Preliminary analysis of a recent cross industry promotion, "50 Must See Movies Before You Grow Up", compiled by education charity "Into Film", indicates that though included in the promotion, home entertainment prices on Blu-ray Disc maintain their prices better than any other format. The 6-week promotion starting from mid-June included titles "The Lion King", "E.T. The Extra Terrestrial", "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" and "Toy Story".
During this time, Ampere's UK retail price tracking data demonstrated that for the "50 Must See Movies Before You Grow Up" titles: physical DVD, Digital HD and Digital SD purchases dropped in average price substantially (as anticipated) - with Digital HD dropping up to £2.50 on average in the first week of promotion. By comparison, titles available on Blu-ray Disc, dropped by an average of just over £1.50 and maintained a far higher average price of £13 for the duration of the promotion.
Ampere Analysis Consumer service, a half-yearly international consumer survey, supports the view that Blu-ray Disc is still seen by the consumer as the premium video product. Higher pricing, even through promotion, supports this market position and highlights the strength of the format, particularly for catalogue titles - further analysis will no doubt ensure distributors will not feel "Blu" with the revenues produced.
Ampere chronicles some notable investments from internet giants and telecoms operators in the eSports and online gaming sector.
Though the formula for releasing new movies is well understood, as a product moves further into its life-cycle exploitation strategies used by US studios are more opaque. Analysing price changes in the context of movie windowing allows us to compere the movie exploitation strategies currently in use.
Cable operators and telcos are becoming increasingly similar in the fixed sector, as product upsell changes their revenue mix.
Discovery bids to become the 4th largest brand owner globally.
As SVoD services look to gain traction in markets with under-developed fixed infrastructures, zero-rating and mobile partnerships will be crucial to their success.
Key Subscription Video-on-Demand (SVoD) players are pushing for an edge on their competitors by increasing their array of “Exclusive” and “Original” content. Netflix and Amazon are at the forefront of this move and over the past 12 months, Netflix’s “Originals” and “Exclusive” catalogue has more than doubled in size, while Amazon’s has grown by nearly three-fold.
As Netflix cancels an increasing number of its Originals, Ampere investigates the cost-effectiveness of the cancelled vs renewed titles.
Ampere investigates AMC Networks' ad-free OTT move for its domestic flagship channel, which is shifting it into the realm of premium channels.
Following a partnership with NTT DoCoMo in Japan, digital media group Vice is looking to expand its subscription video-on-demand services into more territories.
TV operators in the Western world offer a greater proprtion of sports channels, which is perhaps due to the wider range of sports for which rights deals exist in these regions.
Following Verizon's acquisition of Yahoo!, Ampere investigates its planned virtual Multiple Systems Operator (VMSO) launch.
As physical purchases in Home Entertainment decline, Ampere look at a way digital transactions can stem the loss in revenues.
Content was the hot topic at this year's ANGACOM cable show in Germany as cable and telecoms groups look to exclusive originals to compete.
The launch of Amazon Channels in the UK and Germany now allows consumers to access over 40 different SVoD services. Ampere looks at what impact this could have for Amazon and its streaming partners.
A small number of UK homes now consider a Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD) service to be their main way of watching TV in the house, but looking within individual service customer bases, the importance of content access to driving SVoD as a substitute for other platforms becomes clear.
Ampere looks into CBS's new SVoD bundle, which offers consumers a saving if they take both CBS All Access and the Showtime streaming services.
In Ampere’s Q1 2017 survey, respondents were asked to identify the reasons for choosing a specific operator for their mobile subscriptions. Unsurprisingly, by far the most popular decisive factor for selecting a provider was price, evident in 12 of the 13 markets surveyed.
Google currently makes about $7 each quarter for each monthly active user (MAU) from advertising on its sites. By the end of 2016, Facebook had more than doubled its number to nearly $5 per MAU in advertising revenue.
As Facebook continues to invest in video and its ARPUs increase further, it is conceivable that in the near future an average Facebook user will be worth more than an average TV viewer.
