4K: The Party Guest Who Arrived While We Were Turning The Lights On

You know that person,the first guest through the door. Sometimes with a dish or a bag of chips, but nonetheless a bit early and inconvenient. You do your best to make them feel comfortable and welcome, but you’re inevitably still scrambling to put everything together to make your party pop. You’ve no doubt figured out my analogy by now. We’ve been here before, after all. Anyone remember 3D TV?

Spoiler alert: 4K got to the party WAY too early. Let me be clear, I love 4K content and how rich and immersive it is by nature. I own a couple of 4K UHD (ultra HD, as it is often called) televisions. But like the premature party guest, all the parts and pieces aren’t yet assembled for even passable 4K viewing experiences.

One thing beyond dispute is the stunning visual quality of 4K and UHD. After all, 4K itself has enough pixels to fully fill four HD screens. Would you be able to tell the difference between HD and 4K content side by side? Even if you can’t, seeing that eye-popping 4K video at your local Costco or electronics store is quite compelling. Prices for 4K televisions have plummeted in the past 24 months, and more consumers are replacing aging televisions with new 4K rigs or adding to their overall mix because of all the hype. Pure televisions aside, the addressable 4K audience on tablets and smartphones isn’t overwhelming. Research out this year shows that 80% of U.S. homes have smartphones, but only 16% own a 4K television. Regardless of these numbers, the amount of content available to these screens is minute right now.

A Complex but Manageable Sausage Factory

We live in an arid desert of content where 4K is the promised oasis. Once you get beyond those gorgeous 4K videos in store of the eagle flying over some river in Alaska, it is hard to find UHD content for your screen. Sure, Apple upped the ante, throwing its chips in the game with its new Apple TV 4K and library of content upgraded to the new spec. Similarly, Netflix and Amazon produce most (if not all) of their new shows in 4K glory. But relative to the universe of television, movies and other video available to us as viewers, we’re still laying under that palm tree, waiting for some delicious water at the oasis. Even yours truly, the bleeding edge tech adopter that I am, remain disappointed in the extremely finite amount of 4K content available on my DIRECTV system. And I pay extra for it! The problem is multifaceted.

Relief will come. Adoption and availability take time. As we saw with HD content before it, content will eventually trickle into the UHD universe and be more readily available on the screen of our choice. Though 4K content is more computationally complex to prepare, the tools and technologies exist to make production possible at scale.

Samsung presents the company’ s recent smartphones Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ and 4K televisions during IFA consumer electronics unlimited at Messe Berlin. (Photo by Madeleine Lenz/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Specifically, on-demand video clips take more power, resources and time to prepare in 4K. Live events are also able to be streamed in 4K, but it’s difficult. I like to call it “walking an elevated tightrope with no safety net.” In addition to getting this content to the cloud for processing, there is a similar challenge in delivering this content to the viewer. Your friendly neighborhood content delivery network (CDN) is also facing the need to innovate and beef up the infrastructure in support of content that is at least four times more complex to deliver. I’m being facetious on purpose to illustrate the complexity required with every quantum shift in video. As resolution increases, the methods and means through which we deliver it require massive shifts.

Even with all the innovation evident in UHD preparation and delivery, if you’re staring at a 4K-enabled screen, are we confident that the wired and wireless networks are ready for us to view 4K? Some networks will throttle users after a certain amount of usage, which will effectively handicap 4K viewing, given the additional bandwidth required to view.

The Technicolor, Retina Display, Dolby Vision, Yellow Brick Road is Ahead

Whether you’re dialed in to your new 4K smartphone, tablet or television, this is not a cautionary tale. I see a future in which we all revel in the pretty pixels that will dance on screens before us. But like Captain Early Party, I am here now to tell you that we are at best in the first mile of an ultra high-definition marathon. The days (and miles) ahead will yield some rewarding and fruitful experiences, especially for OTT. Keep that screen and bag of chips ready.

Matt Smith is Vice President and Principal Media Evangelist for Brightcove’s media business unit. He has served in a variety of roles in the industry, from architecture to operations, and has extensive experience in finding solutions for the challenging problems faced by media and entertainment companies as they reach viewers on any screen. Matt’s experience spans many aspects of today’s complex video workflows and he is a frequent speaker at many industry events and conferences.

The post 4K Still Too Early for Widespread Adoption – But It Will Come appeared first on MediaShift.

It seems everywhere you look in the industry today, you’re bombarded with something related to 4K resolution. Look over here. Attention: You’ve got to see this. Maybe it’s a channel you must watch, a service you’ve gotta have, or a television that is priced so low that you can’t afford not to try this revolutionary new technology.

Face it, we are all faced with 4K FOMO (fear of missing out). You’ve got to beat your neighbor, friend or drinking buddy in the footrace to 4K (also known as Ultra HD or UHD). Nothing is going to hold you back.

Make no mistake — 4K content is gorgeous. 4K content looks fantastic and will likely have you experiencing deja vu, remembering the first time you saw 1080p HD content. You want to rub your eyes, or at least blink a few times, as the level of detail and colors seem to leap from the screen. I’m a believer and self-admitted early adopter and own a 4K television myself. In my case, the adoption curve has made the HD channels on my DirecTV look poor. This happens when a channel is overcompressed a bit to save bandwidth to provide for other channels, yet you’re watching on a television capable of rendering 4x the pixels as your service provider is pushing. With 4K, it seems I’m not the only one in the proverbial pool. More consumers are buying in – research shows acceleration in 4K television purchases over the past 12 months, and these rates are expected to increase as prices drop. It doesn’t take a market analyst to predict that for 4K the future is bright, literally and figuratively.

Stock image via Pixabay and used here with Creative Commons license.

A gripe about hype

My gripe today, in a Clint Eastwood “get off my lawn” Grand Torino sorta way is with the overhype many in the streaming business employ to position 4K as something that is happening right now (get it NOW or you’ll be left behind). This is pure marketing fodder, hyping the specification in the hopes that they win business by appearing to be ahead of everyone else, on the bleeding edge of technology. This is akin to using fool’s gold to mislead potential customers into thinking that 4K streaming is something they must invest in now.

