Look beyond Over The Top (OTT)

Non-linear programming has witnessed a tremendous rise in the past couple of years. It is not too long in the future when we will witness its convergence with linear. Users, eager for relevant content with the flexibility of viewing it as per their convenience on their preferred device, are gradually pushing away the current trend of passive viewership.The demand for non-linear programming will soon diminish the broadcaster’s power to push the content based on their assumption of what the viewer wants.

Spotlight

Mythical Entertainment

Mythical is an entertainment company, lifestyle brand, and creative collective made up of passionate people brought together by their love of comedy, camaraderie, and the do-it-yourself, direct-to-fan approach to content. Its thousands of popular videos have been viewed nearly 5 billion times across the Internet. Mythical was founded by comedic duo and life-long best friends Rhett & Link, who lead the company in every endeavor.

OTHER ARTICLES
Technologies, Virtualization

Netflix versus Amazon Prime Video – depth versus breadth

Article | August 2, 2022

The first half of 2021 has been a year of continued change and disruption for subscription video. The global incumbent subscription video on demand (SVOD) leaders, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, have been busy signalling to the financial markets how they intend to entrench their market dominance in light of the ongoing market acquisition pushes unleashed by the D2C disruptors following the D2C ‘big bang’ moment of Q4 2019 – Q2 2021. Netflix announced in January that it was no longer going to borrow on the financial markets to fund its day-to-day operations – specifically for its content acquisition budget, which is now driven predominately by commissioning original content for its service. This leaves the SVOD leader with $14.9 billion of outstanding long-term debt to service as it seeks to live within its means by commissioning future content from its ongoing cashflow. In Q1 2021 alone Netflix spent $500 million on servicing this debt pile versus $1.7 billion in net income generated over the same period.

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Business

UGC vs. Premium: Is the video valuation bubble big enough to burst?

Article | July 11, 2022

The market disconnect between the proliferation of independent content creators and the consolidation of brand IP into the hands of ever-fewer major players is growing increasingly stark. On the one hand, independent artists are the fastest-growing sector of the music market. User-generated content (UGC) has proved a huge success during lockdown for the likes of TikTok and Roblox. The traditional brand celebrity spokesperson has ceded ground to the influencer, and even they to the micro-influencer. Content proliferation has driven increasingly niche content to niche audiences, finding smaller fan bases to resonate with instead of attempting the now nigh-impossible cut-through to mainstream popularity. This is the paradox of small: the long tail accounts for a growing share of content consumption, but the fractional economics of on-demand environments means that those in the long tail earn too little to be economically sustainable. Access to the means of distribution may have been democratised, but access to meaningful rights income has not.

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Technologies, Business

VR Headsets of the Future Might Be Made With Mirrors?

Article | July 20, 2022

Do you get headaches or feel nauseous while using VR headsets? About 20% of people do. Even if VR headsets don’t cause you physical discomfort, you might feel that your virtual worlds seem flat..That’s because they are flat. VR headsets using close-to-eye displays rely on lenses. While a lot of cool technology goes into them, they really work a lot like television or computer screens. Advancements like eye-tracking and autofocus try to fix these problems. But, they’ll never work. At least not according to Doug Magyari. Magyari and Immy, his company based in Troy, Michigan, believe that they have the solution: VR headsets that don’t use lenses.

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Media and Broadcasting

The productisation of music rights

Article | June 4, 2021

News that New York-based Pershing Square Tontine Holdings is planning to acquire 10% of UMGis the latest in a wave of financial transactions in the music rights space. Alongside this, Believe’s impending IPO has the potential to be one of the biggest things to happen to the independent music sector in some time, and comes as part of a wave of IPOs (e.g.WMG,UMG), SPACs (e.g.Anghami,Reservoir) and no end of catalogue funds and acquisition vehicles. This trend, with good cause, has been referred to as the ‘financialisation of music’ but that only captures part of what is at play here. This is more than simply an influx of capital and debt; financial institutions are now becoming part of the plumbing of the music business, and in turn they are changing the definition of what constitutes success. This shift in objectives and desired outcomes has the potential to rebalance how the music industry operates.

