Leading the second round of investment were Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) Ventures and Innovacom, along with participation from prior investors Creandum and Northzone; and takes the total amount of funding in the company to almost $18 million.
Videoplaza says that it will be using the investment to help fund its international growth and product development. Those two areas appear to be running fast at the moment anyway: the company says that its client base already spreads across 17 markets, and in the past year its ad serving volumes grew five-fold. Some of its clients include the publisher Dennis, French commercial broadcaster M6 and Spanish newspaper group La Vanguardia and the France-Telecom-owned interactive ad network Unanimis, and it partners with other established names in the business, like Brightcove, to help monetize their video ad traffic.
Videoplaza’s target is to tap into some of the $160 billion that is estimated to be spent on TV advertising annually at the moment, and following those ad budgets as media buyers try to chase down viewers as they start watch more and more of that TV content on an ever-growing variety of screens, from IP-enabled TVs to smartphones, tablets, cars and desktop computers—and who knows what else. Videoplaza projects that by 2020 there will be more than 10 billion connected devices in consumers’ hands that could be used for consuming streamed video.
It is not the only one: companies like YuMe, spotXchange, BrightRoll (a Videoplaza partner), Hulu, CBS (NYSE: CBS) and many, many others are also scrambling for substantial market share in this space. It’s still a fast-growing area, with the amount of ad-funded, streamed video content still very much on the rise—both in terms of volumes and consumption—but there is bound to be some consolidation on the cards among these ad players, too.
A stake from a company like Qualcomm—which plays a central role in making processors and other parts and software for mobile devices—could potentially give Videoplaza a leg up in that respect. At the moment the vast majority of video ad consumption for Videoplaza is still coming from PCs: only eight percent came from other devices. But the company believes that by 2013 (that is, in a year) that will shift to a 50-50 balance.
]]>Silicon.com was launched in 1998 by Rob Lewis, the serial entrepreneur who went on to found Business & Technology magazine, Omnifone and streaming site Rara.com, and the site was a must-read through much of the noughties.
Lewis sold Silicon.com to CBS Interactive, the owner of digital assets Last.fm, CNET, GameSpot and ZDNet, in 2002.
CBS Interactive took the decision to fold Silicon.com into the new TechRepublic UK, which competes against The Register and Computerworld, to keep the “best bits”.
The launch of the new TechRepublic UK site is scheduled for 1 February with Silicon.com editor Steve Ranger set to take the helm.
The US version of TechRepublic attracts 400,000 unique users per month in the UK.
CBS has also promoted Geoff Inns to the head of its UK interactive division. Inns has worked at CBS Interactive since 2002, prior to that he worked at German startup Questico and was head of business development for guardian.co.uk.
Current head of CBS Interactive UK, Jill Orr, has been promoted to an new role focusing on the international digital business.
]]>Polar also today released some numbers that attests to the growth of the apps economy—and to its own business. It says that it currently works with some 380 media brands in 12 countries. It has served 1.6 billion page views for some 11 million users to-date across the many apps that it has produced.
The $6 million round was led by Georgian Partners and takes the total invested in the company to $9 million, with the previous $3 million coming from private investors.
Georgian, which based in Toronto like Polar, has a portfolio that includes another app developer, Kony Solutions, as well as a number of other platform-based B2B digital media startups. (Two others include Shopify and Terapeak, which are used by retail e-commerce companies.)
Meanwhile, the new product line, branded MediaEverywhere, effectively does what it says on the label: it is HTML-5 based and is aimed at letting publishers make apps that can get used on different platforms and devices—not just mobiles and tablets but also desktop computers, and not just native apps but web browsers, too.
Working across different platforms is a trend we’ve seem among other app developers—but given the client line-up that Polar already has, this is a significant sign of how that kind of strategic view is taking shape among publishers investing in apps. Research from GfK last year showed that some 11 percent of magazine views are now digital-only—a number that is on the rise, with publishers all making sure that they will be along for the ride.
It’s worth pointing out that Polar already offered a degree of cross-platform development before today: its SmartTM product lets content be formatted for iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, PlayBook, Windows Phone and Nokia’s Symbian platform; however now web apps are being added into the mix.
Kunal Gupta, the CEO of Polar, tells paidContent that is has some publishers already on the platform but is not announcing any client names just yet.
Some publishers—notably the FT—are buying up/bringing in-house their third-party developers in order to have a better grip on how they develop their apps, and to make sure that they continue to have an edge on their competitors. That presents an interesting challenge for a third-party company like Polar: will it, too, eventually get swallowed up by one of its customers, or will it find it hard in the longer term to attract business from the big-name publishers who will continue to invest in having that expertise in-house?