As content exits the premium video-on-demand window and enters the first pay window, it is typically removed from TVOD pricing (digital rental) on online stores. This blackout, as its known, can act for anywhere between one and two years, dependent on negotiations between the distributors, first window rights-holders and the stores themselves. This blog post looks at a sample of 2000 titles which underwent a blackout in the first half of 2016, taken from Ampere's Analytics Service.
A round-up of the key trends at last week's MIP TV looking at 'localised globalisation', VR, scripted drama trends and digital first content.
Forget cord-cutting, doubling-up and bundling are the new drivers for TV, as consumers take combinations of different services to build their ideal offer.
The changes in the devices people use to watch video content throughout the day reflects both today's greater availability and accessibility of video content as well as the underlying cycle of life as screen-based technology increasingly substitutes other media from the moment we get out of bed to the time we lay down at night.
Deutsche Telekom's zero-rated video offer, StreamOn, caters for growing mobile video demand in Germany.
More than one in four Saudi Arabian internet users frequently use Snapchat to watch video. However, a constantly changing regulatory environment could be a barrier to further success.
There has been a marked change in the number of distinct titles available on Subscription Video On-Demand (SVoD) services during 2016. As the sector continues to mature, the general market trend has been towards refinement and reduction of content libraries, with the majority of platforms showing signs of tailoring and reducing offerings over the year. However, there are exceptions to this, with the most notable being that of Prime Video, Amazon’s on-demand subscription service, which has increased its content quantity by nearly two thirds over the past 12 months.
Ampere looks at Netflix and Amazon's ambitions in India and how disruptive operator Reliance Jio may help.
Ampere looks at the inflation of broadcasting sports rights of some of the major domestic leagues in the US and Europe
Telco-backed IPTV is driving pay TV subscriber growth in three southern European markets but infrastructure is holding back development in Greece and Italy.
Over the past few years, social media networks have been focusing on video and are now investing in exclusive and original content. This could further increase competition in an already competitive VoD market.
The debut of film titles into the subscription window is correlated with an immediate deterioration of chart positioning, reflecting the impact on subscriber willingness to spend on content they already can view within an existing package, as well as the emergence of holdbacks on rental availability.
Ampere looks into the BBC's move towards facilitating binge-watching.
Looking at all pricing data from a selection of large US transactional stores, Ampere has been conducting research into how price decline varies with content age.
Alongside the release of "The LEGO Batman Movie", Ampere finds that the number of LEGO-related titles licensed to major SVoD services in the UK and US has doubled in the last 18 months.
Mobile product lines have lost substantially more value per customer than their fixed counterparts over the past decade. Operators should now be thinking about how fixed content strategies can be adapted to protect the value of mobile customers.
The potential combination with 21st Century Fox and content synergies were brought into sharp focus as Sky revealed its results for the six months ending December 2016.
We often observe a surge in the average chart ranking of a film around the time of release of its sequel. This is, in part, due to vendors dropping the price of the original film but has much more to do with nostalgia.
Ampere solves the long-running debate over whether Die Hard is really a Christmas film
France Télévisions looks set to become the latest entrant to the French Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD) market with news that the broadcaster is working on launch of a new service this year. But France is a challenging market for SVoD...
The ascent of youth-driven social media video platforms is changing the way people engage with video with huge implications for content producers.
21st Century Fox has made an offer to purchase the 61% of Sky that it does not already own for £11.7bn, over two years after having sold its stake in both Sky Italia and Sky Deutschland to BSkyB.
British broadcasters ITV and the BBC have announced a joint on-demand subscription VoD service in the USA, BritBox, to be made available from the first quarter of 2016.
The latest international TV rights deal for the Premier League let many commenters wonder if some people had lost their minds. Indeed, at $230m per season, the Chinese PPTV’s 2019-2022 deal is worth more than ten times its predecessor.
AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner could drive international expansion and push it over 200m domestic subscribers by the end of 2017, complemented by HBO Now's subscriber base.
