Social TV and Film

A key motivation for Amazon is boosting its Prime membership rolls, which may be bolstered by a set-top box.

Streaming video has been an increasing focus for Amazon, which has been racing to distinguish itself from rivals Netflix, Hulu LLC and others with exclusive content deals and a slate of television pilots that are set to become available starting later this year.

Based on the dizzying array of free and paid apps available on Roku devices--from the Yachting Channel to YogaGlo to Trigger Talk TV for gun enthusiasts—it is easy to imagine potential e-commerce tie-ins on an Amazon device.

This week, Facebook says it will begin sending weekly reports to America’s four largest television networks, offering a glimpse of how much chatter their shows are generating on the social network. The reports will reveal how many “actions” — likes, comments, or shares — a television episode has inspired on Facebook and how many members participated in an action.

Facebook, which will not make the results generally available, will share the data reports with ABC, NBC, Fox, and CBS, and a small number of select partners.

Twitter, which has been gearing up for its initial public offering, is expected to begin to distribute the “Nielsen Twitter TV Rating,” its first measurement report in partnership with media measurement giant Nielsen, on Monday. The report will measure how many people participated in a conversation about a particular show, and how many people saw those tweets.

Nielsen says what is new here is determining “reach," the unique audience/impressions.

the entire Twitter TV audience for per episode is, on average, 50 times larger than the authors. If, for example, 2,000 people are tweeting about a program, 100,000 people are seeing those Tweets. Those 100,000 aren’t necessarily viewers of that particular TV episode.

Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings are a separate set of metrics to traditional National TV Ratings. They do not change traditional National TV Ratings. But many believe they will complement each other.

ne thing is immediately clear: There is practically no overlap between the most-tweeted shows on TV and the highest-rated shows.

Seen through a Twitter lens, the No. 1 television show for the week of Sept. 23 to 29 was AMC’s “Breaking Bad” by a mile, with 9.28 million people seeing tweets about the show’s finale — but the episode wasn’t even among the top 20 in total viewership for the period, according to Nielsen primetime ratings.

But the divergence between the top shows Americans actually watch on TV and what they talk about on Twitter illustrates that there is not a strong correlation, today, between the two mediums. Only one show, two airings of NBC’s “The Voice,” appear in both top 10 rankings.

Netflix is banking on getting on cable set-top boxes to hit aggressive growth targets in the next few years — but not every U.S. operator is eager to play ball with a company they view as a rival.

John Malone, whose Liberty Media owns a stake in Charter, has dismissed the notion that MSOs should pair up Netflix. At the company’s annual investor day this month, he said cable operators should team up to create a Netflix-like subscription VOD service, criticizing the industry for being slow to respond to over-the-top competitors.

Longer term, Netflix projects that it can be two or three times larger than HBO’s current linear base — with 60 million to 90 million subs in the U.S. Hitting those numbers would likely require pay TV deals, to reach consumers who don’t want a separate box for streaming Internet video.

“By defining the services as cable companies, they provide a path to finally change the way consumers get their television and cut the cord without losing out on key programming,” he said.

Mr. David pointed out that by classifying Aereo as a cable company the court in effect overturned a previous decision which outlawed a similar service called Ivi. Ivi delivered broadcast television over the Internet and sort to pay a minimal royalty fee for the privilege.

The court at that time said that Ivi was not a cable company. Mr. David said that FilmOn is finalizing the certification process for qualification for this fee and that the company will soon be able to provide local network TV service in the 18 cities it is active in.

SVOD providers are particularly problematic for broadcasters and their advertising partners, because they hurt ad supported television in a number of ways: Consumers with SVOD subscriptions replace time spent watching ad supported television with ad free SVOD watching With so much of online video viewing time spent watching ad free, those quality ad opportunities that are available are more expensive to buy Consumers get a decreased tolerance for advertising as they grow used to seeing content uninterrupted.

U.S. ad agencies spent 2% less on broadcast TV networks in the 4th quarter of 2014 and 16% less on national cable TV. The company also found that, if you exclude the Olympics, broadcast ad revenue would have declined 2% for the full year (it increased 4.1% when the Olympics are included.)

online originals are growing prodigiously and a good proportion of that inventory will provide advertising opportunities. For example, Alex Carloss, YouTube’s head of original programming, announced the site would be funding more original programming in the same way it did in 2012.

Apple TV could be the shot in the arm needed to finally wake up its mostly dormant advertising business iAd.

The ability to target very specific audiences. Apple has a wealth of first-party data about its customers, due to the fact that they register with their real details when they sign up for Apple ID and iTunes.

Apple should be able to tell who was served an ad and what that individual immediately went on to do afterwards: That could include checking out the advertiser's website on their iPad, or tweeting about the brand via their iPhone.