Viacom boss: Online audience uncounted
Viacom’s president and CEO agrees with Hulu: Measurements of online video audiences are off. By a lot.
Noting that “you get paid on measurement,” Philippe Dauman charged that streaming-video tracking done by online ratings services are “extremely inaccurate.”
“What we see internally is very different than what the measuring services have,” Dauman said, making the same points as Hulu executives did in their leaked complaint email to Nielsen. Viacom also uses Nielsen for its streaming video properties, such as fare from Paramount, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and MTV.
Dauman made the comments during his Q&A session Wednesday at the Sanford C. Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference. The majority of the talk focusing on streaming video, to no one’s surprise.
Dauman, among the most savvy of the old-media chieftains when it comes to online video, is on board when it comes to the multiplatform digital universe, at least in theory:
“We’re agnostic about how people view our content as long as we get paid for it,” he said, envisioning a time when TV and video releases were day-and-date across all platforms.
“Consumers certainly want to have access to content on different devices,” Dauman said. “We have to adapt to that world.
“We on the content side have to work with the distribution community to make that happen (but) it’s not going to happen overnight. … It’s not a lightswitch moment.”
Far from hurting broadcast television, he said, online appears to be strengthening it.
“When we have a hit, our online presence actually builds the show. It draws in fans, it gets them more committed to the show. It increases the intensity of the relationship. And, importantly, we can monetize our video and online presence very well.
“We are getting more viewers than we ever had on our shows. When we get strong ratings … we get a tremendous number of views online. … Our programming skews very highly, both online and VOD.
“As we go forward, we’ll be able to modify that better (with new ad models).”
He said establishing appropriate price points for ads and premium online video fare was especially difficult now because skewing from the sick economy.
Keeping network affiliates happy and in the loop is an important part of online development, Dauman said. “We manage content so it’s not cannibalistic. We’re very conscious of this because of our affiliate relationships. Broadcasters until now have not had to be very conscious of (online).
“We’re very careful how we window our product.” He said a “very robust” premium product for distributors and customers was doing well in beta.
On the seamy side of video downloads, he noted that “peer-to-peer networks are still a problem. The studios have to be vigilant.”
Dauman cited the pirated version of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” that appeared online before the film’s debut. (And, incredibly, was the source for a gushing review by a Fox TV movie critic, now an ex-Fox TV movie critic.)
Viacom is working closely with online distributors, he said, because the practice of P2P piracy “is a bandwidth hog.”
Overseas, he said, countries with local film industries tended to be good allies in the piracy fight — such as India, France and Sweden. “Piracy has always been an issue in our business.”
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Watch Instantly, on Windows Media Center
Those TV shoppers who just can’t bring themselves to pay good money for Apple’s good products will be pleased to know that Netflix’s streaming videos are coming to the Windows Media Center.
Only catch is, users have to be running Windows Vista Home Premium or Ultimate. You basic Vista won’t cut it … another reason to regret that operating system. Also out in the cold are the XP diehards and downgraders.
Netflix and Microsoft previously partnered on Xbox 360 delivery of “Watch Instantly” streams, available to the game console’s Live Gold subscribers.
“We’re building on our broader vision to alleviate the need to jump from Web site to Web site to find TV shows, movies, sports and news,” Microsoft said in today’s freshly cooked canned statement. “With Windows Media Center, (viewers) can now find it in one place.”
The Windows Media Center elite must also have a basic or better subscription to Netflix. The streaming catalog of 12,000-some (mostly dated) movies and TV shows comes at no additional cost. Microsoft’s Silverlight video platform will do the heavy lifting.
Home Premium runs about $60 more than Basic, while Ultimate adds another $120 or so to the tab. Microsoft, meanwhile, is ready to trash Vista with a highly anticipated OS, Windows 7.
WMC added a sports channel in March with content from CBS and Fox.
Update: Silicon Valley Insider looks at the Netflix deal from the Apple perspective. The post notes that “Netflix support makes the Xbox 360 a more attractive movie machine than Apple’s sad Apple TV. … And it makes Windows Media Center more attractive than Apple’s “Front Row media center software.” The dagger gets slipped in thusly: “Apple admits its home entertainment business is a ‘hobby.’ But right now, maybe ‘joke’ is a better word.
Meanwhile, live streaming site Mogulus has redubbed itself Livestream, reflecting its function rather than, uh, some futuristic executive whose bit was left on the cutting room floor in “The Matrix.”
Max Haot, Livestream CEO and co-founder, lets slip this bit of promo-talk:
Livestream is doing for live video streaming what YouTube did for on-demand video clips. While we didn’t invent live streaming, we’re removing the barriers — making live video production and streaming easy and affordable for anybody to use and experience. … Live video streaming is well positioned to become a key force moving us toward richer, more immersive content experiences and communication.”
