We made an exciting trip to Riga for EGTA’s 2023 Marketing & Sales meeting last week where we had the opportunity to understand the latest challenges in the TV advertising business across various European markets.

We were invited to present our views on TV’s quick shift to Total Video and the progress we made with our cross-platform measurement project called X-Flight to rapidly deliver unified reach metrics. 

It seemed timely as the event started with Mindaugas Rakauskas, CEO of TV3 Group Latvia, explaining that following the fragmentation of audiences, ad sales had transitioned from siloed sales to mixed total video inventory packages. This was followed by accounts of similar shifts and the accompanying challenges across various markets. 

Below we highlight the key topics that resonated most with our own mission to empower the Total Video ad ecosystem. 

1. Are all impressions equal? 

The debate here focuses on the differences in the values of an impression based on factors such as device, screensize, location, content, nature of the viewing experience alongside more traditional things such as duration and placement. On top of this we also believe that auditability and transparency of measurement will determine the value of an impression, an individual or a household. Such factors should be considered for inventories sitting behind walled-garden. 

2. Useful reach is more important than incremental reach 

The discussion here was around the fact that all walled garden players claim their reach is vastly incremental reach to TV but unproven. True incremental reach needs to be useful measurable reach. 

3. Addressable linear TV opportunity

The industry survey by Altman Solomon confirmed that the number one opportunity for broadcasters is  addressable linear TV advertising. This assumes that publishers will offer a larger variety of audiences beyond sociodemographics, better matching the needs of the advertisers both national and local. 

Sky’s AdSmart is a pioneering example of both the technological capabilities and commercial success where year-on-year Sky is seeing tremendous growth in sales and customer numbers. Another exciting, nascent technology is the HbbTV standard that is making gradual progress with strong promises for addressability and ad replacement capabilities. 

4. Data interoperability (liquidity)

Interoperability of data is posing challenges at different levels and stages of the media ecosystem. Arguably, the biggest disconnect is between the activation dataset and the post-campaign reporting. Resolving this could better bridge outcome-based and reach-based measurement, enabling more effective planning and yield management. Clean rooms are providing part of the solution but we feel that problems also need to be resolved in a more macro-level in relation to standardisation and shared cross-industry datasets. Such a measure would further empower initiatives such as the eGRP offering presented by Prima from the Czech republic. 

5. “Access to accurate measurement data” is the undisputed top challenge and priority

Lastly, we wanted to focus on the European broadcasters’ call for “better measurement”. The survey mentioned the “overwhelming reliance on broader standardisation measures for resolution” and that “distributors need accurate measurement that properly blends ratings and streaming data”. 

In the UK, CFlight, the cross-platform measurement standard initiated and developed by Sky and RSMB, has been adopted for use by agencies and broadcasters since 2022. The recent announcement by BARB to take over its governance and development is a tremendous step for the UK TV industry to lead the exploration in the new era of converged measurement. 

The announcement of our Streamhub XFlight project jointly developed with RSMB was also in direct response to this growing need for broadcasters to offer a holistic, transparent and standardised method of cross-platform measurement for any market that needs it. With the 3 month POC coming to an end, next steps are to push the MVP into the market to drive the necessary consensus, but more importantly, to prove that XFlight can work across multiple markets just with a finite level of customisation. 

If XFlight’s MVP is a success, this will mean that the capability to offer a standardised, modern and efficient measurement platform will become relatively simple to adopt and roll out into multiple markets. Furthermore, XFlight benefits from the capacity to also integrate any further census or multiple panel datasets to enhance the core measurement, and even link things directly for activation. 

To summarise, we found that the top challenges confronted by broadcasters in Europe and around the world are universal. Whilst the approaches to resolving the issues have local nuances, the crux of the problem and the direction of travel for the solution is the same. TV has a great opportunity ahead but needs to modernise faster than ever to maximise the strength of TV whilst bridging its core business to all things digital.