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Spotlight

Mythical Entertainment

Mythical is an entertainment company, lifestyle brand, and creative collective made up of passionate people brought together by their love of comedy, camaraderie, and the do-it-yourself, direct-to-fan approach to content. Its thousands of popular videos have been viewed nearly 5 billion times across the Internet. Mythical was founded by comedic duo and life-long best friends Rhett & Link, who lead the company in every endeavor.

Related News

Business

Entravision adds Entravision Plus for Local Hispanic Reach Optimization

Entravision | February 21, 2023

Entravision, an advertising, media, and technology solutions provider, has recently launched its new solution Entravision Plus, enhancing the local Hispanic reach of companies through connected TV, CTV, and over-the-top OTT, streaming. It leverages performance-based data insights from Spanish-language publishers to optimize digital advertising outcomes. It has added Entravision Plus to its full suite of digital solutions for OTT, CTV, digital audio ads, display ads, SEM, digital out-of-home, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Ads, Branded Content and Email Marketing, along with its television and radio services. It was found that about 90% of Hispanic consumers stream video on smart devices. This data is approximately 10% more than the video streaming behavior of non-Hispanic consumers. Additionally, on average, the Hispanic consumer spends about 26 hours per month on online video-watch. This states that they spend approximately seven hours more watching videos online than U.S. consumers on average. These statistics show that the rising Latino local household consumers can be targeted and reached through television advertising and Entravision Plus online video products. General Manager of Entravision US Digital, Jessica Martinez, said, “Advertisers need to reach their consumers. We can now offer our clients the ability to reach consumers not only through our television and radio assets, but also through an array of digital products.” She added, “Entravision Plus – our newest offering – provides advertisers with unique targeting, competitive ad separation and insightful analytics to reach all segments of the Latino consumers. We are excited to provide this premium solution, along with television and radio, to meet the needs of an evolving market. By leveraging Entravision Plus, we anticipate that our customers’ businesses will stand out and grow faster than ever before.” (Source – Business Wire) About Entravision Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Entravision, an advertising company, provides solutions for digital marketing, social commerce, CTV, application performance, audio programmatic services, Latam, VAS, user acquisition, growth, marketing automation, local marketing, content marketing, data services, mobile advertising and marketing, and media networking. It has been connecting advertising brands with consumers through media, ad tech, commerce and advertising solutions on different platforms and publishers. It partners with companies like TelevisaUnivision, LinkedIn, Spotify, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and Grab for sales operations and financial and commercial services.

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Facebook Acquires Cloud Video Gaming Company PlayGiga

thurrott | December 19, 2019

Facebook seems to be working on a new vision for its gaming products. The company may not be a huge player in the gaming industry, but it has invested a ton into its gaming products for years. And now, Facebook has acquired Spanish cloud video gaming company PlayGiga to further expand its gaming efforts. The company confirmed the acquisition to CNBC, though it declined to reveal any details about the acquisition. Facebook was rumored to have acquired PlayGiga last week by Spanish business newspaper Cinco Dias. The acquisition reportedly cost Facebook approximately 70 million euros. PlayGiga previously ran a cloud gaming service in Europe after being founded in 2013, though the company’s service failed to gain any traction. “We are excited to announce that the PlayGiga team is moving on to something new. We are continuing our work in cloud gaming, now with a new mission. We want to thank all of our partners and customers for their support over the years,” PlayGiga said on its website.

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Vitec acquires OTT tech vendor T-21 Technologies

fiercevideo | January 28, 2019

Video encoding and streaming solutions company Vitec is sharpening its focus on OTT products for broadcasters by acquiring OTT tech vendor T-21 Technologies.The companies did not disclose financial terms for the transaction.Kevin Ancelin, founder and CEO of T-21 Technologies, will join Vitec as vice president of worldwide broadcast sales.“The acquisition of T-21 brings Kevin’s 32-year industry experience and knowledge to Vitec as we expand our product and strategy focus on the broadcast market,” said Mark D’Addio, senior vice president at Vitec, in a statement. “His expertise in product and market development will expedite our new product roadmap and sales efforts for leading broadcasters worldwide.”“I look forward to this new chapter and challenge in my career. Vitec’s technology and dedication to the IP video market is unmatched,” said Ancelin in a statement. “With Vitec’s GEN2+ innovation, the MGW Ace portable hardware encoder delivers no visible latency for the most sensitive video quality and low latency applications. As we develop our next generation of products and marketing, with a focus on broadcast applications, GEN2+ will further transform the contribution market.”

