Posts for 'Facebook'

I'm pleased to present the 328th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

It’s been a milestone week for live-streaming, starting with news that Facebook is spending $50 million with media partners to create content for Facebook Live. Then there was C-SPAN live-streaming the Democrats’ gun protest sit-in via Facebook Live and Periscope after C-SPAN’s cameras were shut down.

Meanwhile, adding more momentum to live-streaming this week, Tumblr announced that it would support live-streaming via YouNow, Kanvas, Upclose and YouTube. And then just yesterday, YouTube announced that it will soon introduce mobile live-streaming within the YouTube app - arguably a catch-up move given Periscope, Meerkat and others already enabling this for a while - but significant given YouTube’s massive scale. Last but not least, game 7 of the NBA finals garnered WatchESPN its largest audience ever for an NBA game, with nearly 1.8 million viewers.

In today’s podcast we discuss Facebook’s live-streaming moves and the industry’s broader opportunity. I continue to be very bullish on live-streaming’s potential and believe we’ll see a lot of interesting applications of it going forward.

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Yesterday morning, just after I posted “5 Reasons Why Facebook Spending $50 Million on Live-Streaming Content is So Smart,” C-SPAN’s cameras in the U.S. House of Representatives were turned off by House Speaker Paul Ryan as Democrats began a sit-in to protest gun control legislation not being brought to a vote. But then, an extraordinary thing happened: various Democratic Representatives began live-streaming the protest via Facebook Live and Periscope, with C-SPAN picking up the feeds.

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The WSJ is reporting that Facebook has signed deals with almost 140 media companies and celebrities, committing $50 million for guaranteed live-streaming content for Facebook Live. A straight average would value each partner’s deal at over $350K, but as expected, certain partners are getting a disproportionate share.

According the paper, the top 15 providers account for $21.4 million, or almost 43% of the total $50 million. At the top of the list are BuzzFeed ($3.1 million), NY Times ($3 million) and CNN ($2.5 million). I’d guess there are others at the bottom of the list whose deals are in the low 5 figures.

I’ve been enthusiastic about Facebook Live and see at least 5 reasons why the company investing $50 million (which is chump change given 2015 revenue of nearly $18 billion) is so smart:

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As video viewing on Facebook has soared, the company has been dogged by “freebooting,” whereby certain users rip copyrighted videos from YouTube and re-post them natively on Facebook. The problem has been widely reported and was perhaps most famously documented in a blistering critique last August by Hank Green (in that piece, Green highlighted data that in Q1 ’15, 725 of the top 1,000 videos on Facebook were freebooted, accounting for 17 billion views).

Being perceived as a place where copyright piracy is rampant is obviously detrimental to Facebook’s efforts to court brands, celebrities and publishers, an initiative which has dramatically ramped up as the company has prioritized video. All this is why Facebook’s announcement yesterday of its new “Rights Manager” tool is an extremely important first step in helping legitimize Facebook as a publisher-friendly video platform.

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I'm pleased to present the 317th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Live-streaming was in the headlines this week as the NFL announced Twitter as its partner for Thursday Night Football games and Facebook unveiled a slew of new features for Facebook Live.

On this week’s podcast, Colin and I discuss details of both of these initiatives, comparing and contrasting the upside. Colin is more enthusiastic about the Twitter-NFL deal, which is still a bit of a head-scratcher for me. Conversely, I’m very bullish on Facebook Live and believe it’s a natural extension of how Facebook is already used. The live-streaming battle will heat up further when YouTube launches its own live feature soon.

All of this means that live-streaming is poised to become a much more mainstream activity going forward.

Listen now to learn more!

Click here to listen to the podcast (19 minutes, 51 seconds)

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A year ago, in “Mobile Live Streaming Looks Like An Important New Video Category,” I asserted that, after playing around a bit with Meerkat and Periscope, I was convinced that live-streaming had huge potential. I envisioned lots of interest in both personal and professional uses across breaking news, promoted broadcasts and companion streams to larger events.

Fast forward to yesterday, with Facebook launching a slew of new live-streaming features to Facebook Live, building on its initial launch of live video as part of Mentions last August. With Facebook doubling down on live video, I think it’s pretty clear this is a category that is poised to soar, as infinite applications crop up.

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Underscoring once again how unpredictable the online video space is, Twitter has emerged as the unlikely winner of the rights to stream NFL Thursday Night Football (TNF) games for the 2016-2017 season. Just yesterday I wrote that with Facebook and Apple bowing out, the bidding likely came down to Amazon, Verizon and Google, with Verizon the most likely winner for a variety of reasons.

On the one hand, Twitter’s interest in streaming the TNF games makes sense, as recently returned CEO Jack Dorsey has publicly stated that a top 2016 priority is live streaming, including leveraging its Periscope product. The 10 TNF games give Twitter a marquee property to highlight live streaming, which complements Twitter activity around all games. And Twitter already had a deal in place with the NFL for highlight clips.