Gupta tells paidContent that the company is more than happy to stay independent for now.
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]]>As CEO of CNET Networks, Ashe helped engineer the sale of the tech media company to CBS with impeccable timing—selling in mid-2008 for $1.8 billion ahead of the market shift. He spent six years at CNET, including the last two as CEO while the public company was under tremendous pressure. He managed the integration into CBS Interactive, sticking through his original commitment to CBS CEO Leslie Moonves into what he called “an operating job.”
This new job promises a mix as Walmart pushes ahead with what CEO Mike Duke calls “a long-term vision to win.” Walmart has yet to achieve the kind of success with digital content that some think it should have. His background at CNET and CBS could be a major plus.
Working for Walmart (the job is effective immediately) marks the first time Ashe has been on the retail side but his last two jobs included international aspects, something Walmart played up in the late Monday announcement.
He joined the board of LivingSocial during his break, so is familiar with the volatile daily deal space. LivingSocial’s investors include e-tailer Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN), among Walmart’s largest online competitors.
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As a Time (NYSE: TWX) Warner-owned cable conglomerate, Turner usually fashions these reports to highlight the precipitous migration of viewers from broadcast networks like Fox (NSDQ: NWS), CBS (NYSE: CBS), ABC (NYSE: DIS) and NBC (NSDQ: CMCSA) to cable networks like TNT and TBS. (This kind of data spin comes in handy when you’re trying to change perceptions on Madison Avenue, and get the same amount of dollars for your commercials as the big broadcasters get.)
However, Turner’s research also sometimes highlights other interesting viewing trends. According to the report, the average number of hours a typical viewer spent watching TV in 2011 was 34.2 (I know, who are these people, and where do they get the time?). The figure was 34.0 hours in 2010 and 32.3 hours in 2006. This despite the rise of on-demand services like Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX), HBO Go and Hulu, and the emergence of new devices to watch that content on, from tablets to gaming consoles.
Other findings:
—While live viewing has slowly been declining over the last five years – down from an average of 32 hours a week in 2006 to 31.7 hours in 2011—time-shifted viewing has risen from just 0.4 hours five years ago to 2.5 hours last year.
—Since 2006, average weekly viewership of the Big Four broadcast networks has slipped from 9.4 hours per week to 7.8 hours, while ad-supported cable watching has increased from an average of 15.6 hours per week five years ago to 17 hours last year.
—Viewership of “other” programming—premium cable channels, Spanish language networks, etc.—increased from an average of 7.4 weekly hours to 9.3 hours over the five-year span.
Over 45 percent of TV viewers used digital video recorders last year, up from 24 percent in 2007, Turner reports. DVR viewing is having a particularly profound influence on cable ratings.
USA Network caper drama Covert Affairs, for example, drew, on average, 61 percent of its total “Live+ 7” audience from time-shifted viewing in the seven days after it aired.
Turner, meanwhile, noted that usage of its content through its various Turner Digital online destinations – which includes everything from the Cartoon Network to CNN—was up 9 percent last year to 93 million unique users, according to comScore.
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]]>FilmOn says it will be offering the content in partnership with XOS Digital, a company that provides digital asset management services to college sports organizations. It already offers its own sports on-demand service, XOS Sports, in which it offers paid rentals and full downloads of college games.
FilmOn’s channels, already live, offer viewers live games as well as archived fixtures. Users also have the option of recording programs to watch later either over TV, Internet or mobile devices using iOS or Android apps, or to subscribe to HD versions of the channels for a monthly fee. FilmOn offers a combination of free channels and those that require a subscription to watch.
It’s not clear just how extensive FilmOn’s coverage of NCAA fixtures will be—will it include the championships and all divisions?—or how FilmOn’s services work in conjunction with other rights deals between the NCAA and other media outlets: ESPN (NYSE: DIS), for example, extended its rights for NCAA Basketball in the U.S. and internationally earlier this month. That deal included both broadcast and streaming rights.
We have contacted FilmOn for further clarification and will update this post as we learn more.
At the very least, the equal content offering seems to be something that FilmOn is trying to exploit for its own marketing purposes: “We are going head to head with the industry’s top sports programmers,” the company’s outspoken founder Alki David boasts in the news release announcing the deal.
Frankfurt-based, UK/Beverly Hills-operated FilmOn has steadily been building up its catalog of premium sports content: earlier this year the company launched an international soccer channel with the UK Premiership and the Football Association, which will kick off (pun!) with football games from the Russian Premier League.
