Fix / newTV — October Twenty One
First, some news on my work — I am excited to announce that Benedict and I are doing something together;
A fireside chat with Benedict Evans and Simon Andrews: Tech, commerce and discovery
Benedict has spent a lot of time looking at the ways that ecommerce, brands, TV and discovery are being destabilised, and I have been doing much the same but with different and overlapping perspective, coming from the world of advertising. As we go into a winter lock-down, we thought it would be interesting to do a ‘fire-side chat’ on Zoom — all the cards are being thrown up in the air, across TV, brands, retail, footfall and advertising. What can we know?
We plan to limit the audience to just 20 people and the recording will only be available to attendees. We want to curate the best mix and by filling in this form your name goes in the hat. Tickets are $500 and we will invoice you once your place is confirmed.
It should be fun — come and join us.
Sports
Interest in sports from GAFA continues with Amazon making the running. I mentioned last week they had acquitted some Champions Leagues rights in Italy — see the reprise below) and they are to stream their first NFL play off game in January. With major contracts up fro renewal in 2021 and 20122 expect to see more GAFA activity.
Whilst NFL ratings have held up quite well, the NBA TV audiences have been disappointing — especially as the bubble etc has worked really well. The off peak scheduling didn’t help, nor did the competition from other sports like the NFL. But on social the story was different — good numbers and the Lakers report selling lots of championship merch. There is something around age here — on TV the audiences are old;
The big question is whether the young audiences just prefer other channels or are they moving to consuming sports in clips rather than complete games? Clearly there is a huge opportunity for social sports content — a DAZN partnership with TikTok in Germany around football, as the latest example.
https://www.ft.com/content/fd9c10b8-6a70-11e8-b6eb-4acfcfb08c11
The COVID crisis is affecting all sports — particularly the lack of live spectators — but the availability of all Premier League games on PPV will be interesting learning for the big clubs who sense they could do better selling their own games, rather than sharing in the Premier League deal.
Film
Two of the building blocks of the film industry have been demolished in the last few months. The 70 day window, where movies were only available in cinema, has shrunk to 17 — at least with Universal and AMC, but we think that will be widely adopted. And the decades old rule preventing studios from owning cinemas has gone too.
So with Cinema chains reeling from the chicken and egg of a lack of audiences and a lack of films, will we see some new deals? AMC — which has kept cinemas open partly because their deal with Universal gives them a share of streaming revenues — thinks it may run out of cash by the year end. It’s market cap is now $340m — is that a good deal for someone like Amazon? This story has been rumoured before and it makes some sense. They could use theatres and Prime to build audience for their content They could use the locations as last mile delivery hubs — with a grocery store for the pick and mix and popcorn. Cheap tickets for Prime members. And they might even sell some ads.
It’s another topic but can the UK industry afford 2 sales houses for cinema ads? Digital Cinema Media is funded (equally?) by Cineworld and Vue. Pearl & Dean are owned by an investment company — and they were sold once (by STV in 2010) for £1. Can both keep going? And without their dedicated sales force do cinema ads drop off the agency agenda? I think we will see one firm consolidate this — could be a neat addition for Global?
There are a few movies around — independent films are doing really well in the vacuum caused by the lack of blockbusters. And this makes the good point that Tenet needs a streaming release soon so we can see the other part of that equation — how big will Tenet be?
Amazon still have the cash to spend — they have bought the rights to the Eddie Murphy sequel Coming 2 America for $125m — and others.
Data
An NBC report on their own cross platform audience is interesting reading — with this chart showing how much viewing is now time shifted. Full report here.
The holy grail for the ad industry is reliable, reputable data across TV and digital. The next phase of the Nielsen measurement expansion will cover both YouTube and YouTubeTV — from next year.
CTV Ads
Fix Friend Dave Morgan makes the good point that CTV is largely ad free so the share of viewing is not matched by inventory. Add into that the need to deal with numerous vendors and it’s a headache. Plus there is the issue of fraud.
