Posts for 'TiVo'

On the podcast this week Colin and I dig into Tivo’s Q4 2023 Video Trends Report, released earlier this week and available here. Among other things, TiVo’s research found that in the past 2 years the number of paid video services used per respondent has leveled off while non-paid services has increased, indicating higher levels of ad tolerance.

Meanwhile, TiVo found that the gap between people signing up for a new streaming service and dropping one is at an all-time low, highlighting how churn remains an issue.

In addition, nearly half of respondents typically go to 2 or 3 streaming apps before deciding on something to watch. Just 19% of respondents said they know what they want to watch, once again revealing how important discovery remains.

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This week on Inside the Stream we discuss four items that caught our attention. First, according to Tivo’s Video Trends report, the number of TV services used has declined, and the mix has shifted from SVOD to FAST. Next up, in Canada, Disney+ has announced plans to limit password sharing. We also discuss Amazon’s plan to roll out ads in Prime Video in early 2024, and S&P’s forecast of declining ad revenue for niche cable TV networks.

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I’m pleased to present the 482nd edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

First up this week Colin and I assess the prospects for Apple TV+, now that we know the full details of pricing, promotion, devices and content. I really like how Apple TV+ is being bundled for free for a year for Apple device buyers as an easy on ramp to give the service a try. Colin agrees, but cautions that absent Android support, Apple TV+ remains mainly an effort to bolster the Apple ecosystem, not close to a full competitor to other SVOD services.

Colin then shares key data from TiVo’s latest Video Trends report, which finds the video market’s competition continuing to intensify. Free, ad-supported services like Pluto TV and Tubi are growing strongly, TV networks’ sites are slipping and surprisingly, virtual MVPDs appear to be losing some viewership.  

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Data has become the rocket fuel behind video advertising and an audience-based buying future – helping advertisers boost targeting for higher ROIs, while allowing content providers to propel the value of their inventory and transact more fluidly.

At our recent 9th annual Video Ad Summit, a panel including Natalie Gabathuler-Scully (SVP, Revenue Operations, Vevo), Ben Maughan (VP, Business Development, Product, and Client Services, Advanced Media and Advertising, TiVo), George Musi (EVP of Marketing Sciences, Citi, Publicis OneTeam) and Dan Punt (Senior Managing Director, FTI Consulting) as moderator, dug into the above topics and much more.

In particular, the panelists explored what’s involved in investing in a data strategy, the complexity of audience targeting models (and who does this modeling work), the incremental value of data when used appropriately and key challenges including many proprietary anonymous ID spaces that aren’t interoperable.

Data tends to be an overused word in the video ad business, but the panel demystified where data’s value really lies.

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Yesterday Netflix announced a very cool new feature called “Smart Downloads,” which automatically deletes an episode you’ve downloaded and finished watching on your mobile device, triggering the download of the subsequent episode. The process happens as soon as you’ve connected to WiFi and occurs invisibly in the background. Smart Downloads is available for Android devices now and for iOS devices later this year.

Smart Downloads is a clever way of automating a manual process, so that users always have something downloaded and ready to watch (although having to manually download a TV episode clearly falls in the category of “first world problems”). Smart Downloads is a a savvy move by Netflix to increase subscribers’ engagement time, which in turn leads to higher satisfaction and better retention. But perhaps most fascinating about Smart Downloads is that it illustrates how fully and quickly Netflix has evolved from an avowed downloading skeptic to an impressive innovator.

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I recently caught up with Walt Horstman, SVP and GM of TiVo’s Advanced Media and Advertising business unit. TiVo, which was known for its DVRs, was acquired in the Fall of 2016 by data provider Rovi, and the combined company was renamed TiVo. It is pursuing an ambitious vision of using data to increase the value of relationships among viewers, content providers and advertisers. An edited transcript follows. 

VideoNuze: What is TiVo doing with advanced advertising?

Walt Horstman: There is a lot going on at TiVo in terms of advanced media and advertising and data.  I’m nearing on my one-year anniversary at the company, and we’ve been really heads down looking at the number of assets that we’ve got across the company, through a lot of acquisitions over the years, that we’ve now consolidated under this business unit, Advanced Media and Advertising, and it’s coming together very nicely with a very impressive set of capabilities. We really are focusing on two key objectives within the media ecosystem. We call these our two Virtual Cycles.