Last year, it came under some controversy when it was accused by the four major broadcasters in the U.S. of violating copyright by showing their programs. It was served at the time with a temporary restraining order. It then fought back against CBS and CNET with suits of its own (later dropped “put on hold” until November, David tells us.)
The stories, by Examiner.com writers local to those markets, will focus on “Best Of” guides and “Top Spots” lists. The content will appear on a few CBS Local sites this month and spread to all of them in the first quarter of 2012.
CBS launched its first Local Digital Media site in New York City in August 2010 and says it now has 33 million unique monthly visitors across its 25 sites. The sites serve as the homepages for CBS TV and radio stations and already provide editorial content. (The picture at left is from the CBS New York Holiday Vertical.)
Examiner.com has 85,000 writers and is owned by the Denver-based Clarity Digital Media.
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]]>Positioning it as the “next big step” for music, Spotify is opening up its platform to include apps from other companies, which will provide music reviews and news from the likes of Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, as well as internet radio from Last.fm.
Rolling Stone founder and publisher Jann Wenner went onstage next to herald the pop culture magazine’s integration into Spotify. Essentially, Rolling Stone’s app within Spotify will help provide recommendations as well as playlists.
(Rolling Stone and Pitchfork already have set up playlists, but it’s nothing more than what users can currently do themselves. Still, it was not immediately clear how this official Rolling Stone app would be more robust than what it currently offers.)
Earlier, Ek noted all the requests for features that Spotify gets, such as “DJ mode” for playing songs, lyrics to what’s being listened to, and accessing concert tickets and related info. Those features will now be supplied by app partners Last.fm, Tunewiki and Songkick, respectively.
One of the most polarizing things about Spotify’s integration with Facebook is the automatic sharing of what’s being listened to at a given moment. Users will now be able to segment out their “real” friends, whose musical tastes correspond more closely.
All the apps will be available to users of the basic, free Spotify version as well the paid subscribers.
So what’s the value to app developers and partners who appear on Spotify? Right now, it’s the promotional aspect of being able to reach Spotify’s 10 million active users.
“These are early days and we’re still trying to figure this out,” Ek said.
“Right now, there is no monetization model for the apps on Spotify’s platform [in terms of revenue sharing]. However, they can attract users, who want to buy concert tickets, as in the case of Songkick.”
Original post: After 20 minutes of serving truffled quail eggs, mini bagels with smoked salmon and other assorted amuse bouches, Ek took the stage at Spotify’s much-hyped New York press conference with a history of the CD in 1981. “Do you know what artist had the first CD? It was Abba, which like me, is from Sweden.”
He then went through Napster and iTunes. “Only 500 million are listening online. You need a better product than piracy. Fast and easy to share. it’s all about access. That’s why the CD is so ubiquitous: it works everywhere. Secondly, we want to ensure that artists get paid and continue to make great music.”
“We’re adding 20,000 new tracks a day and currently have 15 million songs—literally a lifetime worth of music,” Ek said. “We’ve become the second biggest revenue source for European record labels and have paid $150 million so far. Sweden was the land of music piracy. 33 percent of the Swedish population listens to Spotify—since that time, piracy has declined 25 percent.”
Since launching in the U.S. this fall, the company has 10 million active users, with 2.5 million paying subscribers. There have been 7 million users added since September, when it began linking up with Facebook as an app on the social network.
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]]>Aspiro—the Swedish music streaming service that is not Spotify—today announced that it had signed a deal with a “new partner” in one of the Benelux countries. Aspiro doesn’t say who the customer is but from its past track record for customers it may be an ISP or a mobile operator. Under the terms of the agreement the partner will sell Aspiro’s streaming service, called WiMP, under a new brand name. Aspiro says that agreement will give it a revenue bump to the tune of 8 million-30 million Swedish Kronor ($1.2 million-$4.6 million) over the next four years.
It says the new service is expected to launch in the next three to six months.
The white-label route is one that we may start to see increasingly from Aspiro as it looks to expand its customer base and subscriber footprint. Currently, it has only one other agreement of the kind, in Portugal. “Although launching WiMP-branded directly to consumers is our main strategy, we are also flexible towards partners who want to use their own branding. This agreement could generate a substantial growth for us,” the CEO of Aspiro, Gunnar Sellæg, said in the company’s statement.
At the end of October, Aspiro announced that it was selling a 6.5 percent stake in the company to Norwegian music and entertainment retailer Platekompaniet for SEK 16 million ($2.5 million).
As of June, WiMP had some 300,000 paying users in Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Portugal, in addition to another 700,000 via an agreement with Norway’s Canal Digital, whose subscribers can opt for WiMP to be bundled into their pay-TV subscription packages.
