Posts for 'Social Media'

The WSJ is reporting today that YouTube is now offering some of its most popular video creators bonuses in exchange for signing exclusive multiyear deals. The new offers are on top of previously reported deals to underwrite programming for the same creators. All of this is happening primarily in response to pitches ex-Hulu CEO Jason Kilar is making to the same YouTube creators, to provide his new company Vessel with an exclusive 3-day window for these creators' new videos.

The YouTube talent war is raging because the viewing behaviors of millennials - the primary audience for this type of programming - is up for grabs. The most compelling evidence of this came in last week's Nielsen Q3 '14 Total Audience report. Based on my calculations, live TV viewing by 18-24 year-olds (the core millennial segment) dropped by nearly 20% in Q3 '14 vs. Q3 '13. The reduction represented over 4 hours per week of viewing time, thereby dropping live TV viewing to approximately 17 hours per week, easily the lowest of any age group Nielsen measures.

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At LiveRail's Publisher Forum yesterday, CEO and co-founder Mark Trefgarne shared product roadmap details, including support for mobile display advertising, taking the company beyond its video advertising roots. Mark said LiveRail will offer full display ad serving across all devices and a unified video/display SDK for Android and iOS. Mobile display units will include banners, interstitial and native.

With these new display units, LiveRail will expand its mobile ad serving and programmatic capabilities beyond video. All of this will be offered initially through the Facebook Audience Network which provides monetization to mobile apps outside of Facebook. In addition, LiveRail previewed what it's calling "Platform 5," a next-generation UI for ad operations, which streamlines workflows.

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Video ad tech provider Mixpo has acquired ShopIgniter, a Portland, OR firm specializing in social and mobile advertising. Mixpo CEO Jeff Lanctot said the company concluded in a recent internal strategic review that in order for it to truly offer a best-in-class multiscreen video ad platform, it needed to improve its capabilities in mobile and social, which are increasingly intertwined.

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In case you missed it, last Thursday Twitter acquired SnappyTV, a cloud-based video platform that allows content providers and brands to quickly create clips from live video and then distribute them through social media. It's a highly strategic deal for Twitter, further positioning the company to "win the moments that matter" for both audience and monetization.

"Win the moments that matter" is a phrase I first heard from YouTube executives a couple of years ago and it has great relevance for the Twitter-SnappyTV deal. The massive trends around mobile devices, social media, content syndication and video have created a sweet spot for TV networks and rights-holders to drive huge traffic spikes by making highly newsworthy moments readily available to fans.

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Unruly has released new data from its Social Diffusion Curve, showing that, for the top 4,000 videos, 42% of total social sharing now occurs within 3 days of their launch, up from 25% a year ago. Social shares on the day following launch increased from 10% to 18% of total shares and within the first week increased from 37% to 65% of total.

Unruly noted that the acceleration of upfront sharing reinforces how important immediate post-launch activity is becoming to a branded video's overall online reach and impact.

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There is no doubt the TV industry is changing dramatically, largely due to the rise of online and mobile video viewing. But is it "dying," "imploding" or being "nuked" as some recent tech media headlines assert? No, not yet anyway. As a close observer of all things video, it's just mind-boggling sometimes to see how data is conflated to support distorted conclusions. If your company's product strategy were guided by today's headlines alone, you'd be on a course to disaster.

To help set things straight, Piksel's Alan Wolk has put together a really good slide deck with data debunking 7 of the bigger myths floating around these days (1) cord-cutting is a mass movement, (2) kids ignore mainstream TV, (3) your pay-TV provider is the one forcing you to pay for 800 channels, (4) cutting the cord lets you stick it to the cable company, (5) second screen is all about social TV, (6) TV viewing has decreased and (7) in the future we'll be able to watch TV wherever, whenever and however we want.

See slide deck

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, the biggest food holiday of the year. But for many people, food is a year-round personal obsession, which can now be amplified through mobile, social and video technologies. Operating at the intersection of these powerful trends is a startup called Tastemade, which is building a foodie community of digital natives through an innovative prosumer and user-generated video programming model. When I was in LA recently, I visited with Stephen Kydd, one of the 3 co-founders of Tastemade, who all worked together previously at Demand Media.

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I'm pleased to present the 199th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. In this week's edition we discuss the new "See It" tool announced in a partnership between Comcast/NBCU and Twitter.

