Weekly Digest from the West
Jean-Baptiste Piron
Cultural Attaché I Attaché culturel I Québec Office Los Angeles
-Facebook Watch Chief Talks Early Lessons From Video Push, Unveils Three New Shows: Every original program that lands on the Facebook Watch platform should spark its own Facebook community. That’s the mantra from Ricky Van Veen, who oversees Facebook’s ambitious foray into video in his role as head of global creative strategy for the social media giant. Van Veen spoke Tuesday at the NATPE conference, detailing strategy and early lessons from Facebook’s fledging effort to become a provider of original entertainment content — or what he called “planned viewing of video.” “A show should activate a community — a psychographic or demographic or affinity group or a new community formed around a show,” Van Veen said. “The most important aspect of Watch is that social element. … There’s just so much you can do when you have content and conversation happening at scale on the same platform.” Van Veen made it clear Facebook is not rushing into the $10 million-an-episode drama series business. They’re taking a methodical and so far low-key approach to discovering the kinds of content that works best on its air. The big push into video began about four months ago, he said. But Facebook knows its limits. “We’re not going to win by competing in prestige hourlong dramas. There are many people who do that well,” he said during a Q&A with moderator Rich Greenfield of BTIG Research. “What’s going to differentiate us is that show that uses the social fabric of Facebook.”
-Amazon Fire TV becomes an interface for Live TV with select Amazon Channels: Fire TV is getting an update that will help viewers better discover live TV programming, and even be able to tune into live channels with Alexa. The voice integration builds on the recently added “On Now” row on the Fire TV homepage, where you’ll find the live streams from channels like HBO, Showtime, Starz and Cinemax, if you’re signed up through Amazon Channels. This row will display what’s currently airing on those channels, so you can tune in to the current program with either your remote, or now, your voice. To access the channel you want, you can just tell Alexa to “watch HBO,” “go to Showtime,” or “tune to Cinemax,” for example, by pressing the Alexa button on the Fire TV remote. In addition, Fire TV is rolling out a new Channel Guide that lets you browse the channels’ full lineup, starting with what’s on right now and going out two weeks. You can access this guide via the remote, as well, by pressing the Options button, or asking Alexa to “go to the Channel Guide.” Plus, the “Recent” row now captures the last “Live” channel and video on demand titles viewed, Amazon says, which makes it easier to get to your favorite content. A preview of the live channel is also presented while customers browse. The new features make Fire TV feel more like the front-end to a live TV service – an interesting change, given that Amazon reportedly cancelled its plans to launch its own “skinny bundle” of programming to rival services like Sling TV, Hulu Live TV, YouTube TV, and others.
-Roku Is Introducing an OTT Advertising Measurement Service: As TV viewing habits continue to change significantly, marketers are searching for other ways to engage with these fragmented audiences. For instance, more and more marketers are shifting a large chunk of their advertising budget to over-the-top, or OTT, services which draw a growing number of viewers away from traditional TV, particularly those from the younger demos advertisers covet. But the marketers who are moving a significant amount of their ad spend to OTT want help quantifying how effective their ad campaigns are and a way to validate results. And that’s where streaming TV company Roku comes in. Today, the company is introducing a new measurement suite called Roku Ad Insights that lets brands and agencies measure how effective their marketing is on OTT in four ways. There’s a Reach Insights tool, which marketers can use to quantify their ad campaigns by demo across linear TV, desktop and mobile. Tune-In Insights lets TV networks and media owners measure the effectiveness of ads and the viewership lift they provide by demo across the Roku platform, linear TV, desktop and mobile. Cord-Cutter Insights provide information to marketers about cord cutters, the people who don’t have pay TV, to ensure their campaigns reach this ever-growing segment of the entertainment-consuming population. And there’s Survey Insights, which allows marketers to gather feedback quickly on how effective the ads actually are among Roku’s audience. This is done via a live on-screen survey marketers can use to learn what viewers are thinking in real time, as opposed to having to contact them later or using an off-device method.
https://www.adweek.com/tv-video/roku-is-introducing-an-ott-advertising-measurement-service/
-LA Seed Deals outperform national averages — Q4 2017 LA Seed Deal Report: We’re excited to share the most recent update of our LA Seed Report, encompassing all seed funding to LA companies in Q4. As a part of this update, we’ll also explore some of the top-level trends we saw over the course of 2017. In total, 84 LA companies raised $892mm in Q4, with seed stage activity accounting for 36% of deal volume and $67.2mm in funding. This makes LA the fourth most-funded region nationally, by both deals and dollars. Across all stages, LA experienced a decline in deal volume and total funding, but at the seed stage, we noted an uptick in both. Below are a few key trends from the quarter:
? Media & Entertainment remained the most-funded category. For the second quarter this year, entertainment deals took the top spot. Historically, this has been a strong category in LA, and this quarter continued the trend with 6 companies bringing in $14.6mm in funding.