The route of offering music services via a local ISP is one that is being tested by Virgin Media with its Spotify deal in the UK. Other partnerships of this kind have seen a lot of success: TDC in Denmark has been offering a music streaming and downloading service, TDC Play, since 2008 in partnership with the company 24/7, and in June it said it had seen 340 million downloads on the service (but no details about actual subscribers).
Aspiro is due to present its interim report for Q3 on November 10, when it might give out more up-to-date details on subscriber numbers and the new customer.
Meanwhile, the music download company 7digital has launched an app optimized for Android tablets—with perhaps the most unique feature being an enhanced graphic interface for browsing new and downloaded music.
The move is part of 7digital’s wider strategy to offer its service via more of its own-branded apps, which it is doing on top of the many deals it has in place to power music download services for a range of companies that include handset makers like Samsung and online music providers like Last.fm.
7digital in September noted 500,000 installs of its Android handset app and 600,000 downloads of its BlackBerry app. It has not said, however, how many music downloads have been made via those apps.
]]>Lanzone arrived at CBS Interactive in March, when the network acquired his startup Clicker, which defined itself as a “TV Guide” for online video.
Clicker is at its heart a search engine, and with most people satisfied with what Google offers, why did Lanzone see a need for such a site?
“TV was moving online, and there was tremendous growth in the number of original online videos being created and distributed,” Lanzone said. “But unlike TV, online video wasn’t about when they were on, but where. My sense was that the remote control of the future was a search engine, and it needed to be a highly structured one around video choices.”
Lanzone ended up selling it to CBS 14 months after creating it. In terms of moving himself and Clicker to CBS, he said, “I’m a product guy and I love the opportunity to run websites.”
CBS already had its own site for discovering videos, TV.com. Lanzone talked about greater integration between Clicker and TV.com. “TV.com, when it was created in 2008, historically was the leading community site to talk about TV information,” Lanzone said. “Then it became a place to watch video, but it wasn’t clearly defined. That’s changing.”
While TV.com brings outside shows and clips under the CBS Audience Network umbrella, CBS.com is the main hub for the broadcaster’s programming. And Lanzone said that the network still doesn’t see a need to see that mimic anywhere else. “We do not believe in competing against ourselves,” he said. “But we’re not closed off either. Not only do we post videos on CBS.com, it’s the modern equivalent of Channel 2 on the web. We do a lot of syndication through the CBS Audience Network. But we’re not going to be acquiring other people’s shows.”
In terms of Hulu, online video viewers in Tokyo can watch older CBS shows thanks to a deal that was struck two months ago. Lanzone gave no indication that a similar deal for the U.S. was in the works. “Our strategy is to own, operate and monetize ourselves,” he said, “and I think (CBS Corp. CEO) Les Moonves has been very smart about that.”
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]]>Hulu Plus will be the only subscription service with in-season episodes; the five most recent shows will be available the day after broadcast. Ad-supported Hulu.com will have the five most recent shows eight days after air. But it’s not a full exclusive—the deal still allows for access via authentication by cable operators and CW will stream episodes on its own cwtv.com before they show up on Hulu.com.
Unlike the Netlfix deal, which focuses on scripted programming, Hulu will get America’s Next Top Model. Other shows include rookies Ringer, Hart of Dixie and The Secret Circle and veterans The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural, Nikita, 90210 and America’s Next Top Model.
CBS resisted invitations by original Hulu partners NBC (NSDQ: CMCSA) and Fox (NSDQ: NWS) to be an equity partner in the online video portal—ABC (NYSE: DIS) joined later—and only recently made a deal for library movies and TV shows to go to Hulu Japan.
More to come.
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]]>In addition to Sears, whose blog post this summer was merely a provocative way of saying that the SSP model was evolving into a fuller ad exchange operations service, Rubicon has hired CBS (NYSE: CBS) Interactive’s Jeremy Fain as , VP, Client Services, and Grant Sterling, formerly platform manager at NBC (NSDQ: CMCSA) Universal, as account director. All three will be based in Santa Monica company’s New York offices.
The need for executives who can reach out to publishers and understand their concerns about the RTB—many premium publishers half-jokingly refer to it as “race to the bottom”—is increasingly important to companies in the SSP space. Earlier this month, PubMatic hired former Time Inc. (NYSE: TWX) digital exec Kirk McDonald as the SSP’s first president.
