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WOLK’S WEEK IN REVIEW: WHY THE ‘STREAMING IS DEAD’ MEME ISN’T TRUE, ALTERNATIVE
CURRENCIES GET A FURTHER BOOST

By Alan WolkApr 29, 2022 03:59pm
TV[R]EVNetflixiSpot.tvNielsen
Alan Wolk, co-founder and lead analyst at TV[R]EV, says Vizio and iSpot should
take a bow for finally gaining recognition of the value of ACR data.


1. WHY THE “STREAMING IS DEAD” MEME ISN’T TRUE

If you’ve been anywhere near the internet this past week, you’ve surely come
across an article about how streaming TV is now dead, likely written by someone
whose main interaction with the television industry has heretofore been as a
viewer.



The rapid drop of Netflix stock, their stalling subscriber numbers and
subsequent turn to advertising along with random anecdotes from the author’s
friends are usually cited as proof points.

WHY IT MATTERS

This is, of course, nonsense. Streaming isn’t dying or even slowing down and if
you’ve been paying the least bit of attention (or reading TVREV) none of what
happened in the past few weeks is the least bit surprising.




Allow me to explain.

I’ll start with one of my favorite anecdotes: despite the fact that set top
boxes with built-in DVRs were routinely pushed, and pushed hard, by the various
MVPDs, DVR penetration in the U.S. barely got over 50%.

Why? Because that was how many people wanted one. The rest just did not watch
enough TV, or care enough about TV to want one.



So too with Netflix. It was inevitable that at some point everyone in America
who wanted a Netflix subscription would have one. The company has already signed
up around two-thirds of U.S. households, no small feat.

But that remaining third just doesn’t watch enough TV or enough Netflix-style TV
to warrant coughing up that extra $15/month. Yet to read many of these takes,
you’d assume that anything less than 100% penetration constituted abject failure
on Netflix’s part, and that millions of new users would begin magically keep
cropping up once that 100% figure had been reached.

And that’s just the U.S. Which brings us to the next piece of obviousness: ads.

Netflix, in its quest for Total World Domination is now in every country on
earth save China, North Korea and Syria. In many (if not most) of those
countries, there really isn’t much of a middle class. Most people are poor,
which means they don’t have an extra $15/month lying around with which to
subscribe to a streaming TV service. Things like food and firewood get a higher
priority.

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So again, I must wonder why it is surprising that Netflix is looking to
introduce an ad-supported subscription tier (SAVOD)? 

How did people think they were going to get subscribers in places like Africa
and Central America?

(I’ll go one step further here and say that they’re also going to need to move
to a free e.g., FAST model in those countries because even a low-priced
subscription service is something few people can afford.)

Then there’s the wringing of hands about all the competition in the space and
its effect on Netflix’s subscriber numbers. 

As if the fact that there are eight other multibillion dollar streaming services
was new information. Of course, all that competition is going to cut down on
Netflix’s ability to bring on new subscribers. Especially since many of those
new services cost less than Netflix, have deals that allow subscribers to get
many months for free, and have Really Good Shows That Everyone Is Talking About.

Which brings me to the final point: a lot of what is on Netflix these days
sucks.

That one is on Netflix. Once the various networks and studios started taking
popular library series like Friends and The Office, a decision was made to
massively ramp up the amount of programming Netflix was producing. 

And by “massively” I mean they were making close to 150 original series each
year. 

Compare that to a traditional broadcast network which, back in the day, may have
created a dozen or so new series each year.

So of course quality was going to suffer—there just aren’t that many talented
people in Hollywood. And while no doubt some of those series connected with
certain demographics, by and large they created a perception that much of what
was on Netflix was pretty awful. 

Which was already a meme of sorts back in summer 2021, so again, no surprises
there.

Then there is the other side of the coin, the irrational exuberance to declare
linear TV dead, usually combined with the observation that “nobody I know
watches cable anymore.” Which of course resulted in a massive overestimation of
the potential growth curve for streaming.

As we have pointed out time and again, traditional pay TV is very much alive and
well and there is likely a floor of somewhere between 30% and 40% of current TV
households who are only going to give up traditional pay TV when someone forces
them to. 

So no it is not dead, and yes it will impact the number of subscription services
people will ultimately subscribe to. 

Final note: The CNN+ debacle was all about corporate politics, an executive on
his way out trying to make a point to the people taking over. Cooler
heads/common sense would have indicated it never should have launched and the
decision to shut it down has everything to do with Warner-Discovery wanting to
put all its eggs into a single basket (or app, as the case may be) and using CNN
content to help that app set itself apart and nothing to do with the long-term
viability of streaming. Well that and not being bound by an ill-fated rogue
decision.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO ABOUT IT

If you are a player in the streaming industry or someone who feels compelled to
write about it, remember that this is not a zero-sum game.

