Addressable Advertising: A Primer
While addressable TV advertising had been getting a goodly amount of buzz lately, it’s still largely misunderstood by many in the industry. And with good reason: the ecosystem is still... Read More
Why Open AP Won’t Close (Just Yet)
As you’ve likely heard, Warner, the pioneer member of Open AP, announced it would be withdrawing from the consortium on a Passover/Good Friday/Mueller haze drop. The announcement comes as a... Read More
Viacom Building Formidable Ad-Supported Alternative For Hollywood’s Digital Future
With its $340 million acquisition of ad-supported streaming service Pluto TV, Viacom has added another important piece to its transformation as a player in the digital world. Importantly, the company... Read More
Maybe It’s Not The Algorithm
There’s been a lot of talk about how Netflix’s amazingly awesome algorithms were responsible for taking the show You from purgatory on Lifetime and turning it into a streaming hit. ... Read More
Remind Us – Why Does Hulu Exist, Exactly?
Are we all still clear on Hulu’s reason for being? I’m not sure I am anymore. The more streaming services the various media titans roll out or announce for the... Read More
WEEK IN REVIEW: Netflix Raises Prices, NBCU Launches An OTT App
1. Netflix Raises Prices Netflix raised prices again this week, taking its most popular package, the one that allows for two simultaneous streams (aka the family package) from $11/month to... Read More
Netflix Turns Up Heat In Online Video’s Shark Pool As Three More Services Jump In
As if the pool of big fish in on-demand video wasn’t already stuffed full, this past week saw three more sharks dive in, just to make it interesting, along with... Read More
Could An Amazon With Sports Be Pay TV’s Waterloo?
For a long time, we’ve been rolling our eyes at the whole cord cutting myth, at the gullibility of mainstream journalists who insist on repeating the canard about the “tidal... Read More
Are We So Sure That Roku, Amazon Fire And Other Sticks Are Long For This TV World?
Have you bought a new TV recently? My family had been seriously overdue for a larger, smarter set, so we recently took advantage of the post holiday sales and snatched... Read More
Questions (and Opportunities) Around ESPN’s College Football Megacast
ESPN’s latest megacast opened up some questions — and great opportunities — for the network to explore for OTT advertising.... Read More
NBCU Building A ‘Bluprint’ For Its Post-Cable TV Future: Q&A With Dave Howe
Among a string of experiments and ventures at NBCUniversal, few are as intriguing as Bluprint, the revamped hobbyist education and e-commerce site formerly known as Craftsy that the media giant... Read More
Netflix’s Merry Holiday Season Sets It Up To Survive Challenging 2019 Competition
There, he said it: “Netflix, Netflix, Netflix.” If that punchline to a joke by host Andy Samberg wasn’t quite the theme of Sunday night’s broadcast of the Golden Globe Awards,... Read More
The Year Ahead. Our Fearless Predictions For 2019, Part 2 of 2
Picking up where we left off with Part 1, here are our last six predictions for 2019. 7. As the content bubble explodes, a lot of great shows get lost... Read More
Q&A With WHOSAY CEO Steve Ellis On Integrating Influencer Marketing For Success
Steve Ellis is founder and CEO of WHOSAY, which after nearly a decade is one of the oldest and largest influencer-marketing agencies in the business. And as of about a... Read More
The Year Ahead. Our Fearless Predictions For 2019, Part 1 of 2
It’s that time of year again, time for us to get out our crystal balls and predict the future. Before you laugh, remember that we were spot on last year... Read More
Immersive Entertainment’s December To Remember Reflects 2018’s Return To Optimism
If 2016 was a year of excess hype for virtual reality, and 2017 was mired in that rugged trough of disillusion, 2018 marked a return to optimism, growing consumer acceptance... Read More
Week In Review: T-Mobile vMVPD Service Might Launch in 2019, NBCU Might (Finally) Launch A DTC Service Too
1. T-Mobile vMVPD Service Might Launch in 2019 So it seems that T-Mobile is not going to launch its TV service in 2018. Which, given that there are just 10... Read More
Amazon Prime’s BYO Bundles Scoring Big For Small Channels
One of pay TV’s biggest developments the past couple of years has been the rise of the skinny bundle of digitally delivered online video channels. But those digital bundles have... Read More
STIRR Fills Sinclair’s Pot With Hybrid Linear, On-Demand Approach
STIRR, the big swing at an online service by Sinclair Broadcast Group, came into much clearer focus this week, with CEO and President Christopher Ripley detailing its hybrid business model... Read More
Warner Spares Netflix. But At What Cost?
Sometime in the spring of 2015, a secret memo went out to 12-year-old girls across America. “Log into your parents Netflix account and start watching Grey’s Anatomy,” it commanded. “All... Read More
Week In Review: AT&T Reveals The Three Faces Of Warner, Pluto Discovers Europe
1. AT&T Reveals The Three Faces Of Warner While the industry awaits the “Attack of the Giant Flixes” one of the biggest questions has been what those “Flixes” will actually... Read More
Connecting The Next Generation Of TV Viewers To Publishers and Advertisers Wherever They Are
Nearly three-fourths of American households already have a television connected to the Internet. What’s less well connected? Some way to identify and tie those users to the video sources they... Read More