In joining Rubicon from ContextWeb (it’s recently rebranded as PulsePoint), Sears says that the opportunities are much bigger than just optimizing publishers’ yields on their online ad sales. “Whether the ad network, agency trading desk or demand-side platform uses their own bidder or the Rubicon bidder via the company’s REVV for demand interface, digital ad buyers can easily access more than 4 billion impressions every day from 450 high-quality publishers,” Sears said in a statement. “Access to the platform provides buyers scale and quality that is unmatched in the market, with some 20 percent of comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) 500 leading digital properties, including Time Inc., NBC Universal, News Corporation (NSDQ: NWS) and CareerBuilder using REVV.”
Right now, about 10- to 15 percent of the roughly $30 billion being spent for online advertising is going through ad exchanges. Publishers fear that as more agencies and marketers funnel media buying dollars through ad exchanges, there will be increased “channel conflict”—that advertisers will simply aim for automated “audience buying” instead of relying on direct sales from publishers, who have been traditional focal point for reaching consumers.
The idea is that if publishers have more control over the exchange process, they’ll be naturally more willing to place their premium inventory on those bidding platforms, said Fain an interview with paidContent. Fain had run CBS Interactive’s network-wide audience targeting operations. That understanding of publishers’ needs from the inside is viewed as key to encouraging content companies to continue to open more of their inventory to exchanges.
The fairly recent introduction of “private marketplaces,” which put a variety of controls and options in publishers’ hands, has helped unlock some of that ad space. But for the most part, publishers feel they have little choice to to participate in bidding environments. Fain’s job will be to convince his former peers that exchanges can work for them and not reduce the value of their direct sales.
“Private marketplaces are a good option for publishers, because it allows them to access ad exchange dollars that they wouldn’t otherwise get,” Fain said. “In a sense, it’s really an extension of direct sales, and part of the challenge is coming up with improved ways of giving publishers right kinds of controls to make exchanges work for them.”
Related
]]>» Does Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) CEO Tim Cook Also Want To Destroy Android? (paidContent)
» Steve Jobs To Biographer: ‘I’m Going To Destroy Android’ (paidContent)
» WikiLeaks suspends publishing to fight financial blockade (The Guardian)
» We Now Return You to Our Previously Scheduled iPhone Estimates (AllThingsD)
» 37% of Android Apps Removed Since Launch (MediaPost)
» The Media Equation: Bonuses Worthy of Protest for Gannett (NYSE: GCI) and Tribune Executives (NYT/David Carr)
]]>» Does Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) CEO Tim Cook Also Want To Destroy Android? (paidContent)
» Steve Jobs To Biographer: ‘I’m Going To Destroy Android’ (paidContent)
» WikiLeaks suspends publishing to fight financial blockade (The Guardian)
» We Now Return You to Our Previously Scheduled iPhone Estimates (AllThingsD)
» 37% of Android Apps Removed Since Launch (MediaPost)
» The Media Equation: Bonuses Worthy of Protest for Gannett (NYSE: GCI) and Tribune Executives (NYT/David Carr)
» How Roku Plans to Own the Digital Living Room (Digiday)
» Traffic to newspaper websites increases 20 percent in past year (NAA/press release)
» Agency says HuffPo story payout sets precedent (Press Gazette)
» Hinton Faces Questions Over Two News Corp. (NSDQ: NWS) Scandals at Hearing (Bloomberg)
» Video: ‘60 Minutes’ On Steve Jobs (paidContent)
]]>Yes, we’ve been hearing tidbits for days but the two-part Steve Kroft interview with Issacson is worth a look—and a listen, given that it includes audio from some of Issacson’s 40-plus interviews with the cofounder of Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). We’ve embedded the interview below, as well as a web extra of Jobs talking about Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and more.
]]>Yes, we’ve been hearing tidbits for days but the two-part Steve Kroft interview with Issacson is worth a look—and a listen, given that it includes audio from some of Issacson’s 40-plus interviews with the cofounder of Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). We’ve embedded the interview below, as well as a web extra of Jobs talking about Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page and more.
Some viewers outside the U.S. may have problems seeing the embedded videos. Try the links below each video instead.
Direct link to Part 1 on YouTube.
Direct link to Part 2 on YouTube.
No alternative link available yet.
Related
]]>Current-season shows will hit Netflix when the following season starts so don’t look for Ringer or Hart of Dixie until next fall. But past seasons of The Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill and Nikita start Saturday, Oct. 15, with Supernatural and 90210 to follow in early 2012.
It’s a boost for Netflix, which is still struggling to shake off the after effects of a major price increase for half its customers and the ill-fated effort to spin DVDs into a new service called Qwikster. The network gets some 700 hours of youth-oriented programming to stream and vampire bragging rights.
