09/30/19: Cynopsis Media Tech Update

Tesla released a software update that enables owners to connect to Netflix, YouTube and Hulu accounts to watch streaming entertainment on the dash display while in their (parked!) cars. The feature is part of Tesla software version 10.0.

YouTube Music will come installed on new devices launching with Android 10 and Android 9, including the Pixel series, Google announced on Friday. Music listeners with new Android 10 devices can access Google Play Music by downloading it from the Play Store and logging in to their accounts.

Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren on Friday proposed the reinstatement of the Office of Technology Assessment, a group established in the 1970s and dissolved in the 1990s. Referencing last year’s hearing with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Warren noted, “Even Senators well-versed in social media struggled to ask about difficult concepts like end-to-end encryption, location tracking, and the competitive landscape of Silicon Valley. When Congress decides whether it should break up big tech companies, our representatives shouldn’t have to rely on Google’s policy team to understand the effects of technology consolidation.” Warren’s proposal follows other efforts over the past months by members of Congress to have the OTA reinstated.

NCC Media changed its name to Ampersand. The advanced advertising joint venture from Comcast, Charter and Cox, announced the news at the Advertising Week Conference in New York, while also unveiling new features and services for its ad platform. Ampersand said it has unified aggregated viewership data insights across the Charter, Comcast and Cox combined footprint of nearly 40 million households to support the design of audience-based planning and buying for the TV marketplace. The move allows marketers to plan, buy and optimize their TV investments against desire audience segments.

Videa, an online buying and selling marketplace for automated TV advertising, announced the availability of free, transparent, TIP-based API specifications for programmatic transactions and software integrations. “Videa strongly believes in a platform agnostic future and is proud to help lead the industry by delivering an open source option for other solution providers that will ultimately make it easier for dollars to flow through to local TV,” said Shereta Williams, President of Videa. “We worked with Sinclair Broadcast Group and innovator Imagine Communications on the first proof of concept that will ultimately help deliver operational efficiencies and transparency that accelerate the broader industry to move forward at a far quicker pace.”

SSIMWAVE, provider of viewer-centric video quality evaluation, is offering cable system operators the availability of SSIMPLUS Single-Ended HDMI-Out monitoring. The new product place-shifts end point analysis to the farthest reaches of the network, simplifying field monitoring by providing objective measurement of the video quality subscribers see. “By leveraging the AI capabilities of SSIMPLUS at the very last point in the delivery chain, operators can gain valuable new functionality: real-time, automated visibility into actual video quality that can inform business and operational decisions and can impact customer satisfaction and ROI,” said Dr. Abdul Rehman, CEO and Co-founder of SSIMWAVE.

Google is not obligated under EU law to require search engines to censor results worldwide, ruled the Court of Justice of the European Union on Tuesday. A “right to be forgotten” rune was created in 2014, calling for search engines to remove embarrassing information about Europeans at their request, in the name of privacy. Google argued that no country should have the ability to censor the internet internationally. 

Live global streaming and on-demand audio service TuneIn is teaming with Apple to offer listeners access to TuneIn’s 100,000+ global radio stations on all Siri-enabled devices and Apple Music. The collaboration comes on the heels of Apple’s release of iOS13, which introduced a new radio experience to Apple devices, including iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, AirPods, CarPlay and HomePod.

India’s ZEE5 announced its partnership with video technology provider Kaltura for the deployment of the Kaltura TV Platform Player, which provides ZEE5 with Quality of Experience, while supporting over 8,000 devices. The Kaltura TV Platform Player also includes native support of advertising insertion and measurement.

The Authors Guild is supporting seven book publishers behind a copyright lawsuit against Amazon Audible’s Captions, a feature that would let people read along while listening to books. “Authors and their agents will bear the loss of a valuable right and revenue stream, along with a loss of control of their work, if Audible is permitted to proceed with its Captions feature,” said the guild in a proposed friend-of-the-court brief filed Monday with a U.S. District Court judge. Audible contends Captions would help listeners comprehend and focus on what they’re reading.

Comcast Company’s FreeWheel released its Q2 Video Marketplace Report, analyzing the changing dynamics of how advertisers, publishers and distributors are utilizing ad supported premium video. Key takeaways: For the second quarter, ad completion rates on full-episode and live content in the U.S. remained extremely high, between 87% and 98% for both pre-roll and mid-roll. And video ad views grew 27% year-over-year, driven in large part by connected TV (up 48%). One of the major themes of the report is the role of industry partnerships and increased interoperability. “The value of premium video is now well established and the industry is focused on finding ways to drive scale, sophistication and simplicity by connecting together multiple exiting platforms,” said David Dworin, who heads FreeWheel’s Advisory Services Team and was one of the lead authors of the report. “With this focus, we expect audience targeted campaigns, which increased 82% this quarter, almost four-times as fast as the industry, to continue to grow at pace.”  

Verizon Media unveiled brand new AR capabilities for Moments, a premium, full-screen native format that drives consumer relevance and engagement through commerce, utility and content. Macy’s signed on as a user. With the new features, advertisers can allow people to interact with, evaluate and test multiple products in a 3D environment via smartphone camera and screen.

MEASUREMENT

Simulmedia and mobile attribution platform Kochava are partnering to leverage Simulmedia’s predictive daily insights into TV viewership and Kochava’s mobile data analytics and tools, to give marketers a precise view of their target users’ viewing habits by accessing their Kochava dashboard. “The Simulmedia/Kochava partnership will make a big difference for digital native direct-to-consumer marketers, the fastest growing segment of TV advertisers,” Simulmedia CEO and Founder, Dave Morgan, tells Cynopsis. “For the first time, D2C marketers can basically push a button and activate automated TV ad campaigns targeted and delivered across the top 100 TV networks optimized to cost-effectively reach targeted customer types that they identify in their mobile app analytics. This will enable the marketers to marry the best of digital analytics and TV ad platform automation.”

Roku has partnered with Innovid on a new analytics solution to measure daily demographic reach and frequency on TV campaigns run across the Roku platform and linear TV. The product combines OTT and linear TV occurrence, while identifying data from Roku’s 30.5 million active accounts with Innovid’s OTT ad serving footprint across over 75 million households.

STREAMING

After exponential growth in adoption of streaming between 2010 to 2016, the share of adult TV viewers who stream at least some of their TV content has plateaued for the past three years at around 65%, according to Horowitz Research. What is still growing among the 2 in 3 adult Americans who stream, however, is a growing reliance on streamed content. According to Horowitz’s report, “Focus OTT & SVOD 2019,” the share of streamers who stream more than half of their TV content viewing has risen from 57% in 2018 to 66% in 2019.

Overall, streamers spend 57% of their viewing time streaming, compared to 39% on traditional TV. As for the future, “The streaming environment will become increasingly cumbersome to navigate – and more expensive – with media companies like Disney and NBC launching their own streaming apps and removing their content from Netflix and other platforms,” said Adriana Waterston, Horowitz’s SVP of Insights and Strategy. “We keep hearing from consumers that they wish there were a service they could subscribe to, to pay one price to access all the content they want and have it organized all in one place, but that they can watch anytime, anywhere, on any screen. In a sense, consumers want an MVPD service, but with the convenience, control, portability, flexibility, and value for the money they get with streaming.”