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I’m pleased to present the 411th edition of the VideoNuze podcast, with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week Colin and I share details from TiVo’s new Q4 ’17 Online Video & Pay-TV Trends report (download here), which shows how the high cost of multichannel TV subscriptions is leading to a record level of cord-cutting. The TiVo report also shows how SVOD has gained loyalty and that broadcast TV remains critical for many viewers.

All of this adds up to a dynamic which Colin and I only see firming up further: consumers becoming more proactive through more cord-cutting and cobbling together SVOD subscriptions with low cost, “good enough” skinny bundles and/or antennas. Skinny bundles like YouTube TV, which includes broadcast will become market leaders, while those that don’t (or don’t offer a solution like Sling TV does) will be challenged. Absent a new catalyst, we see this as the state of play in the TV industry for the foreseeable future.

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Cord-cutting is accelerating, and there’s a simple, unsurprising reason why: pay-TV service is just too expensive. For the fifth quarter in a row, that’s the finding of TiVo’s Online Video & Pay-TV Trends Report. In Q4 ’17, in response to the question “What factors influenced you to cancel your cable/satellite service?” the price/too expensive answer grew by 6.6 percentage points vs. Q4 ’16 to 86.7%, its highest level ever.

Price/too expensive is by far the most important reason, with the second reason, “I use an Internet streaming service” at 39.7%, actually down 8.6 percentage points vs. Q4 ’16. Next was “I use an antenna to get the basic channels on my TV, at 23%, down 4.2 percentage points vs. Q4 ’16.

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If you find yourself watching a lot of video these days, you’re not alone. According to a new global survey from TiVo, the average viewer now spends almost 5 hours a day with video, including 4.4 hours watching and another 28 minutes searching for something to watch. U.S. viewers lead with 5.1 hours watched per day, followed by Brazil, with 4.7 hours. At 3.3 hours per day, viewers in Germany watched the least.

Despite the headlines around cord-cutting, the survey found that pay-TV remains highly popular, with 87% of U.S. households still subscribing (along with 90% in Western Europe and 96% in LATAM). But the survey notes how viewers are experimenting with new options. 64% of U.S. households now have an SVOD service (60% in Western Europe and 71% in LATAM) while 44% of U.S. have a connected TV device (44% in Western Europe and 59% in LATAM).

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TiVo has released its Q2 ’17 Video Trends Report, finding among other things that satisfaction with the value of pay-TV among subscribers noticeably increased over the prior quarter even as price remains a major concern, and a driver of cord-cutting.

TiVo found that 31.2% of subscribers said they’re “very satisfied” with the value of their pay-TV service, up 7.5 percentage points vs. Q1 ’17 and 11.6 percentage points over the past 2 years. Another 52.9% of subscribers said they’re “satisfied,” roughly flat with Q1 ’17. Respondents saying they’re “unsatisfied” dropped 6.9 percentage points vs. the prior quarter to 15.9%.

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Downloading video for offline playback continues to gain momentum with Showtime announcing late last week that it has enabled downloading of its entire roster of programs from its standalone subscription and TV Everywhere apps at no additional cost. Downloading is available on iOS and Android phones and tablets plus Amazon Fire tablets.

Loyal VideoNuze readers know that I’ve been an enthusiastic downloading proponent for 4 1/2 years, back to when I first experienced TiVo’s implementation of it via TiVo Stream. I immediately saw downloading as a killer app because it allowed high quality out-of-home viewing independent of shaky or non-existent WiFi hotspots and/or eating up expensive mobile data plans (if they could even support video streaming).

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I’m pleased to present the 361st edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

This week Colin and I discuss TiVo’s 16th quarterly Video Trends Report, which we both covered this week (here and here). We agree that the pay-TV industry has painted itself into a high-cost corner. The consequences of this are increases in cord-cutting, cord-shaving and adoption/use of SVOD, reduction in perception of per channel values and budding interest in new skinny bundles.

All of this is bad news for the industry and the report illustrates the specifics of each of these trends.

The report is available as a complimentary download here.

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TiVo has released its 16th quarterly Video Trends Report (previously published by Digitalsmiths, which was acquired by TiVo in 2014) and the key takeaway is that pay-TV’s high cost is creating huge industry vulnerability that is already showing up in increased cord-cutting/cord-shaving and higher penetration and use of SVOD services. It also looks possible that interest in skinny bundles could be fueled by their low cost compared to traditional pay-TV.

