Presto, Stan, Quickflix: You need to come clean on your numbers before it’s too late
Video streaming has dominated headlines this year but Mumbrella’s Nic Christensen argues the numbers being touted by the SVOD players and TV Networks are at best confusing and at worst close to misleading.
It’s an old cliche that there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.
For the modern media world, I’d like to suggest we tweak that, just a little, and make it: lies, damn lies and video streaming numbers.
The most recent stock market reporting season illustrated this well, showing that when it comes to the streaming video on demand (SVOD) space, many key players are presenting the market – be it investors, media buyers or just the wider market – with some highly questionable numbers.
I don’t get the negativity.
Stan and Netflix and Presto aren’t open to media buyers, so the metric isn’t even relevant.
If an investor is that concerned, don’t invest.
For what it’s worth, Stan is doing a really good job at competing with the juggernaut (which is also an excellent service).
The real negativity should be directed at the moribund traditional media organisations.
Hey Nicho did you miss the bit about advertising being on the cards for the future survival of streaming services…
As for AVOD: yes Nielsen are tracking users and it’s a number we can all trust, but it’s still just a PC based number and until we’re tracking ‘users’ across all screens i would argue it’s no comparison at all.
And what’s included in the numbers, is a small 2min clip of The Block counted under a ‘user’ and ‘stream’ for 9JumpIn. Id also argue this is not catch-up TV or AVOD at all but just someone watching a small news clip.
Great piece Nic.
Nicho is spot on. The ad industry making predictions of ad funded models is like the oil industry saying electric cars aren’t the future.
The closest media agencies are going to get to streams is when the FTA’s finally demolish thier towers and broadcast over the net instead.
Netflix is a proven model…
I’m guessing a lot of ‘subscribers’ (air quotes) are on more than one. I know from chats (oh, the anecdotes-are-not-evidence) that people who are on one, are on another, so lets go with its being at least on two, if not more. Foxtel/Presto is a no-brainer. So lets go with probably on three or more. See what I mean?
So out of a 23+ m population base with almost saturation penetration of TV and Internet devices, we have maybe 500,000 subscribers to some kind of digital content. 2% or thereabouts.
Two percent. lets be generous. Lets say Five percent. Your free-to-air catch up platforms are out-performing this INDIVIDUALLY let alone collectively.
Wow. thats some dropoff from countdown days. The nation stopped? I don’t think so.
Kid was in Digital advertizing: ain’t in digital revenue stream any more.
Excellent article Nic. Another example of quality Mumbrella journalism.