Posts for 'Startups'

My longtime podcast colleague Colin Dixon at nScreenMedia and I are trying out a format for a second podcast, which we’re calling “Behind My Thinking.” The idea is that we would ask each other a few questions about a post we each wrote recently, to get share a little more insight on why the topic was important and other takeaways - in other words, behind each of our thinking.

On this episode Colin first asks me about my post about Extreme Reach’s data showing connected TV ad impressions share has varied widely over the past few months. Then we flip to me asking Colin more about his post on why he thinks Covid-19 in an unlikely culprit for Quibi’s weak start.

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A new app called Watchworthy is the antidote for viewers who are overloaded by the bewildering array of program choices in the Peak TV era. Watchworthy, introduced by Ranker, the fan-rankings company, asks for a minimal 30-60 second investment of the user’s time upfront so it can start making program recommendations. Viewers are quickly shown a sequence of images for existing programs. Then like a dating app they swipe left/right (or thumbs up/thumbs down) to indicate their preference if they’re familiar with them.

Those preferences and the programs’ attributes are analyzed against data gleaned from a billion preference votes that have been cast on Ranker over the years to generate the recommendations. Clark Benson, CEO of Ranker, told me in a briefing that there are currently 100-120 programs that viewers can cast preferences on in the upfront process, which can then be translated into recommendations from a pool of 7,000-12,000 different shows.

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It’s been hard to avoid reviews and prognostications about Quibi over the past 24 hours since it further pulled back the curtain on its April launch plans. Quibi is the startup mobile video service from Jeffrey Katzenberg (Disney and DreamWorks) and Meg Whitman (eBay and HP) that has raised $1.4 billion (including $400 million just announced) from virtually every Hollywood studio and others.

Quibi will charge $5/mo for its ad-supported tier, and $8/mo for its ad-free tier. Quibi will have 50-60 shows at launch, which will grow to 175 originals within a year. There are “movies told in chapters,” “episodic, unscripted and docs,” and “daily essentials.” The movie content is longest, at 7-10 minutes per clip, with the others targeted for 5-6 minutes per clip. Quibi’s aiming to launch 3 hours of content per day, with the vast majority of it being daily essentials (basically news and information).

Quibi is delivered via a mobile app with feed format. There’s no web site and no CTV apps. It’s targeted to 18-34 year-olds. The big tech innovation is called “Turnstyle” which lets users toggle seamlessly between portrait or landscape mode; all video be shot in each mode, with the same soundtrack overlaid. I haven’t seen the demo but here’s I size things up so far:

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Startup Eluvio has an ambitious vision for next-gen video delivery that would enable content providers to bypass using traditional content delivery networks (CDNs). Eluvio has launched a software platform called Eluvio Content Fabric, which would stream live, linear, on-demand or hybrid video from a content provider’s single source file, eliminating the need for pre-generating and storing multiple files.

Michelle Munson, CEO and co-founder of Eluvio, explained that this more efficient approach would both improve the economics of video delivery and also create dynamic new content experiences. Lower delivery costs would result from reduced need for transcoding, cloud storage and aggregation.

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I’m pleased to present the 472nd edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Quibi is making a big bet that viewers are ready to subscribe to a premium mobile video service. This week Colin and I discuss where Quibi might fit into the increasingly competitive video landscape. A critical variable is how viewers’ expectations are going to shift when the ad-free, content-rich Disney+ service costing just $7 per month launches later this year. Colin and I agree that if Quibi charges $8 per month as reported, and doesn’t offer a solid tier as a freemium on-ramp, building audience is going to be very difficult.

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It’s a good day for video tech providers with Israeli roots as Wibbitz has announced a $20 million Series C funding and Connatix has raised a $15 million Series A round. The Wibbitz round was led by Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, with participation from The Weather Channel, The Associated Press, TF1 and existing investors NantMobile, lool Ventures and Horizons Ventures and brings total funding to $30.8 million. The Connatix round was led by Volition Capital.

While the companies have different value propositions, they’re both playing to the broader industry trends of enabling publishers to enrich their properties with more video, which creates more opportunities for video advertising.

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Niche programming provider ZoneTV has partnered with Microsoft and Ooyala to introduce a set of customizable AI-driven linear TV channels that will be made available in partnership with pay-TV operators using IP-enabled set-top boxes.