TiVo found that in Q4 ’16, 17% of respondents didn’t subscribe to a pay-TV service, and of this group, 19.8% cut the cord in the last 12 months. No surprise, “price/too expensive” was the top factor influencing respondents’ decision to cut the cord, cited by 80.1% of them. But in second position was using a streaming service such as Netflix/Hulu/Amazon, which was cited by 48.3% of respondents.

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I'm pleased to present the 348th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

We lead off this week with a cord-cutting update, based on reported Q3’16 results from the 11 largest pay-TV operators in the U.S. Video subscriber losses expanded a bit, to 255K in Q3 ’16 vs. 210K in Q3 ’15, with a continuing shift to cable operators and away from satellite and telco. As I wrote on Wednesday, depending on how the DirecTV Now, Hulu and YouTube skinny bundle launches in 2017, subscriber losses could accelerate.

We then shift to discussing new TiVo survey data that provides insights about online video viewers’ tolerance for ads. As Colin points out, despite respondents stating they have a low tolerance, their behavior suggests otherwise. That suggests there’s more potential for ad-supported premium video, in addition to the SVOD model that has thrived.  

Speaking of ads, I also point out the surprising research from Brightcove this week, that 46% of people who watched a branded video on a social platform then made a purchase. That’s the kind of performance that gets marketers’ attention and could portend an increase of more TV ad dollars moving to social.

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Yesterday YouTube announced YouTube Go, a new mobile app that provides sophisticated new features for offline video use. While YouTube Go will initially only be available in India, it will no doubt be introduced in other geographies once proven in.

YouTube Go builds on YouTube’s embrace of downloading for offline viewing in India and other Asian territories begun nearly two years ago with the introduction of YouTube Offline, which allowed downloading of certain videos for viewing within 48 hours. Earlier this year YouTube added the “Smart Offline” feature that allows users to schedule their downloads to take advantage of off-peak data use.

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TiVo has announced its latest DVR, the 4K BOLT+, which includes 6 tuners and 3 GB of   storage, comparable to the existing Roamio Pro. The BOLT+ follows the introduction of the original 4K BOLT one year ago, which included 4 tuners and two sizes, 500 GB and 1 TB. Importantly the original BOLT only came in white, while the new BOLT+ comes in black, which will make it fit more elegantly into existing entertainment centers. The BOLT+ retains the BOLT’s sleek, unconventional curved design.

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The TV industry is in a race to data enable its ad inventory to keep pace with online video and digital alternatives like Facebook and Google that offer finely-grained audience data at massive scale. Earlier this week TiVo Research and Cadent announced a new joint solution that is another good example of how the industry is creatively pursuing data enablement to build more targeting value across its inventory.

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TV ad budgets are being diverted to many different types of digital spending these days, so it’s no surprise to see TV networks and their partners re-asserting the value of TV advertising, especially as the all-important upfronts approach.

The latest evidence is a new study from TiVo Research, consulting firm 84.51 (part of The Kroger Co.), A+E Networks and Turner, which found that for every dollar decrease in TV ad spending, the reduction in sales was $3. The study looked at 15 consumer packaged goods brands which had reduced TV ad spending somewhere between 29% and 75%. The study then measured their sales performance for one or two quarters in the 2013-2014 period.

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I'm pleased to present the 292nd edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Last month Colin and I discussed on our podcast how the connected TV device market is in flux, and this week’s introduction of the TiVO BOLT and the new Chromecast provided yet more evidence of this (not to mention the new Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV).

Colin and I are both very impressed with the BOLT and its new features (after we use the review units we’ll have more to share). We agree that the new “SkipMode” feature - which allows viewers to skip an entire commercial break for a set of 20 TV networks during primetime - is the biggest news with BOLT.

Beyond BOLT, Google also announced new versions and form-factors for its Chromecast device, which Colin and I have both been big fans since its initial release. Colin reviews Chromecast’s new capabilities, which at $35, makes it an appealing mobile device complement.

Stepping back, both of continue to be struck by how all the innovation in connected TV devices is laying the groundwork for SVOD services (which are making investments in long-form programming) to thrive in the living room.

(Note, we recorded before news broke that Amazon has banned Apple TV and Chromecast from its store, the latest twist in the connected TV device competition.)

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