TV viewing in the Western world is worth an average of 23 cents per hour watched, but this has been climbing in some markets as viewing figures begin to slide.
Targeting social media video viewers is not just about considering the device environment as there are dramatic differences in the content preferences of video viewers on different social media platforms.
Sport on TV is facing a demographic challenge, Ampere's analysis of data on over 30,000 consumers in Europe and the USA indicates. Young millennials are being lured away from watching sport by the plethora of other content on offer in the TV and online video market.
As Three Italia's and Wind Italy's merger is finalized, Iliad will enter the Italian mobile market as the fourth operator.
Vudu recently announced a free streaming service, 'Movies on Us' - Ampere data highlights trends in the titles available.
Exchange rate effects – and specifically the strength of the dollar relative to European currencies – have been some of the key issues impacting addressable market value for the international branches of US film and TV groups.
Two months on from the aborted Vivendi-Mediaset deal, conditions remain challenging for domestic pay TV services in Europe.
Once content goes beyond a short initial window of approximately 6 months, an average value decline for EST and rental VoD titles begins to take place
Amidst the speculation of a merger between Disney and Netflix, Ampere considers the potential impact of the deal.
Netflix announced this week that around two thirds of content viewing is TV shows, our analysis suggests that this also applies to the proportion of its content.
If Netflix continues on current trend, 50% of its total content volume could be Netflix originals by mid 2021.
Ampere compares data from its latest consumer survey to see if there is a relationship between the genres that consumers of major SVoD services want and the content available on those services
Music video network Vevo is reportedly seeking $0.5bn of investment for expansion and diversification. Ampere estimates that the MCN is currently worth nearly $2bn.
Despite increasing overall company valuations, an update to Ampere's 2015 review of MCN acquisition trends reveals a downward trajectory in the value that purchasers are willing to place on MCN audiences.
The BBC's closure of the iPlayer loophole will deprive those who do not pay TV licence legal access to nearly 4,000 hours of content.
Content aimed at young children on YouTube is getting more TV like, increasing in length and refresh rate, an analysis of the top 50 kids' channels shows.
UHD content rental and retail prices are roughly double that of HD prices, but with an industry-wide push for more UHD content, we expect this price premium to decrease in the coming year.
Six months on from its global launch, Netflix is continuing to expand its range of content in Europe, particularly in key Eastern European markets
A closer look at the Emmy nominations for TV series with Netflix and HBO leading the way.
As the EU launches new incentives for high speed broadband development, there is still a long way to go to catch up with Asia.
As tech companies such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Snapchat throw their weight behind live video streaming, Apple is granted a patent for the blocking of camera recording on its iPhones. Rights holders will have to find the balance between enforcement and misuse.
Past evidence suggests that the UK advertising sector is particularly vulnerable to loss of confidence in the economy from consumers and businesses. The EU referendum result also brings with it additional uncertainty regarding whether international media groups will be able locate their activities in the UK and still gain access to the EU single market.
Sky will re-brand its UK movie channels Sky Cinema, bringing the brands in-line with the rest of Sky in Europe. Move is part of a renewed focus on film and international expansion.
Some of the key issues and themes to emerge during ANGACOM 2016 held in Cologne this week.
Sky retains the majority of the live domestic Bundesliga TV rights but a new entrant emerges in Eurosport who control a small section of live games for the first time. Total TV rights totaled €4.6bn over the four-year deal term.
Ampere estimates that 40% of Amazon's retail revenue was derived from Prime subscribers in 2015, and the importance of Prime to consumer purchasing behaviour allows the retailer to extensively subsidise content acquisition.
Analysis of a basket of 87 major studio digital retail releases indicates the point at which pricepoints begin to decay occurs from 28 weeks after retail release.
A potential quota on SVoD services in Europe requiring them to have at least 20% European content could have limited impact on Netflix or Amazon, which already offer a wide array of European video.
The UK's Now TV is launching a monthly kids TV pass, and with a third of Now TV users living in households with young children, the new pack appears carefully targeted.