Beginning in November, certain tweets about TV shows will carry the "See It" button. When users click on it, they will be given choices to watch the program now on their mobile device, tune their Comcast X1 set-top to that channel to watch on TV, set their DVR or receive a reminder (more about how See It works here).

Colin and I both like See It's potential to convert the "chatterfest" that now regularly occurs on Twitter around TV shows and live events (sports, award shows, etc.) into higher viewership. Tightly coupling social discovery and the opportunity to immediately watch is very compelling. If Twitter can show See It can actually driving viewership (note, still a big "if"), it would become a very important promotion tool for the TV industry.

We also discuss how See It works with authentication/TV Everywhere, the critical role that Comcast's new IP-based X1 set-tops play in enabling See It, how the rest of the pay-TV industry might adopt See It, and the potential to spread See It to other social sites. See It's widespread adoption will require a lot of TV ecosystem support, but if its value is quickly proven, we believe that could happen.

(Last - Colin and I will both be participating in BroadbandTV Con in Hollywood Nov. 4-6.  Come meet us! VideoNuze readers get $75 off conference registration using the code "VideoNuze." Colin will also be hosting a pre-conference workshop.)


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The Internet is awash in free videos to watch. For consumers, that's been great news as there are more choices available today than ever. For independent content creators, the Internet offers an unparalleled opportunity to build audience and visibility. The problem is that for these creators, actually making money online has remained a tough nut to crack.

Now, a startup named LittleCast is giving content creators an easy way to sell their videos, via Facebook and in iOS and Android mobile apps. CEO Amra Tareen explained to me that the process is pretty straightforward - content creators just upload their videos to LittleCast and decide how much to charge. LittleCast transcodes the video into various formats and HD/SD resolutions and stores them in the cloud. They can then be published in LittleCast's media player on Facebook and in the mobile apps.

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This is last call to register for tomorrow's complimentary webinar, "Social Media and Second-Screen TV Experiences." The webinar will feature Michael Greeson, founder of The Diffusion Group, who will share social insights from his firm's recent survey of 1,000 broadband users/TV viewers. TDG will also provide registrants with a complimentary copy of its accompanying report, a $1,500 value. Then Kevin Wyatt, director of business development for Rovi, will explain how the company's entertainment-related social media can be incorporated into TV apps. There will be plenty of time for Q&A.

Register now!

Periodically someone asks me how I think of the relative level of social networking use vs. video consumption. Of course they have both have been huge trends over the past 5 years, and they are very complimentary to each other. But, at least when it comes to mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) social dominates video in terms of time spent according to Nielsen's Q1 Cross-Platform Report, released late last week.

Looking at app-only usage on smartphones, social networking notched 9 hours, 6 minutes per person per month, nearly 8x as much as the 1 hour, 15 minutes of video viewed per person per month. For iPads, the range is tighter, with app-only social networking racking up 3 hours, 41 minutes per person per month, just over twice as much as the 1 hour, 48 minutes of video viewed per person per month. This makes sense to me because the iPad is more of a "personal TV" and therefore prone to longer-form viewing.

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Next Wednesday, June 19th, I'll be hosting a complimentary webinar focused on the impact of social media and second-screens on TV experiences. By now, anyone involved in the TV industry is well aware that the content itself is one part of the overall viewing experience;  for a growing group of viewers the social aspect that surrounds it has become equally important. Still, social is a relatively new phenomenon for TV and much is not yet understood.

In this webinar, Michael Greeson, founder of The Diffusion Group, will share social insights from his firm's recent survey of 1,000 broadband users/TV viewers. TDG will also provide registrants with a complimentary copy of its accompanying report, a $1,500 value. Then, Kevin Wyatt, director of business development for Rovi, will explain how the company's entertainment-related social media can be incorporated into TV apps. There will be plenty of time for Q&A.

Register now!

Please join me for a complimentary webinar on the impact of social media and second-screens on TV experiences. In this webinar, which I'll moderate, Michael Greeson, founder of The Diffusion Group, will share detailed findings from his firm's recent survey of 1,000 broadband users/TV viewers. TDG will also provide registrants with a complimentary copy of the accompanying report, a $1,500 value.

In addition, Kevin Wyatt, director of business development for Rovi, will explain how it enables entertainment-related social media to be seamlessly incorporated into apps, with supporting examples. There will be ample time for Q&A.

Register now!

