The latest strategy sits in the latter camp, after CNN launched CNNgo – with access to its live stream plus on-demand shows – back in 2014.
So how is CNNgo doing? CNN product chief Alex Wellen revealed March stats to Beet.TV:
CNNgo lets consumers watch CNN telecasts digitally, across multiple device types, without signing in – but only for 10 minutes. After that, they must authenticate using their local cable provider account.
Wellen’s “video starts” count is for video views clocked up by users who weren’t even signed in.
In March, we did about 300 million video starts, that’s unauthenthenticated content – all the clips you see across all our platforms.
But he says 80% of the 9.5 million hours consumed was from users who did sign in. That means the service is finding some success in driving consumers to shift from viewing CNN over local cable to viewing online, albeit using legitimate accounts.
How does CNN plan to make money from this? Beside serving up traditional TV ads from the linear feed, Wellen also hints: “Ultimately, everything’s going to dynamic ad insertion.”
This video was produced as part of a series on the need for standardization of premium video advertising. The series sponsor is the NAB. For more videos from the series, please visit this page.
]]>Bloomberg TV sales head David Bickford wants to teach the old dog of telly some new tricks – namely, the kind of measurement and analytics advertisers now get online.
“When you’re placing an ad on TV, you can buy an ad at a specific time and you get a spot schedule,” he tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “That doesn’t translate to digital.
“That is really holding everybody back.
“Until that’s solved, you’re never going to get to what some people refer to as the ‘holy grail’ – ‘I want to buy a spot ‘here’ and have it run at the exact same time any way it’s consumed’.”
Bickford blames lack of analytics and lack of ad insertion technology in the TV space. There are dozens of ad-tech vendors trying to approach the problem, but Bickford says technology isn’t ready for primetime, while addressable-TV platforms go against the aim of mass-reach TV.
We interviewed him as part of our series on the need for standards around premium video advertising. The series was produced around the NAB Digital Summit in Las Vegas. This series on Beet.TV is sponsored by the NAB.
]]>The NAB is has tabled a Digital Summit, including assembling a board to tackle the issue – namely, how to standardize measurement and reporting mechanisms for quantifying viewership of TV across a burgeoning range of new platforms.
“What hasn’t happened is a standard method of viewing the data and articulating the data in a common way,” says Cablevision media sales head Ben Tatta, in this video interview with Beet.TV. “The first step is to fill in the holes of measurement.
“While sample-based methods might be sufficient in measuring the top 50 networks, we have several hundred channels on their dial. Typically that’s where the sample breaks down. (There is) a lot of viewing that just isn’t method.”
Cablevision introduced census-level audience data to its Total Audience ad suite three years ago, leading Tatta to conclude: “Sample-based methods aren’t sufficient enough in measuring viewing across the dial.”
That echoes a common concern across the industry, although the likes of Nielsen and comScore claim to be racing to account for cross-device viewership.
We interviewed him as part of our series on the need for standards around premium video advertising. The series was produced around the NAB Digital Summit in Las Vegas. This series on Beet.TV is sponsored by the NAB.
]]>Sure, more than 1.1 million households cut the cord last year, according to a new Convergence Consulting report. But consistent data is hard to find. Nielsen April estimates suggest a 1.7% decline in pay-TV households.
To Pivotal’s senior media analyst Brian Wieser, that looks more like “cord shaving”.
“Many investors have long foretold concerns around cord cutting. That was always both an incomplete and an incorrect argument,” he tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
“Consumers generally have expressed a need to retain their cord with the incumbent distributor.
“Most of the cable networks are seeing erosion that outpaces reduction in subscriber levels to cable services – we’re seeing the rise of the skinny bundle.
“The stickiest piece of the bundle is the broadband. Consumers are not giving that up. They are typically retaining the free-to-air broadcasts networks delivered over those systems. It reconcentrates viewing in the hands of the broadcast networks.”