And there is some truth to the notion, if you are in the market to buy a television or if you are a service provider with the need to deploy encoders to deliver 4K channels for your subscribers. For the uninitiated, this would be the DirecTVs, Verizons, Time Warners of the world who provide your channel lineups. They are adding infrastructure to process these new 4K channels they are delivering (or planning to) to their subscribers. But OTT or mobile streaming of 4K content? Unless you’re Netflix or Amazon, 4K isn’t a reality anytime soon in production or at scale.

Here’s the why:

It’s more expensive to create and deliver

4K is more expensive to create and deliver by orders of magnitude. The relative return on investment today just isn’t there. From a practical perspective, 4K streaming presents more business challenges than technical challenges today. Don’t get me wrong, we’ll need to improve on the technicalities and architectures through which 4K is created and delivered (and more on that in a second).

But let’s stop and talk technology briefly. If you look at data from the Top 10 ISPs in North America, the average Netflix stream is delivered at roughly 3.5 Mbps. This is sufficient and works well for HD streaming today. By comparison, the same content delivered as a 4K stream requires 15 Mbps of throughput. Even in today’s hyper-competitive content delivery network market, this means that the average streaming customer would see their streaming and storage budget increase by orders of magnitude.

At a time when many are still in the process of turning their streaming infrastructure from a cost center to a profit center utilizing things like dynamic ad insertion, increases in the overall cost model is generally something not up for consideration. This isn’t to say this is a proverbial brick wall and that streaming is a #never4K proposition, but it will take time for broad market adoption and availability.

It takes more to process

So while we’re talking about the cost to deliver 4K video, we can’t leave out the other expense with this content in both time and investment. 4K content costs more to process across the entire workflow. To shoot, edit, store, and encode/transcode video in 4K resolution is expensive – a great deal more than HD, as I’ve outlined earlier. Encoding by itself can take as much as six times longer to encode in 4K. Sure, these metrics will change over time as we get a better handle on how to process 4K, but today’s cost will be largely prohibitive for the majority of companies who would like to “kick the tires” of 4K.

The reality today is that only premium content owners can afford the cost in kicking said tires. In fact, Netflix charges more for it. Today’s business models just don’t support 4K workflows for many beyond the Netflixes, Amazons and a few others. It is the Louis Vuitton of streaming video at the moment.

What about HDR?

What will move the needle? As is usually the case in technology, an acronym may hold the keys to something innovative and market moving. Perhaps that neighbor or drinking buddy may have told you, 1080p video with HDR also looks amazing. What is HDR? High Dynamic Range expands the range of both contrast and color significantly. Adding more depth of color and contrast to HD provides for some beautiful content. In fact, in many side by side displays I’ve seen, 1080p video with HDR looks better than 4K.

As the second half of 2016 rolls on, expect to see more HDR in both televisions and perhaps in streaming offerings, as some seek a cost effective solution to show compelling content without the (for now) steep adoption cost of 4K content. Controversial comments, to be sure – but I maintain that we’ll see 4K content in its due time, sooner on the large TV screen and on other screens eventually.

Again, I’m a 4K believer; one of the reasons I love the video space is the constant pace of innovation, where we’re continually raising the bar and finding ways to make streaming exceed expectations. But I also believe in architecting and delivering solutions that are reliable, cost effective and innovative, without smoke and mirrors or vaporware.

Will 4K have a relevant seat at the streaming table? Yes – very likely. 4K as a strong addition to core video technology has more benefits and legs than the last great technology to come along, sending people scrambling to market themselves, their wares and push their customers to adopt. Remember 3D anyone? 4K holds more promise in its little finger than 3D had in its entire body, but mass market adoption of 4K streaming is still a few years out.

That’s not to say that if you are a programmer or service provider and want to ensure a smooth path toward the future of your streaming platform, you should ask your technology partners whether they can check the 4K box. But it is unrealistic and irresponsible to create or increase upon FOMO in the marketplace today with so much 4K marketing-speak. Like a good Guy Fieri burger on television, today’s 4K streaming marketing is a bit hyped up and over-the-top (pun intended). For now, I’ll take mine with all the fixins, but easy on the hot sauce and hype.

And then out of the blue, a quadruple kitchen sink burger shows up in the form of 8K content. We’ll handle that monstrosity next time.

Matt Smith is the Chief Evangelist for Anvato – the leading, turnkey platform solution that enables media companies, content providers and broadcasters with a robust, powerful and complete toolset to enable their content to reach any screen, anytime.

The post Why 4K Matters, But Isn’t Worth the Hype, Yet appeared first on MediaShift.

So we’ve clearly established that the revolution will be televised – and streamed. There is no mistaking the explosion of content to screens of varying shape, size and connectivity.

As consumption skyrockets and choice expands, a few challenges are emerging. No matter what you call it – over the top (OTT), streaming, TV Everywhere – IP-cased video delivery is called to be “better than broadcast” and must harmonize a variety of requirements in order to facilitate this massive growth to incorporate killer experience with monetization and more.

Dynamic ad insertion (called DAI) is absolutely critical to nearly all TV Everywhere and/or OTT strategies and deployments today. Plain and simple, digital decision makers need to look at these opportunities and begin planning for these offerings to begin as a profit center rather than a cost center.

Targeted Delivery

Today, many of these media managers (and perhaps their counterparts in advertising) don’t realize the hyper-targeting capabilities today’s streaming experiences can deliver on the devices they play out on. Given that each user maintains a unique connection with the cloud when they consume streams, we can deliver ads specific to them. This means that two viewers of the same stream on opposite sides of a market can and will receive discretely different ads based on those locations.