The post The debate around cross-platform measurement – EGTA M&S Meeting Report appeared first on Streamhub.co.uk.

The strategic partnership will address growing demand for hybrid measurement across linear and streamed TV with a unique cross-platform metric

RSMB and Streamhub have announced a ground-breaking partnership that is set to create a unique offer in the cross-platform measurement of viewing linear and streamed TV. 

The rapid evolution of streaming and connected TVs is creating new opportunities for consumers, content producers and advertisers alike. This has led to a need for measurement methodologies to adapt to these new demands. One manifestation of this is the need for hybrid measurement, for example the integration of traditional TV panel data with the first party data of TV streamers). The new partnership between RSMB and Streamhub will provide solutions in this growing area of TV and video measurement.

The partnership will provide clients with RSMB’s currency grade data modelling capabilities matched with Streamhub’s multi dataset analytics and activation platform.

The initial focus of the partnership will be to build out incremental reach calculations for clients. This will allow reporting of the reach delivered by streaming services over and above the reach of linear TV through the high quality integration of currency metrics with first party data. The partnership will initially focus on Japan where Streamhub will be representing RSMB’s capability in the market. However, key modules will be available in all markets internationally.

Chris Mundy, CEO of RSMB commented: “RSMB has a successful track record in managing data integrations and calculation of currency metrics. Partnering with Streamhub allows us to operationalise these measurement solutions more quickly, in more markets.” 

Akihiro Tsuchiya, CEO of Streamhub, said: “We are excited to see our audience analytics product move into cross-platform measurement, bringing together our two strengths: managing complex streaming data and handling currency-grade panel data to service both TV and streaming advertising opportunities.”

The post RSMB and Streamhub announce next generation cross-platform measurement partnership appeared first on Streamhub.co.uk.

From Bangalore to London, Streamhub is speeding up and growing fast, as 2021 sees the team almost double in size and there are still vacancies to be filled in Engineering and Marketing teams.

Have a look if you have the profile and share the opportunity if your network if you know someone who can be among the next talent we hire.

Senior Data Operations Engineer (Contract / Part Time / Remote)

Some of the skills required for this position are:

• Solid experience in supporting complex data pipelines with technologies like Airflow, AWS, and Kubernetes.
• Solid experience in operationally maintaining Kubernetes cluster.
• Experience in working with scripting languages – Python/Ruby
• Experience in cloud computing, preferably AWS.

Another vacancy open in the Engineering team is:

Applications Engineer (Microservices|Java|K8s) – PERM

This is a position for an Engineer to join our team in Bengaluru, India, or to work remotely.

To apply for this job position you must have:

• Solid experience in Scala or Java.
• Exposure to building user interfaces preferably using Angular or ReactJS.
• Solid experience with Docker, container services like Kubernetes, infrastructure tools like Terraform/Ansible. Including operational handling.

On another note, we are also looking for an industry-savvy, experienced Marketing Analyst to join our efforts on B2B initiatives and to proactively participate in the building of 2022’s strategy and action plans.

Marketing Analyst (London, UK / Full Time) 

This role suits better a generalist with a background in either Ad Tech companies or Broadcasters and those are some of the skills and experience we are looking for on the candidates for this role:

• Event Organization (On-line/Off-line)
• Creating and Editing Sales Collateral
• Google Tag Manager, Mailchimp, Hubspot, Pipedrive, Slack, Trello
• Content Creation)
• Media and Partners Relations
• Market Research
• B2B Data or Ad Tech Company or OTT/Streaming/Broadcast/Publisher/AdTech Industry
• Native-level English and UK Work permit

Have a look also on our values to check if you are the perfect match and prepare ahead for the job interview!

Be a part of this exciting startup/scaleup that is accelerating fast, with offices in London, Tokyo and Bangalore and is a restless data-driven and highly creative team and apply today.

 

The post Streamhub grows team and hires for Engineering and Marketing appeared first on Streamhub.co.uk.