For both CBS and Time Warner, it’s a master stroke in terms of The CW and their respective licensing strategies.
For CBS, it’s another dollop of vindication for being the only major broadcast network to stay away from Hulu (it has a library deal now with Hulu Japan) and avoiding deep online access for its shows—a strategy that is paying off as CEO Leslie Moonves and company slice and dice in the increasingly competitive streaming video area.
Time Warner has been patient about major deals. CEO Jeff Bewkes evangelized TV Everywhere but that didn’t mean TV immediately or that all deals would be the same. In this case, he told the NYT, Netflix made sense as a location for heavily serialized shows that might not fare well in syndication.”
As for CW, Moonves told the LA Times this one deal “essentially makes the CW a profitable enterprise.” From now through the deal, CW and its studio owners will be able to count on Netflix revenue that increases the value of the network through guaranteed payments for online access to its scripted dramas.
About that $1 billion figure that I’ve been told is right by multiple sources and too high by another: the answer is both. The full potential value is based on a number of variables that all have to be hit, much like an acquisition with a conditional earnout. The LAT says Netflix is paying in the neighborhood of $600,000 an episode for Gossip Girl with a varying scale for other shows.
More details in the release.
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]]>According to an article in Bloomberg, Pandora already attracts more listeners in big cities like New York and Los Angeles the cities’ biggest radio stations, but even so, analysts do not think that the service will be profitable until 2014.
Pandora today runs a streaming service that lets users listen to listener-generated radio stations, which it offers on a free, unlimited basis with ads running alongside the service. It competes most closely with the likes of Last.fm and is unlike services like Spotify, Rhapsody, Mog and Rdio, which offer users the ability to listen to specific music on-demand, and features subscription tiers starting at around $10/month that give users extra features, such as ad-free listening, mobile access and offline listening.
Although Pandora also works via PCs, the fact that it gets so much of its traffic from mobile platforms means that this is the area that the company will need to look at more closely if investors are not happy with those profitability prospects. And it seems as if they are not: increased competition from Spotify and the others, combined with the short-term profit issues, have shaved 16 percent off the company’s stock since it went public in June of this year.
Pandora hasn’t said it will pivot its service, but you do have to wonder if that could be on the cards. Mobile advertising, which looks like the most obvious revenue generator today, is definitely growing, but possibly not fast enough, and not in the formats that Pandora uses on its site, which range from display ads and video spots, to short audio clips, aimed at both local and national advertisers.
Mobile ads are forecast to generate revenues of $3.3 billion this year worldwide, according to Gartner. And depending on whether you trust Gartner or eMarketer’s figures more, the U.S. alone will bring in either $701.7 million or $1.23 billion. But with a large portions of that advertising coming in the form of search and maps revenues (great news for Google), as well as the old-fashioned format of messaging (that is, apps coming via SMS or picture messages) that doesn’t leave much to share among the many apps and mobile web sites looking for revenues from display and rich-media formats like video and audio clips.
According to Morgan Stanley, Pandora currently gets $20 in mobile advertising for each hour of music provided to listeners, and it will not offset music licensing fees with mobile advertising until 2016, when each hour of mobile music will generate $40, compared to the $23 in licensing fees it will get at that time, a rise of 35 percent on today’s rates. When the company filed its IPO it disclosed that half its revenues get eaten up by copyright royalties on music.
Pandora currently has 23 million active users and Morgan Stanley believes that this base could reach 159 million by 2021. If the company continues with its existing business model for the next decade, the analysts believe that Pandora will be listening to the service for an average of 18 hours per month by 2021, compared to 13 hours in 2010.
But even that raises another issue: whether Pandora can scale up its sales staff to meet that growth.
“It’s really tough to grow our sales organization 125 percent year-over-year,” noted CFO Steve Cakebread, speaking at an investor conference in September.
Although Pandora first debuted with an international service several years ago, it shuttered its international operation over music royalty issues and seems to have put those plans on ice for now.
“This is the most intractable problem of all,” Pandora’s CEO said in March. “It might be there’s simply no chasm bigger than the fundamentally global nature of the internet, and copyright which is still terribly parochial. We’ll be tripping over that, potentially not just for years to come but for decades to come. I wish I could say something more hopeful on that topic.”
