased to present the 457th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

On this week’s podcast we’re joined by Dan Robbins, who is Roku’s director of advertising and programming research. We explore all of the angles around Roku’s connected TV (CTV) ad business, which has become a critical driver of its growth. As Dan explains, Roku is hyper-focused on helping ad buyers understand how CTV can add incremental value to their campaigns, by using sophisticated tools and industry partnerships.

Among the topics we discuss include which agency buying groups are focused on CTV, how Roku’s measurement partner program is creating new value for advertisers, how Roku is serving the full funnel from lower to upper, why Roku considers itself a “data company, first and foremost,” why the “social contract among advertisers, programmers and viewers is broken,” and lots more.

For anyone interested in how Roku is successfully transitioning its business to ad-supported and the dynamics of the booming CTV category, Dan’s insights are extremely valuable.

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Note, Roku is a Branding Partner at our 9th annual Video Advertising Summit on May 29th in NYC. Register early to save and to double your chances of winning a Roku 55-inch 4KTV!

I’m pleased to present the 456th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

On this week’s podcast we cover 3 different topics. First, AT&T had a busy week - its deal for Time Warner was finally cleared after the DOJ’s appeal was rejected, both HBO CEO Richard Plepler and Turner president David Levy resigned, and a Variety report has Disney interested in buying AT&T’s 10% stake in Hulu. Colin and I discuss all of these and their implications.

Next, Colin weighs in on the new collaboration between the BBC and ITV to launch a version of BritBox in the U.K. and why it matters. Finally, another week, another YouTube content malefactor(s), leading to an advertiser pullback. We discuss how YouTube is playing whack-a-mole but that at the end of the day advertisers need YouTube and are unlikely to leave altogether.
 
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Looking for confirmation of the outsized rewards of being well-positioned in the booming connected-TV (CTV) ad space? Then look no further than the Q4 ’18 and full year 2018 performance of 3 public companies representing 3 different vantage points on CTV ads - Telaria, The Trade Desk and Roku - all of which reported strong results in the past week, powered at least in part by their CTV success.

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I’m pleased to present the 455th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Connected TVs are rapidly re-making the TV landscape and, according to new data from Extreme Reach yesterday, an emerging benefit is that they’re reenergizing 30-second ads delivered online. On today’s podcast Colin and I talk about why this is happening and more importantly why it’s likely the beginning of a strong trend.

We then transition to talking about “password sharing” which has been a longstanding, but quite murky topic in SVOD. Most SVOD services have dealt with it by imposing caps on concurrent streams, users or devices, relying on subscribers to get hooked on the programming and then feel the need to upgrade or add plans. Colin reviews recent data that supports the idea that password sharing is mostly a nonissue.

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Extreme Reach has released its Q4 and full year 2018 Video Advertising Benchmarks report, which further reinforces the ascendance of connected TV (CTV) viewing and monetization. Importantly, the ER research is the first I’ve seen that highlights how CTVs are actually helping 30-second ads gain share of impressions vs. ads of other durations. This is a critical development as it helps re-energize TV advertising’s traditional workhorse unit that has been under pressure from all corners.

First, CTV’s share of video ad impressions jumped to 38% in 2018, up from 16% in 2017. CTV video ads are benefiting from a perfect storm: rapid device adoption, launch of numerous apps by premium content providers, emphasis on ad-supported business models with the exception of a few SVOD or hybrid stalwarts (e.g. Netflix, Amazon, etc.) and heavy investment in CTV ad tech stacks. All of this is leading ad buyers to rapidly embrace CTV as a must-have in their campaigns. (And by the way as just one indicator of how accessible CTVs have become, I just noticed that Amazon is selling its Toshiba Fire TV 32-inch model for just $100 today only. Yes, you read that right.)

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Yesterday eMarketer shared its U.S. advertising forecast for 2019, predicting that digital ads will account for $129.3 billion or 54.3% of spending, while traditional ads will drop to 45.8% of the market. eMarketer said it’s the first time digital will surpass  traditional in share of market.

Digital has been on a trajectory for years to achieve this milestone, so in a sense there’s no major surprise here. What is a surprise is the outsized role that Amazon is playing in both growing the digital ad market and taking a bigger slice of it - and how quickly this has happened.

eMarketer believes that in 2019 Amazon will take nearly 9% of digital ad spending, chiseling into Google’s and Facebook’s (the “duopoly”) combined share which stood at 60% in 2018 but is forecast to drop to 59.3% in 2019. eMarketer cites Amazon’s “shoppers’ behavioral data for targeting and provides access to purchase data in real time” which was previously only available to advertisers/agencies through retail partners.