This is a big deal. Using this strategy, advertisers can reach viewers with hyper-local ads that are more relevant to the viewer. Taken one step further, an overlay ad displayed over the lower third of a video ad could offer a real time couponing opportunity, which could result in immediate opportunities for advertisers (think of a Starbucks coupon tapped and saved to Passbook on iOS where the user redeems it minutes later, in store). Even if the target audience is somewhat larger (think regional), some of today’s OTT video supply chains can serve to delineate between local, national and regional payloads within an ad pod so that any of those three can dynamically be replaced or allowed to play through from the broadcast where broadcast and digital ad reach have been sold together. Make no mistake – over the top and today’s video technology is creating a renaissance in the space.

The Promise of Live Streaming

By Ed Yourdon – originally posted to Flickr as NY Jets vs. Buffalo, Oct 2009 – 05, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Live streaming for events continues in its growth and popularity. From hockey to football, boxing to baseball – organizations like the PGA, NBA, NFL and MLB are expanding the number of live, linear events and content they offer. This NFL season will see the first-ever streaming-only consumption of a game in its history, a mid-season game between the Buffalo Bills and Jacksonville Jaguars. Internet pioneer Yahoo reportedly paid in the neighborhood of $20 million for the rights to stream the game. Existing broadcast rights with the big networks and bundling questions aside, this event likely represents an interesting start to a future model of direct to consumer OTT delivery of the NFL. Time will tell.

Expect every sports league and organization to continue to look to streaming to build their brand and reach, increase user engagement and potentially to explore ad-supported content to compliment subscriptions. Further, the rise of instant streaming applications like Meerkat, Periscope and the new Facebook Mentions have opened up new ways to consume live content from all over the world. The impact to live sporting events for these apps remains uncertain and unclear at this time, though. The NHL and the PGA have banned their usage, or at a minimum, barred journalists from using them from behind the ropes. This could be short sighted though, as subscription and ad placement revenue in and around this content could be real drivers for those companies, should they choose to explore rights entitlement and sponsorships.

A Tidal Wave

CC0 Public Domain photo.

On both of these key fronts, expect to see more engagement, movement and advances in the next 18 months or less. Over the top delivery of video represents the largest tidal wave to impact media consumption in history and will likely outpace VHS, DVD, BluRay and HDTV in terms of how quickly viewers will adapt and adopt. Each of those technologies improved the viewing experience and outpaced their predecessors in time to market and mass adoption. Streaming delivery and the massive growth of device driven consumption is expanding and moving ahead at a pace that many industry experts and analysts struggle to define. For those who create and deliver content though, the question of going to market with their wares has moved from ‘should we’ to ‘how fast can we get there’ sprinkled in with a little ‘how can we monetize our content.’

This shift is imperative in the race to meet viewers on the screens of their choice. Viva la revolución.

Matt Smith is the Chief Evangelist for Anvato – the leading, turnkey platform solution that enables media companies, content providers and broadcasters with a robust, powerful and complete toolset to enable their content to reach any screen, anytime.

The post How Dynamic Ad Insertion Will Make Its Way to Live-Streaming Apps appeared first on MediaShift.

Twenty-one billion dollars. Not a trivial sum. For clarity, this isn’t a holiday spending figure, either. This number represents the dollar amount in lost ad revenue last year alone.
This recently published study from PageFair shows not only tremendous growth in ad blocking technology, but also some staggering numbers in terms of lost revenue being suffered as a result.

As the 2015 holiday season ended, some were referring to ad blockers as a modern day Grinch — a grumpy, dispirited character seeking to take from others and spread misery and blight. Indeed, nicknames and comparisons aside, ad blockers have created a new wrinkle that programmers and advertisers are scrambling to straighten out. Though the current dialog is relevant and the scenario legitimate, the technology needed to defeat ad blockers has been in use for more than two years.

Of the aforementioned $21 billion dollars in lost ad revenue, approximately $3 billion represents video advertising. Some premium video authors estimate that as much as one-third of their video content isn’t reaching their streaming audiences at all. It may not be an epidemic yet, but there clearly is a trend, as ad-supported video businesses are being challenged as consumers install ad blockers at an increasing rate, especially on their mobile devices where they engage with video the most. A Grinch at work, indeed.

Client versus Server – paving the proper path

Ads in and around video can make for prickly dialogue these days, with some viewers complaining about being subjected to watching any advertisements. Clearly, there are still some best practices to be established with regard to how many ads per clip are shown and how long a pre-roll ad should be in advance of a requested video. However, unless you are viewing premium, subscription content, expect to see some ads in and around the content you’re watching in a similar manner to what we see in our living rooms.

Like many technologies that have come before it, ad serving is evolving. Though mid-roll ads (those seen when watching a live event or broadcast) may seem new to some, this form of dynamic ad insertion (DAI) has been at work for many streamed live events for the past few years. Until recently, almost all ad replacement had been done at the user level, right within the player itself. This approach, called Client Side Ad Insertion (CSAI), puts not only the video programming itself, but also the valuable ad payload at risk of playback failure because ad blockers see these outbound requests and block them as they are designed to do. This is the equivalent of friendly fire in the video space.

The initial request for playback may also be viewed as an ad call by the ad blockers, in the way that they see subsequent calls for video payload in a CSAI model. As a result, the program content is sometimes not able to reach the viewer, and the ad payload almost certainly isn’t. To de-Grinch these challenges, leveraging an SSAI approach to monetization defeats the ad blockers and keeps those dollars in the pocket of the publishers.

To be clear, CSAI was good in its day, but introduced a dynamic that the ad blockers have been able to pounce on, as well as the legacy challenges that existed — introduction of latency, mismatched quality between program and ad payload and others. But as media brands and publishers of all size grow, they need these solutions to scale without limitations. As the most popular shows and events on television have driven audience, so must the OTT (or streaming) versions of this content respond to demand. If a show or an event drives massive OTT audiences, these programmers and publishers need the scale and elasticity of the cloud to be able to deliver highly targeted (per user) ad payload at scale, hence the move to more efficient and scalable benefits of SSAI.

