The number of video ads served surged from nearly 9.5 billion in April to just over 10 billion in May, according to the latest online video rankings from comScore. That’s a month-over-month increase of around 6 percent and a record total, which is great news for the online video industry. Once again, the streaming TV/video service Hulu led the way, with more than 1.66 billion video ads served, followed by Google/YouTube with 1.385 billion ads served. Video ad network BrightRoll rounded out the top three with 1.130 billion ads delivered. In summary, just over 180.5 million Americans watched online video in May -- slightly less than the nearly 180.8 million Americans who watched online video in April, representing a drop of about 0.2%. Americans watched 36.56 million total videos in May, also down slightly from the 36.85 billion videos consumed in April.
Keeping the focus on original content, Alloy Digital has acquired online entertainment news producer Clevver Media. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. “Clevver represented a logical step in this expansion with its ... popular entertainment brand,” said Alloy Digital CEO Matt Diamond. Launched in 2006, Clevver’s network now includes seven entertainment and celebrity-focused YouTube channels, including ClevverTV, ClevverMovies, ClevverMusic, ClevverGames, ClevverNews, ClevverStyle, and the Spanish-language ClevverTeVe. A distributor of online video content, Alloy Digital says the deal gives it over 8 million YouTube subscribers -- making it among the video hub’s top content providers. Explaining the company’s acquisition strategy, Diamond said the goal was TV-like reach. “Our properties are delivering massive audiences equal to or greater than broadcast and cable networks,” he said. Together, the YouTube footprint of Alloy Digital’s brands gains nearly 1 million subscribers -- and 1.6 billion video views -- with Clevver’s properties, bringing total video views for their combined owned-and-operated channels to more than 3.3 billion measured views. The deal is just the latest content grab for Alloy, which has put a premium on original content. In January, it scooped up Generate -- a full-service studio and talent management company -- for an undisclosed sum. Per the deal, Generate CEO Jordan Levin -- formerly CEO of The WB Network -- joined four of Generate’s early partners at Alloy, including Generate Studios’ President Peter Aronson, former head of Regency Television and creative affairs for Disney Television, head of branded content Jared Hoffman, former CAA literary agent and brand strategist, and two talent managers, Dave Rath and Kara Welker. All continue to serve as producers on select company projects. In addition to Generate, Alloy Digital recently acquired Smosh, which is comprised of copyright-clear, relatively brand-safe original content -- and more recently, B5 Media, a women’s lifestyle digital publisher and media network.
Research from GfK Media might give heat to the argument that cord-cutting is rising with increased digital opportunities, although a GfK researcher disagrees. A GfK survey found notable growth in the number of homes with only over-the-air TV reception, increasing from 15% last year to 17.8%, but GfK’s David Tice suggested it could be more cyclical than secular. The array of online video options isn't the reason, he says. GfK Media projects 20.7 million-plus homes (an estimated 53.8 million people) get broadcast-only service now. The National Association of Broadcasters, the trade group for local stations, seized on the GfK Media data and distributed it in an email. Evidence that more people are relying on broadcast TV could give the NAB heft in Washington. But from another perspective, if the reason is cord-cutting, that’s a negative for NAB member stations. It reduces the amount of carriage fees they get from pay-TV operators. Still, GfK Media’s Tice wrote in a blog that data indicates cord-cutting may be increasing, but that trend could be reversed with an economic uptick. The GfK survey, part of its Home Technology Monitor, showed 70%-plus of respondents who dropped pay-TV service said it was because of “cost-cutting.” Only about 20% said it was due to satisfactory online options. Still, 24% of homes with a head of household between the ages of 18 and 34 had broadcast-only service, up from 20% in 2011. Younger people seem most likely to drop pay TV, and use free broadcast stations and online options. Homes with a head of household between the ages of 35 to 49 had a much lesser 17% with broadcast-only service. Beyond the economy, however, Tice suggested that homes may be increasingly satisfied with broadcast-only reception because of the rise in digital multicast channels, giving them more choice. “Does online or streaming video play a role?” Tice wrote. “Certainly, there is no denying that it plays an important part. But is it the primary driver of people moving back to broadcast-only reception? Our data doesn’t strongly point to that conclusion.” The GfK research indicates that 6.9 million TV homes, 6%, have engaged in cord-cutting in their current dwelling for some reason. That 6% percentage is up from 2011. GfK found 28% of Asian homes rely on broadcast-reception only, up from 25% last year. The current figure in African-American homes is 23%, up from 17% in 2011. In Latino homes, the figure is at 26%, up from 23%. The online survey was conducted in March and April with 3,207 homes participating.