There was never going to be a “Netflix killer” because there is never going to
be just one streaming service that wins.

Similarly, most viewers are going to be watching some combination of linear and
streaming, at least for the near future. Because that is not a zero-sum game
either, as the continued trickle of cord cutting (versus the mythical “massive
wave”) attests.

So yes, streaming services will continue to grow and viewers will continue to
subscribe to both traditional pay TV and to various and sundry streaming
services. But TV, largely due to the complexity of the underlying distribution
and rights deals, will not collapse the way the music or print industries did.

If you are Wall Street, it’s time to re-evaluate how you look at the television
industry, which is a lot more complicated these days than you would like it to
be, what with multiple revenue streams and players like smart TV OEMs assuming a
far greater level of importance.

Meaning there’s a whole lot of gray and not all that much black and white, so
maybe a deep breath before you send stocks soaring or sinking again. (We’re here
to help.)

If you’re Netflix—and this is the most important point of all— you have a chance
to really reinvent TV advertising and fix everything that currently ails it when
you launch your product—focus on that, on hiring the right people and once again
being the revolutionaries you were born to be.

We’re counting on you.


 2. ALTERNATIVE CURRENCIES GET A FURTHER BOOST

The TV measurement industry got two pieces of good news this week.

First, Nielsen struck a deal with Vizio to use its Inscape ACR data for
measurement. Combined with the Gracenote data Nielsen already owns, that will
make for a larger sample size and reaffirms the ascendency of ACR data.

Second, iSpot, one of the key “alternative currency” vendors, received a
whopping $325 million investment from Goldman Sachs (they now own a minority
share) which will allow it to further refine its measurement tools while
focusing on “everything from additional capabilities in products supporting
currencies to tighter industry-wide integrations and MRC accreditation,” as per
CEO Sean Muller.

WHY IT MATTERS

As more and more viewing moves towards streaming and as MVPDs begin sunsetting
their set top boxes, ACR data from smart TVs takes on more and more prominence,
both as raw data and as a key part of newly ascendant measurement platforms like
iSpot.

The value of ACR in the current hybrid (streaming and linear) environment is
that it captures everything that is “on the glass” (on the TV screen) and thus
can measure both linear and streaming viewing from the same TV, which provides
for far more accurate measurement.

This has taken on a great deal of importance as of late given the growing
complaints about “over-frequency”--the same households getting hit with the same
ads on both streaming and linear.

It also provides advertisers with a much larger data set: Inscape collects data
from over 20 million TV sets, compared to Nielsen’s panel base of 40,000
viewers.

As for iSpot, its measurement is now currency for NBCU during the upcoming
upfronts (say that one ten times fast) and they have major measurement deals
with WarnerMedia and others as well. And they are not alone—other alternative
currency providers have their own deals too now, as the industry reacts to the
availability of bigger and better data.

All this matters because the television industry’s main competition is not other
companies in the TV space but rather, digital, in the form of Google and
Facebook. What those two companies can offer are 1:1 metrics on how each and
every ad impression performed, who it was served to, when and where, all
presented in beautiful four-color charts.

What they can’t offer is the emotional connection of a television commercial, so
the more TV companies can show more complete measurement stats, the easier it is
for advertisers to justify the spend.

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO ABOUT IT

If you are Vizio and iSpot, take a bow. It’s been a long uphill climb and even
now I speak to senior people in the business who don’t get the value of ACR
and/or what you and other providers are up to. But you hung in there and now
your day has arrived, so kudos.

If you are Nielsen, kudos to you too, for being wise enough to reach out beyond
your comfort zone—the more inputs TV data has, the more accurate it will seem.

If you are an advertiser or agency executive and you feel you don’t know enough
about ACR, TVREV has some reports for you. Because digital delivery of
television is the future and it’s not going anywhere.

Alan Wolk is co-founder and lead analyst at the consulting firm TV[R]EV. He is
the author of the best-selling industry primer, Over The Top: How The Internet
Is (Slowly But Surely) Changing The Television Industry. Wolk frequently speaks
about changes in the television industry, both at conferences and to anyone
who’ll listen.

Wolk's Week in Review is an opinion column. It does not necessarily represent
the opinions of Fierce Video.

VideoAdvertisingVizioautomatic content recognition (ACR)advanced
advertisingadvertising technologysubscription video on demand (SVOD)streaming
videoadvertising-based video on demand (AVOD)audience measurementadvertising
technology

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