This approach circumvents and defeats ad blockers on devices and desktops, because both the content and the advertising elements are dynamically created and delivered from the cloud. This approach also improves on some of the legacy limitations of client-side ad delivery as well, where latency and mismatched video quality (from program content to ad payload and back to program) were two key flaws in that delivery scheme. Further, stream stitching enables the publisher to replace content as needed when business rules dictate, going beyond ad replacement and into full content replacement.

For example, if a live sports stream isn’t available in a particular geography or a particular show of episodic television can be broadcast but not streamed, stream stitching enables immediate content replacement on the fly. Finally, server-side architecture enables publishers and programmers to scale their audience without limits.

More screens mean more considerations

Photo by Gabriele Barni on Flickr and reused here with Creative Commons license.

The benefits and efficiency of server-side content and ad replacement is multi-faceted. First and foremost, this approach doesn’t delineate between live versus on-demand content, and the same approach can be used to deliver ads for both scenarios.

Another key benefit is no impact to the revenue stream in place, as a move to the cloud doesn’t impact ad operations with the publisher. They still utilize the same workflow and ad platforms, using standardized IAB VAST compatible ad servers (generally from FreeWheel and DoubleClick) to create campaigns and monitor performance, but with the new benefit in per-user targeting to optimize revenue and maximize fill rates.

Lastly, a unified cloud-based architecture enables publishers and programmers to reach all screens with a greatly simplified delivery mechanism that creates content and ads that reach all screens in one fell swoop. Whether the audience target is iOS or Android, Roku or Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Airplay, or Chromecast — one size fits all with this approach.

While SSAI will send the Grinch packing to his perch high above Whoville — there are, and should be, best practices to be implemented as this architecture takes shape. As streaming audiences continue to grow, we must account for those viewers and the scale of the solutions needed to reach them. Specifically, an effective SSAI strategy must consider that the absolute best practice is to pre-seed the ad payload prior to the first request for an ad.

This simply means provisioning the ad ahead of time and conditioning it for playback across all screens. In case this isn’t feasible, for whatever reason, the publisher can have a backup set of house ads or promos that can play for the first 2-3 users who make an ad call for an ad unit that ‘isn’t aboard’ yet. In architectural terms, this is referred to as a cache miss. In this case, we deliver those first few users a house ad or promo while preparing the proper ad and feed that ad to the cache so that every subsequent user is able to see the appropriate ad. Look for this pre-seeding step to become standard operating procedure as we build the future of OTT and streaming ad delivery.

Blame our smartphones, but benefit lies ahead

Photo by Flickr user Japanexperterna.se and reused here with Creative Commons license.

Although I do own an iPhone and have installed iOS 9, I lay the blame for ad blocking hysteria there. When it shipped earlier in 2015, iOS 9 added a content blocking setting that enabled the rise of ad blockers. This move has hit some publishers as a storm front of dark clouds, leaving them scrambling to find proverbial shelter — but they aren’t faced with a case of whack-a-mole, as it is sometimes the case with technology. In this case, smart solutions exist to help dispense with the dark clouds and build a bridge to strategic programming and monetization success.

The benefits for both the viewer and for those offering content — where rich, relevant ad experiences that can be tailored to the individual tomorrow are well worth the effort we’re spending in not only sending the Grinch packing, but also in helping to circumvent the challenge ad blockers present today.

Matt Smith is presently Chief Evangelist for Anvato – the leading, turnkey platform solution that enables media companies, content providers and broadcasters with a robust, powerful and complete toolset to enable their content to reach any screen, anytime.

The post How Online Video is Defeating Ad Blockers appeared first on MediaShift.

By nearly any measure, there is a tremendous amount of interest in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Television ratings for the first two Republican presidential debates have been through the roof, and the dialogue and drama that surrounded both events have given Wrestlemania a run for its money. None of this is particularly new, but what will be new, and play a massive role this election cycle, is streaming video.

In 2016, the massive volume of video content will help voters decide who is elected as the next President of the United States. Video of all types — live, on-demand, streaming, device-driven — will play a significant role in how candidates convey their message. Video will represent one of the primary ways voters connect with candidates and, as well as how a new generation of voters learns more about them.

The Power of Streaming

Photo by teteria sonnna and used here with Creative Commons license.

To be clear, streaming video has been a campaign element before. The 2012 Obama presidential campaign used video snippets to drive fundraising while the candidate was on the trail, honing his stump speech. The amount of money given in the minutes and hours after these “behind the curtain” videos, which showed the candidate backstage just before making a speech was orders of magnitude higher than the standard donation volumes before and after the video was posted. The campaign recognized the value of these snippets of content, the exclusive feel of the video and the growing demand for content produced in this intimate way.

In the intervening years, technology has evolved to the extent that it will help create experiences and simplify workflows that define how events unfold in our lives. Social networks continue to play a massive role in how we discover and consume digital media and this election will advance this trend. While Facebook and Twitter were part of the 2012 campaign, they will profoundly shape this election season. You can expect them to figure prominently in how each campaign positions their message to voters and how voters receive them.

Video technology has also progressed. Device-driven apps like Meerkat and Periscope have changed the way people create and consume video on smartphones. By enabling users, and in this case politicians, to easily share their experiences, live, to the world, viewers can feel like they are right there on the campaign trail and witnessing an unmediated view of the candidate. This cultivates a sense of trust and empathy, which research shows have a powerful impact on voting behavior.

Highlight Reels

Photo by Japanexperterna.se and used here with Creative Commons license.

In addition, the 2016 candidates now have access to technology that enables them to easily extract short video clips from live feeds. Shortening the video to bite-sized bits makes them more shareable on social media. According to video production marketplace Veed.me, the optimal video length on social media is “as short as possible,” and certainly under two minutes. People are more likely to watch shorter videos, and shorter videos translate into a more engaged audience.

The ability to live stream experiences and put sound bites on social media in-the-moment will have a have profound impact on the way information is disseminated. Voters will be able to see important moments, soundbites, and gaffs as they are happening, or a few short minutes later, and well in advance of the evening news or the next day’s paper. Politician’s communications office, press conferences, and journalists won’t maintain their centrality to campaigns, since candidates have a direct way to connect with voters.