We are thrilled to announce, following some earlier coverage from our friends at DTVE and Advanced Television, that Streamhub is officially partnering with Kantar to provide combined data analytics & activation capabilities to their clients around the world. Full release below:

Kantar, the world’s leading evidence-based insights and consulting company, today announces a global collaboration with Streamhub, the technology company transforming video audience analytics, to incorporate data from its video tagging technology into Streamhub’s enterprise analytics platform. Media owners will now be able to use Streamhub’s enterprise platform to analyse any digital video content that integrates Kantar’s video-tagging technology, making audience analytics from live and on demand video streaming more intuitive and actionable.

As Kantar scales up its cross-media measurement capabilities, this partnership offers new capabilities in analysis and activation of online streaming audiences. Whether content providers managing inventories or advertisers optimising campaign reach, access to the Streamhub platform will enable Kantar’s clients to improve management and monetisation of audience on-demand viewing.

Kantar’s video tagging technology provides media owners, media agencies and brands with granular data on online video consumption, on specific programme or ad occurrences to get a more accurate view of media, whenever and however it is consumed. Through more detailed insights of what video content people are consuming and how they can evaluate and justify digital investment choices, more accurately monitor content/channel performance, and maximise the effectiveness of their advertising space.

Streamhub’s enterprise platform has been designed to automate reporting and accommodate complex workflows between publishers, agencies and advertisers for cross-market video and connected TV census datasets. Through a powerful, intuitive dashboard, platform viewing data can be interpreted via customised reports or advanced data visualisations and integrations into programmatic or first-party platforms for activation.

Bas De Vos, Global Director – Audience Targeting at Kantar comments. “As industry currencies expand to incorporate more on-demand viewing data across platforms, we’re committed to providing our clients with a choice of analytics tools that equip them to optimise their content and advertising inventory and investments. Today’s announcement is the latest in a series of collaborations we’re formalising across the ecosystem to ensure clients have the best choice and tools to meet their needs.”

Aki Tsuchiya, CEO Streamhub, added “We’re passionate about empowering video businesses, by helping manage the complex relationship between audiences, content and monetisation data. We’re incredibly proud to be collaborating with the world leader in audience measurement, working together towards this goal. To date, we have found resounding success both with individual media companies and market-wide implementations such as that in Japan, so this announcement represents a significant milestone in our mission to transform industry standard platforms back home in the UK and around the world.”

The post Streamhub and Kantar Announce Global Partnership appeared first on Streamhub.co.uk.

PRESS RELEASE – London, UK – Wednesday 28th May, 2014: Former business development director at Joost, Aki Tsuchiya, has today launched Streamhub, a real-time video analytics service for the media industry.

The platform, now in public beta, is already being used by one of the world’s largest public broadcasters to manage its online video and social data, delivering actionable insights to increase viewer acquisition and stickiness in key markets. This is done by consolidating big data relevant to all the programmes and revealing key influencing factors that lead to positive and negative engagement of the viewers.

Content owners will now have a highly visual dashboard, providing a comprehensive picture of how a video or a live channel works minute-by-minute across each and every viewer, opening doors to many data science driven opportunities.

Data sources include video engagement metrics from the broadcasters` own services and YouTube, social marketing metrics from Twitter and Facebook, and web/app/traffic metrics from Google Analytics, providing a comprehensive analysis of the audience journey. Integration of custom metrics is also provided as an additional service.

Aki Tsuchiya, said: “Streamhub was created to solve the problems we faced when we worked in broadcasting and online video. Audiences are moving online, fragmenting ever more, and there are massive data sets that teach us at last about each and every viewer. However, it’s not easy to make clear analyses when there’s so much data to manage. We want to automate these tasks to allow businesses to focus on the KPIs and ROIs in making great content and reaching the right viewers. Getting to these relevant insights requires the analytics platform to be ever-green and this can only happen if we are quick enough to evolve based on customer feedback.”

