Posts for 'Partnerships'

Four topics for this week’s podcast:

First, Disney+ and Hulu are no longer available for sign up in Apple’s App Store. As we discuss, this feels like a move by Disney to preserve margins, though at the expense of some of its subscribers losing the advantages of unified billing and integrated search/discovery. It also means less competition for Amazon, which is already the dominant distributor of third-party streaming services.

Next, IAB Tech Lab this week announced an initiative to help standardize emerging CTV ad formats. We’re confident it will help more advertisers move spending into the channel.

Third, Fubo is boldly offering premium services on a standalone basis, not requiring a base subscription plan. Fubo aims to be a “super aggregator” and is breaking from pay-TV operators’ traditional approach of enabling access to premium services only for subscribers. It’s a sign of the times, with viewers requiring flexibility and it seems like a savvy play by Fubo to keep viewers engaged with its app.

Last, a variety of streaming services are partnering with grocery chains and delivery apps, which both of us think makes a lot of sense to reduce churn and cost per acquisition. We expect to see more partnerships going forward.

Listen to the podcast to learn more (28 minutes, 3 seconds)

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PadSquad, which specializes in creating high-impact advertising experiences, has partnered with CTV leader Innovid to gain in-house access to Innovid’s full suite of interactive CTV tools. The goal of the joint advanced CTV offering is to streamline and accelerate brands’ ability to create interactive and shoppable CTV ads.

According to PadSquad’s head of marketing Lance Wolder, it is the first time Innovid’s interactive CTV tools can be fully utilized by a third-party instead of through Innovid’s managed service. Lance said that with PadSquad’s team of over 20 designers and developers, being able to directly use Innovid’s tools will enable faster turnaround times for clients’ campaigns and also unlock new creative potential.

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Yesterday’s partnership announcement between Roku and Shopify brings CTV advertising another step closer to realizing its ultimate potential as a full-funnel channel for advertisers. Loyal VideoNuze readers know that I have been advocating for CTV advertising to become full-funnel for a while now (see “How CTV Advertising Can Drive Super Bowl Ads Above $10 Million Per Spot,” “Behold, YouTube,” “The CTV Advertising Flywheel is Here, and It’s Only Going to Accelerate,” and “Connected TV’s Big Opportunity at the Bottom of the Funnel.”).

CTV advertising is of course surging these days, with eMarketer forecasting CTV ads in the U.S. alone will more than double to over $27 billion in 2021. CTV ads are benefiting from proliferating adoption of CTV devices, many new streaming services creating compelling content for audiences, cord-cutting, and massive changes in viewers’ behaviors. Still, when I talk to industry executives, there’s broad consensus that today CTV ad spending is coming mostly from the shift in spending from linear TV to CTV as advertisers seek to maintain their reach and frequency goals. In other words, CTV is mainly a “follow the eyeballs” strategy.

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I’m pleased to present the 488th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

On this week’s podcast, Colin and I explore how powerful partnerships can be in the increasingly competitive SVOD space. First, Colin shares details on the Amazon-Premier League partnership which was first announced in June, 2018, but will be implemented for the first time in December, 2019. Under the deal Amazon has exclusive streaming rights to 2 blocks of 10 Premier League games. Colin crunched the numbers on what the deal could be worth to Amazon in the UK.

Then we turn our attention to the Verizon-Disney+ partnership announced earlier this week, in which Verizon's unlimited plan wireless subscribers will gain a full free year of Disney+. The deal could easily jumpstart Disney+ with several million subscribers.

Listen in to learn more!

 
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Video ad tech provider SpotX has announced server-side ad insertion interoperability with Amazon Web Services’ Elemental MediaTailor service. This means that content providers which are joint customers of SpotX and AWS Elemental MediaTailor are able to use SpotX’s ad decisioning capabilities to dynamically serve targeted ads, using server-side ad insertion.

With server-side ad insertion (“SSAI”), which is also known as ad stitching, relevant ads are integrated with the content at the server level, providing a better viewer experience as compared with when ads are inserted by the player on the user's device. The latter model often results in buffering as the player transitions between content and ads and vice versa. Buffering is major challenge for content providers because it is the leading cause of abandonment, which in turn diminishes monetization.

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Late last week SpotX announced that it has integrated its recently-launched header bidding solution for video ads with Amazon Publisher Services’ Transparent Ad Marketplace (TAM). To learn more about the integration and the benefits to publishers, SpotX and Amazon, I spoke with Tal Almany, SpotX’s Senior Director, Advanced Integrations who recently joined the company from OpenX.

For those not familiar with header bidding, this is an approach that video providers use to offer their ad inventory simultaneously to multiple demand sources to optimize bidding and monetization. Amazon’s TAM is a header bidding solution that is cloud-based and server side, which means less code is running on the publisher’s site, creating efficiencies. TAM is relatively new to the market, but because it’s from Amazon, it has gained a lot of attention.

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Tout, which syndicates premium video to over 4,000 sites, has inked a partnership with Grapeshot, a real-time marketing intelligence and optimization platform. Tout’s CEO Michael Downing told me in a briefing that the goal is to provide ad buyers increased transparency about the pages in which Tout content partners’ video is placed and also enable buyers to target more specific audience segments and context.

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Yesterday I posted the recent Video Ad Summit keynote interview with Brian Lesser, CEO of GroupM North America, in which he articulated some of the key challenges facing advertisers today: consumers are harder than ever to reach, data is becoming more valuable, workflows and media buying need to be simplified and agencies need to be more streamlined, among other things.