ZoneTV will leverage 6,000 hours of video that it has licensed across a number of different content categories to create specialized linear channels. Then, as the viewer consumes the content that has been characterized using Video Indexer algorithms from Microsoft Cognitive Services, a more and more personalized channel is presented for subsequent viewing.

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With the launch of numerous skinny bundles, direct-to-consumer OTT services and innovative new packages from incumbent pay-TV operators, it’s more confusing than ever for viewers to decide which service(s) are right for them and how much they should pay. For skinny bundles in particular, the confusion is compounded by the fact there’s little rhyme or reason to which TV networks are included and which aren’t, leading to what I’ve called the “Swiss cheese” problem of too many holes in their lineups that consequently diminish their value.

To address this complexity, startup Suppose TV has launched a free online tool that allows users to specify their geographic area and which TV networks are most important to them with further filters like DVR availability and device/multi-stream compatibility. Suppose’s algorithm considers these inputs and then provides unbiased recommendations on the optimal services, starting with the “Best Fit” service.

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Startup Vinyl Trading Desk, founded by longtime Altitude Digital COO Devin Yeager, has raised an initial round of $750K from FastPay. Devin told me in a briefing that Vinyl’s platform unifies and simplifies ad buying across video, search and social for clients starting with budgets as little as $1,500. The new funds will be used mainly for product development and building sales and marketing staff.

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Online video is booming. But that doesn’t mean all industry initiatives will succeed. Two examples in just the past two days illustrate the point. Yesterday Verizon announced it was acquiring Vessel for an undisclosed amount in what appears to be a straightforward asset purchase and talent acquisition. And on Tuesday, Google Fiber announced that it was stopping all expansion into new markets. Both companies’ leaders, Jason Kilar at Vessel and Craig Barratt at Google Access, will be departing their positions.

While the two companies operate in distinct segments of the market - Vessel in content and Google Fiber in infrastructure - both were bets on new business models and consumer demand that do not seem to have panned out.

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With online video increasingly becoming about long-form programming, viewers expect a flawless experience comparable to TV. But one of the complicating factors is that many content providers use application programming interfaces (APIs) from third-party vendors to enable multiple aspects of their experience whether online, mobile web or via apps. These could include APIs for analytics, ad serving, content management, video management, storage, CDN, etc.

While APIs enrich and enable the experience, when they fail or suffer degraded performance, the viewer is impacted and the content provider’s brand and business model suffer. Failures or reduced performance can happen for all kinds of reasons: new releases, insufficient testing, custom implementations, under capacity during peak load times, etc. Worse, given their lean staffs, content providers often don’t even know about failures, until viewers have surfaced them (many of us have no doubt been in this role, for example, tweeting about real-time problems).

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We are in the era of “Peak TV,” where hundreds of original programs are spread across many different free and paid video services and TV networks. For those who no longer want to spring for pay-TV, assembling the right mix of OTT, SVOD and skinny bundles to cost-effectively access desired programs is very confusing.

Now a startup named CobbleCord is aiming to address this, using a 4-part set of user-provided information about viewing preferences to return a list of custom recommendations. CobbleCord was started by Virginia Juliano, a 10-year Showtime marketing executive, who walked me through how CobbleCord helps users “cobble” together the most appropriate video services for them.

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I'm pleased to present the 327th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week, Ellation, which is backed by Otter Media, itself a joint venture of The Chernin Group and AT&T, announced a new SVOD service called VRV (pronounced “Verve”). VRV is targeted mainly to the gamer/geek audience with a mix of anime, animation, gaming, comedy, fantasy and technology content.

While VRV has multiple content partners already signed up to participate, Crunchyroll, the anime SVOD service in which Otter Media holds a majority stake, is clearly the anchor tenant of VRV. Crunchyroll is perhaps the most successful niche SVOD service, with approximately 750K paying subscribers, plus a larger free ad-supported audience.

To learn more about VRV, Colin was briefed by Ellation’s head of marketing and distribution Arlen Marmel and I was briefed by CEO Tom Pickett. Colin is very enthusiastic about how VRV will leverage Crunchyroll and believes VRV’s freemium approach will find success with its target audience. While I like VRV’s parallels to Amazon’s Streaming Partners Program, I’m more cautious in my outlook, mainly because it’s not quite clear to me how VRV’s pricing/value proposition for a la carte channels vs. its bundle offer will work until VRV launches later this year.

