Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Apr 8th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!
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John MedeirosChief Policy Officer |
CASBAA’s appearances last week in India got noticed. We were in Mumbai and then Delhi, alongside police and industry officials from the UK, pointing out the advantages of the UK’s energetic approach to online piracy, including an official list of Infringing Websites that advertisers use to shun placing ads on pirate sites. (We covered this ground in last year’s CASBAA Convention as well.) India, with good official support for its increasingly active content industry, seems a likely Asian partner in suppressing ad malpractices. |
Anjan MitraExecutive Director, India |
Act like responsible grownups. This was the overall message that the government seems to be giving to the Indian media sector. Speaking at Frames 2016 in Mumbai late March, MIB Secretary Sunil Arora was categorical that the industry has to deal with issues like questionable ownership of news channels as the industry has been propagating self-regulation. Telecoms and IT Minister RS Prasad went a step further — and beyond his jurisdiction — to raise question marks on BARC’s measurement data — criticism that was countered by the ratings agency in all earnest. |
Mark LayVice President, Singapore |
Twitter just did an end-run on Amazon and Verizon to stream 10 NFL Thursday night games to the world. They apparently paid a mere $10 million for these rights, while CBS and NBC collectively paid $450 million to broadcast the same games. Though, Twitter will be streaming the CBS and NBC feeds of the games and will only have the rights to sell a small portion of the ads. And get this, Verizon already owns the mobile rights to NFL games for their customers. Nice work, NFL. The choice for viewers is amazing: free on Twitter, paid on Verizon and broadcast on CBS and NBC. The NFL is right, these games "will actually be hard to miss". |
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Mark LayVice President, Singapore |
As we saw above, "Twitter is basically a cable company now" and then days later Facebook launches Facebook Live to everyone. Well not EVERYONE, just their 1.6 billion monthly active users. So if it wasn’t enough that Meerkat and Periscope were grabbing video viewers to watch live on their platforms, self-broadcasting is now just a button away on the Facebook app. The article states, "And it seems clear where Facebook will eventually go with this: right at traditional broadcast.” “We’re entering this new golden age of video,” says Zuckerberg. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you fast-forward five years and most of the content that people see on Facebook and are sharing on a day-to-day basis is video.” This “golden age" could mean there will be more folks sharing the same amount of gold. |
Kevin JenningsVice President, Programme |
Verizon has announced it has agreed to buy a 24.5% stake in AwesomenessTV. In addition to its equity investment, Verizon and AwesomenessTV will create a first-of-its-kind premium short-form mobile video service featuring leading talent in front of and behind the camera. The new service will operate as a new and independent brand, and feature premium transactional content for a variety of audiences. The new premium content service will initially be exclusive to Verizon platforms in the United States, while AwesomenessTV will retain the right to sell content in the rest of the world. |
John MedeirosChief Policy Officer |
Policy wonks will recall that three years ago the Taiwan NCC announced an intention to restructure its rate regulation for analogue cable TV packages. (Analogue? Still?) Well, the changes in the analogue era rules still haven’t been implemented yet; in theory it’s supposed to happen this year. NCC has tweaked the proposal from its original form; they eliminated a proposed cap on monthly subscription fees. But cable operators remain unhappy with too-heavy requirements for a la carte offers. That could kill lots of channels, they said. And some legislators don’t like that idea either. |
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Kevin JenningsVice President, Programme |
A new report from the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) says a quarter of EU citizens aged between 15 and 24 have admitted to intentionally using illegal sources to access online content in the past 12 months. According to the report most say they do this because it is free, or cheaper than accessing content from legal sources. The research surveyed young people in each of the 28 EU Member States, seeking to understand how young EU citizens behave online, and to explore the main drivers and barriers for them in acquiring online content and physical goods both legally and illegally. |
John MedeirosChief Policy Officer |
And in Indonesia, the censorship wars continue. This time, the action is all focused on the free-to-air TV channels, with content censors at KPI seeking legislative teeth for their blasts at the channels. Separately, KPI’s plan to review the operations of the FTA channels was supported by leading Muslim organization Muhammadiyah, which says TV shows shouldn’t be allowed if they don’t “benefit society.” |
Kevin JenningsVice President, Programme |
The research firm GlobalWebIndex, says that over 40% of internet users in Indonesia are using a VPN, which is a markedly higher rate than in some European countries, such as the UK (16%) or The Netherlands (14%). Other Asian countries also have relatively high rates, including Thailand (39%), Vietnam (35%), India (33%), Taiwan (33%), Malaysia (32%) and China (29%). The global average is 25%. Looking at the survey results for Asia, it would appear that internet users in the region are using VPNs to access entertainment and news sites that the authorities would prefer to block. Examples of this are Indonesia's state-owned telecoms operator blocking access to Netflix and Vietnam blocking Facebook. It is also clear that some countries in the region are keen to restrict access to certain news sites, but there are less authoritarian motives at play in other nations, such as Singapore, which seeks to block access to file-sharing sites like The Pirate Bay. |
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John MedeirosChief Policy Officer |
Ooh! Ooh! What is it about oo names for OTT services? In SE Asia, we have Hooq. (No alternate meanings, it seems.) In South Korea, it’s Pooq. (Guess nobody in Seoul cares about the alternate meaning of that word.) And last week in India, Viacom18 launched its “Voot” OTT service. Well, at least they did a good job of choosing a happy name. Toot! |
Jane BuckthoughtAdvertising Consultant |
Carat’s latest global forecasts highlights that advertising spend will reach US$538 billion in 2016, accounting for a +4.5% year-on-year increase. Fueled by high-interest media events taking place during the year – including the US presidential elections, Rio 2016 Olympics and Paralympics and the UEFA EURO 2016 championship the positive outlook for 2016 is predicted to continue into 2017, with Carat’s forecast highlighting a consistently strong year-on-year global advertising growth of +4.5%. |