Related
]]>» Steve Jobs Departs a World He Helped Transform (BusinessWeek)
» Steve Jobs, 1955 – 2011 (Wired)
» On Steve Jobs (The Atlantic)
» Steve Jobs: 1955-2011 (The New Yorker)
» Steve Jobs Was Always Kind To Me (Or, Regrets of An Asshole) (The Wirecutter)
» The Steve Jobs I Knew (AllThingsD, Walt Mossberg)
» Steve Jobs Is Dead (Gizmodo)
» The Tao of Steve (GigaOm)
Steve Wozniak said he will always remember Jobs’ “very quick mind… and being almost always right… when you should implement a new technology, or when you should be a follower.” (BBC video)
» Steve Jobs: a man of contradiction and genius (Guardian)
» My Neighbor, Steve Jobs (PaloAltoPatch)
» Stevie Wonder sings Steve Jobs’ praises for iOS accessibility (The Next Web)
As Steve said: ” Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. It’s better to be a pirate than to join the Navy.”—Sara Öhrvall, R&D, Bonnier.
“For those of us lucky enough to get to work with Steve, it’s been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.”—Bill Gates.
“Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) II was the first PC you could bring home, open up the packaging like an Xmas gift, use a color screen & play music-He did this in 1977.”—Rob Wiesenthal, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Corporation of America Executive Vice President, Sony Entertainment.
“Grateful for his innovation and inspiration. Learned to program on an Apple IIe and now I’m using his company’s tools to start a new company.”—Anthony Soohoo, former SVP & GM, Entertainment & Lifestyle at CBS Interactive; (NYSE: CBS) currently founder and CEO of mobile startup Strongerlabs.
“Steve Jobs moved industries, companies, and most importantly, people. His thoughtful stubbornness and insanely high standards have inspired and will continue to inspire entrepreneurs, leaders, and innovators the world over.”—Jason Kilar, CEO, Hulu.
“Thank you Steve. You were a true inspiration in so many parts of my life, both personal and professional. My hat off to our time’s Da Vinci.”—Daniel Ek, CEO and founder of Spotify.
“Steve Jobs was a visionary who showed us that a passion for design and a reputation for excellence is a winning combination that can change the world. Qualities that we highly value at Condé Nast. His legacy is the millions he inspired, the industries he reinvented, and a future made brighter from his invaluable contributions. It is an end to an era. Our sympathies go out to his family and all of our friends at Apple.”—Bob Sauerberg, president, Condé Nast
“Great appreciation for pioneers like #SteveJobs & @BillGates & lucky to have front-row seat to witness leadership of global transformation.”—Jeff Raikes, CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
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]]>MobiTV has been around since 1999—well before the wave of smartphone and tablet-focused video entertainment from players ranging from Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) and Hulu, to Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). Starting out as a real-time TV streaming service for mobile handsets, it now offers VOD as well, and streams its services to smartphones, tablets, PCs and connected TVs.
Unlike Netflix, Hulu and the rest, MobiTV’s main business has been powering other companies’ mobile TV services. Current customers include all four major carriers in the U.S.—Verizon, AT&T (NYSE: T), Sprint (NYSE: S) and T-Mobile, and it licenses content from major broadcasters including Disney (NYSE: DIS) and affiliated companies like ABC and ESPN; CBS (NYSE: CBS), Fox (NSDQ: NWS), MTV Networks (NYSE: VIA) and NBC (NSDQ: CMCSA).
It may have a lot of partners potentially covering millions of users, but MobiTV has never given out any numbers on exactly how many people are using and paying for its services. It does note the volume of content going over its network: it currently delivers more than 220 channels, including over 75 live channels, and in 2010 delivered over 3,000 live events. Total mobile minutes streamed in 2010 was 1.4 billion, compared to 264 million minutes in 2007.
Revenues have steadily grown at the company. It made $37 million in the first six months of 2010, versus $31.5 million for H1 2010.
Risks and clouds. Although MobiTV’s revenues have been rising—and there has definitely been more attention on cloud-based video services of late—it has yet to make a profit as a company. Net losses are declining, but slowly: in the first half of 2011, MobiTV reported a net loss of $8 million, compared to $9.3 million in the first half of 2010.
The company says in its S-1 that it currently relies on three customers for most of its revenue: AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile. “We depend on our key customers, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile, for the substantial majority of our revenue. Sprint represented 56%, 69% and 54% of our revenue in 2008, 2009 and 2010, respectively,” it writes in the S-1 filing.
It also has preemptively combined the business it gets from AT&T and T-Mobile, which, combined, represented 24 percent, 17 percent and 24 percent of our revenue in 2008, 2009 and 2010, respectively, and 42 percent of revenue in the six months ended June 30, 2011.
Those big deals, though, look significantly less secure in the future—whether or not may depend on how many subscribers are actually using the service.
MobiTV notes that in September 2012, the terms of its deal with Sprint converts to a month to month basis. The T-Mobile agreement will automatically renew in December 2011 for a one-year term, but T-Mobile can cancel with a 30 days notice. The AT&T agreement expires in January 2013.
