Posts for 'Research'

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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Innovid has released its Q3 2015 State of Interactivity Report, based on a survey of 200+ U.S. media buyers in August, which provides insights about their priorities and preferences. Per the chart below, over 92% of respondents said they’re currently buying pre-roll video ads, slightly ahead of display. Mobile video was fourth with 85% buying it. Further down in the eighth position was Interactive Video (61%) and in tenth position, connected TV (55%).

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Last Friday Adobe released its U.S. Digital Video Benchmark for Q2 ’15, showing, among other things, surprisingly stagnant adoption of TV Everywhere over the past 4 quarters. According to Adobe, active viewership of TVE among pay-TV viewers stood at 12.7%, exactly the same rate as in Q3 ’14 (and down a bit from 13.2% in Q1 ’15). However, the Q2 ’15 rate of 12.7% was 19% higher than the 10.7% rate Adobe recorded in Q2 ’14.

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FreeWheel has released its Q2 '15 Video Monetization Report, finding once again that long-form and live viewing drove the biggest increases in video ad views. Live viewing increased 146% vs. Q2 ’14 with long-form up 26% vs. Q2 ’14. Short-form again lagged, up just 16% year-over-year. Overall, ad views increased by 32% and video views increased by 25%, both vs. Q2 ’14.

For broadcast and cable TV networks plus pay-TV operators (which FreeWheel calls “programmers”), 66% of their ad views in Q2 ’15 came from the combination of long-form (35%) and live (31%). As always, the biggest share of live viewing was sports at 78% (though that was down from 82% in Q1 ’15), distantly followed by news at 15%. For long-form, scripted drama had the highest share (42%), followed by reality (26%) and comedy (17%).

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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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The range and quality of online original programs is unquestionably improving as investments by OTT services soar. What gets far less attention - but is equally important - is that the viewers’ actual experience watching these new programs must be high quality and free of buffering/other annoyances. The best content in the world will not make up for lousy delivery. Increasingly, a TV-quality level of experience is where viewers set their expectations.

Fortunately there was some good news this week on the quality of experience front, with Conviva reporting mid-year 2015 quality metrics gleaned from analyzing billions of video streams worldwide. Some of the key data points, according to Conviva’s mid-2015 Viewer Experience Report, were:

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Watch an ad longer and all kinds of effectiveness measures should increase. That’s a pretty bankable assumption. But in a world where viewers are going to great lengths to avoid ads, just getting them seen and paid attention to have become huge challenges. For example, earlier this week a report from Adobe and PageFair estimated that publishers are now foregoing $22 billion per year due to increased use of ad blocking software.

All of this has triggered a range of new video ad approaches to deliver improved monetization. One of them is “outstream” video ads, where the video ad plays outside of the video stream, instead running in a text article, newsfeed or slideshow, as opposed to instream (i.e. pre-roll, mid-roll or post-roll). I’ve been a fan of outstream ads for a while as I think they unlock lots of new premium inventory for publishers while balancing the viewer experience.

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Tremor Video released data gleaned from 40 billion ad calls in its premium video marketplace, finding, among other things, that 7 out of 10 advertisers are now buying multi-screen campaigns. That’s a bit higher than the 58% Videology reported for Q1 ’15 back in May based on its data.

Both data points illustrate how aggressively advertisers are embracing both online video and mobile video advertising. Mobile in particular now accounts for 50% or more views on many popular sites, including YouTube, making a mobile component mandatory.

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Research released late last week by Parks Associates, which revealed high levels of churn for many smaller SVOD services, reinforced for me that many of these services are at risk of being seen as little more than transactional VOD opportunities by consumers. If this occurs it would have huge implications for both the SVOD services and larger ecosystem.

First, to review the research, Parks found that for SVOD services other than Netflix, Hulu and Amazon, the churn rate over the past 12 months was equal to 60% of those who subscribed to such services. For Hulu Plus, 7% of U.S. broadband subscribers cancelled their subscription in the past 12 months (equaling churn of half or more of Hulu Plus’s subscribers). Parks estimated Amazon’s churn at around 25% (though that’s clouded by value of the overall Prime service). Only Netflix fared well, with churn in the past 12 months running around 9% of its subscriber base. Note, none of these SVOD services publicly disclose their churn rates.

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Revenue in the U.S. from premium OTT services could double or triple from $4 billion in 2014 to $8-12 billion in 2018, according to new research study from Ooyala and Vindicia, which was conducted by MTM.

The study, based on input from 45 content and service providers, forecasts that just a small number of OTT providers, mainly existing ones, will dominate. Netflix is seen as the biggest of the group, although its market share will decline from 85% currently to approximately 50% in 2018. However, respondents were optimistic about the opportunity for niche OTT providers such as sports, kids, specialized entertainment and personality-drive services where they foresee 15-20 providers each having over 100K subscribers.