Ampere's Quality Rating shows NowTV in the lead over other SVoD platforms when it comes to content catalogue quality, with Netflix and Prime Instant Video brought down by a long tail.
Ampere data suggests up to 2.9m paid subscriber net adds, compared to Netflix's forecast of 2.3m.
Verizon's investment in AwesomenessTV values the multichannel network at $650m, double the value of the company at the point at which Hearst acquired a stake, and over six times the price that Dreamworks originally paid.
Ampere data suggests that £4bn of revenue is at stake if the UK government drops mandatory telephony line rental charges.
How do entertainment brands rank in terms of Net Promoter Score (NPS)? Our ranking of the top 20 entertainment brands shows some stark difference between the US and UK TV viewer as well as the very strong brand position that Netflix has carved out in the entertainment space.
The top 15 cable bundlers are spread across a wide-range of territories from Malta to Singapore. Bundling is a global phenomenon and increasingly seen as key to growth. In our latest report, we examine the bundling strategies of multi-service operators across the globe and look at the impact on pricing and competitive positioning, asking the question: when is it right to bundle?
In a new free-to-download Ampere report just published by MIP TV we take a look at how to target a key TV consumer segment and how developing the right pay TV bundle can engage and attract the 'new' TV viewer.
On 21st October 2015, TalkTalk suffered an online security breach, resulting in the unauthorized access of customers' personal details and a subsequent poorly performing fourth quarter. Other UK telecoms operators appear to have benefited from TalkTalk's security woes. A comparison of net additions by company indicates that Q4 saw a different trend to that observed earlier in the year: while Sky's quarterly net additions remained relatively static between Q3 and Q4 2015, BT and EE experienced a significant rise. The change in net additions for each operator from Q3 to Q4 provides one indication of the impact that such a loss in customers' confidence can have on the UK broadband market. TalkTalk claims that around 95,000 of the total 105,000 churned customers in Q4 left as a direct result of the attack, which is equivalent to more than 60% of the estimated 157,000 customers who had their personal details hacked. Despite this set-back, the company expects to deliver full year results in line with market consensus and have already observed a return to positive RGU growth in Q1 2016.
To coincide with Spotify's recent announcement of the addition of a video channel on Android and iOS devices in the US, Ampere takes a look at the consumer profile of its premium service subscribers across the two operating systems. Both sets of customers have an extremely high uptake of video services, comparing similarly in uptake of SVoD services, premium channels and pay TV. This suggests that the incorporation of video channels on Spotify is in line with its customers' demand for access to content. They also over-index compared to the average for the high value content connoisseur consumer segment.
On a global basis, pay TV continues to grow. Although subscription television declined in 15 markets globally during Q3 2015, this represents a drop in the number of countries impacted by cord-cutting against the previous quarter. Several factors indicate that the global trend in cord-cutting is on the up, however, and there are other causes for concern in the shifting drivers for overall global pay TV growth. We take a look at the trends in 'Global cord-cutting and connecting monitor Q3 2015'. Subscribers can now access the full report from our products page.
Local content is a critical part of SVoD movie offerings across Western Europe, typically accounting for between 15% and 20% of all movies available across major platforms in each market. US-produced content, including major Hollywood studio movies, is also fairly consistent across territories, ranging between 40% and 50% of movies. The UK is the main exception to this, with services typically containing a much greater focus on US-based titles, and local content typically much more centered around TV series. But there are notable differences across services. International platforms such as Netflix and Prime Instant Video tend to have slightly less local content and more US content, while local platforms typically have between a quarter and a third of all movies produced locally.
The top line rights values for many of the world's most popular televised sports leagues have ballooned in recent years. Many question whether this will improve or harm conditions for sports fans, but it is becoming a huge driver of revenue for clubs.