Streamhub has also launched an experimental YouTube index as part of its Labs initiative that monitors the performance of TV programmes on the world’s biggest video destination, allowing companies to get a feel for the relative popularity of TV content between legitimate and illegal uploads.

Aki Tsuchiya added: “This was something born out of a conversation with a content owner who was concerned about how competitors were performing in the online video space. As we don’t have access to every broadcaster’s online video viewing data, YouTube’s sheer scale makes it imperative for companies to use this market data to both drive traffic to their official channels as well as understand YouTube itself.”

Entirely self-funded, Streamhub managing director and founder, Tsuchiya is joined by Ariya Priyasantha, head of product and Radu Sora, head of development. Priyasantha previously founded the startup which delivered the Orange Wednesdays programme before being sold to 2ergo PLC, while Sora is a seasoned software engineer who has worked at Thomson Reuters, Xoom completing a PhD focused on semantic web technologies from the University of Warwick.

For more information, images and to set up interviews with the Streamhub team, please contact:

press@streamhub.co.uk

About Streamhub

Streamhub is a London-based media technology venture providing big data analytics for video audiences. Led by Aki Tsuchiya, former business development director at Joost, former Viacom International President Brent Hansen and ITV online technology director Richard Harding head up the advisory board, joined by advisors Masayuki Watanabe, co-founder of DeNA and David Orman. Through its early prototypes, the company was awarded the 2013 Streaming Media European Readers’ Choice award for ‘Best Analytics/Quality of Service Solution,` and received a `Special Commendation’ at the MIP Cube Labs 2013 event in Cannes, France. Streamhub is Five Cool Consulting Limited’s principal trading brand with operations in UK and Japan.

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London, United Kingdom, September 29th, 2011 – Five Cool, a new entrant in online Internet TV solutions, unveils its latest product, Streamhub, the unified Internet TV software behind NHK WORLD’s award-winning online coverage of this year’s Japanese Tsunami. Following the disaster, Streamhub dealt with an astronomical increase in traffic and support capacity with both the product and its international team scaling to meet those needs.

“Streamhub is an excellent, complete platform for managing Live channels and VOD providing an immense wealth of data about our audiences everywhere, and the Five Cool support has been world class throughout the difficult period during the disaster,” said Tatsuya Sasahara, Senior Program Director at NHK.

In its latest release, Streamhub delivers real-time analytics and the unique Hybrid Channel Scheduler that enables building custom linear channels, with seamless VOD insertion and scheduling. Other features include Network Distribution with which the broadcaster can monitor and control distribution costs over multiple CDNs including Amazon’s cloud services.

“Internet Television is evolving in response to greater demand for access to real-time content via the web,’’ says Five Cool Founder & Managing Director Akihiro Tsuchiya. ‘’It’s essential broadcasters have the tools and apps to respond to differentiated and unexpected audience appetites. We went sleepless for many nights to respond to the disaster, but now that entire experience has been coded and reflected into our product.”

Streamhub provides minute-by-minute audience information on 24/7 channels across all devices, countries, and third-party destinations under one standard. All major content formats and business models including pay-per-view, advertising, download-to-own and subscription are supported on the platform. Moreover, it provides stable integrations with social and e-commerce platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and Amazon.

“I have worked with Five Cool to upgrade our complex legacy system to a product that worked for today’s web audience. They did a fabulous job in delivering the new product to budget and on time, working fast together with our bluechip partners Dolby and Nokia. Their tech is highly reliable and I’m very excited at the innovation in their latest release of Streamhub.” said Scott de Mercado, CEO of Audiotube.

About Five Cool – Five Cool’s unified online content platform, Streamhub, provides an innovative and convenient set of tools for use by broadcasters, agregators and rights-holders. It offers the ability to manage both linear and on-demand content across multiple formats, devices and business-models, providing real-time tools to quickly respond to online audiences. Five Cool is headquartered in London with operations in the Netherlands and Japan.

For further information please contact:

press@streamhub.co.uk

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