Online Video Category
Getting Back to Our Roots with the Embedded SDK
Yesterday was an exciting day for YuMe. It was a day we went back to our roots. You may not know this, but before we created our advertising technology platform, ACE, YuMe launched in 2004 as an IPTV company. Our first product enabled people to download and watch movies directly on their TV:
YuMe, like online video, has come full circle. It started with television, and then moved to the computer screen, then to mobile phones and tablets. Now seven years after our first IPTV box, we’ve announced the Embedded SDK and established our position as the operating system for TV 2.0. The YuMe Embedded SDK is the only video advertising platform to be built directly into TVs, Blu-Ray Disc™ players, and other connected devices.
For advertisers, this means access to consumers at every stage of interaction with the TV. Even as consumers’ attention continues to fragment, advertisers can maintain a presence on every screen on which video is being watched. For publishers and CTV app developers this means even more access to TV brand dollars, enabling them to maximize revenue and simplify their ad serving and management. And because the Embedded SDK is built into the firmware of the TV, CE manufacturers can easily integrate with ACE for Publishers and the Connected Audience Network, and finally participate in the advertising value chain of television.
What makes this announcement even more exciting is that we’ve secured the support of one of the most innovative automotive advertisers, Toyota. Through their participation in this important launch, they’ve proven the value of this fast-growing channel for video—a channel in which we’ve helped participated and innovated since the beginning.
We’ll be making several exciting announcements about our Connected TV products in the coming months. Check out our News Page for updates!
Content Snackers Become Cord Cutters and Are Changing the World as We Know it
An article penned by our SVP of Emerging Platforms, Frank Barbieri, appeared in TechCrunch today and is also featured below.
Every five or so years for the past two decades the introduction of an Internet connect
ion to a new device type has created a boom in disruptive businesses.
Most of these booms – computers followed by mobile phones, and then gaming consoles and now tablets – have been clearly successful. Others (remember the Network Computer?) have been ill-timed.
Now manufacturers, and a growing ecosystem of partners to support them, are betting big that consumers are finally poised to accept an Internet connection in their most cherished living room technology mainstay, the television. Players from Samsung to Sony are bringing the so-called ConnectedTV (CTV) to market in mass, and you’ll see a big push this holiday season. There are already upwards of fourteen million CTVs in North America and sixty five percent of TVs sold in 2012 will be CTVs.
With every platform change new companies and nimble traditional companies have lined up to try and capture a share of the redistribution of rewards that inevitably comes when consumers change their habits. North American television advertising is certainly no exception as a host of companies, old and new line up to try and capture their share of that $62B annual advertising feast.
While there has been some preparation to date, incumbents have an incredibly hard time cannibalizing established revenue streams for growing, but yet to mature, new revenue streams. We’ve seen this with everything from books to brokerages. And in the TV world, we are seeing it on display with the recent stutter of Hulu, the pioneering archetype, catching arrows in their back from erstwhile incumbent partners as they bravely forge ahead.
Such is the nature of distribution when the business advantage is built primarily on pricing and bundling, and carefully restricted access, not on real consumer demonstrated desires and behaviors.
Technology has always been on the side of the consumer, especially in the realm of television viewing. You may not remember now, but broadcasters bitterly fought the arrival of cable in the 70s.
And while it seems absurd now, given it has created hundreds of billions of revenue, studios fought against the arrival of DVDs in the late 90s. The early titles were a handful of B movies released by Warner Brothers in conjunctions with Toshiba. It was all Toshiba could get at the time.
We may be seeing another disruption today. With a new wave of CTV content applications, the pricing and access advantage of cable television may dissipate. Imagine downloading a TNT program application directly from Turner rather than paying a cable company for access to Turner content. Content providers themselves now, or will soon, have the tools to reach their audience directly on the big screen. Turner could pocket 100% of any subscription fee and advertising revenue rather than having to share with a distribution partner.
The traditional distribution players are betting, but not banking, on the fact that new television distribution will look substantially similar to old television distribution. They are expanding their services to include on demand viewing and hoping much will continue as before with consumers paying a fee for content bundles.
But what if that’s not the way it goes down? What if like mobile phones and the PC before them consumers choose to snack on content delivered directly to them by the content providers themselves, effectively removing the pricing, bundling and access advantage of traditional cable and satellite television distribution. In that world the power of delivery, and we’ll say advertising insertion, shifts directly to content providers, device manufactures and the ecosystem of direct Internet connected business partners they surround themselves with. In that scenario online advertising businesses have a distinct advantage over traditional distribution businesses as they are already in the market pumping billions of video ads through existing devices like PCs, mobile phones and tablets.
Sure distribution incumbents like Comcast could make IP connected set-top boxes that consumers use to access content directly, unbundled or al la carte, but that erodes their existing revenue model around cable pricing. The industry calls folks who end run cable to get their content directly from content companies, “cord cutters.” A recent Morgan Stanley report concluded that cable companies would have to double the internet access fees of so called “cord cutters” to make up for the lost revenue on cable TV packages.
