NEW YORK—Ziff Davis has reached a definitive agreement to sell its Connectivity division to Accenture for $1.2 billion in cash.

The deal includes such brands as Ookla, Speedtest, Ekahau, Downdetector, and RootMetrics that provide solutions and services that help optimize networks, elevate digital experiences, and ensure faster, more reliable connectivity.

"This is a transformative deal for Ziff Davis, representing a significant realization of value for our shareholders and a concrete illustration of the quality of the businesses in our portfolio," said Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff Davis.

The sale price is subject to certain closing adjustments and the proceeds will be subject to applicable taxes. The transaction is currently expected to close in the coming months.

Evercore Group L.L.C. and Citi served as Ziff Davis’ financial advisors, and Kirkland & Ellis LLP acted as legal counsel to the Company for this transaction.

Ziff Davis plans to utilize the proceeds of the transaction for general corporate purposes and to fund its robust capital allocation activities in accordance with the terms of the Company’s outstanding debt securities.

NEW YORK & AUSTIN, Texas—Accenture has acquired Nextira, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Premier Partner that uses AWS to deliver cloud-native innovation, predictive analytics and immersive experiences for their clients.

The deal will expand Accenture’s engineering capabilities in AI and machine learning. Nextira’s nearly 70 employees will join the Accenture AWS Business Group with a focus on media and entertainment industry clients.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

Nextira builds cloud-based solutions and services with cutting-edge engineering skills, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and data analytics that enable clients to design, build, launch and optimize high-performance computing environments. In addition, Nextira’s proprietary Studio in the Cloud solution on AWS provides clients with a virtual environment to easily develop and render 3D objects using the latest rendering platforms, Accenture reported. 

Nextira’s platform engineering expertise and AI and machine learning services will enable AI capabilities to be directly embedded into the rapidly growing number of applications and services on AWS, Accenture reported. 

“Nextira brings in proven expertise in engineering and architecting the cloud solutions that form a digital core for continuous innovation,” said Karthik Narain, global lead for Accenture Cloud First. “We will combine Nextira’s AI, machine learning, and data and analytics abilities with Accenture’s approach to using modern data platforms on cloud. This will deliver the actionable insights and predictive outcomes that our clients need to create new applications and services, deliver innovative customer and employee experiences and fuel their next wave of product and market growth.”

“Our strategy has always been to use cutting-edge technologies in order to create better futures for our clients,” said Jason Cutrer, founder and CEO, Nextira. “Joining Accenture will connect our deep experience in platform and software engineering with Accenture’s breadth of knowledge across cloud technologies, creating new opportunities for organizations to unlock the potential of emerging technologies to drive business value.”

NEW YORK—As media companies plot their strategies for 2023 in what promises to be a challenging market for streamers and broadcasters, new consumer research from Accenture suggests that one major opportunity will be solutions that address widespread consumer complaints about the hassle of navigating through many different apps and streaming platforms. 

According to “Reinvent for growth,” a new report from Accenture, six in seven consumers globally (86%) say they want an all-in-one platform to simplify their entertainment experiences with video streaming, fantasy sports, social media, ecommerce and more. 

As part of its second annual global entertainment study, Accenture surveyed 6,000 consumers to understand their preferences and behaviors regarding their online entertainment experiences. Four in 10 respondents (41%) said they would pay for an all-in-one platform for their entertainment services. In addition, three in five (61%) want the ability to share their streaming profiles across platforms to allow for better personalization of content, the survey found. 

“Standalone streaming services are running up against some simple facts: There are limits to what consumers will pay for and only a certain amount of complexity and options that they are prepared to deal with,” said John Peters, a managing director in Accenture’s Media & Entertainment industry practice. “It is time to reimagine entertainment ecosystems so that media companies can move to profitable growth by helping consumers get everything they need and want.”

Other findings from the report further highlight the need for media organizations to reconsider their operational and content strategies:

• More than one-third (35%) of consumers unsubscribed from at least one of the top five streaming video-on-demand services in the last 12 months, and 26% said that they plan to cut one or more in the next 12 months.
• More than seven in 10 consumers (72%) reported frustration at finding something to watch, up 6 percentage points from last year.
• More than half (55%) of consumers said they are overwhelmed by the number of streaming services to choose from, with 26% saying it can take them more than 10 minutes to settle on a streaming choice (up from 17% last year).