Ooyala, one of the more successful online video platform providers, on Monday announced $35 million in new capital in a Series E funding round led by Australian telecommunications giant Telstra, which now becomes an Ooyala client. The new round brings Ooyala’s total funding to $79 million. Ooyala helps content owners publish and distribute video content across devices, in addition to measuring, monetizing, and optimizing that content. As part of the deal, Telstra will become an Ooyala customer and reseller, marketing its offerings throughout its network of content owners in Australia. Telefonica and Yahoo Japan are two other major Ooyala resellers. Ooyala technology will help power Telstra’s IPTV offerings across devices. The company says it will use the new capital to strike more deals with multichannel TV operators and TV programmers -- particularly outside of the U.S. -- eyeing Europe, Asia, Australia and Latin America. Over half of Ooyala’s business is outside of the U.S. "The lines between online video and TV are blurring,” said Jay Fulcher, CEO of Ooyala. “Service operators everywhere are redefining their offerings for digital, multi-screen consumption. Ooyala has been the driving force the past few years, innovating and helping broadcasters and operators transition their business models to not only maintain but improve the economics of traditional television. "The industry is now standardizing around technology stacks that enable the future of IP-based distribution,” said Gary Traver, director of Telstra Media, who becomes a member of Ooyala’s board of advisors. “With Ooyala's robustness and focus on personalization and profitability, it is becoming the platform on which the next generation of large-scale deployments are built." Sierra Ventures, Rembrandt Venture Partners, CID Group, and other undisclosed strategic investors also participated in the funding round.
JetBlue Aiways is hosting a live, online game show this week called “Get Away With It.” Consumers can win one of 25 JetBlue Getaways vacation packages. The first of five daily episodes aired June 18. Contestants appear via Skype as the fake host, Mark Hammerberg, conducts the show live from New York City, in a studio outfitted with plasma screens where the contestants appear before him. One winner per episode can win a getaway to the sandy beaches of Mexico or the turquoise waters of Turks and Caicos, among other destinations. Viewers can tune in to watch the live streaming games from their computers, smart phones or tablets at jetblue.com/getawaywithit. Episodes air daily at 10 a.m., 12 p.m., 3 p.m., 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. ET. "For those who've always dreamt of being a contestant on a game show, we're giving them the chance to be in the spotlight -- all from the comfort of their own home," said Grant McCarthy, JetBlue's director getaways and ancillary travel, in a release Previously, fans were limited to simply watching their favorite game shows from their living rooms. This new spin gives anyone with access to a computer a chance to play. Individuals over the age of 18 from across the United States can apply to play. The airline also is playing off the age-old rivalry between Boston and New York by bringing the game show to the streets, challenging consumers to a city vs. city trivia battle. An interactive storefront at 303 Park Avenue in New York City, an interactive pod at Copley Square in Boston, and video screens in five bus shelters throughout Boston will verbally beckon passersby for on-the-street gaming. For those who miss the live game show, there will still be a chance to interact with a sweepstakes version of the game June 23 through July 10. Consumers can play daily for a chance to win up to $250 toward a JetBlue Getaways vacation package. Web site visitors also can watch repeat episodes of the live action and a highlight reel.
Actor Julia Stiles, who stars in the new YouTube channel series “Blue,” says there are tradeoffs in working on an online video series. For example, directors and producers give their teams “creative freedom,” but the reality is that online video doesn’t pay. In an interview with Reuters’ Lucas Shaw, Stiles says: "The downside of Web content -- scripted Web content -- is that there is no money involved. No one is earning a living. The upside is there is a lot of creative freedom." But that’s okay, she adds, because Web series are short, so shooting an entire series can take just a couple of weeks. “Blue” is the story of a part-time working mom (Stiles) who is also a part-time escort trying to make ends meet. The series, which was written by Rodrigo Garcia, debuted on “Wigs,” YouTube’s original content channel aimed at women, last week. Stiles notes that the revenue model still needs to be sorted out. “The people at the top have to find a way to share wealth. Nobody knows where the ad revenue is going,” she says. “Once we figure out where that's going, we can spread it around with the crew. The pitfall of that is the more money involved, the less freedom you have.” Nevertheless, “these things have a way of righting themselves," she says. "There are so many ads on the Internet now you actually can't watch anything without watching an ad. People will get sick of that. They'll make you subscribe to skip all the ads. I just show up and say my lines."
