Nielsen believes in addressable TV

 Even though an average person nowadays have multiple devices and more and more time is spend looking at a phone, TV remains very important channel of interaction with potential customer. Average TV watch time per day is forecasted to be 46 minutes in the US (Nielsen). Addressable TV is one of the most discussed topics in this field. Sceptics often argue that it is impossible since many households have multiple viewers each of whom needs individual approach. Moreover, they claim that it is difficult to measure the effect of this tool and that it is quite expensive. However, according to adage addressable TV has a higher CPM then traditional television.

Nielsen strongly believes in the future of addressable advertising and highly invest in this idea.  The company acquired Qterics (Smart TV software and privacy management company), Gracenote (automatic content recognition technology) in 2016, and recently Sorenson Media for $11.25mln (leading addressable TV technology). The idea is to leverage the best technologies to provide real-time optimization, deliver relevant content, and make results measurable.

With help from 007's Daniel Craig, “House of Cards” star Kevin Spacey and singer Adam Lambert, Alibaba makes China's Single Day larger than Black Friday.

In the annals of television history, China's “Tmall Double-11 Night Carnival” might go down as the watershed moment when 21st century retailing geniuses first truly fused online shopping and entertainment into one awe-inspiring juggernaut of consumerism.

More cynical types may see the star-studded, three-hour live broadcast — created by e-commerce behemoth Alibaba and featuring celebrities such as 007 actor Daniel Craig, “House of Cards” star Kevin Spacey and singer Adam Lambert — as the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it.

A combination of the Grammys, the Oscars, a game show, the Home Shopping Networkand Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve — all counting down to China's equivalent ofBlack Friday or Cyber Monday — the program was created by Alibaba to stoke interest in “Double 11,” a newfangled Chinese holiday also known as Singles Day.

The Nov. 11 event, which originated in the 1990s as a sort of anti-consumerist Valentine's Day for the singles set, has quickly become China's biggest shopping day of the year, thanks to a blitzkrieg of publicity efforts by Alibaba starting in 2009.

This year, Alibaba said total transaction volume on its Tmall.com platform alone hit $14.4 billion on Wednesday, far ahead of last year's record $9.3 billion. By comparison, U.S. retail store sales reached $9.1 billion on last year's Black Friday and about $53 billion for the entire Thanksgiving weekend, including online sales through Cyber Monday.

http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fi-alibaba-china-double-11-singles-day-shopping-20151111-story.html

Hulu’s New Player: Ad Targeting

Hulu (hulu.com) is a joint venture of Fox, ABC and NBC, initially devised as an alternative to piracy. It offers free streaming video of TV content from the 3 broadcasters, and other studios. The revenue model is supported by advertisements, usually short and few (with a sleek countdown clock, which makes the experience less annoying) Not surprisingly, viewers recall the ads they see on Hulu much better than they remember TV ones.

This week Hulu’s blog (http://blog.hulu.com/2010/05/13/pardon-our-dust/) unveiled the new player improvements, consisting of a number of technical features (such as adaptive bitrate streaming or volume normalization), a slight restyling (mainly consisting on a larger screen) and “ad tailor”, a new system for better targeted advertisement. As discussed in class, this is the ultimate objective of any online advertiser.

Hulu refers to this phenomenon in terms of relevance: every time we watch an ad we’ll be asked “was this ad relevant to you? Answer yes or no with one click, and we'll use the data to try to serve your ads about the products and services most relevant to you.” Occasionally, people will be able to choose which ad to watch, so it will be even more likely to be relevant to their interests.

Hulu represents both a success and a threat for its parent companies: audience has been drawn from both illegal P2P sites, but from broadcast TV as well. In my view, Hulu will charge for premium content in a near future. As an illustrative example, RTL (a German broadcaster), allows viewers to catch up free for recent shows but charges them for older episodes, as well as to view the latest one a couple of days before it’s aired on TV.

CBS May Be Making Online TV Even Cheaper

In a move that could spell even lower value perception by consumers for online media content, Mashable reports that CBS's Les Moonves is hinting that the price point for television programs may be lowered to $0.99 saying, "There are certain shows that will be sold on Apple for 99 cents."

The question is whether this shift, which Apple's iTunes has been pushing for, will be followed by other TV content providers. If so, as consumers shift more to watching content online and the value of commercials on traditional cable and network outlets becomes less and less, where will the money to create this content come from? And where will this democratization of content creaton lead the industry? How will we ever be able to produce such quality content such as Survivor and Fear Factor on 99 cents an episode?

Murdoch: WSJ, Other Newspapers Could Go Paperless

Internet and digital media bring a transformative life to us so quickly, even my previous boss-Rupert Murdoch, the traditional media giant, had to admit that newspapers may go Paperless.

As newspapers attempt to stave off extinction, News Corp. (NWSA: 10.41, -0.09, -0.86%) CEO Rupert Murdoch, one of the world’s biggest newspaper proponents, predicted publications like his Wall Street Journal could eventually go paperless.
“I can see the day -- and it may be 20 years away -- where you don’t actually have paper and ink and printing presses,” Murdoch said Monday morning in an interview with FOX Business's Neil Cavuto.
News Corp. is the parent of FOX Business, FOX News Channel and Journal publisher Dow Jones.
Murdoch predicted the digital age will continue to revamp news organizations, but he does not see newspapers disappearing altogether.
“People need it. It’s the source of our democracy that we have newspapers,” said Murdoch.
Murdoch said that “within 10 years I think nearly all newspapers will be delivered to you digitally either on your PC” or a device similar to Amazon.com’s (AMZN: 84.08, -1.61, -1.88%) Kindle e-reader.
“It’s going to be something that is quite mobile that you can take around with you. We are moving into a digital age and it’s going to change newspapers,” said Murdoch. Murdoch acquired the Journal and Dow Jones for $5 billion in 2007, a price well above the company's likely current value given how the downturn has impacted the newspaper industry. Still, the Journal's subscription numbers have held up better than those of many of its rivals. In a wide-ranging interview with FBN’s Neil Cavuto, Murdoch, 78, also downplayed talk of incoming No. 2 executive Chase Carey being his heir-apparent. “No, I don’t think we’re going to make any commitments on that at all. Chase is coming in to be my partner and right hand,” he said. Chase, 55, will join News Corp. on July 1 when he steps down as CEO of DirecTV (DTV: 22.77, -0.54, -2.32%), a former News Corp. business. Chase will replace longtime Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin, who is resigning. It's unclear if Chase or Murdoch's son James will eventually lead the media empire. On the economic front, Murdoch joined a chorus of business leaders who say the worst is over for the recession.

“My feeling is that we hopefully hit a bottom here where things will be pretty stable from now on. Not as good as they were a little while back. It’s going to take time to climb out of it. That’s okay,” said Murdoch, adding that his media empire is in “pretty good shape.”