? Average seed deal size remained stable at $2.24mm. Nationally, average seed deal size rose to a two-year high of $2mm. LA averages consistently beat the national figures each quarter this year, with an average of $2.3mm for 2017 as a whole.
? We saw a slight increase in number of seed deals in LA this quarter, with 30 LA companies raising rounds in Q4. Nationally, seed funding as a share of total deal activity declined to 22%, well below LA’s 36% for the quarter.
-Disney Hires Apple Veteran to Launch Its Netflix Killer: Disney’s BAMTech Media has hired former Apple and Samsung executive Kevin Swint as SVP and GM, Disney SVOD Service, to build, and ultimately run, the company’s upcoming Netflix competitor, Variety has learned. Swint joined this month, and will be reporting to BAMTech CEO Michael Paull, a BAMTech spokesperson confirmed. Most recently, Swint worked as VP product / content & services for Samsung, where he built out the company’s Milk Music streaming service as well as Milk Video, a mobile video aggregation service. Before that, he worked for five years at Apple, heading the worldwide iTunes movie business. Earlier in his career, Swint led digital products and services for Walmart. Disney announced last summer that it plans to launch an ESPN-branded direct-to-consumer offering early this year, followed by a Disney-branded service in 2019. To power the service, Disney acquired a large stake in the streaming solutions provider BAMTech for $1.58 billion last year. Disney had previously owned a smaller stake in BAMTech, and now holds the majority ownership.
https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/disney-svod-service-kevin-swint-hire-1202669637/
-Intel Opens Los Angeles Studio for Volumetric VR/AR Video Productions: Intel wants to help Hollywood embrace the next generation of immersive media: The chip maker officially announced the opening of a Los Angeles-based studio space dedicated to the production of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and other types of cutting-edge content at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas Monday. The new facility, aptly named Intel Studios, features the world’s largest stage for volumetric video capture. At the center of it is a 10,000 square-feet dome designed to capture actors and objects in volumetric 3D, essentially producing high-end holographic content for VR, AR and the likes. “We have created a new state-of-the-art production studio for immersive media,” Intel Studios director Diego Prilusky recently told Variety. Designing and building out the space took some 18 months. “It was a very long process of research and development,” he said. Aside from the actual stage, this also involved setting up a complete production facility capable of handling all of that raw video captured by the studio’s many cameras. The captured data travels through some five miles of fiber cables to be processed by a whole army of Intel-powered servers, at the rate of 6 terabytes a minute.
https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/intel-studios-los-angeles-volumetric-video-capture-1202656079/
-Everything is connected, and there’s no going back: My mother likes to tell me that I went to my first tech trade show in a stroller, and that she and my father were inspired to get a VCR that day. The VCR, for nearly two decades, was the prototypical gadget of tech trade shows. Not only did it make previously inaccessible tech accessible, but it justified the existence of such conventions. Do tech trade shows even matter anymore? Attendees grouse now, since so many hardware makers hold their own launch events throughout the year. No, but also yes: every so often, that VCR-like product is there, the one that introduces a new, disruptive format that everybody makes a big deal about. But if the VCR was revealed last week at CES, it would have to be a much smarter VCR. It would have to be connected, with a compatible app. It would be a part of some company’s broader Internet of Things strategy. An upgraded model would respond to voice commands. Eventually, it would be hacked. Everything is connected now, and there’s no going back. That’s the sense I got, anyway, roaming the floor at CES — not just this year but for the past few years. There are connected light switches, refrigerators, bathroom mirrors, mattress pads, meat thermometers, pet food bowls, toothbrushes, hairbrushes, skin scanners, sports goggles, turntables, diapers, shoes, so many put-this-thing-on-your-body-and-send-us-the-data wearables. There are, of course, smart speakers. TVs are no longer just displays, and they haven’t been for some time. They’re internet-connected portals to streaming media and advertising platforms. Cars are now computers. Some of these connected products absolutely make sense. A home security camera is nothing if it doesn’t send you a video feed of what you need to see. Connected medical devices can also be useful, like when they’re helping to track flu outbreaks. As Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi wrote to me via email, “A connected meds dispenser that alerts your doctor when you forget to take your life-saving pill, or can see if you overdose because it knows how many pills you took, is a good example of connected tech.” Some products don’t really benefit from a Bluetooth chip and an app, though. Milanesi also observed that a smart pet scoop that tells other family members whether the pet has been fed is only “solving” our own laziness or communication issues.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/17/16898728/ces-2018-tech-trade-shows-gadgets-iot