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Business

Entravision adds Entravision Plus for Local Hispanic Reach Optimization

Entravision | February 21, 2023

Entravision, an advertising, media, and technology solutions provider, has recently launched its new solution Entravision Plus, enhancing the local Hispanic reach of companies through connected TV, CTV, and over-the-top OTT, streaming. It leverages performance-based data insights from Spanish-language publishers to optimize digital advertising outcomes. It has added Entravision Plus to its full suite of digital solutions for OTT, CTV, digital audio ads, display ads, SEM, digital out-of-home, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube Ads, Branded Content and Email Marketing, along with its television and radio services. It was found that about 90% of Hispanic consumers stream video on smart devices. This data is approximately 10% more than the video streaming behavior of non-Hispanic consumers. Additionally, on average, the Hispanic consumer spends about 26 hours per month on online video-watch. This states that they spend approximately seven hours more watching videos online than U.S. consumers on average. These statistics show that the rising Latino local household consumers can be targeted and reached through television advertising and Entravision Plus online video products. General Manager of Entravision US Digital, Jessica Martinez, said, “Advertisers need to reach their consumers. We can now offer our clients the ability to reach consumers not only through our television and radio assets, but also through an array of digital products.” She added, “Entravision Plus – our newest offering – provides advertisers with unique targeting, competitive ad separation and insightful analytics to reach all segments of the Latino consumers. We are excited to provide this premium solution, along with television and radio, to meet the needs of an evolving market. By leveraging Entravision Plus, we anticipate that our customers’ businesses will stand out and grow faster than ever before.” (Source – Business Wire) About Entravision Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Entravision, an advertising company, provides solutions for digital marketing, social commerce, CTV, application performance, audio programmatic services, Latam, VAS, user acquisition, growth, marketing automation, local marketing, content marketing, data services, mobile advertising and marketing, and media networking. It has been connecting advertising brands with consumers through media, ad tech, commerce and advertising solutions on different platforms and publishers. It partners with companies like TelevisaUnivision, LinkedIn, Spotify, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and Grab for sales operations and financial and commercial services.

Read More

Facebook Acquires Cloud Video Gaming Company PlayGiga

thurrott | December 19, 2019

Facebook seems to be working on a new vision for its gaming products. The company may not be a huge player in the gaming industry, but it has invested a ton into its gaming products for years. And now, Facebook has acquired Spanish cloud video gaming company PlayGiga to further expand its gaming efforts. The company confirmed the acquisition to CNBC, though it declined to reveal any details about the acquisition. Facebook was rumored to have acquired PlayGiga last week by Spanish business newspaper Cinco Dias. The acquisition reportedly cost Facebook approximately 70 million euros. PlayGiga previously ran a cloud gaming service in Europe after being founded in 2013, though the company’s service failed to gain any traction. “We are excited to announce that the PlayGiga team is moving on to something new. We are continuing our work in cloud gaming, now with a new mission. We want to thank all of our partners and customers for their support over the years,” PlayGiga said on its website.

Read More

Vitec acquires OTT tech vendor T-21 Technologies

fiercevideo | January 28, 2019

Video encoding and streaming solutions company Vitec is sharpening its focus on OTT products for broadcasters by acquiring OTT tech vendor T-21 Technologies.The companies did not disclose financial terms for the transaction.Kevin Ancelin, founder and CEO of T-21 Technologies, will join Vitec as vice president of worldwide broadcast sales.“The acquisition of T-21 brings Kevin’s 32-year industry experience and knowledge to Vitec as we expand our product and strategy focus on the broadcast market,” said Mark D’Addio, senior vice president at Vitec, in a statement. “His expertise in product and market development will expedite our new product roadmap and sales efforts for leading broadcasters worldwide.”“I look forward to this new chapter and challenge in my career. Vitec’s technology and dedication to the IP video market is unmatched,” said Ancelin in a statement. “With Vitec’s GEN2+ innovation, the MGW Ace portable hardware encoder delivers no visible latency for the most sensitive video quality and low latency applications. As we develop our next generation of products and marketing, with a focus on broadcast applications, GEN2+ will further transform the contribution market.”

Read More

Events