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A new study from research firm SmithGeiger and Net2TV has found that just 18% of 18-34 year-olds’ video viewing time is now spent with traditional broadcast and cable TV. Fully 61% of their viewing has shifted to digital devices. For 35-44 year-olds, 27% of total video viewing is on traditional broadcast and cable TV. The data is the latest in a well-documented trend toward viewership fragmentation driven by OTT services and the proliferation of digital devices.

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With binge-viewing becoming a mainstream activity, there’s more and more energy being devoted to understanding the behavior and how to profit from it. The latest comes from video optimizer Conviva, which has published a white paper, “Binge Watching: The New Currency of Video Economics,” detailing findings from a survey of 750 binge-viewers between the ages of 25-36.

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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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More affirmation that advertisers and agencies are shifting spending to video: a new Forrester survey has found that 77% of advertisers and 70% of agencies plan to increase their video ad spending in the next 2 years. In addition, 73% of media companies plan to offer more video inventory to meet demand.

The data is based on a survey Forrester conducted of 529 executives at advertisers, agencies and media companies in 8 countries, including the U.S., for a report commissioned by Teads.

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Pixability has released its second annual, deep-dive, "Beauty on YouTube" report, finding, among other things that beauty video views have increased by 50% between January, 2014 and April, 2015. Overall, beauty is one of the most vibrant verticals on YouTube, with 1.8 million videos driving 45.3 billion total views to date, of which 55% are now viewed on mobile devices.

There are over 123 million subscribers to YouTube beauty channels. Makeup accounts for 51% of beauty videos, far ahead of hair (28%), nails (10%) and skincare (6%). No surprise, 89% of YouTube's beauty audience is female.

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A new survey from Unruly reveals that 70% of U.S. advertisers have shifted a portion of their TV ad budgets to programmatic online video ads in the past 12 months (see graph below). In addition, 75% of U.S. advertisers said that programmatic will account for a share of their overall online video ad budget.

The data is based on a survey of 1,000 senior advertiser and agency executives, 500 each in the U.S. and U.K. from March, 2015. It is one of the strongest endorsements yet for the adoption of programmatic video advertising.

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Here's some data that contradicts conventional wisdom: in a new survey from Clearleap, 67% of pay-TV subscribers said sports are not the reason they maintain a subscription, citing viewership of programs on other TV networks instead. Even sports fans didn't express a lot of enthusiasm for sports as justifying the multichannel bundle, with almost half citing other programs they watch as requiring a subscription.

There has always been a strong industry consensus that live sports were the firewall for pay-TV's multichannel bundle. Even as entertainment programming has proliferated in OTT services and elsewhere, the only place to get marquee sports programming was on pay-TV. Therefore, the reasoning went, sports were the "glue" keeping subscribers on board.

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A new survey from Leichtman Research Group has found that 56% of American homes now have at least one TV connected to the Internet, more than double the 24% level from 2010. 29% of American homes now have TVs connected using multiple devices.

LRG did not break out the type of connected TV devices used, but last week, FreeWheel's Q1 '15 Video Monetization Report found that Roku has a 43% share, followed by Apple TV (23%), gaming consoles (20%), Chromecast (12%) and Smart TV (2%).

LRG also found that 29% of adults watch online video on their TVs at least weekly, almost 6x the 5% level in 2010, underscoring how rapidly this has become a mainstream activity. 33% of adults watch video on non-TV devices on a daily basis, with 58% watching on non-TV devices on a weekly basis.

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FreeWheel has released its Q1 '15 Video Monetization Report, which reinforces many of the key trends seen in recent quarters. Of note, TV Everywhere viewing increased 328% vs. Q1 '14, now accounting for 57% of long-form content viewed. Once again, live content grew the fastest, up 140% year-over-year. Sports accounted for 82% of live ad views, basically flat from Q4 '14.

Overall, FreeWheel found that video views grew 40% in Q1 '15 vs. Q1 '14, with ad views up 43%, the fastest growth since 2012.

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U.S. pay-TV operators lost 31K video subscribers in Q1 '15, compared to a gain of 271K in Q1 '14, according to analysts MoffettNathanson. The loss was the first time the industry has ever lost subscribers in a first quarter, and signals an acceleration of cord-cutting (or cord-nevering, since it's hard to pull the two apart), contributing to a .5% industry contraction over the past 4 quarters (461K subscribers).

MoffettNathanson has always tried to put pay-TV results in context with both occupied housing net additions and new household net additions. In Q1, the former declined by 407K, but the latter increased by 1.3 million, suggesting around 900K households were added in the U.S. Despite the gain the industry still lost subscribers.

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