For many voters, especially younger ones, Periscope, Meerkat and perhaps even Facebook mentions will be the only way they hear a candidate speak live. Smart political campaigns are making these platforms an important part of their logistical plans at each and every campaign stop.

Into the Clouds

The cloud will also play a role in this election, maturing significantly from the 2012 campaign. Some campaign teams may choose to elevate their video efforts and go beyond just the smartphone; they will add more production value by using a laptop and camera to live stream from a campaign stop or on the bus between them.

Streaming technology has developed such that these teams are no longer dependent on a full-scale television production infrastructure through which the video signal is passed. Now, they can use a simpler setup and push a single stream to the cloud using LTE or Wi­Fi and have it delivered to larger audiences. Audience engagement is critical, especially with services like Meerkat and Periscope. These platforms offer a perfect fit for the candidates to reach the viewer, and take and answer questions as the event unfolds.

As we approach the general election, and then the inaugural speech, I predict that live streaming numbers will spike. Members of the younger, smartphone-­first generation will turn to their smaller screens to keep abreast of vote tallies as they are counted into the night, and as our new president begins his or her term. From now and into the future, presidential campaigns will be streamed.

Matt Smith is presently Chief Evangelist for Anvato – the leading, turnkey platform solution that enables media companies, content providers and broadcasters with a robust, powerful and complete toolset to enable their content to reach any screen, anytime.

The post Election 2016: Before the Votes Will Come the Video Streams appeared first on MediaShift.

Sharing is the new normal. Everywhere we look, our social networks are providing us with links, lists and video that our friends and acquaintances think will impress and delight us. Key among these are the new, in-the-moment notifications to catch a video as it happens on Periscope (or fledgling competitor, Meerkat). Most of you are familiar with that whistle emanating from your phone, beckoning you to come watch. The immediacy is, for many, irresistible.

Photo by Japanexperterna.se and used here with Creative Commons license.

Periscope has clearly established itself as the ‘go to’ channel, if you will, for catching never seen before moments on the screen of your choice. Want to go backstage with U2 at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam on their Innocence + Experience Tour? In this era of Periscope you can, as Bono enables a live stream on his iPhone 6 Plus using the app. Or maybe you’re a politics junkie and want to see what the guests and Chuck Todd are discussing on Meet The Press during a commercial break. Wait no more, because Chuck is firing up his phone and providing you with a live stream every Sunday.

Down Periscope – not on my submarine, not on my watch

Despite all this unprecedented access, not all Periscope streams are equal – or allowed. Let’s sideline discussion of legality and copyright for a second and explore this unprecedented access and those who don’t want you to go where you haven’t been before. Fancy a trip behind the ropes to see Jordan Spieth hitting a few warmup shots before the PGA Championship? How about following Tony Romo out onto the practice field this week in Oxnard, California as the Cowboys begin training camp? Lastly, let’s stop in the Dallas Stars locker room and check out Jamie Benn as he straps on the pads before practice at the American Airlines Center. Sorry, would-be viewers. None of these experiences are allowed on Periscope. Each league or team has forbid its staff and players from using Periscope to provide this behind the scenes access their fans so desperately seek. But what if these leagues, teams, even individuals could recognize new, incremental revenue streams (pun intended) from this new pathway to content?

Periscope – turning previously private moments into profit

iPhone screenshots of Periscope via the iTunes store.

It seems that the watershed moment for Periscope and access to copyrighted/protected content was the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight this past spring. Never before could thousands of people watch a pay per view event without paying a dime for it. I and others were very surprised at the unfettered access to the Fight of the Century. Why pay $99, when I had hundreds of Periscope users providing me easy access, round by round. It so happened that I had a twenty-something-year-old niece in town shortly thereafter, and we were talking about the event and Periscope in general. She told me that she loved the app and would watch many random streams, but wondered why she couldn’t pay for à la carte access to the shows and events she cared about. This is the voice of the modern video viewer. Just as we see other models changing, whether it be Verizon offering ‘skinny’ channel bundles or SlingTV attempting to capture the OTT only subscriber, it seems sensible to think that another model is primed to emerge – the single event Periscope viewer.

Take my patient zero, my niece, and turn her query into a business. She, and many like her, have some small discretionary spend. Maybe they aren’t a $200 per month cable subscriber or even a $99 per month SlingTV target. But what they are, or potentially could be, are an event by event Periscope viewer of premium content. Say you’re a fan of ‘Alaskan Bush People’ on Discovery or ‘Ballers’ on HBO. In the latter case, you do have the option to subscribe to HBO Now and watch it and all the other HBO programming, but at a higher price point. But what if you could watch either show without a subscription, but at an attractive price point (call it $1.99) where the purchase and viewing experience are frictionless and enjoyable? In this scenario, Discovery or HBO would originate the stream within their broadcast physical plant and deliver the stream to Periscope. If my niece, and a few hundred thousand like her, find this simple, effective and valuable solution through which they can connect with shows they can’t generally otherwise see without Mom and Dad’s cable subscription, Discovery and HBO just unlocked new revenue and tapped into new viewers who may eventually move toward more content on their channels and larger subscriptions beyond à la carte as they go.

As we learned during the music industry’s migration to digital, technology doesn’t equal piracy. When content – whether it be music, movies or episodic television – is easy to find and consumed and priced properly, piracy is thwarted. In my earlier examples, stream sharing and users Periscoping their television screens can be overcome with technology. Will it circumvent one hundred percent of those who seek to pirate content? Of course not. But with viable technology and the right business logic and tools, this content offered within Periscope could open up new streams of revenue and enable programmers to connect with audiences in new and disruptive ways. The audience, platform and technology are there. The outstanding question is whether those who control the content will see the opportunities present when looking through the Periscope.

Matt Smith is presently Chief Evangelist for Anvato – the leading, turnkey platform solution that enables media companies, content providers and broadcasters with a robust, powerful and complete toolset to enable their content to reach any screen, anytime.