A good opinion piece wonders if the networks may outsource their ad sales? If you think about the success of the TradeDesk in CTV you may argue this is happening. And I am convinced that Amazon see this as a big part of their future. As they accumulate inventory through their carriage deals, the Amazon DMP and their best in class attribution should make them the prime contender (sorry). Joe Marchese sums up the opportunity;
Disney
The neatness of the Disney reorg to focus on streaming, just days after their activist investor called for a rethink and more spend on streaming content may have led people to overestimate the change. One analys put it well- these changes are
It’s also unclear what the reorg means for Hulu. The global expansion was pulled earlier this year — when Disney realised they would need to share profits with Comcast — and the global play is now Star. But what are the plans for that? The Earnings session on Dec 10 will be interesting.
Samsung
In a good interview with Digiday the head of SamsungAds talks about their aim is to be as frictionless as possible when working with buyers;
That is explored more in this talk with SamsungAds, Seat and PHD. Here the Seat client explains how they used Samsung Ads;
..so on the one hand, this means that we are using new targeting possibilities for video campaigns on smart TVs, and on the other hand, this means that we’re using ad campaigns like you presented earlier, running on the home screen of smart TVs leading to a micro page. So for instance for our recent campaign, which was the launch of the new Seat Leon, we created an ad campaign, showing the classic TV spot leading directly to our micro page, which was even presenting more content and information for the consumer. So, this gives the audience the possibility to get more information without actually changing to another device or to a second screen.
Click here to watch the full session
Plus+
Katzenberg May Shut Down Quibi as Options Run Short. Think I got this one wrong. My thesis was Katzenberg would be able to get great content from his network. Given it appears he cannot sell what he did get, that would seem not to be true.
The New Frontier in Content Commerce: Platform-Driven TV Gala Shows — good learning from China on how big TV shows can help commerce
The Roku Channel Launches On Amazon,
ITV restructure reflects changing viewing habits two new business units — Broadcast and On-Demand.
How Netflix reinvented its marketing on social media
Sky signals new move into shops
Audio’s Opportunity and Who Will Capture It — long essay by Matthew Ball but an essential read
Reprise — New TV Fix/Friday — October 16
The re-org announced by Disney appears to pivot them to a full focus on streaming — and answer the criticism from their new activist shareholder. Some think it’s less profound than this. But it seems that streaming isn’t always the perfect solution — some data shows that whilst Hamilton was effective in driving subscriptions, Mulan wasn’t. But priced at $30 PPV, Mulan made about $150m. So not too bad.
But not enough to stop a number of films being pushed back to 2021 although Disney do plan to launch the next Pixar movie Soul on Christmas Day. As part of the standard subscription. That’s a big deal.
The new Stratechery analysis of Disney is a must read.
One of the smart things Disney did was to drop the free trial on Disney+ — announcing this just before Hamilton launched so, if you wanted to see it, you paid. Netflix have quietly dropped their free trial in the US but their Watch Free service continues as a sampling exercise — just with older content. Wall Street analysts continue to enthuse about Netflix — with a new target price of $650, valuing the firm at $286bn — $50bn more than its current market cap. They also suggest that AT&T may screw up HBO as a competitor.
Amazon keep investing in Sports rights — now a deal in Italy to show the mid week Champions League games
Reprise — New TV Fix/Friday — October 9
In this weeks Deep Dive on new TV we looked at the battle between cinema and streaming. I took the view that if Disney is holding back on its major movies until next year, the business case for a streaming launch was not made by the experiments with Hamilton, Artemis Fowl or Mulan.
The FT have been looking at the same issue and this is a good take — essentially the studios have hung the cinemas out to dry. Rumours of the studios buying the cinema chains persist
“If Disney bought AMC, there’s no reason why they could not show The Mandalorian 2 in theatres on opening weekend, and then start streaming it after, and they would make so much money,”
Amazon was rumoured to be considering the acquisition of AMC (who own the Odeon chain) but why buy distressed assets like debt laden cinema chains now — better to wait and buy them debt free after a bankruptcy.
An activist investor in Disney is bullish on streaming and wants Disney to axe the dividend and double the streaming budget. Their math;
But whatever content you have on your platform you depend on a number of gatekeepers making it available to their customers. The big players here are Amazon and Roku and we keep covering their strong arm tactics to get ad inventory to sell in return for distribution. We covered the new Chromecast and this good Digiday article looks at their aggressive strategy to build their newTV business. They make the good point that the rise of Google makes it harder for Amazon and Roku to hold out against HBO for example
(Sign up for the email edition — and the mid week deep dives — here & are we connected on LinkedIn and on Twitter?)