We interviewed him in New York at the Simulmedia PeopleFront conference where he was a speaker. Please find more video interviews from the PeopleFront event right here.
]]>“Bloomberg Media is now a majority digital video company,” Smith tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “We reach about 8 or 9 million viewers a month on US television. On Bloomberg digital platforms, we reach 14 million viewers a month.
“It’s a significantly larger number of viewers. One could view that as a weakness, but, given the trends… it’s a tremendous advantage, fuelling a lot of our advertising growth.”
The outweighing of TV by digital media may not be surprising for a company that has, to some, best been known as the provider of terminals and stock data over digital wires.
But the Bloomberg Media division is tackling more than just provision of data. A year ago, it set out to create five new thematic vertical brands alongside its core Bloomberg business news – Bloomberg Markets, Bloomberg Politics, Bloomberg Technology, Bloomberg Pursuits and Bloomberg Opinion.
The sites have variously adopted bold designs, alongside a Businessweek site that nowadays mixes regular business reporting with vivid, web-specific visual tricks. It’s a feast for the eyes that evokes something of HotWired, one of the web’s earliest tech content sites.
Now Bloomberg Politics is coming into its own, with five million monthly uniques, pushed by show carriage across Bloomberg and MSNBC plus a co-production agreement with Showtime, Smith says: “Our audience cares tremendously about the US presidential election. It’s the single largest business story every four years.
“So Bloomberg Politics is quite core. A lot of the content is resonating extremely well with our business audience who want to understand the implications of the race on their businesses.”
This interview took place at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, Colorado, in March.
]]>Still, one ad group man says the prospects for that tipping point are now looking a lot healthier, five years after it began.
“We seem to be turning a corner regarding broadcasts and their engagement in the programmatic space,” SMG’s performance marketing CEO Marco Bertozzi tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “We are seeing broadcasters have realised they need to find a way to understand their own audience better, and help advertisers deliver more specifically.”
Recently, UK satellite operate Sky invested in the brand data and analytics platform DataXu, while Videology has also struck a number of broadcaster partnerships.
“All of of the mainstream broadcasters are doing something now in this space,” Bertozzi says. “After quite a few years of resistance, it’s a positive shift, and a demonstration of the last hurdle toward programmatic being part of every channel that we operate in.”
But, so far, broadcasters’ programmatic foray has been limited to their digitally-delivered video-on-demand inventory. The next five years will see the shift of linear TV, too, Bertozzi reckons.
]]>Advertisers will be able to bring their own data to a self-service, “private marketplace.” They will be able to see results in a fully transparent manner, explains Jason Brown, VP for National Advertising Sales at AT&T AdWorks.
The new programmatic marketplace is powered by Videology. Details of the AT&T plan was discussed on Thursday at an industry event on advanced TV presented by Videology in Manhattan. We interviewed Brown there.
News of the plans at AT&T was reported earlier today by the Wall Street Journal.
We interviewed him at the Videology Full Frontal Conference in New York. Please watch other videos from Beet’s coverage here.
]]>That’s what Deloitte is doing by partnering with three software providers to wrap up their offerings as one of its own, the so-called MarketMix for Media.
The company says the suite is an “over-the-top (OTT) platform to help Media and Entertainment (M&E) companies launch, monetize, and manage direct-to-consumer (DTC) content offerings”. Launched at the recent Consumer Electronics Show, it is comprised by three prongs:
So why is Deloitte getting in the game? Deloitte Digital principal Danny Ledge tells Beet.TV: “We looked at this as a two-stage shift in viewing behaviors:
Announcing its involvement, Adobe said: “The TV market has shifted. The growing adoption of OTT services among consumers has created an opportunity for media companies to develop a direct relationship with their audience instead of relying on distributors.
“This often involves a complete digital transformation that includes running new business operations, deploying new technology, and managing new engagement models.”
]]>In the latest new advertising tie-up, Bloomberg Media has sold a sponsorship for the green room, during its new Bloomberg Go morning TV show, to Hewlett Packard Enterprises.