As seen already this year, with Furious 7, Jurassic World and Spectre, the launch of a new movie in a long-established franchise has a considerable effect on sales of older films in the franchise. This spike in a franchise back-catalogue typically only occurs in a 1 to 2 month period around the movie launch date, but in the case of Star Wars Episode VII, digital sales of the previous six movies have been growing rapidly for nearly five months. The three oldest movies, Episode IV, V and VI were the most popular titles, although all six movies saw a considerable spike in downloads from November onwards.
Our latest report looks at the 11 investments Sky has made in tech start-ups and asks: What's missing and where next for the pay TV giant.
We take a look at some of the underlying factors which make the UK a suitable test market for Disney's launch of its new subscription service Disney Life.
Sky's new Q platform is targeting whole-home content distribution and access but the business model for making this premium product available has yet to be revealed.
The US pay TV market took another hit in the third quarter of 2015 officially losing 393,000 customers, while a re-report by AT&T took even more customers out of the market. This is an improvement over the previous quarter (decline of 608,000 homes) and while three companies saw positive net additions, there are underlying causes for concern.
Ampere Analysis has identified 5 groups of companies which command almost 50% of the global pay TV market by revenue. These groups are AT&T/ DirecTV, Comcast, Altice, and entities directly or indirectly controlled by either John Malone or Rupert Murdoch.
As of October 2015, the most torrented movies of the year to-date were Action, Adventure and Thrillers, according to Ampere's analysis of sample torrent sites - with titles including Terminator Genisys, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, and Avengers: Age of Ultron, amongst those topping the table.
This year's Rome Film Festival was full of anticipation regarding the impending local launch of Netflix, arriving on October 22nd in Italy. As such, much focus at the festival’s new MIA Markets event was placed on the role of video-on-demand services and their position in shaping the future of the TV and film markets. We look at some of the themes discussed.
Despite top line growth globally in Q2 2015, 23 markets across the world saw a net decline in pay TV in the second quarter of the year. We review the winners and losers in our cord-cutting, cord-connecting audit.
Ampere research director Guy Bisson will present at the PIKE 42nd International Conference & Exhibition in Krakow, Poland, next week. We take a sneak peak at the issues to be discussed.
International markets are making more use of TV content in the SVoD space than the USA. All of the top ten markets for TV content licensing into SVOD (ranked by proportion of titles) are international with drama being the key genre.
Our analysis of kids content licensing in the SVOD space shows that the UK and Germany are key markets in Europe but Latin America is fast emerging as a key territory for licensing animation and children's titles.
As competition hots up between the top SVoD services, we predict that rivals will increasingly splash out on original programming to the detriment of licensed content spending. This can add value to the brand and removes the problem of exclusivity, whilst squeezing growth for those dependent on selling older catalogues to over-the-top services. By the turn of the decade, Ampere expects to see as much spent by these two companies on originals as on acquired titles.
Post-IBC 2015, Ampere Analysis outlines its key takeouts from the show, revolving around advertising, user data and the HEVC codec
With IBC now in full swing, Ampere looks at 3 wider-market trends that affect the provision of equipment and solutions to service providers and broadcasters.
Skinny bundles, online video, cable companies' use of capital, direct-to-consumer plays and mobile-to-fixed convergence where all high on the agenda at CTAM Eurosummit 2015 which wrapped in Amsterdam last week. We pick out the key take-aways.
The number of pay TV homes in the Middle East and Africa is set to overtake the number of fixed line telephony homes by 2017, what are the implications for the developing TV, broadband and OTT markets?
Income for public broadcasting continues to grow in absolute terms in Europe, but adjusting for inflation reveals that the sector has entered a period of sustained decline.
The consumer profile of an SVOD home is significantly different from that of a traditional pay TV home, representing a risk factor for incumbent operators which do not address the unique needs of the key customer segment we call Content Connoisseurs.
The digital film rental and retail market is now becoming increasingly mature, with over a quarter of US and a fifth of UK Internet users having made a purchase or rental via a digital platform such as iTunes or Google Play in the first half of 2015. Yet despite the growing numbers of users of digital retail and rental services, a standard approach to pricing product has yet to crystalise. Studio groups are maintaining diverse and highly differentiated pricing strategies – particularly with respect to how to price Standard Definition (SD) relative to High Definition (HD), and new-release films relative to catalogue titles.