The post Could Periscope Turn Piracy into Profit? appeared first on MediaShift.

We’re suckers for change, particularly those that improve experiences. Sure, some may complain that another moved the cheese, but transformative change is something we generally embrace once the value is visible and understood. Take television viewing. An experience that began as a square, black and white (with slightly rounded edges) experience housed inside a massive wooden box has morphed into one where many of us own screens approaching 60 inches or better, with resolution and colors that exceed imagination. Television has transformed, no doubt.

Today’s television viewing experiences have moved beyond traditional transmission and delivery models. It seems that you must live in a cave or Rwanda (one of the world’s least IP-connected nations) to not be aware that every day, more episodic television and feature length movie content is available at your fingertips on the device and screen of your choosing. Again – that news may be old hat for some. So what and where are the next emerging trends?

Dick Tracy, meet Tom Cruise

Photo by thomersch on Wikimedia Commons and used here with Creative Commons license.

Perhaps the 40s era detective Dick Tracy was onto something way before Tim Cook and Co. at Apple reinvented a wrist based communication device. While Detective Tracy may not have been watching video, he was talking to folks all over town on his nifty wristwatch. Today, specifically at June 2015’s Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple’s Kevin Lynch showed a couple video clips from Vine being played back on the 312×390 pixel Apple Watch. While this isn’t as sexy as the science fiction movie magic displayed by Tom Cruise in 2002’s “Minority Report,” where Police Chief John Anderton (Cruise) moved around transparent video frames with his hands, playing and stopping them at will, the addition of new, smaller and more personal screens for video consumption has arrived. This isn’t to suggest that you’ll want to watch an entire episode of ABC’s “Blackish” on a small screen attached to your wrist, but you may well be watching Vine clips, short YouTube videos and short social snippets from Facebook in that fashion very soon. As viewers are signaling to those who produce entertainment fare as well as those who architect and deploy the workflows to deliver said clips (like yours truly), the desire is to consume this variety of clips on screens of all size, shape and resolution. Yeah whatever, you argue – my phone battery is massacred anytime you watch a few episodes or a movie. So how in the world is a device one-eighth the size on my wrist going to be able to render video clips for more than 10 minutes or so? This is a valid concern, and I believe we still have a long road to travel before power consumption on wrist based devices is sufficient to support extended viewing sessions. However, I do think that in today’s selfie driven world that a good number of consumers who embrace wearables will make (very) short form video content part of their experience with these devices.

Changes in syndication syntax means new viewing options

Photo by Bhupinder Nayyar and used here with Creative Commons license.

For many of you, this number may be higher, but the average social network (Facebook/Twitter) user spends an average of 1.72 hours per day with their content. These represent the latest, most addressable viewing audiences in today’s marketplace. Even though you may go to Facebook to keep up with Grandma in Grand Rapids or head to Twitter to read the latest tweet of wisdom from Taylor Swift, more broadcast brands are planning to offer some form of their episodic entertainment for you to consume on network.

This is one new model of syndication – follow the audience to where they are reachable. HBO and Facebook recently partnered to enable this for the new Dwayne Johnson show, “Ballers.” To be clear, this didn’t happen live as the episode aired on network, but was offered a couple days later in its entirety. Interestingly, it wasn’t offered on YouTube – which shows the growing reach and relevance of social networks besides the latest pics of the kiddos or likes for your shared shopping list. Viewing experiences are permeating an ever increasing number of pathways to our eyeballs. Expect these content creators and their brands to continue to find new and innovative ways to deliver content to you. Here’s one example. Let’s say you like “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” on Facebook, and you also follow Tom Hanks. Using new technology, NBCUniversal could tag Tom Hanks in an appearance on tonight’s Fallon show, and he would appear in your feed based on those parameters. However, your Mom isn’t a Fallon fan, but does follow Tom Hanks. She would now see the same clip as you, given her Tom Hanks parameters. She might even laugh at the skit featuring Fallon and Hanks and choose to follow “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.” Viewer gained. This new methodology of reaching viewers within the experiences they are engaged in and presenting content relevant and timely to them at the right time will be a trend to watch.

Video – on the cornea next?

I joke with the heading, but the future of video looks (pun intended) as immersive as the previous “Minority Report” reference suggests. Today, expect to see video on your wrist, on your social feeds and pushed to corners of your life – especially those that are device driven, to grow exponentially. While we may not be able to view video via contact lens or on the cornea today, the road ahead holds promise for experiences that are both exciting and hard to predict (and visualize). I for one am keeping my eyes wide open.

Matt Smith is presently Chief Evangelist for Anvato – the leading, turnkey platform solution that enables media companies, content providers and broadcasters with a robust, powerful and complete toolset to enable their content to reach any screen, anytime.

The post On a Wall, on My Wrist – What’s Next for Video Delivery? appeared first on MediaShift.

With apologies to those who spin the proverbial yarn or sew (alas, this is not a post on sewing technique), let’s dive in and explore “stitching,” one of the key buzzwords in the streaming space in 2015.  To be honest, the term has been in the vocabulary for the past few years, but is becoming more important and relevant now. For those not familiar with the term, stitching refers to splicing and assembling more than one thing, in this case, video elements.

In today’s connected screen environment, eliminating the complexities of multi-format streaming of yesterday is crucial to delivering a world-class viewing experience.  This isn’t to say that you can’t execute well and hit every screen and every device with a hodgepodge of various formats and technologies, given that most connected devices around (and screens of all shapes and sizes) are capable of delivering one prevalent format: Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming specification, otherwise known as HLS.  The term “HLS” is a bit misleading in that it specifically calls out “live.” On-demand content is just as important, and stitching is key in VOD services. More on that in a moment.

Photo by
Markus Grossalber on Flickr and used here with Creative Commons license.