Variety reports: “The network joins some of its rivals in TV’s frenetic morning-news scrum in letting advertisers gain a seat, of sorts, at their news desk.”
How does Bloomberg sell ads across not just TV, but multiple screens? “This is all about innovation, more so than even disruption,” chief revenue officer and client partnership officer Paul Caine tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
“We’re in this state right now where consumers are continuing to adopt our platforms, continuing to engage with our premium content.
“There are many issues that have faced this industry – but we’re at this inflection point where it is all about how to best connect with our customers.”
We interviewed him last month at the IAB annual leadership meeting.
]]>A new thorough analysis has shed some hard light on the possible impact to the subscription VOD service.
Ampere Analysis‘ report, Commercial Gain: If Netflix Moved Into Advertising, finds:
“At current consumption and subscriber levels, a pre-roll model could make Netflix an additional $270m per quarter, assuming an $15 average CPM. This equates to an aggregate $1.6 billion in quarterly subscription revenue.
“By contrast, a full broadcast-style ad-load could make Netflix nearly $2 billion per quarter, assuming a CPM average of $8.
“Netflix would have to be very careful in managing such a process, however, as its customer base has indicated sensitivity to advertising. Low-level churn could wipe out financial gains from a pre-roll model, while heavier churn from a full ad-load would combine with a higher cost-base to result in minimal positive impact on the bottom line.”
Speaking with Beet.TV, Ampere‘s Richard Broughton says Netflix has an attractive demographic for advertisers. Adding a pre-roll model would grow Netflix’s business by 15%: “As little as 10% churn could wipe out those gains.”
But Broughton says, if Netflix introduced a full ad model, it could sustain a loss of up to 50% of its subscribers without losing revenue.
This video was produced at the Future Of TV Advertising Forum. Beet.TV’s coverage is sponsored by Xaxis. You can find more Beet videos from the conference on this page.
]]>The deal would see Canadian media and telco company Shaw Communications exit the media ownership business, instead sticking with telecoms and broadcast network operation.
So what would Corus be getting? A company that has lately been amping up its interest in new-wave digital TV advertising techniques.
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Shaw Media next-generation media manager Barry Marcus says the company made three moves in the last six months:
Corus expects to complete the deal in Q3, subject to shareholder approval.
This video was produced at the Beet.TV executive retreat presented by Videology with Adobe, AT&T AdWorks and Nielsen.
You can find more videos from the Beet Retreat on this page.
]]>Sometimes, things are moving too fast. But, standing back to take a look, Furious Corp CEO Ashley J. Swartz says 2016 will bring a “reverence” that everyone is all in this – the disruptive curve – together.
“It was display and search that printed money,” Swartz says. “Video doesn’t, and television may have done at one point, but it doesn’t any longer. And so, I think that this is a time of ‘FUD’, as one of our investors intelligently used that phrase – fear, uncertainty and doubt.
“I hope that we just get to a point where in lieu of … being divisive as an industry, there is a recognition that we all need one another to actually deliver the sea-change.”
Furious’ Prophet software aims to unite advertiser data sources to get a more holistic look at advertising campaigns.
“It’s going to change. I believe that there is going to be, finally some acknowledgment and recognition that not one person, regardless of how much free cash flow you print in a fiscal quarter, can be all things to everybody.”
This video was produced at the Beet.TV executive retreat presented by Videology with Adobe, AT&T AdWorks and Nielsen.
You can find more videos from the Beet Retreat on this page.
]]>Ad agency SMG has already reported a tripling in client addressable TV business last year
And SMG’s director Steve Murtos says lots of clients finally “leaned in” after years of evangelizing.
“There’s more scale coming,” he tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “Primarily, it’s been MVPD-led inventory but we’re starting to see some other sources come online.
“As you see more inventory, you’re gonna see more of everything else. It allows us to be able to secure more budgets, there’s going to be more data available for us to continue to measure. so I think 2016 is going to be a big year.”