Accenture’s report also highlights three emerging roles for entertainment companies hoping to better compete for consumers’ time, attention and money: 

• Audience aggregators are platform companies with a diversified business model that monetize attention and engagement directly and indirectly by tying multiple entertainment and other services together in one place.
• Audience cultivators will create and efficiently monetize entertainment in one or multiple forms (e.g., video, music, gaming etc.) by knowing their core audience, focusing on content/cost efficiency, and ensuring that they’re included in audience aggregator platforms and bundles.
• Content merchants will focus on making the best possible content without needing to monetize the engagement their content achieves.

“The future of the media industry is moving toward aggregated platforms,” said Imran Shah, a managing director with Accenture’s Communications, Media & Technology industry group. “These platforms will achieve two crucial outcomes — creating inclusive, lower churn services and bundles that will drive revenue for media companies, while delivering experiences that enable consumers to easily find and access content.”

Additional insights and findings from the report are available here.

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The widely touted benefits of 5G wireless networks to offer consumers new entertainment experiences and streamline the way companies produce content could also help the U.S. combat climate change, according to a new study by Accenture that was commissioned by the CTIA. 

The wireless industry association funded study is forecasting that 5G connectivity will play a significant role in enabling the U.S. to meet the Biden Administration’s climate change goals, with 5G-enabled use cases projected to make up to a 20% contribution toward the country’s carbon emission reduction targets by 2025. 

The report, titled "5G Connectivity: A Key Enabling Technology to Meet America’s Climate Change Goals," finds that use cases on 5G networks will enable up to 330.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMtCO2e) of additional abatement by 2025. That is the equivalent of removing 26% of all the passenger vehicles from the road in the U.S. for a year—roughly 72 million vehicles.

“This study confirms that U.S. 5G wireless networks will be instrumental in tackling the pressing challenge of climate change,” said Meredith Attwell Baker, CTIA President and CEO. “America’s wireless industry is building a world-leading 5G platform that will spur the investment and innovation necessary to meet our country’s climate objectives.”

The report examined 31 use cases for 5G across five industry verticals: transportation and cities, manufacturing, buildings and energy, agriculture, and working, living and health. 

“This study shows 5G networks can bring material reductions in our country’s carbon footprint,” said Peters Suh, Accenture’s North America Communications and Media industry lead. “The crucial piece will be how industries leverage cloud-first 5G networks to bring greater innovation into key operational processes. With appropriate education and ecosystem changes, organizations can reap the climate benefits of 5G across their cloud continuum, which includes everything from the public cloud to the edge.”

“U.S. 5G networks already cover 305 million people, we’re building out 5G faster than we built out 4G, and every day, the wireless industry is working to make these networks go faster and farther,” added Attwell Baker. “Taken together, America’s wireless ecosystem is positioning U.S. innovators across these key industry verticals to quickly unlock these climate benefits.”

The report does not specifically examine the entertainment industry but technologists are already viewing 5G as a promising way to reduce the carbon footprint of producing live sports and other content, as previously reported here and here in TV Tech. A IBC report on the subject can be found here.  

The full CTIA report is available here. 

For a new business that most media companies see as an opportunity, the over-the-top market already has a problem, according to a new report from Accenture.

Accenture’s new report, Reshape to Relevance, finds that as technology gives consumers more choice, being relevant is of paramount importance, and yet, the global OTT has “a relevance problem,” the consultant said.

In a survey, Accenture found that 50% of video subscribers said they believe they’re paying for at least some content they don’t care about.

“However, people will still pay for the right content. True, subscription TV is showing signs of erosion both in use of bundled services and viewing time, but adoption of subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) services is growing, particularly among younger consumers,” the report said. “With low-cost bundled SVOD services like Netflix available in the market, aggregators need to become smarter about their bundling value to consumer.”

Accenture’s study found that 30% of consumers are willing to pay to remove ads from their video subscription services, which is less than the 38% reported last year.

Younger viewers are more tolerant of TV ads, which implies that a future ad market could be an opportunity for OTT video, and not a threat, the report said.

“Taken together, these are strong indicators of both the importance of ad-supported models and the necessity of reimagining ad placement for digital OTT content. Companies should also explore pay-per-view (PPV). Consumer interest in PPV is four times actual usage and that presents a seriously untapped opportunity,” according to the report.

Accenture’s study found that global SVOD adoption among online consumers already paying for video services has grown to 52% from 44% last year. It also found that 44% of global video consumers are willing to share their personal data in exchange for something in return.

In addition to OTT TV, Accenture looked at other categories affected by technology including digital voice assistants and extended reality.

