• by Ross Fadner , April 19, 2012

Hi folks,

This Thursday edition of VideoDaily Roundup has a distinct television bent to it. First up, Google's GRP: the search giant's latest pitch to attract TV dollars online. Next we'll look at a startup that's making TV Everywhere cheaper for content owners, followed by the Starz network signing a TV Everywhere deal with DirecTV. After that, Akamai warns that video consumption may lead to a possible bandwidth crunch, and finally we ask: are brands ready to buy video inventory on exchanges?

Google Joins GRP Race

So Google is going to start using gross rating points (GRPs), the metric used to buy and sell television ads, to sell display and video inventory. Marketers everywhere should rejoice, right? Not so fast, says All Things Digital's Peter Kafka.

The GRP is supposed to simplify the complex world of online ad buying -- yet several companies, including Facebook, Tremor Video, AOL (which use Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings) and comScore, are all offering advertisers some version of the GRP too. As Kafka says, three competing versions of the same metric will not make the process of buying online advertising much easier. Moreover, many folks in the industry are not sure that TV-like metrics are even appropriate for online advertising. All of which is to say that someone needs to win here before the $190 billion in TV advertising migrates onto the Web.

Dyyno Brings TV Everywhere to the Media Masses

Keep an eye out for Dyyno, a Palo Alto-based startup that rolls out custom video portals that can distribute live streaming, VOD and linear TV across computers, tablets, smartphones, Android set-top boxes, and OTT services like Google TV and Roku. Yesterday at the National Association of Broadcasters meeting, Dyyno introduced a cloud-based TV Everywhere service for cable operators and media companies across these devices and services.

The offering is really for smaller MSOs, virtual MSOs and content aggregators. While not the first cloud-based TV Everywhere solution, what sets Dyyno apart is the speed with which it claims it can go to market with the new product (4-8 weeks), and its extremely low price point. For example, Dyyno claims that a company looking to offer 20-25 channels would need just over $100K to get up and running. A larger company with 150 channels or more would need closer to $1 million. After that, Dyyno requires a monthly revenue share of subscription, pay-per-view or ad revenues.

Starz Aligns with DirecTV Everywhere

After turning up its nose at Netflix’s offer to re-up its digital streaming rights agreement, the Starz network has decided to align with traditional satellite TV operator DirecTV instead. Under the agreement, Starz and DirecTV subscribers will be able to view the premium network’s movies and series on smartphones, tablets, game consoles and anywhere else you can access DirecTV Everywhere, the satellite operator’s still-in-beta TV Everywhere product. So, how much more did DirecTV offer Starz? Unfortunately, financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Liberty Media-owned Starz becomes one of the first programming partners for DirecTV Everywhere, which is scheduled to launch later this year. DirecTV joins the likes of Comcast, Cablevision, Dish Network and content owners like HBO in launching its TV Everywhere initiative.

Akamai: Video Consumption Could Lead to Bandwidth Crunch  

At the NAB show in Las Vegas this week, Akamai's Will Law, a principal architect at the content delivery network’s media division, warned that the Internet could be facing a bandwidth crunch, especially as more and more people watch online video. He used the example that if 10 percent of a global online subscriber base of 80 million tried to stream video simultaneously at an average speed of 3 mbps (which is probably not fast enough to stream a video seamlessly), the global bandwidth usage would be 3X Akamai’s current peak usage for all Web traffic.

So does that mean we’re headed for technology Armageddon? Luckily, Law said technologies like video compression codecs are becoming more efficient, computing capacity continues to rise, and storage density is growing even more rapidly, which will help ease the problem. But he added that the future would also likely see ISPs shaping user bandwidth consumption with creative pricing models and data caps.  

Is Transparency Keeping Advertisers Away from Real-Time Video Ad Buying?

In a video interview with Beet.TV, Mullen’s Group Digital Media Director Gina Preziosa shares, among other things, her thoughts on video ad networks versus video exchanges. She says that Mullen works with ad networks like BrightRoll, YuMe and Collective the most, because “they sort of sit in the middle; they have premium content, they have decent rates.” However, when it comes to working with DSPs to buy inventory on a video exchange, she says: “Going to the bidding level just doesn’t work for a lot of our clients…clients want to plan their budgets, they want to know where their ads are going to be seen. The DSPs and the exchanges don’t offer you that on the front end.”

In other words, transparency is king: “my clients just aren’t willing to throw money at us and put them on an exchange,” Preziosa says. “I really like working with the networks because you get a good competitive rate, but you’re still around good content.”