Hulu steamed over Nielsen’s numbers
Hulu lost 1.5 million viewers in April, but streamed 25 million more videos than it did in March. Total video streams increased a whopping 490% year over year. Or … maybe not.
In email messages obtained by the New York Times, Hulu executives have been busy this week complaining to Nielsen about April’s reported loss of unique viewers, down from 7.4 million in March. “Uniques,” of course, is the stat that matters most to advertisers and the media these days.
ComScore, a competitor to Nielsen’s online ratings, reports Hulu’s total audience much higher, at 42 million for March — a spread of 34 million or so compared with Nielsen’s number for that month. (None of the ratings services have direct access to Hulu’s server reports, so one way or another, they’re all estimates.)
The Times weighs in on the mess:
The wildly divergent numbers demonstrate the nascency of the market for online-video measurement. It’s “still the wild, wild West,” said Rob Davis, a leader of the interactive video practice at OgilvyInteractive. … “Industrywide, we need to solve this.”
Meanwhile, Nielsen found some good news for Hulu, as it must:
Streaming-video consumers in the moneyed 35-to-49 demographic hiked their time spent on the site by 154% in the past six months, making it the top demo in viewing hours — an average of almost 7 hours. The 18-24 demo came in second in time spent, while the 25-34 group placed third.
Nielsen Online’s Jon Gibs does a spin drive-by: “Despite what many believe, it is not the young, tech-savvy, early-adopters who are attracted to long-form video. In fact, we see that it is the older crowd, viewers 35-plus, who gravitate toward long-form video, with sites like Hulu acting as a perfect example of this.”
Nielsen said Hulu’s total streams (online videos engaged by viewers) grew from 63.2 million in April 2008 to 373.3 million in April 2009 — some sort of land-speed record.
Hulu ranks second on both Nielsen and comScore’s key charts for online video, far behind Google’s YouTube.
Hulu’s uniques hit a high in February, the month in which the video service announced that its bad self had arrived with this snarky Super Bowl ad featuring Alec Baldwin.
Hulu power trio: ABC, Fox, NBC
The Walt Disney Company is taking a 28 percent share of Hulu, meaning that three of the Big Four television networks are about to become partners in the influential and popular streaming video site.
ABC hits such as “Dancing With the Stars,” “Lost” and “Desperate Housewives” are headed for Hulu, reinforcing the site’s ad-supported fare from NBC Universal (NBC) and News Corp. (Fox). Disney owns ABC. Some Disney Channel shows will be shared with Hulu, but not its cash cows “Hannah Montana” and the “High School Musical” spinoffs.
ABC shows currently stream for free on abc.com, some in HD. That site does not appear in the top 10 online video rankings. Hulu will be the first free site to carry ABC shows. The deal also brings the alphabet network’s content to Hulu’s network of partner web sites such as AOL.
As part of the deal, ABC is giving Hulu $25 million in network ad tradeouts, the New York Times reports.
NBC Universal and News Corp. re-upped for another two years on Hulu as part of the new structure.
CBS, the lone wolf at this point, issued a statement saying it preferred to distribute its own shows on the Net. Its shows appear on several outside video sites.
“CBS has long employed open, non-exclusive content partnerships (allowing us to) control our distribution, sales and profit,” the company said Thursday. “Controlling our own rights for that content — in all media — preserves its value in a multi-platform business system.”
Talks for Disney to go exclusively with revenue-hungry YouTube fell apart over owner Google’s refusal to offer an equity stake in its video site, the Times said. YouTube could only manage a watery deal with Disney that brings clips from ESPN and ABC to the user-generated-content giant. Analysts say YouTube will have to come up with equity or big-time payments to woo premium-content providers.
Another company no doubt watching the developments with interest is Apple, which sells ABC episodes on its iTunes Store. Apple chieftain Steve Jobs is a major Disney shareholder. (MacWorld ponders the Disney-Hulu impact on iTunes.)
Google put out a statement Thursday bragging that “the average YouTube viewer spends nearly 150 minutes a month watching videos on YouTube,” and that the Disney-Hulu deal was good for the online video industry.
Regardless, the new Hulu most likely will swamp YouTube’s aspirations of becoming a premium content player, at least for the next two years.
Hulu is third in market share behind YouTube and Fox, soon to be a distant second. Viewer time spent on Hulu has been increasing impressively.
Meanwhile, Sony’s Crackle video site trumpeted the addition of dozens of guy-friendly movies such as “Spiderman 2,” “Stripes,” “Groundhog Day” and a heaping pile of Japanese “Godzilla” movies.
“These are the movies that matter for guys 18-34,” said Eric Berger of Sony Pictures Television’s digital unit. Crackle also rolled out Cinemactive, an interactive trivia game. Sony Pictures also has embraced trivia games in its Blu-ray BD Live features.
Crackle’s movie page features a scroll of “Assassins and Ass-Kickers,” leaving no doubt that Sony Classics fare won’t be coming soon.
