Weekly Online Video News Round Up - August 4th 2012

Another week in the books and that means a whole new news round up for what's hot and who's what in online video. So without further ado, on with the show, er... article.

SEE ALSO: Online Video Weekly News Round up - Turkey Day Edition

Hulu Drops on Apple TV

Existing subscribers can now find "Hulu Plus" on the Apple TV home screen and enter their Hulu Plus username and password to start watching Hulu Plus shows instantly. New subscribers get a 1-week free trial when they create a Hulu Plus account, through http://www.huluplus.com/appletv or directly through Apple TV using their existing iTunes account.

Lovefilm Brings Miramax to UK & Germany

Beginning this summer, LOVEFiLM subscribers in both the UK and Germany will have instant, on-demand access to Miramax films including the Oscar-winning epic drama There Will Be Blood and Martin Scorsese's critically acclaimed Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator. Other titles include the dark crime drama Sin City and Quentin Tarantino's cult classics including Kill Bill, Kill Bill 2 and Jackie Brown.

 Yahoo! Brings Second Screen Content to TV Viewing with IntoNow

It's not the best name for an app ever but it's definitely moving in the right direction.

IntoNow is the media-centric company’s television sidekick “experience.” It brings avid TV fans a comprehensive offering of news headlines, statistics, and even social media updates from popular actors. IntoNow 3.0 is specifically tailored for iOS devices (the old IntoNow is also available in the Google Play store; we anticipate an Android-friendly version of IntoNow 3.0 will be available shortly).

 Carriage Fees Be Damned! DirecTV Posts 9% Profit Growth

We don't cover financials here at ReelSEO, but will all the hubbub about carriage fees and "oh poor us how will we pay it?!" I thought this was of interest.

DIRECTV Latin America Increases Net Additions 37% to All-time Record 645,000 Surpassing the 9 Million Cumulative Subscriber Mark

DIRECTV Revenues Grow 9% to $7.22 Billion

• Increase driven by strong DIRECTV Latin America subscriber growth coupled with 4.2% higher ARPU at DIRECTV U.S.

Operating Profit before Depreciation and Amortization Increases 9% to $2.01 Billion and Operating Profit Grows 15% to $1.41 Billion

• Growth driven by DIRECTV U.S.'s 10% increase in operating profit before depreciation and amortization to $1.59 billion and 20% increase in operating profit to$1.22 billion.

That's just for the second quarter of the year.

Cord Cutting? We Still Grow Money on TWC Trees!

There might be a small percentage of people cutting the cord but it doesn't seem to be affecting Time Warner Cable (who was my provider until I cut the cable) as they also posted a rise in revenue and profit for the second quarter.

Revenues for the second quarter of 2012 increased 9.3% from the second quarter of 2011 to $5.4 billion. Residential services revenues increased 7.4% to $4.6 billion and business services revenues grew 28.5% to $464 million, while advertising revenues increased 17.8% to $265 million.

Specifically for cable, "Residential video revenues decreased driven by declines in video subscribers and revenues from premium channels and transactional video-on-demand, partially offset by price increases, a greater percentage of subscribers purchasing higher-priced tiers of service and increased revenues from equipment rental charges. "

Affine Rebrands to SET, Starts Online Video Ad Network Based on Content Recognition

With Do Not Track quite possibly coming down the pipe very soon, I recently talked about what we could still track and how online video targeting could, and should, be done. Affine decided they needed a name you could pronounce easily (is it A Fine or Ah Fine of Ah Feen or A Feen?), and so have rebranded to SET and announced a new online video ad network based on their stellar in-stream content recognition tech (which ingests video and spits out categories, genres, people, places and things, all automatically).

SET's new online video ad network will allow brand advertisers to buy online video the way they buy traditional TV.   SET's granular targeting capabilities enable show-specific and personality-specific buying, giving TV-like control over the digital video content they sponsor. For the first time, advertisers can prove every impression ran on high quality content with SET’s unique video level reporting solution. Heck, you might even, one day, be able to peek into all that YouTube content and target the cat videos.

Also:

Free Verification Data (with any ad buy):  Verification companies make advertisers pay for player context data -- after an impression is served. This defeats the purpose of providing player context data, which is to ensure an advertiser sponsors only the highest quality environments. SET ensures that ads only run on high-quality content by targeting location and size of player, length of content, autoplay vs. user-initiated content, and  high definition vs. standard definition content.

TheSheet: While most networks only provide advertisers with a list of domains their ads ran on, SET offers customers a Tear Sheet that shows exactly which videos they sponsored, the kind of environment they ran in and that the content is brand-safe. Brands can even see which slot their ads ran in, just like they can with TV.

That's some pretty awesome and powerful tech they've got there. Watch for more on this soon.

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