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It’s no secret that everyone in the TV advertising business is trying to make ads more data-driven, automated and effective as platforms like Google, Facebook and Amazon double down on their efforts to siphon away TV ad dollars. Videa is one company that is having a real impact, tightly focusing on helping TV broadcast stations become more competitive in the fast-changing ad business. I caught up with Videa’s president Shereta Williams recently for an update.

Videa had a strong 2018 and is closing in on relationships with 600 different stations from all major station owners spanning nearly 160 markets around the U.S., with Shereta adding that the goal is to have 90% coverage by the end of 2019. Through these partnerships Videa gains access to the stations’ full schedule of local inventory across all dayparts in the stations’ primary linear feed, regardless of whether the viewer is accessing over the air, via pay-TV or a virtual pay-TV operator (e.g. YouTube TV, DirecTV Now, etc.). Some virtual pay-TV operators enable dynamic ad replacement or non-linear ads and Videa is not selling those ads. Videa is 100% linear at this time but they aspire to sell across the other streams in the future.

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Perhaps the most noteworthy thing about Netflix’s solid Q4 subscriber growth was the company’s ongoing success with a pure ad-free subscription model. Netflix is becoming even more unicorn’ish among big video providers in completely eschewing ads. Virtually every other major video provider (aside from established premium TV networks like HBO, Showtime, etc.) is reliant, at least in part, on advertising (Amazon’s ad-free approach gets an asterisk because of the outsized role Prime/free-shipping still plays - and even Amazon is now integrating ads in various ways, see below).

In fact, though we’re barely a month into 2019, there are signs everywhere of advertising’s growing role in the future of the video industry.

Consider just the following:

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SpotX has released its “2019 Video Advertising Trends” report, highlighting 4 key trends:

1. New offerings will come into play for OTT video services.
2. Traditional TV will continue to transform for today’s digital landscape.
3. Shifting consumer expectations of ad experiences and personal data usage will drive innovations in ad transactions and delivery.
4. Industry-wide transparency efforts and regulation will spur larger investments in data management.

The report offers numerous insights about each of these 4 trends (and others). The report’s discussion of the latter two are especially relevant and thought-provoking.

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I’m pleased to present the 448th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Continuing our tradition for our final podcast of the year, this week Colin and I discuss the top 10 video stories of 2018 - at least in our humble opinions. Once again it has been a very active 12 months, with lots of innovation and change. Colin and I have had a great time analyzing and discussing the critical industry trends each week and we hope you’ve enjoyed listening to our thoughts in 2018.

Let us know what you think of our choices, whether you agree or disagree!

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Beachfront, a leading video supply-side platform, said that connected TV ad requests jumped to approximately 30 billion in November, 2018, a stunning 1,640% increase from November, 2017 when it received approximately 1.8 billion requests.
Beachfront works mainly with mid-tail and long-tail video providers as well as virtual MVPDs.

Roku continues to dominate, with Beachfront saying that 87% of CTV ad requests in November ’18 were on Roku devices. Trailing well behind were Amazon Fire TV, LG, Samsung TV, Vizio and Chromecast, in that order.

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I’m pleased to present the 446th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

YouTube has long been the 800-pound gorilla of online video advertising; now it is positioning itself for further gains in premium video. On this week’s podcast, Colin and I discuss a couple of the highlights: YouTube’s recent decision to add over 100 movies for free, ad-supported viewing and to shift its originals strategy from an SVOD model (YouTube Premium) to ad-supported.

As we explore, there is another interesting angle here as well, which is the interplay between Roku and YouTube. As I wrote earlier this week, The Roku Channel’s success was no doubt an influence on YouTube’s decision to launch free movies. As well, Roku’s huge footprint of connected TVs (as well as others like Chromecast, etc.) has created a living room environment perfect for longer viewing times and a more TV-like experience that YouTube is capitalizing on.

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Some great reporting from Ad Age over the past couple weeks reveals how Amazon and Google are ramping up in premium video advertising. Given the size and respective positioning of both companies, their initiatives are worth paying close attention to.