There is change brewing. Years in this business and witness to booms and busts have taught all of us to be cautious of absolutist rhetoric opining the end of any particular distribution channel. Consumers have shown a remarkable ability to expand their entertainment appetites, and new consumption habits largely prove additive, not cannibalistic (except for my poor print friends of course). So be suspect of anyone who claims that all programming or advertising is going to be wholly delivered in a particular way. But the numbers themselves are so enormous, and the opportunity so large that even a ten percent swing in consumer viewing habits from cable and satelite to ConnectedTV applications and cord-cutters will represent a shift in $6.2B of advertising spend. That, to me, is a scenario worth preparing for.
Sources include GFK Market Analysis, Piper Jaffray, and DeutscheBank.
YuMe Team Continues To Grow
Today we announced six new additions to our mobile team. The new hires hail from mobile video advertising network Transpera and include former Chief Product Officer and Transpera founder, Frank Barbieri, as Senior Vice President Emerging Platforms; Anshu Dua, Vice President Business Development Mobile, Tripp Boyle, Senior Director Mobile Sales, Sachin Gupta, Principal Engineer, Matt Knopf, Senior Director Business Development Mobile and Krishna Kanagrayer, Senior Manager Business Development Mobile.
In addition, we also have two additional members joining our executive team – Bryan Everett and Ed Haslam. Bryan joins us as EVP of Business Development, previously he served as executive vice president of business development at Kontera. Bryan will lead business development for YuMe, focusing both on the adoption of its ACE technology platform across web, mobile and connected devices, and the continued development of its premium publisher advertising network.
Ed joins us as SVP of Marketing. Prior to joining YuMe, Ed was co-founder and Vice President, Marketing at Groupon’s Ludic Labs, which developed the social media community, Diddit.com, and local commerce service, OfferFoundry.com.
- Molly Glover Gallatin
Can a brand be built online, using nothing more than video advertising?
Online video would appear to be a powerful brand-building tool, much like its offline counterpart, TV. More and more people are watching video online. Studies by Nielsen have shown that online video performed better than TV across every brand metric and for every vertical, and that campaigns combining online video and TV ads improved recall and likability for all verticals. While it’s clear that brand advertisers need to leverage online video in order to effectively reach their audience, they have yet to fully embrace the medium due to a lack of efficacy metrics.
We firmly believe in the power of online video, so we decided to team up with BBE and ScanScout to promote the launch of HoodieBuddie, the world’s first hooded sweatshirt with ear-buds built into the drawstrings. With Vizu’s help, we have proven, once and for all, that brands can be built online using nothing more than in-stream video advertising.
Awareness and purchase intent results from Vizu.
Read the case study to check out the results of this unique, brand-building campaign.
And if you’re going to be at ad:tech NY, come hear more details this week at “The Future Track” presentation: Video Everywhere—Deep Brand Integration in Online Video, on Thursday, November 4, at 11:45AM.
Beet.TV, MSNBC & YuMe Roundtable – Tune in June 22nd
Tune in this Tuesday, June 22nd from 4 to 6 p.m. EST for our video roundtable with Beet.TV and MSNBC. Hosted by Scot McLernon, YuMe’s CRO, and Mark Marvel, MSNBC.com’s Sr. Director of Video. The topic? Exploring online video monetization and syndication. Moderating the panel is Andy Plesser of Beet.TV and Peter Kafka of All Things Digital’s “MediaMemo.” Joining us on the panel includes the following industry veterans:
Andy Chapman, Leader, The Exchange, MindShare
Allen DeBevoise, Chairman and CEO, Machinima.com
Ran Harnevo, CEO, 5Min
Ping Li, Partner, Accel Partners
Bob Mason, Co-Founder and CTO, Brightcove
John McCarus, VP & Group Director, Digitas/The Third Act
Adam Shlacter, Managing Partner, Digital Investment, MEC Global
Tania Yuki, Director, Product Management, comScore
You can check out the live stream here, on our home page or on Livestream at www.livestream.com/beet_tv.
- Molly Glover Gallatin
Breaking Down Online Video Ad Stats
Ah, the spin. Ask thousands of consumers their thoughts on a particular topic, digest the results and find a way to spin those results into something that makes you say, “hmmm.”
Take, for example, the results of IBM’s End of Advertising Survey, which found that 11 percent of the 2,400 respondents were willing to pay a small fee to watch online video without advertising. Could that mean that a YouTube Premium subscription option soon would be in the works?
So, let’s put our own spin on this. If 11 percent are willing to pay a fee, does that mean that 89 percent of the respondents would not? Sure, we can’t discount those 11 percent who would dig into their pockets for a chance to watch online videos sans advertising. But, as online video continues to evolve and companies both large and small start experimenting with new platforms for distributing that content – such as what we do here at YuMe – it seems that the jury is still out when it comes to determining what viewers are and aren’t willing to watch.
The idea behind a premium service that removes advertising isn’t crazy – after all, look at the popular of HBO-like networks. But 11 percent seems like an awfully small number to consider when developing business strategies. Let’s give it some more time to see what works and what doesn’t – and how audiences, advertisers and content publishers interact with each other on this new medium.
Jayant Kadambi