Don’t bother mentioning the “I” word to Socialcam CEO Michael Seibel. Ever since Facebook famously bought Instagram for $1 billion or so, the press and VCs have been swarming around the purported hunt for the next Instagram. “I think it is more distracting than anything else,” he says. The enormously popular video-sharing app and site gets that treatment all the time. Seibel and his crew of four spun off from Justin.tv, where he was a co-founder, in the fall of 2010 to launch SocialCam in spring of 2011. But VCs are not his main target and hurdle, he argues. “In video we have a fundamental challenge. We need to convince people that taking video is extremely easy and valuable.” Instagram and photo-sharing apps had the long legacy of snapshot photography working in its favor. Transferring those user reflexes to the mobilized video cam is not as easy as it seems. “Convincing people to take videos at all is a harder problem,” he says. For all of the talk about mobile video being the next hot category, “it is not the mirror image of the challenge Instagram had.” And yet Socialcam has generated over 14 million app downloads, and some of its leading posters have well over 1 million followers each. But that pales against the amount of activity they see coming to the main Web site. Both site and app were launched simultaneously, and the site proved to be an especially effective driver of app downloads, Seibel says. While he is campaigning to make video-taking as much of a reflex among consumers as mobile still photography, no hard sell appears to be necessary with brand marketers. “The brands are coming to us -- not the other way around,” Seibel says. In fact, he counts about ten brands on the Socialcam leaderboard that have over half a million followers already. Lipton Iced Tea, Sierra Mist, Oprah’s OWN network, and even General Electric have in excess of 500,000 followers. Musicians and sports teams have proven to be especially powerful here. One of the advantages of Socialcam as a marketing vehicle over the standard social nets like Facebook is the alerting system. When you follow anyone on SocialCam, it sends a mobile app alert whenever a new item is posted. This, of course, forces providers to be reserved. This can’t be treated like Twitter. “I think those followers are a lot more valuable,” he says. Unlike sponsor posts in social network feeds that can scroll by unnoticed, this is a more one-to-one relationship. “The brand can get a direct connection.” He says that despite the alerting mechanism, he is not seeing users becoming overwhelmed. While he wants video to become more of a reflex for people and advertisers, the natural hurdle comes in handy here. “It is pretty cool. The bar for creating video is pretty high. The brands will create maybe two videos a week.” Sixty- to ninety-second clips are the norm among individual users, and that is the length Seibel recommends to brands. Some brands like the Brooklyn Nets are already creating spots that are exclusively for Socialcam, and others are repurposing video assets they have elsewhere on the Web. OWN, for instance is pushing out celebrity clips from its on-air programming. The Nets will throw into their mix a spot interview with GM Billy King from the sidelines after a game. My impression is that years of experience with Justin.tv have given Seibel and co. a head start on some other startups when it comes to imagining both a monetization path and future uses for advertisers. They already have a VIP program for brands that advises on best practices and the new ideas spin off of this. They are already working with film studios on promotions involving custom video filters that help the consumer replicate the look and feel of the entertainment company’s film. But in my mind the killer potential here is when the alerting system is married to geo-fencing. Farther out, Seibel is imagining the ability to leverage location as a trigger for a video alert. “One of the future use cases we are thinking of is letting brands send videos to followers when they are in a location.” If a Brooklyn Nets follower walks into the team’s new arena, they will get pinged with a new introductory video welcoming them to the venue with instructions and directions for optimizing their experience. The same idea can be applied to a mall or any retail venue. What if Walmart or Target pinged you at the entrance with a video clip on the week’s specials? While obviously it has its limitations -- not the least of which is its reliance on opt-in -- there is a natural logic to finding ways of pushing video to users over devices and in sync with location. As Seibel says, “traditionally what a brand does is pound you as hard as it can when you are at home. But we think we can help brands message people in the real world when they are in a position to buy something.” Whatever the hurdles, the geo-fenced video push model is a remarkable idea that literally untethers the power of video promotion from the TV or the desktop. There is no arguing that video remains the most compelling storyteller for advertisers. Finding reasonable and user-friendly ways to release that medium from its usual anchors in the home is one of the great tasks of outdoor advertising. But mobile is the natural, more personalized venue for this project. Better that video come to us in a personalized way when and where we need it than make every mall and retail location look and feel like Times Square.
Speaking duing a "making brands matter" panel at Mediabrands' villa in Cannes, France, Huffington Post Founder Arianna Huffington just annoucned that HuffPo will launch a live, 24/7 video streaming network in August, just in time for the major U.S. party conventions.