First, on Google, Ad Age reported that YouTube has begun to offer feature length movies like “The Terminator,” “Rocky” and “Legally Blonde” for free and with ad support (note all are also available on The Roku Channel). They’re part of around 100 movies YouTube has collected in a bid to further boost YouTube viewership and give advertisers more access to premium, brand safe content.

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I’m pleased to present the 444th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

In Q3 ’18, Roku continued its pivot to an advertising and licensing based business model, with “Platform” revenues accounting for 58% of total revenues, up from 46% in Q3 ’17.

On this week’s podcast, Colin and I discuss this shift and Roku’s other key metrics, which were all very strong, once again. Roku occupies a unique place in the video ecosystem - at once a device powerhouse with 24 million monthly users, a content provider through its fast-growing The Roku Channel, a connected TV advertising innovator and something akin to a next-gen pay-TV provider offering a la carte access to thousands of content choices.

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Cadent has unveiled its Cadent Advanced TV Platform, enabling national ad buyers and TV networks to achieve a higher level of efficiency and effectiveness in addressable TV advertising. In a briefing, Cadent’s Chief Product Officer Eoin Townsend and Chief Marketing Officer Paul Alfieri emphasized that today’s national TV ad buyers are looking to shift to data-centric approaches that enable customized, targeted audience segments at scale. This is what Cadent Advanced TV Platform is built to deliver.

Cadent Advanced TV Platform can access 70 million addressable homes (i.e. those with set-top boxes that are individually identifiable and enabled) with ads across cable, broadcast and OTT content. The new platform has integrated all the elements required to make a scaled, targeted buy - choosing specific pay-TV/OTT providers, number of homes, relevant data sources, KPIs, budgets and more and melded them into a cohesive workflow that will feel familiar to most people who have bought digital advertising. Once the parameters are set the platform presents different campaign options to the buyer.

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Ranker, a publisher that creates data-driven, list-based content attracting 55 million unique visitors per month, has seen a 70% increase in video ad revenues over the past year, following its implementation of AppNexus’s Prebid Video header bidder solution and the AppNexus Marketplace. The companies have published a short case study on Ranker’s success.

I spoke to Prem Purayil, CTO of Ranker, who explained that the company had been using a traditional tag-based waterfall model. But this approach had led to having 50 demand partners and growing complexity. Ranker had previously and successfully implemented AppNexus’s header bidding solution for display, so it was already familiar. Prem said Ranker activated video header bidding in just a couple of days and needed minimal assistance. Importantly, Prem said moving to header bidding had no adverse impact on user experience.

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Beachfront, a leading supply-side platform for video ads, has partnered with MadHive, a data management platform, to enrich and verify audiences on connected devices. Frank Sinton, President and Founder of Beachfront told me in a briefing that the company is focused on validation of inventory quality and audiences, issues that are top of mind for its publisher customers.

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Ad tech provider MediaMath is forging strongly into programmatic video and connected TV, by among other things joining the board of the IAB Digital Video Center of Excellence, and seeking to help drive transparency and industry standards.  

Mike Fisher, MediaMath’s Head of Video and Advanced TV said, “We couldn’t be more delighted to have a voice in the important conversation around the challenges that come with automated TV inventory, and the opportunity to shape best practices for transacting in the programmatic TV space.”

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I’m pleased to present the 439th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

In today’s podcast, Colin and I explore the rise of free, ad-supported online video. While SVOD services like Netflix and Amazon have gained tons of attention, there is a ton of activity in ad-supported as well. Colin highlights The Roku Channel, Pluto TV and others. Amazon is rumored to be launching its own ad-supported service soon as well.

We’re both bullish on the role of ad-supported video for a variety of reasons we discuss, including the growing footprint of connected TVs, the upper limit on how many paid services most consumers will adopt, the explosion of content and the maturing of video advertising in general. We dig into all of this and more.

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While the “Mad Men” era of TV advertising was characterized by three-martini lunches, the current era is characterized by the push toward efficiency, most notably programmatic transactions that are data-enabled with increased automation. For many, these trends raise the prospect of a future of machine-to-machine only interactions, with minimal human involvement.

But, attending the SpotX Connect half-day breakfast event in NYC yesterday, I heard a very different message from participants on one session after another: contrary to the “automation-is-king” mythology, human relationships and engagement are actually still very much at the core of how things work in today’s video ad business.

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