It has been another exciting week in the world of video advertising. This week’s top stories come from News Corp, Maker Studios, Blip, RTL, Google and The Diffusion Group. To have a weekly summary of industry news delivered to your inbox, subscribe to the VAN digest.
News Corp to Create Global Private Exchange, Dumps All Third Party Ad Networks/Exchanges
News Corp plans to launch a global ad exchange – powered by the Rubicon Project – for all News Corp media properties. News Corp will discontinue any remaining arrangements with third-party ad networks. News Corp Chief Executive Robert Thomson said, “Content aggregators would like to commodify our content, while data scrapers would like to aggregate our audience – the only way to reach the world’s greatest content and the most prestigious and lucrative audiences is directly through our digital properties. Third parties are no longer invited to the party.”
Maker Studios to Acquire Blip
Maker Studios – a major YouTube network – is set to acquire Blip for an undisclosed amount of cash and stock, giving the content powerhouse a home outside
Real Full Story on All Things D
RTL Says TV Market Still Challenging, Continues to Invest in Digital Expansion
RTL Group say TV advertising market conditions remained challenging in the first half of 2013: only the German net TV advertising market was estimated to be stable year-on-year, while all the group’s other core markets decreased. Accordingly, reported Group revenue was slightly down 1.3 per cent to €2,779 million.
The group’s annual results also gave an interesting overview of the TV giant’s move into digital:
- In June 2013, RTL Group acquired a 51 per cent majority stake in Broadband TV, Youtube’s fifth largest Multi-Channel Network (MCN). Broadband TV manages more than 8,500 channels and generates around 800 million video views per month. The acquisition makes RTL Group the number 4 player on Youtube (excluding music video services) and strengthened its position in the US market.
- In July 2013, RTL Nederland acquired a 65 per cent stake in The Entertainment Group, the leading pay video-on-demand (VOD) company in the Netherlands, which operates the VOD services Videoland and Movie Max Online
- Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland continued to expand its digital distribution with extensive new content agreements to broadcast its linear TV channels via the online platforms Zattoo and Magine
- RTL Group’s video services and websites attracted a total 4.8 billion online video views, up 35 per cent year-on-year
- Online video advertising was up 39 per cent in Germany, 24 per cent in France, and 34 per cent in the Netherlands year-on-year
Google Opens Up Trueview and AdX for Online Games
New Research Finds Younger Consumers Less Likely to Subscribe to Legacy Pay-TV Services
Obvious perhaps, but the The Diffusion Group’s research confirms what we already knew.