Last year, SMG launched SMG Maps TV, an addressable TV measurement product that it says links addressable TV ad exposure to brand location visits,in partnership with PlaceIQ and Acxiom.
But Murtos thinks the industry isn’t changing overnight. “I think we’re still maybe two, three years out before we’re, before it’s at scale,” he says. “There’s still a lot of confusion in the marketplace, too many players all trying to do the same thing. I think that’s going take a good two years to shake out.”
This video was produced at the Beet.TV executive retreat presented by Videology with Adobe, AT&T AdWorks and Nielsen.
You can find more videos from the Beet Retreat on this page.2
]]>But what’s dynamic can also me added to what is static. New York cable operator Cablevision is eyeing up the application of dynamic ads to shows recorded via customers’ set-top boxes.
“What I get really excited about is also our DVR,” COO Kristin Dolan tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “The cloud storage DVR works exactly the same way as VOD does. It’s stored, and DAI works on DVR content as well.”
Cablevision’s cloud-based DVR was upgraded last April to support recording of up to 15 channels simultaneously. That’s because content isn’t recorded to a local disc at all, but to Cablevision’s own servers in the sky. That could be the perfect opportunity to serve up regular dynamically-inserted ads.
“We do 30 million hours a month of DVR recording for our customers,” Dolan adds. “(We can) present to an advertiser the opportunity to refresh that ad.
“It just opens up even more inventory and more opportunities for partners, particularly programming partners, but also other advertisers to refresh their media and refresh their advertising and retarget a customer in a very unique way. So, it almost feels like the amount of inventory we have with DAI becomes almost infinite, so that’s truly exciting.”
She was interviewed for Beet.TV by Tim Hanlon.
This video was produced at the Beet.TV executive retreat presented by Videology with Adobe, AT&T AdWorks and Nielsen.
You can find more videos from the Beet Retreat on this page.
]]>That change is happening because, as TVs or TV boxes get connected to the internet and enabled with software services, the way content is consumed and ads traded is, many think, about to look a lot more like digital video.
“I think there are elements of linear that could be applied to digital – maybe finding ways to put a specific advertiser in a specific spot as opposed to the dynamic, continual dynamic allocation of those ads,” according to James Rothwell, the agency and brand relations VP for FreeWheel, a video ad tech vendor, in this Beet.TV video interview.
“But I think it’s more likely to be the other way around … I think linear is more likely to look like digital … where we’re taking the best of digital in terms of data, in terms of automation, in terms of dynamic insertion and applying those to the linear world.”
The industry is now replete with ad tech vendors trying to enable TV, a decades-old, one-way medium, with some of the qualities of online ad buying, like refined targeting and solid campaign measurement.
Whilst the change has started, many also concede they are in it for the long haul.
“We’ve got a long way to go,” Rothwell acknowledges. “There’s still decades of practices and infrastructure. That means that we’re just not gong be applying the same digital practices across the board.”
This video was produced at the Beet.TV executive retreat presented by Videology with Adobe, AT&T AdWorks and Nielsen.
You can find more videos from the Beet Retreat on this page.
]]>That is what we cover regularly here on Beet.TV, and that is the trend seen by Ashish Chordia, CEO of Alphonso, an ad tech company helping advertisers harness device data to target those ads on multiple devices.
“There is a thirst for data-driven, TV data, viewership-driven real-time TV data-driven advertising,” Chordia tells Beet.TV in this video interview. “Being able to retarget these audiences using this data has been just huge and a very massive growth area.
“I can target exactly the people who have watched my TV ad on television on the same day on their digital device – within that same few minutes. And that wasn’t possible a few years ago. It is insane what’s happening and what will continue to happen.”
Of all the ad tech vendors promising to light up video opportunities, Alphonso is one of the smaller in the pack.
With offices in San Francisco and New York and a small amount of funding under its belt according to Crunchbase, the company made a good fist of bolstering its profile using a video summit around last year’s TV upfronts season, however.