But back to stitching for real-time video. Over the past couple of years, the industry has moved away from client-side ad insertion (at the player/presentation layer) and toward the cloud and server-side dynamic ad insertion, or DAI.  There are many advantages to this.  The viewing experience mimics the linear broadcast TV ad experience, but with one key difference: advertisers can target the over-the-top streaming audience using very specific criteria.  Again, given the single format approach and the need to reach audiences at scale, designing for and deploying the most lean and capable architecture are key considerations as we prepare our needles for stitching.

I always feel like somebody’s watching me

With apologies to the ’80s singer Rockwell and without getting off on a “Big Brother” tangent, know that the devices through which we consume all this content are providing a variety of data back to the cloud and the infrastructures which deliver this content.

Device-level ad targeting criteria includes:
• Time of day
• Geo-location
• Audience frequency and control (capping)
• Travel (distance and direction)

This is one savvy cloud.  As a live event or broadcast unfolds, the media processing platform in the cloud is reading some broadcast specific signals and using those markers to manipulate the media publisher’s video content, inserting ad payload, in real-time, using the targeting criteria set by the advertiser to reach their audience with a more relevant brand message.  All this techno-speak means that you the viewer will now receive an ad much more relevant to you.  Just got off the subway in New York City, turn the corner, and see a Starbucks ad during a commercial break?  It is no coincidence that there is a Starbucks on the other side of the street, half a block up.  This is part of the promise of stitching – highly relevant ads, specific to the viewer, delivered in real time.  Advertisers are keen to reach you ‘in the moment’ when their brand is close and contextual to you as a consumer.  This is a variation from the more traditional broadcast ads on the channel, the key delineation being between individual viewer versus whole audience targeting.  True ad personalization is possible today, given these individual connections to the cloud.

Stitched another way: program replacement

Photo by
Kari on Flickr and used here with Creative Commons.

Live ad replacement isn’t exactly new and has been in practice for the past few years.   Now, as more direct-to-viewer options like HBO Now, Sling TV, and others emerge, stitching content has moved to center stage in today’s TV Everywhere world.  Why?  Business logic. Rights. Geography. Viewing and experience continuity. Let me explain.

As these new services are launched, they are still generally bound by business agreements which govern where the shows can be viewed (both by platform and location), resolution, monetization, and more.  For example, the television show Law & Order may have negotiated streaming rights with one service to be viewable in North America only on broadcast but not over-the-top on a particular network.  If said network is part of an OTT channel lineup, blacking out that one hour of the day where the broadcaster isn’t allowed to push the show out is clearly not an optimal experience. Instead, the broadcaster will want to employ a program replacement strategy with the OTT elements–in this case, replacing that hour in the schedule with an episode of a show they have negotiated the rights to stream, in real time. As a result, we have stitched new content for the user.  In fact, complex business logic may dictate that viewers in different time zones tuning to the OTT output may get a different replacement episode.  This is possible and can be achieved today, and again falls into that category of stitching.  There are sports applications, too.  If you’re watching a baseball game in one town, get on a plane, and try to pull that stream up again, you may be greeted by a message that says that you are out of market and not permitted to view the game.  With the stitch in place, perhaps the network would offer you yesterday’s game spun up and replaced in real time as an alternative.

More where that came from: VOD

Lastly, but just as important and valid, is the exponentially exploding universe of on-demand, or VOD, content.  Let’s go back to our live/linear example.  A live channel that is being prepared and delivered in the moment is immediately available as an on-demand asset within seconds of the broadcast’s completion.  And to top it all: that asset is marked and prepared for immediate dynamic ad insertion because the ad pods that appeared during the live event have been delineated and are ready for individualized ad delivery when the user requests the VOD playback.  This represents some very attractive new ad inventory for a brand and their sales channel to optimize.

This all means that we’re moving well beyond the notions of years past that broadcast dollars outweighed digital pennies (later amended to dimes) and continue to create real value and significant opportunity in reaching these new and shifting audiences.  It also means that we’re gonna need more needles to stitch all this content together — a good problem to have in this exciting multi-screen world that is part of our on-the-go lives today.

Matt Smith is presently Chief Evangelist for Anvato – the leading, turnkey platform solution that enables media companies, content providers and broadcasters with a robust, powerful and complete toolset to enable their content to reach any screen, anytime.

The post Why ‘Stitching’ is Becoming Table Stakes for TV Everywhere appeared first on MediaShift.

Click the image for the full series.

2015 will be a banner year for ‘TV Everywhere’ and delivery of television to smartphones, tablets and other capable devices. Make no mistake, it will happen.

But a look back at how the landscape has evolved shows, that for the very vocal “cord cutters” (those who seek to reduce their dependence on traditional cable channel bundles) or “cord nevers” (those who propose that they will never pay for a traditional cable channel lineup), the universe of content they sought at price points of their choosing never seemed to materialize. In both cases, it seems that perception has swerved far past and missed reality.

Changing perceptions on ‘the cord’ and connection

Let’s begin this discussion by eliminating the term “cord.” Why? In reality, the cord has morphed and become not only a cord but also a wireless signal. Think about it. Across a variety of age strata, whether it be grandparents, Generation X, or millennials, the pathway through which television reaches us has changed. Those of us on the upper end of that range have been part of the cable universe and its channel offerings since its inception. Those on the younger end of this range have seen their channel offerings expand exponentially, while the screens on which they watch has rapidly grown as well.  For this latter group, it was never a question of when they would cut the cord.  For them, the cord was never to be. They are a generation of wireless watchers. Most of the content they consume has, and likely always will be, delivered via wireless means. This means that the device has become essential to most, if not all viewers.

The wireless watcher may be consuming their television through a data connection provided by a traditional wireless provider like AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, or T-Mobile (in the U.S.). Another wireless watcher may be watching their channels via tablet on a WiFi access point in his or her home, or even on the go in a coffee shop or shopping mall. You see where I’m going with the notion that the cord proposition isn’t as black and white as some positioned it to be.

Photo by Leon Lee and used here with Creative Commons license.

Ultimately, any screen that renders television (whether smartphone, tablet, or smart TV) is connected in some way. The argument isn’t whether there is or isn’t a connection, but rather how the content is delivered, packaged, and priced.

