On-Demand, TV Everywhere Services Need Measurement to Monetize, Industry Experts Say

Seamless measurement methods of streaming TV need to catch up with new technology, said industry experts at a CableFax conference Tuesday in New York. Nielsen will expand its ratings system to smartphones and tablets in 2014, said Brian Fuhrer, senior vice president. The challenge with streaming across multiple platforms and TV Everywhere is monetizing the content, said cable executives. “Moving from live linear to online on-demand is a tremendous opportunity for a new layer of advertising and how we are going to track is going to be a big challenge that is going to require more collaboration,” said Fuhrer.

The demographics are changing from 10 years ago in terms of who watches TV across different platforms, said Debra Davis, Davis Communications Group CEO. The value of a baby boomer 10 years ago is not the same today, she said. Forty percent of households have DVRs, which gives people the opportunity to find new content, shows that “might have been cancelled otherwise,” said Davis. “Networks can give shows more of a chance to find an audience because of new technology.” The fragmentation of the audience allows advertisers to purchase, plan and track how their ads are working, said Becky Jones, Viamedia vice president. Making shows available online and on demand gives customers more time to watch shows, said Lisa Heimann, ABC multiplatform research vice president. “As we make more shows available on demand, customers are choosing to watch it and we are monetizing it more with dynamic ad insertion."

Developing a cookie for TV would be helpful to advertisers and networks to develop more content that viewers would be more receptive to, said Mike Lee, Roger Venture Partners general partner, in his keynote. “Cookies expose the actual value of every piece of inventory you have,” said Lee. “Between Twitter, Facebook, Google and Apple, TV is in the cross hairs and they are certainly going to be participants, maybe not distributors or suppliers, but they are part of the experience for the lifestyle of the consumer.” Lee said the TV cookie will come in the next two years and companies and third parties will be able to get data in scale. A lot of technology has to happen before a TV cookie can be used, said Viamedia’s Jones.

The Cable Privacy Act keeps the cable service operators from getting data across the platform, said Marshall Jacobowitz, Time Warner Cable research senior vice president. TWC is collecting data from set-top boxes on what its customers watch, said Jacobowitz: “Further down the road, we will have better management across our platforms. … There are changes happening in coding and there should be some interesting data coming out next month.”

The new technology will take time to quantify, said Davis. “We depend on Nielsen to get our news, and Nielsen is willing to put up with the fuss to get the numbers right.” ABC needs to get these numbers from mobile devices to monetize it, said Heimann. ABC’s app was launched in 2010 and it has half of the network’s online adoption numbers, she said. “We will always have tensions on maintaining our production quality and managing our news,” said Fuhrer. “Overall, we have found different companies and perspectives in these numbers makes the data better to find solutions.”

TV Everywhere also provides monetization challenges, said executives. TV Everywhere is challenging because it needs to be like TV, which is “always on and always there,” said Michael Bishara, Synacor vice president. “We need to make TV Everywhere an experience where the customer does not have to work too hard.” Bishara was part of the team that created the HBO Go app. Rights for programs become especially important for cable service providers to get content to their customers, said Maggie Suniewick, Comcast Cable video services vice president. Rights issues can cause confusion, and Comcast does not work like HBO, which can make every episode available on its HBO Go platform, said Suniewick. Consensus is necessary to provide programs to audiences across a variety of actors, said Ron Lamprecht, NBCUniversal sales business development executive vice president. “It depends on more than just a studio owning a show."

Events like the Olympics and March Madness can draw big crowds across TV Everywhere platforms, said Suniewick. “Sochi is going to be a great platform for us to connect with viewers,” said Lamprecht. During the London Olympics in 2012, viewers were able to watch content through NBC’s TV Everywhere app, he said. The network hopes to replicate the success of the app next year at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, he said. Cable operators are continually going up with messages to connect viewers to TV Everywhere, said Suniewick. “We had a tremendous year in overall growth in TV Everywhere and we are continually marketing in different ways to get viewers to pay attention,” said John Harran, Turner Broadcasting System multiplatform distribution vice president. “As measurement moves outside the home, monetization will depend on the rights acquired.”