“At the heart of Alphonso, is a system that enables all sorts of OEMs – whether it’s TV or smart devices like set-top boxes or living room devices or mobile apps – to be able to collect data on what people are watching on those devices in real time,” Chordia adds.
This video was produced at the Beet.TV executive retreat presented by Videology with Adobe, AT&T AdWorks and Nielsen.
You can find more videos from the Beet Retreat on this page.2
]]>Then, in October, the company bowed AdVance, a suite knitting together data from across its many screens to better target consumers. So what is AdVance all about?
“If AdSmart is all about taking the very best and only the very best of digital targeting and bringing it to TV, what Sky AdVance does is take how really unique TV consumption understanding and brings it into digital,” according to Sky Media’s deputy MD Jamie West.
“Knowing which sites subscribers are browsing and which channels they are watching lets Sky Media serve ads back through internet or TV, respectively, that learn from consumers’ holistic behavior.
“We enable our three million-home viewing panel,” West says. “When you think about all those multiple touch-points that we have with our customers … you have a really rich understanding of customer journeys across those multiple platforms. That will enable us both to serve ads both on the Sky platform or via our DSP partners.
“Once you’ve seen the ad four times on TV, we can now frequency cap … Or we can use that platform to tell … different stories … in the app environment, the mobile environment, or the browser environment.”
This video was produced at the Future Of TV Advertising Forum. Beet.TV’s coverage is sponsored by Xaxis. You can find more Beet videos from the conference on this page.
]]>Ad holding group WPP’s chief Sir Martin Sorrell recently said Facebook, the biggest exponent of the format, “has a lot of work to do” to demonstrate effectiveness, saying it was “ludicrous” to declare such videos watched after only three seconds.
Now, as part of the solution, Facebook is trying to help agencies think differently about how to use the ads better.
“We believe this is a problem worth solving,” Facebook global agency development director Patrick Harris tells Beet.TV in this video interview at the International CES show, where Facebook gave a presentation guiding advertisers to better use of the ads.
“We don’t have all the answers. That’s what we’ve been seeking to get this week in working with our agency partners. How do you build long-term brand equity in a mobile world with sound-off and auto-play?”
Harris’ answer doesn’t appear to be rejigging the measurement criteria or sound-off nature of auto-playing video ads themselves – he suggests that comes with the new mobile territory. But Facebook is giving advertisers guidance and making some tweaks to make better creative use of the format. Amongst them:
“The way you build brand equity in mobile is going to be very different from the way you did in TV.”
Facebook reached an impressive eight billion daily video views in November, double the rate seen in April.
]]>The G+J deal means PubMatic will help enable programmatic mobile ads for brands including Spiegel and Vodafone live, after its mobile business grew by 200% early last year.
They sound like the kind of customers PubMatic is concentrating on, after seemingly axing others in 2015.
“Publisher networks have been a huge part of the business, but, in the last quarter or two, we’ve concentrated back and focused on our premium publisher business,” PubMatic president Kirk McDonald tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
“Intentionally, we moved away from some publishers who are just not, long-term, the right partners for us.
“We’ve concentrated toward premium publishers … In terms of a direct salesforce strategy, pricing and packaging is how they will differentiate their inventory sources from what is beginning to be a commoditized supply of inventory in the market.”
McDonald adds PubMatic continues to be publisher-centric, but has also launched features drawing buy-side customers.
We spoke with him at the MediaLink annual executive dinner at CES.
Our coverage of CES is sponsored by Adobe.
]]>
With consumption rising, Adobe Primetime has extended its services to broadcasters to include a range of advertising optimization solutions including the one recently announced with Videology. Personalization has become increasingly important and that has lead to an integration with the Adobe Marketing Cloud, he adds.
We spoke with Helfand last week during International CES. Beet.TV’s coverage of CES is sponsored by Adobe.
