Issue 145  19th January 2018

EY: online video revenues in MENA to grow by up to 35% annually

If you are interested in learning about the future of video and e-commerce we highly recommend you check out EY's recent Videonomics report . This report projects online video revenues to grow by 22%-35% annually in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) markets by 2021. The report also provides key insights on the trends that are likely to dominate the industry for years to come:

• MENA'S youth will drive digital growth with most MENA markets projected to grow online video revenues at 11-35% annually til 2021, to reach 17% of total video revenues from less than 10% today
• On-demand content is leading to new viewing habits, including time-shifted bingeing, and declining consumption of mid-tier content
• The OTT space is fragmented and driven the need for efficiencies, across content costs, back-end savings and analytics

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. 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.

Roku 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.

They include Reach Insights tool, Tune-In Insights , Cord-Cutter and a Survey Insights tool.

Roku sees its new product as a way to improve the over-the-top universe as a whole.

Facebook Watch chief talks early lessons from video push and announces new shows

This week at the NATPE event in Miami, Facebook's chief of Watch Ricky Van Veen announced the latest news on their new platform and three new shows.

Every original program that lands on the Facebook Watch platform should spark its own Facebook community. Facebook's aim is 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,” “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.”

Unveiled at the event were three new series projects, including a new survivalist effort from Bear Grylls, “Bear Grylls: Face the Wild", a scripted half-hour drama “Sacred Lies” from Blumhouse Television, and the unscripted “Fly Guys,” revolving around movie and TV stunt performers.

The Silicon Valley thinking of “shorter is better” when it comes to Internet video “just didn’t pan out,” he said. “One of the most frequent comments on Facebook Watch series was ‘I want this show to be longer.’ “

YouTube alters partner program eligibility, vows all Google preferred videos will be human verified

Amid ongoing brand safety concerns from advertisers and revenue worries within the creator community, YouTube announced sweeping changes to the way in which it vets members of the YouTube Partner Program (YPP) as well as to its Google Preferred ad tier.

From now on in order to be eligible for the YPP, creators will need to have surpassed 4,000 hours of watch time within the last year, and have at least 1,000 subscribers.

YouTube said in a blog post, the aim is to weed out bad actors by emphasizing factors like watch time and subscribers. Raising restrictions will also mean more monetization opportunities for a smaller pool of qualifying channels.