Stepping back, VRV represents further innovation in business models and user experiences for video services and is part of a broader trend toward SVOD curation/aggregation that we envision gaining momentum.

Listen now to learn more!

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Turner announced this morning that it will launch a new ad-free SVOD service this Fall dubbed FilmStruck, which will be managed by Turner Classic Movies and exclusively draw on movies from Criterion Collection. According to the release, FilmStruck is targeted to “diehard movie enthusiasts who crave a deep, intimate experience independent, foreign and art house films.”

A Turner spokesperson confirmed that Criterion’s 1,000 movie catalog will move over from Hulu in November, where it has been under an exclusive deal announced in February, 2011 and extended in April, 2014.

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Stre.am, which has offered free mobile live-streaming to consumers, is looking to help brands and media companies capitalize on the live-streaming craze by introducing Stre.am Enterprise.

CMO Will Jamieson told me that that two distinguishing features are that Strea.am Enterprise provides a full solution so that content providers can incorporate their live-streams into their own web or mobile properties. In addition, Stre.am has built its own media server that uses RTMP, so it can deliver live streams with sub two-second latency, critical in mobile gaming / eSports apps.

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Skinny bundle service Sling TV got a lot of press last week as parent company Dish Network reported its Q4 ’15 and full year results. Based on a lot of assumptions, analysts MoffettNathanson estimated that Sling TV ended the year with 523K subscribers. Meanwhile, the WSJ cited unnamed sources estimating Sling TV now has more than 600K subscribers.

Once again, Dish Network provided no detailed breakout on Sling TV’s subscriber growth. As many analysts have observed, that’s a deliberate strategy to obscure the subscriber losses occurring in Dish’s core direct satellite service. On the earnings call, Sling TV’s CEO Roger Lynch only said that the vast majority of Sling TV subscribers are not currently pay-TV subscribers, noting they were either cord-nevers or cord-cutters.

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Wochit, whose technology allows publishers to quickly create short-form, shareable videos from a rights-cleared library, has reported strong 2015 momentum, along with new features.  Wochit said it grew revenues 300% in 2015 while doubling the number of customers. The US grew 200% and Europe 450%, with similar growth rates expected in 2016.

Wochit is benefiting from the larger industry trend of publishers’ desire to inexpensively create engaging video that often accompanies traditional text-based stories. With users’ insatiable appetite to watch short-form video on social/mobile, Wochit-created videos give publishers the ability to greatly increase their footprint, as well as tap into video advertising.

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Canvs, which interprets video viewers’ social sentiments about their favorite TV programs and ads across 250 different TV networks, has raised a $5.6 million series A round, led by KEC Ventures, with participation from Rubicon Venture Capital, Gary Vaynerchuck and BRaVe Ventures, Social Starts and Milestone Venture Partners.

I spoke to Canvs CEO and co-founder Jared Feldman last week who explained the company’s approach and why its syndicated research portal has been quickly adopted by almost 3 dozen TV networks, studios, ad and talent agencies to date including Sony Pictures, SMG, NBCU, Viacom and others.

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Wibbitz, an Israeli text-to-video startup, has raised an $8 million Series B round led by NantMobile, with participation by existing investors. The funds will be used to expand into the U.S. via a new New York City office, headed by CEO and co-founder Zohar Dayan, who brought me up to speed on the company yesterday.

Wibbitz uses natural language processing to quickly turn publishers' text articles into short videos. The process begins with Wibbitz's technology digesting the article via algorithms meant to emulate a human reader's behavior, identifying key people, main points and the theme, resulting in a summary of about 20% of the full article.

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Startup VHX has unveiled a turnkey SVOD platform with no upfront cost, no exclusivity and full branding/pricing/packaging control by content providers. The platform is intended both for both premium content providers and online original creators (e.g. YouTubers) seeking to diversify from free, ad-supported only models.

Jamie Wilkinson, co-founder and CEO of VHX sees the SVOD platform as allowing content providers to easily "roll their own" Netflix or HBO Now service. He distinguishes VHX's approach because the content provider is in control and retains all viewer data. Unlike a storefront like iTunes or Amazon, VHX's platform is meant for content providers that want to set up branded video businesses online, rather than just sell their content through third-party outlets.

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