]]>That’s the assessment of one exec in the thick of the ad-tech explosion, who says customers have more choice than ever.
“They want to apply the same techniques that have made online advertising so successful to these new connected video channels,” AppNexus president Michael Rubenstein tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
“Reaching consumers that are watching a Roku or accessing content through Amazon’s platform or through a Samsung smart tv or watching videos on Dailymotion… advertisers want to be able to speak with one voice to consumers and increase the relevance of their messaging by using data.”
Serving both publishers and advertisers, AppNexus offers a supply-side platform, ad server and yield optimization software. It has grown from its traditional core of programmatic ad supply by acquiring YieldX for optimization and OAS for ad serving.
“Publishers have never really had choice in ad technology,” Rubsenstein says. “DoubleClick has been the leader for the last 20 years. There hasn’t been a lot of competition. That’s changing now.”
This video is part of Beet.TV coverage of CES 2016 sponsored by Adobe.
]]>At least, it may look like that from the outside. The Santa Monica-based outfit spent plenty of time perfecting its platform before taking on a $15m first venture round in November, the latest in German broadcaster RTL Group’s ad-tech roll-up.
Now VideoAmp CEO Ross McCray says 2016 is primed to be “the year of execution” for the company he co-founded. So what does VideoAmp bring to the party?
A “cross-device graph”, McCray says: “We associate multiple device IDs to a user, we append intelligence to those devices. We’ll say, ‘here’s everything those devices have consumed’; it watches these ads or shows on TV.
“Today, we over 150m unique users in the United States and over a billion devices associated underneath those users, and consumption data across all of them.”
That means advertisers will get to more smartly target ads based on a holistic understanding of who exactly is behind the many devices that are now used throughout households.
McCray says an earlier seed round had funded the engineering build-out, but the effort in 2016 will be about sales.
This video is part of a series of interviews about the transformation of television produced at CES and sponsored by SpotX.
]]>“Every marketer, especially every B2C marketer, is going to make decision in the next five years about their first-party data,” he tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
How brands choose to use consumer data – both their own and from other sources – to target ads became a hot topic in 2015.
Rocket Fuel, which began by applying artificial intelligence to rate ad inventory, partnered with DISH in October to allow its advertisers to use “moment scoring” to target ads programmatically. The technology has been used by whisky brand Glenfiddich.
Wootton explains: “There is computational power you need to score that impression. (Rocket Fuel) is the machine learning-powered optimisation engine, DISH is the marketplace that creates the supply in their hub.
With moment scoring up and running, what does Wootton’s first full year in the job look like?
“Last year was mostly about the integration (of X+1),” he says. “We’re doing a couple of bets as we go forward:
This video is part of Beet.TV coverage of CES 2016 sponsored by Adobe.
]]>We spoke with Straight at the CES show about partnerships for SpotX and prospects for the growth of the automated video marketplace.
This video is part of a series of interviews about the transformation of television produced at CES and sponsored by SpotX.
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“We have 22 films in different stages of development, and four television shows in production as we speak,” Conde Nast CEO Robert A. Sauerberg tells Beet.TV in this video interview from Consumer Electronics Show.
“Whether it’s Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ or Glamor, it’s such a natural extension for us to take it from a magazine to video. We’ve hired the best people we can find, Dawn Ostroff leading a great team.”
Sauerberg hired Ostroff, the former CW network head, to lead his new Conde Nast Entertainment division, the unit tasked with making moves in video as well as in publishing – a move that was considered bold. Productions include:
Sauerberg says magazines are thriving: “It is far from being dead. Consumers love magazines. In a world of ad avoidance, it’s such an engaging thing.
“Our brands are really learning how to get the DNA of what they’re doing in sight, sound and motion,” Sauerberg continues. A huge part of our future is in video. This is a huge growth area for Conde Nast.”
Se interviewed Sauerberg Wednesday night at the MediaLink executive dinner.
Our coverage of CES 2016 is presented by Adobe.
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