Fubo Back In The Spotlight, TV Data Gets Real

1. Fubo Back In The Spotlight

FuboTV has always been “the little vMVPD that could.”

There’s no reason the company should have succeeded. They are the only vMVPD not backed by a giant parent company and they initially built their reputation by catering to audiences looking to watch Latin American soccer matches.

And yet, here they are with 1,1 million subscribers (up 106% YOY), a newly acquired French partner (Molotov) to fuel overseas expansion and a place in the TV news cycle. 

Even more impressive given that the service is not a particular bargain—bundles range from $65-$80—and does not have a deal with Warner Media, so no CNN, TNT or TBS.

Why It Matters

Fubo’s success continues to flummox Wall Street. The mixed financial report—revenue was up beyond expectations, but so were net losses—seemed to trouble investors enough to send stock prices downwards, as did the fact that Fubo would not be able to air March Madness next month. (It’s on Turner). 

This does not particularly trouble us however.

Fubo’s base is very loyal, one might say fanatically so. And while there is no doubt overlap between college basketball fans and soccer fans, the inability to watch March Madness is probably not enough to cause a large number of people to drop the service.

In our view, Fubo is worth keeping an eye on because they’re not doing what everyone else is doing.

They’ve invested heavily in sports betting apps, which are likely to prove far stickier than March Madness. 

They also have the deal with Molotov, which is sort of the Hulu of France, a popular streaming service with free and subscription options, and a real emphasis on user experience and interface that will bode well for Fubo’s planned international expansion.

They’ve even launched their own Fubo channel as a way to get into the booming FAST market.

So there’s all that and there’s the fact that Fubo CEO David Gandler is well aware of the inevitability of bundling, going so far as to poke the powers that be with an investment letter that stated, “We believe that studios and networks siloing premium content on their owned-and-operated platforms is unsustainable and the market will continue to move in our direction, favoring a bundled option.”

He’s right too. Well, for the most part.. We’ve been hailing the coming Great Rebundling forever, and while it is likely to be be more about FASTs and Flixes than cable channels, Gandler is correct that a vast archipelago of siloed SVOD services will be where the industry winds up.

In the interim though, the vMVPD market will continue to grow as users look for ways to cut the cord without, you know, actually cutting the cord.

What You Need To Do About It

If you’re FUBO, keep on keeping on. You’re doing a great job with expanding revenue streams, but you may want to look at adding in some of the more popular  linear-like FAST channels to your line-up—movie channels seem to be particularly possible.  If nothing else, you might not have to pay carriage fees.

If you’re an investor, maybe put on your skeptic’s hat and  look into Fubo more deeply, what their long-term business model looks like and how zagging when everyone else is zigging often pays off.

If you write about the industry, remember that getting a pay TV package through a vMVPD isn’t cord-cutting. It’s just opting for a different distribution platform.

2. TV Data Gets Real

For many years, “TV data” was limited to understanding how many people in a specific Nielsen demo (women 18-54) bought a specific product or service. That’s changed dramatically however with the digitalization of TV viewing (e.g., streaming). 

Take, for instance, a deal announced this week between smart TV OEM VIZIO and TransUnion, whereby TransUnion will incorporate their TruAudience Identity and Data Marketplace products into VIZIO’s Household Connect platform, which is currently fueled by the ACR data VIZIO collects from nearly 20 million opted-in sets, as well as data from Yahoo.

The deal will allow brands to coordinate omnichannel campaigns across TV and mobile, so that, for instance, a viewer who sees an ad for Acme Widgets’ new MetaWidgetPlus 2.0 will also get a coupon offer for the MetaWidgetPlus 2.0 on their mobile phone.

Why It Matters

Omnichannel advertising is hot right now as it takes into account that most consumers spend time with multiple mediums, often in tandem (e.g., looking at their phones while watching TV) and that the more those messages can be coordinated, the better.

TV data, as the header indicates, is getting real. It’s becoming as versatile and widespread as digital data and that gives a huge boost to the television industry whose biggest enemy in terms of budget allocation is digital display advertising.

When a brand manager needs to defend ad spend to a CEO, the granularity of digital data is a huge plus. As in “yes, we know where every dollar went and what happened as a result.”

Compare that to television, which, for many years, was reduced to “when we spent more money on TV, sales went up” without actually being able to offer any specifics, or, more critically, any data that clearly tied cause (we ran more TV spots) to effect (sales went up.)

Now, thanks to ACR data from smart TVs, brands and agencies have much more data than ever before, which allows them, among other benefits, to run omnichannel campaigns. 

There are still issues around TV data—privacy, identity resolution, verification and more—but groups like the TV Data Initiative are working to solve those issues, and the fact that they’re being discussed at all is a huge step forward for the industry.

Final note: if, thirty years ago, someone had said that data from TV manufacturers would someday be important to advertisers, they would have been seen as some sort of quack. The only data TV OEMs had was sales data (their own, as in how many TV sets they’d sold.) So the fact that all of the major OEMs are now front and center of these conversations around data is a huge step forward. (You can read more about the Emerging Smart TV Ecosystem in our TVREV report.)

What You Need To Do About It

If you are an agency or brand and you are not looking at omnichannel advertising, now would be a good time to start. There’s a whole world out there beyond just GRPs. Aligning all of your campaigns so that consumers see consistent messaging across channels is a very good thing. Just remember not to be creepy. 

If you are at all involved in the TV data ecosystem, remember that cooperation and transparency will get you much further than continued attempts to defend your own walled garden. Your peers are not the enemy. Digital is.