CNN and BuzzFeed are partnering to create a new YouTube channel called "CNN BuzzFeed" to break original news online. The channel will feature current and archived CNN video and like all BuzzFeed content, is targeted to a younger, social media savvy audience.

CNN BuzzFeed will capitalize on two of the most important attributes of today's online video landscape: short-form and syndication. Last week, data from ad manager FreeWheel showed that "Digital Pure-Play" content providers grew their video views by 47% year-over-year (with 84% of their views coming via syndication to 3rd-party sites), while views from long-form "Linear + Digital" providers (e.g. broadcast and cable networks) decreased by 8%.

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Today I'm pleased to share a contributed post from Alan Wolk. Alan is Global Lead Analyst at KIT digital. He frequently speaks about the television industry in general and second screen interactions in particular, both at conferences and to anyone who'll listen. Recently named as one of the "Top 20 Thinkers In Social TV and Second Screen" Wolk is one of the main architects behind the award-winning KIT Social Program Guide and writes about the television industry at the Toad Stool blog. You can find him on Twitter at @awolk

If you are interested in contributing to VideoNuze, please contact me!

Social Recommendations: No Surprises There
by Alan Wolk

There’s a firmly held belief in the world of social TV and social media that our social graphs-- the people we are friends with on Facebook and Twitter and other social networks-- are the best source of recommendations for anything from restaurants to movies to TV shows. (Witness this week’s Facebook Graph Search announcement.)

I’m here to suggest that may not be the case, particularly in regards to television.

Let’s take Facebook, the most personal of the social networks. While it is considered good form by many on Twitter and LinkedIin to connect with relative strangers, our Facebook friends are generally people we know in real life.

Or knew.

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Colin Dixon, senior partner at The Diffusion Group and I are back for the 149th edition of the VideoNuze-TDG Report podcast. This week Colin kicks things off discussing zeebox's entry into the U.S. market, plus its new partnerships with Comcast, NBCU and HBO. Colin has used zeebox in the U.K. (where it has over 1.5 million users) and has been very impressed. zeebox falls into the general category of "second screen apps" but Colin notes its current focus on live TV was likely the hook for its new partners. With a sizable segment of viewers having shifted their viewing to on-demand, an app that helps drive some back to live would have lots of positives for TV networks.

We then shift to discuss new research released by NPD Group this week that 45% of consumers reported the TV as the main screen for viewing online video, up from 33% a year ago. Those identifying the PC as the main screen dropped from 48% to 31%. As I explain, this is noteworthy because it shows how online video is in fact moving to the living room, becoming a more mainstream behavior. As online video finds itself on more of an even footing with traditional TV, it raises the stakes for cord-cutting and shaving, along with shifting ad dollars from TV to online video.

Listen in to learn more!

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These days you can pick any sport and you're guaranteed to find examples of how online video is improving the fan experience. Beyond improved access, through live streaming to multiple devices, and post-event catch-up through highlight clips, another dimension of online video's value is now also emerging - fan engagement and interaction. A perfect example of this is the US Open tennis tournament's first-time use of Google Hangouts during its men's and women's finals matches.

Recently, I caught up with the two US Tennis Association executives responsible for the hangouts, Phil Green, senior director, advanced media and Peter Dopkin, director, strategic and business development, advanced media, to learn more. Listening to the strategy behind the hangouts, and how they were executed, what struck me is that in the digital age, forward-thinking sports executives are able to bring the fan, analyst and game together as never before.

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The process of authenticating users for TV Everywhere content access is improving yet again, as Synacor announced this morning that users will be able to log in via their Facebook, Twitter and Google accounts. The use of social IDs has become widely deployed by web services providers, but had not yet been made available in the TV Everywhere world. With the feature, users will be able to tie their pay-TV accounts to their social media accounts which means they'll no longer have to remember pay-TV specific login credentials to gain access to TV Everywhere content. This will reduce friction and should drive higher TV Everywhere adoption.

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mPortal, whose SPRINGBROARD Media platform allows pay-TV operators and content providers to create cloud-based TV Everywhere apps, is being enhanced with a new set of social TV APIs to build second screen companion apps for connected devices.

While the number of social TV startups abound, mPortal's VP, Products Fady Lamaa told me that mPortal believes its social TV APIs are the first to be integrated fully with TV Everywhere app building tools, meaning that pay-TV operators and content providers can present unified, branded TV Everywhere/social experience to their users. mPortal is seeking to capitalize on two of the biggest video trends today: connected device viewing and social.

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