Homes that take an SVOD service are more likely to be dissatisfied with their in-home service providers for all their communications and entertainment needs than average. We ask: why?
We take a look at the point at which online video subscriptions overtake the number of subscriptions to traditional TV platforms.
It's been a decade since ITV's disastrous investment in social media pioneer Friends Reunited, but in those ten years, ITV's heavy focus on production investment has seen it diversify away from the boom/bust cycle of TV advertising. Our latest report has a full analysis of ITV's 10-year investment timeline and shows that the group began to address some of its short-falls in online and digital investment during 2014. To date, 2015 has seen a return to a laser-like focus on production assets, however. Has this left the group underweight in key areas it will need to successfully navigate the next ten years?
Subscription VoD services are now consistently outpacing pay TV services in terms of their European quarterly net additions.
BT will launch a new Ultra HD entertainment pack this August including the UK's first UHD sports channel. We compare UHD TV set uptake among UK premium customers (including Netflix which operates a UHD streaming service in the UK) At 16.2%, Sky sports customers have the highest levels of UHD TV set ownership. Netflix customers also rank highly for UHD at 14.1%. Meanwhile, 11.1% of BT Sports customers own a UHD set. How will BT's new UHD sports channel shake things up?
Despite growth in domestic Q2 net additions on a YoY basis, an ever-growing international footprint resulted in three-quarters of Netflix's net new paying subscribers in Q2 2015 being derived from markets outside the USA.
Our analysis of 15 Multi-Channel Network investment deals spanning 2012-2014 reveals a tight linkage between monthly viewership and company valuation.
With the latest BARB data showing UK homes claiming to have a TV is at its lowest level, we take a look at TV ownership across ten markets, revealing some stark differences in the role of the TV set as the centre of the modern home.
The deal with Showtime capitalises on Hulu users' tendency to over-index on SVoD and premium channels.
Orange's acquisition of Jazztel will boost its market share in the Spanish fixed broadband and telephony market by approaching 100%.
UK telco Talk Talk plans to charge no more for its gigabit broadband service in the UK than it does for its traditional broadband offer - good news for consumers, but a worrying sign for ISPs hoping that fibre would return them to high average revenues per customer.
Over a quarter of Spanish Internet users, and nearly a sixth of UK and German Internet users, have used Facebook to watch video in the last month.
Facebook's video views are rocketing and recent trials with content owners suggest it’s primed to become a plausible alternative to YouTube.
Mobile operator Vodafone has moved into the consumer ISP and fixed telephony market in the UK, under the brand ‘Vodafone Connect.’ We look at which incumbent players are most at risk from this.
More homes in the US now take a traditional pay TV service supplemented by a third-party Over-the-Top (OTT) subscription service than take pay TV alone, showing that OTT services like Netflix are now a a key part of the US in-home entertainment channel mix, but the UK pips the US to the post in terms of the number of homes choosing OTT without a traditional pay TV service.
Viewers in the big five European markets who watch on-line video daily, watch the majority of their non-linear content on a Smart TV rather than a PC, but for overall on-line viewing the PC remains the key device.
Full video of Guy Bisson's June 2015 panel session at NEM in Croatia where platform operators Iskon and Vipnet went head-to-head with public broadcaster HRT over the issue of who pays whom for channel carriage...
Analysis of on-line movie rental pricing shows that premium-price markets, perhaps counter-intuitively, apply a greater premium for HD content over SD.
Ampere Analysis has assessed 15 Multi-Channel Network investment deals between 2012 and 2014. Globalised platforms such as YouTube are becoming an existential threat to free-to-air broadcasters.
One of the key challenges for entertainment execs is judging correctly the point at which consumers will jump ship from one medium to another. Two things are needed: a largescale shift in consumer behaviour and a device environment able to seamlessly facilitate the transition.