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Late Friday afternoon, Bloomberg reported that Facebook had dropped out of the bidding for streaming rights to the NFL’s Thursday night package. That news followed Recode’s report from last month that Apple had also withdrawn. With two of the most likely candidates now gone, the only digital players remaining who are both big enough to afford the deal and for whom it potentially makes enough strategic sense are likely Verizon, Google and Amazon (I’m excluding Yahoo since its own instability almost certainly precludes a bid).

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Video ad tech provider Pixability has unveiled v4 of its platform, enabling unified video ad buying across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. With v4, agencies and advertisers can plan, execute, measure and optimize video ad campaigns through one dashboard, greatly streamlining the workflow. With v4, Pixability is expanding beyond its traditional focus on YouTube ad buying.

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I'm pleased to present the 308th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

In today’s podcast we discuss a number of different items that hit our radar this week. We start with Facebook’s growing impact in video, which was detailed on the company’s earning call earlier this week.

We then transition recent research from Nielsen which Colin analyzed, showing the level of viewership by device.

Next up, Colin and I were watching reports from the Sundance Film Festival noting the aggressive bidding by Amazon and Netflix, underscoring another industry segment being disrupted by SVOD. Last, we touch on the problems Netflix is already running into with its international expansion. Indonesia was the latest country to raise red flags on Netflix’s content this week.
 
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Facebook reported record results for 2015 late yesterday and on the earnings call, video was the first thing Mark Zuckerberg highlighted when discussing the company’s product strategy for delivering more engaging experiences. He added that 100 million hours of video are now watched daily on Facebook by 500 million people (though “watch” can be an ambiguous term for Facebook given its autoplay, audio-off format).

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I'm pleased to present the 303rd edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

In this week’s podcast Colin and I discuss our top 10 online video stories of 2015. A lot happened this year and it’s been tons of fun to cover and try to make sense of it. If you disagree with any of our choices, then as always, we welcome your feedback.

We’re going to try to slip in one year-end podcast next week, but in case you’re heading out early for the holidays, Colin and I would like to thank all of our listeners for tuning into our podcast this year, and wish all of you happy holidays!

Listen now to learn more!

Click here to listen to the podcast (28 minutes, 57  seconds)

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Facebook is poised to dominate “social TV” according to a new report from The Diffusion Group, authored by veteran industry analyst Alan Wolk. Social TV is defined as using social media platforms to discuss, comment on, or enhance the television experience.

While Facebook’s importance grows, TDG sees Twitter’s role in social TV declining, though it is still significant today. Two main forces are at work: (1) a continued decline in live viewing, thereby making real-time platforms like Twitter less relevant and (2) a shift from fan-driven social TV activity to paid promotional placements by TV networks.

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Positioning itself as friend, not foe to the TV industry, Facebook is tapping the Target Rating Points metric to measure reach, efficiency and effectiveness of combined TV-Facebook video ad campaigns.

Facebook said advertisers can use TRPs to plan a combined TV-Facebook campaign and buy a share of TRPs with Facebook. Nielsen’s Digital AdRatings will verify Facebook’s in-target TRPs and Nielsen’s Total Ad Ratings will verify the total TRPs.

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I'm pleased to present the 279th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Change is everywhere in the video and TV industries and this week 6 different news items hit our radar, which Colin and I think illustrate how quickly things are moving. In today's podcast we discuss each of them and why we think they're significant.

The items include continued falling linear TV ratings as measured by Nielsen, Hulu distributing Showtime, new research showing that Netflix's audience is size larger than those of broadcast TV networks, Tennis Channel's converged TV Everywhere-OTT model, HBO premiering 2 new shows on Facebook and Ooyala's new data showing that 42% of video views are now on mobile.

(note: Colin wanted to clarify one point - when citing Netflix viewership, he said it was 10 million hours streamed per quarter when it's actually 10 billion hours)

Listen in to learn more!

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I'm pleased to present the 277th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

On today's podcast we dig into the incredible growth in mobile video consumption and how it is impacting content creators and advertisers. Earlier this week I wrote about how Facebook's auto-play and audio-off video, which is mainly consumed on mobile, is influencing the creative process. Colin weighs in with new IAB data showing how pervasive mobile video viewing has become, including how many people are now watching 2 screens simultaneously.

Stepping back, we're in agreement that mobile is really a game-changer for everyone in the ecosystem. The advent of larger screen smartphones in particular has fundamentally changed how these devices are used, making video much more important. Neither of us sees this trend slowing any time soon.

Click here to listen to the podcast (20 minutes, 5 seconds)

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It's no secret that smartphones and tablets are now nearly ubiquitous, and that more and more video is being consumed on them. For example, Ooyala recently said that 34% of all video plays were on mobile devices in Q4 '14, which was up from 6% just 2 years prior. Meanwhile, YouTube's CEO said last Fall that 50% of its views are on mobile and its head of content said about its product development focus, "It's all mobile, mobile, mobile."

All that mobile video usage is now starting to heavily impact how video is created and monetized. While mobile video has always been shorter-form than desktop, a key creative influence over the past year has been Facebook's insertion of audio-off autoplay video in users' news feeds. Last week Fortune provided a lot of context for what's behind Facebook's 4 billion views per month. Then, in an insightful post, Newsbound's Josh Kalven pointed out how audio-off is leading content creators to adopt readable video formats.

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