The race is on to offer content direct to consumer.

Moving to the content we consume – 2014 ended and 2015 began with direct to consumer offerings growing by the week. Everyone jumped into the proverbial pool – first it was HBO, then CBS, later AMC and others. As we turn the pages of the calendar in 2015, we will see more and more broadcasters and networks offer their wares to viewers directly. Pricing will vary, depending on the content.

So what does this mean for the aforementioned cord cutting scenario? In short, a reality check. When broadcasters make the decision to offer their content direct to the viewer, they do so in a financial model that isn’t that different from their existing cable and satellite agreements. This is where I believe a disconnect has manifested itself. The cord cutting proponents have incorrectly assumed that broadcasters would offer their direct to consumer content at lower rates per subscriber/viewer than they do with cable/satellite distribution.

Now, they are faced with a world of choice that equals compromise and a cost structure none of them expected. With these a la carte offerings popping up at an average price point of $7, picking a few channels and absorbing the cost of a data plan through which to watch them generally ends up costing as much as a lower end cable offering.

Behind the scenes at the SF Emmys, live stream powered by Anvato and BeyondPix Studios, photo courtesy of BeyondPix Studios

Change means choice – and compromise

What this may mean for viewers is even more choice in the way of mini channel bundles on cable and satellite platforms as well as channel lineups offered directly.

We’ve already seen movement on this front. Dish Network was the first entrant to this race with SlingTV. It isn’t unreasonable to expect similar offerings to pop up soon. The compromise here though will be choice and concessions on type of content offered. When SlingTV debuted, many took issue with the very limited number of channels and lack of any sports content. The service has since added more content, but sports will likely be an exception for not only SlingTV, but similar services going forward. The reason is that the major sports leagues have negotiated massive carriage rights with broadcast networks that get passed along to the cable providers, which in turn trickle down to your monthly cable bill.

CBS’ direct to consumer offering today specifically excludes most sports content. This may, however, also open the door for a direct to consumer offering from the major sports leagues in the not too distant future. Might we see a subscription service from the NFL this fall? I certainly wouldn’t bet against it. The time is right, the technology is there to make a service a reality very quickly, and one could argue the consumer is prepared to pay at the right price point.

So this all reminds us of the childhood adage many heard growing up – “be careful what you wish for.”  As I’ve mentioned, choice, offerings and consumption models will continue to change significantly over the next several months – but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the incorrect assumptions of a content universe with limitless choice at desirable price points will emerge.  In fact, it isn’t likely to happen at all.  Or at least not without compromise.

Rainbows, unicorns, channel availability and actual mileage may vary.  

Matt Smith is presently Chief Evangelist for Anvato – the leading, turnkey platform solution that enables media companies, content providers and broadcasters with a robust, powerful and complete toolset to enable their content to reach any screen, anytime.

The post How ‘Cord Cutters’ and ‘Cord Nevers’ Became ‘Cord Compromisers’ appeared first on MediaShift.

With apologies to dragon slayers, kingdom builders and bear pelt clad men who fight off all variety of creatures and invaders, a battle is being waged on every screen for your viewing consideration. TV Everywhere — a term coined by Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes in 2009 and now widely accepted as a description for streamed programming delivered to phones, tablets and devices other than your traditional television — has created this mad dash for your attention.

If you subscribe to a cable or satellite lineup of channels, then you most likely have the ability to watch those channels on the device of your choice, anywhere, anytime. This is Television 2.0.

Photo by Flickr user Tim Wilson and used here under the Creative Commons License.

Never before has the viewing audience had so much choice at their fingertips. Which screen do you use first? Which screen do you use most? Is the viewing experience the same across all screens? The answer to these questions largely breaks out by demographics. The primary screen for Grandma is going to vary a great deal than the one frequented by my 13-year-old daughter. Our viewing choices are exploding exponentially. No longer does one need a broadcast network or a television transmitter to reach an audience.

But everyone values you as a viewer, and they just want you to consume their content in any way possible.

New platforms, same television

Television is the same — it’s just the media have merged and the “available on any screen” mentality is breaking down paradigms around content and programming. Entertainment programming that may have cost millions of dollars to produce and is traditionally watched by someone on a 65-inch screen may be considered “bor-ring” by a millennial on a 5.7-inch screen. Conversely, the YouTube clip of makeup application tips from Michelle Phan, who drives hundreds of thousands of views every month, will not be something the middle school soccer mom will find highly entertaining or relevant. 

This is not to say that all scripted and professionally created entertainment is going away — far from it. Grab your sword and shield — this is the battlefield for your viewing attention. Advertisers want to place their creations and wares before you too in this new viewing universe. Part of the value in advertisement in the TV Everywhere universe lies in the additional data that will drive more personalized ads. When you’re mobile (in this case, not sitting in front of the large television), advertisers will know more about you by leveraging data points that signal your viewing behavior, location, device and authentication method. This is a good thing, meaning that the ads you’re delivered will be more relevant to you — a Starbucks coupon delivered to your phone, redeemable at the location just a half a mile ahead, for example.

More flexibility than ever before

Photo by Flickr user TheeErin and reused here with Creative Commons license.

All this choice, new ways to watch and more detailed and relevant marketing shouldn’t scare you. This is simply the growth and adaptation of two mediums that we’ve come to rely on for our entertainment, information and education for many years. In fact, I would argue that for many viewers, Television 2.0 offers more flexibility and access than we’ve ever had.

No matter your primary screen or demographic, the how and where you watch the content you desire has simplified. Expect these experiences to change, adapt and improve rapidly in the years ahead. Look for the terms “TV Everywhere” and “television” to merge. Television will be the same to you, no matter the size of the screen. And the epic battle will wear on — and you will sit in the throne of your television kingdom.

Matt Smith is presently Chief Evangelist for Anvato – the leading, turnkey platform solution that enables media companies, content providers and broadcasters with a robust, powerful and complete toolset to enable their content to reach any screen, anytime.

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