Video ad tech providers are well aware of these imperatives and this week, 2 new partnerships that were announced (one between YuMe and Mediaocean and the other between DataXu and Teads), along with a new strategic consulting initiative announced by SpotX, all pick up, in one way or another, on the points Brian made.

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Samba TV and SpotX have announced a partnership to improve video ad targeting to viewers on the web and in apps and connected TVs. Under the deal, Samba TV’s TV viewership data will become available in SpotX’s ad server, so that custom TV audience segments can be built using combined TV and digital data.

SpotX will become Samba TV’s primary connected TV ad server enabling advertisers to buy connected TV ads either programmatically or direct.

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In another indicator of how TV and video advertising are becoming more data-enabled and precise, Videology announced a partnership this morning to incorporate Autobytel’s anonymized first-party buyer-intent data into its platform. Autobytel collects data from approximately 8 million consumers per month at its various properties.

The data will enable marketers to more accurately target consumers who are actually in the market for a car, using their own preferences for brands, price points and features. Given the longer consideration time associated with buying a car, marketers’ ability to implement specific “lower funnel” marketing messages aimed at in-market buyers is much more efficient.

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Seeking to simplify and cost reduce the process of launching new OTT services, Brightcove and Accedo have partnered to introduce Brightcove OTT Flow, powered by Accedo, a turnkey OTT solution for media companies.

The solution was developed in response to the companies’ recognition that the OTT launch process typically involves numerous technology providers and custom development which in turn lead to steep development and maintenance costs plus long timelines. In the fast-moving OTT world, these obstacles hinder innovation and competitiveness.

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Adobe and comScore have announced a major new partnership this morning for improved cross-screen measurement, a thorny issue for all content providers and advertisers in an increasingly fragmented viewing landscape.

As part of the deal, comScore is integrating into its Cross Media, Audience and Advertising product suites,  Adobe’s Certified Metrics, which is standardized digital census data powered by Adobe Analytics. Adobe Certified Metrics will supplement comScore’s existing cross-platform audience data and recently acquired census TV data via Rentrak. The key benefit is improved insight into viewing on connected and mobile devices.

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More evidence this morning of how online video and TV are continuing to converge: SpotX and clypd have announced a new joint solution for content providers to manage all video and linear TV ad inventory whether it’s sold directly or programmatically. The goal is to optimize the value of all inventory and audiences with dynamic, targeted ads across all screens. The joint solution is currently available.

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Teads, which specializes in “outstream” video ads, has partnered with Moat for real-time analytics on viewability for outstream video campaigns powered by Teads. Outstream video ads such as Teads’ “inRead” format can run against text-based content, thereby creating brand-new inventory for premium publishers.

Because inRead ads only play when in view on the screen for a defined amount of time, their viewability is already strong. Teads has advocated for stricter viewability. The Moat partnership gives Teads a custom dashboard to display video ads that have been completed. Teads said that early implementation has shown viewability and attention are nearly double Moat’s viewability benchmarks.

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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TubeMogul and Videoplaza, an Ooyala company, have announced a partnership to build a premium programmatic ad marketplace, which will enable brands, agencies and trading desks that use TubeMogul's buying platform to access inventory from international broadcasters and publishers that use Videoplaza's sell-side programmatic solutions Karbon and Konnect.

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Synacor, which provides TV Everywhere and portal solutions to small-and-medium sized pay-TV operators, has partnered with thePlatform to integrate the latter's mpx video management system. Himesh Bhise, Synacor's CEO, told me that the deal furthers the company's goal to be a white label provider of end-to-end managed video solutions, supporting customers who are increasingly exploring a range of new services and business models.

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BrightRoll announced a number of new and expanded partnerships this morning at its BrightRoll Video Summit, all intended to accelerate programmatic video advertising. They include:

comScore and Nielsen - Integration of comScore's Validated Campaign Essentials (VCE) and Nielsen's Online Campaign Ratings (OCR) so buyers can tap into this measurement data in planning, targeting, optimizing and reporting on their campaigns. Access to the data is being provided free to buyers.

Google - A programmatic integration with DoubleClick so that video ad buyers using BrightRoll will be able to gain real-time access to high-quality inventory in the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, which includes YouTube.

BlueKai - Last, BrightRoll announced that mobile audience targeting is available, with BlueKai as the first 3rd-party mobile data provider that has been integrated. Others are expected this year. The mobile capability means buyers using the BrightRoll platform will be able target audiences beyond desktops, on smartphones and tablets. BlueKai includes 20,000 data categories in a marketplace of 70 million unique iOS and Android users.

(Note: I'm attending the BrightRoll Video Summit this morning and will be continuously tweeting highlights at #BRVS.)

Encoding.com and Harmonic have announced a partnership to offer unlimited cloud-based transcoding to content and service providers to convert broadcast-quality content into numerous other media formats for multi-screen delivery.

Jeff Malkin, president of Encoding.com told me that there are 2 principal benefits of the partnership: 1) existing Harmonic ProMedia Carbon customers can use their presets/profiles to easily augment their own on-premise encoding infrastructure when workloads increase by utilizing Encoding.com cloud capacity, and 2) for new customers who want to tap use cloud transcoding instead of building their own infrastructure, they can use Encoding.com. In both situations transcoding costs and time to market are reduced.

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Innovid announced today that it has been chosen as the preferred video ad partner for Atlas, the ad serving and measurement platform which Facebook acquired from Microsoft last year. As a result of the deal, Innovid will be integrated with Atlas so that clients can run addressable and interactive video ad campaigns across screens via one unified console. Analytics for the Innovid video ads will also be provided within Atlas and billing is integrated.

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