Given the emphasis on these three customers, it says, “If we are unable to renew our agreements with these customers on favorable terms, or at all, or if any of these customers were to terminate our agreement for any reason, our revenue would decline and our operating results and financial condition would be harmed. If any one of these Tier 1 customers chose not to continue to use our services, or limited its use of our services, or if it replaced our services with a service provided by another company or by the customer itself, it would be difficult or impossible for us to replace that revenue because there are a limited number of such Tier 1 customers.”
With that in mind, it’s no wonder that MobiTV is looking to diversify its activities with more operators abroad, as well as new products and potential acquisitions of adjacent companies.
Below is an interview we did with the CEO of MobiTV, Charlie Nooney, earlier this year on all things mobile television, in which he hints of the kinds of expansion that he hopes to do with the funds raised in an IPO.
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]]>Hulu Japan launches with programming from CBS (NYSE: CBS), NBCUniversal (NSDQ: CMCSA) International Television Distribution, Sony (NYSE: SNE) Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox (NSDQ: NWS), The Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS) Company (Japan) featuring content from Disney/ABC Television Group and The Walt Disney Studios, and Warner Bros. (NYSE: TWX) Disney, Fox and NBCU are equity owners in the online video portal.
But the launch version doesn’t offer Japanese programming. Hulu promises to rapidly add more programming, including Japanese-produced content and content from across Asia.
In the launch announcement, Hulu said it has an exclusive mobile marketing partnership NTT Docomo, Japan’s largest mobile carrier, but promised that Hulu Japan subscribers “will be able to use Hulu on any mobile carrier or internet service provider on supported devices” without a long-term contract or subscription commitment.
But there are some device gaps at the start, notably Sony PlayStation 3, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) Xbox 360 and Blu-Ray players. The only connected TVs at launch are Panasonic Vieras; Sony Bravia is “coming soon” along with Blu-Ray players from Panasonic and Sony.
In the U.S., Hulu.com is free while the subscription service is known as “Hulu Plus.” Each is ad supported. Hulu calls its service “first of its kind” for Japan but also wanted it to stand out among the many entertainment options. Hulu Japan is more like streaming video rival Netflix (NSDQ: NFLX) than Hulu U.S. in one respect: TV shows are previous seasons, not current. The slate of current and library shows includes the CSIs, 24, Bones, Criminal Minds, Desperate Housewives, Fringe, Grey’s Anatomy, and NCIS. The first month is free.
International head Johannes Larcher explained some of Hulu’s reasoning and its plans on the company blog:
As we’ve done in the U.S., we will rapidly and continually add content to the service. The content lineup will only become more robust over time, including the addition of Japanese-produced content and content from across the Asian region in the near term.
We are equally proud of the user experience that the Hulu team has built for Japanese entertainment fans. We are offering an intuitive and fully localized product available in both Japanese and English, with many of the popular Hulu features from the U.S. incorporated into the experience.
As for expansion, writes Larcher:
We are committed to the success of our efforts in Japan and future international markets. Hulu in Japan is 100% owned and operated, and our growing Japan team has been hard at work building and inventing in our new Tokyo office. We are in Japan for the long term, and excited to continue building our product for Japanese consumers.
As we celebrate the launch of Hulu in Japan, we are conscious that this is just the first of more markets outside of the U.S. for Hulu. We hope that you will stay tuned for more news regarding our journey around the world.
The long-anticipated international expansion comes as Hulu collects bids for a potential sale. While speculation mounted in the U.S. over the possible suitors, believed to include Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG), among others, the Hulu team led by CEO Jason Kilar was in Tokyo to launch Hulu Japan. While the move could make Hulu more attractive by showing its potential, it’s also a major investment that will take time to pay off.
Hulu’s running a different pattern from competitor Netflix, which started its expansion by going north to Canada and goes south to Latin America this fall. The next stops are expected to be Spain and the UK in early 2012. Netflix is using the same template as it has for streaming in the U.S. at a cost that is very similar $8-$10 a month.
The emphasis on streaming and the international push for that side of its business led to a change in pricing that starts today as Netflix splits its DVD and streaming, requiring users to pay for each separately rather than a less expensive combined package. Meanwhile, Amazon’s Lovefilm is looking at ways to expand its own streaming service. So far, the only head-to-head competition is in the U.S., with Netlfix, Hulu Plus and Amazon Instant Prime; the latter is included in a $79 annual site membership with shipping benefits, not marketed as a monthly service. Hulu Plus is the only one with current primetime programming.
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