How important is relevance? Accenture reports its research reveals that in the U.S., companies lost $1 trillion in potential revenue by not being relevant enough and losing business to competitors.

To Accenture, being relevant means increasing the value a consumer perceives in a product so they’ll want to buy it for their home.

“That’s the challenge facing extended reality technologies right now. In the end, it might mean rethinking a business model to give people what they really want, and that’s a big issue today for over-the-top (OTT) video providers,” according to the report.

To appeal to consumers as their preferences are changing with new technology, products and services need to be:

• Intelligent, flexible and scalable to consumers’ needs

• Able to tightly integrate with other products and services

• Highly trustworthy

• Available to consumers, when and where they need them

• Optimized for consumer value

WASHINGTON—Collectively, the growing wave of streaming and OTT versions of linear programs has generated a tidal wave of usage, posing challenges to producers and distributors who are hustling to find ways to create a “consistent experience” for audiences who see programs on a variety of devices and via multiple delivery systems.

According to a Parks Associates analysis last month, 52 percent of U.S. broadband households subscribe to both pay TV and one or more OTT video services. The study also found that about two-thirds of U.S. broadband households subscribe to an OTT service, and 38 percent have more than one OTT subscription.

A separate study by the Interactive Advertising Bureau found that in North America, 65 percent of viewers watch streaming video once or several times per day—slightly less than the streaming usage in Europe, Asia/Pacific and far less than in South America and the Middle East. And yet another report from PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that OTT video revenue will reach nearly $31 billion by 2022, up from about $22 billion this year.

MULTIPLE CHALLENGES

Despite such rosy data, however, the video streaming outlook faces multiple challenges. For example, Dan Rayburn, a principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan, frets that the current streaming infrastructure cannot keep pace with the growth in streaming demand. In a recent online blog Rayburn contended that, “if online video consumption continues to take market share from traditional distribution channels and ultimately replaces traditional broadcast distribution, then streaming video infrastructure will need to increase its capacity by over 3x in the coming years.”

Moreover, Rayburn predicts that if 4K UHD replaces the current high-definition signals for streamed content, then “the required bandwidth will increase by a factor of another 4x.

”Adding 8K, used for “true virtual reality” would trigger the need for “another 3x increase in capacity,” Rayburn said in a blog last month. He concluded that such growth scenarios would require a 20-fold increase in the streaming video infrastructure during the coming decade.

“Building 20x the data centers and filling them with 20x the servers in addition to constructing the power plants to power this infrastructure is clearlly not an economically viable or sustainable strategy,” Rayburn added. But his modest conclusion was only that “we need to start talking now about how to meet the “capacity gap” challenge.

WANTED: NEW WORKFLOW TOOLS

That realty—the necessary coexistence of linear and streaming content—has triggered aggressive efforts to empower the media supply chain with new tools to handle workflows for the emerging market.

“Workflows, as repeatable processes, are evolving constantly in reaction to new content manufacturing and distribution scenarios,”said Richard N. Yelen, head of North American Business Development for Accenture Digital Video Products and Services. He cited “the migration from traditional licensed content distribution to ‘app syndication,’ as content owners take greater ownership over the viewing experience.”

“We are increasingly looking at ways of using data [aggregated from consumption platforms, AI-generated from media analysis and other sources] in a highly secured way to drive automation into the supply chain,” Yelen added.

He acknowledged the “distinct differences” between broadcast and cable operator products and services “with obvious intersections” but emphasized that both of those traditional platforms are “quite different” for video on demand and live streaming.

“The difference is between file-based workflow vs. active real-time streaming,” Yelen said. “Live streaming requires more careful/intense real-time management of service continuity and user experience since popular large live events, such as sporting matches, can cause unpredictable viewership spikes.

“These spikes often have load implications across the viewing platform ecosystem, including both core platform services [e.g. user authentication], as well as network and caching [e.g. CDN performance],” Yelen added.

Jon Alexander, senior director of product management for Akamai, noted the special considerations for live vs. on-demand.

“For live and linear delivery, we emphasize live origin capabilities—ingesting video into our network from as close to the origination point [ideally production or playout] as quickly as possible,” Alexander said, noting that for on-demand content, Akamai seeks to move content “into our storage environment or from a customer’s on-premise or cloud storage platform. He emphasized the architecture that seeks to enable “capabilities such as multisource multicast and prepositioning of content.”

The technologies Akamai leverages for OTT video delivery differ from those used for traditional broadcast and cable transmission, according to Alexander.

“The workflows themselves are different, as is encoding and security,” he said. “For OTT, we’re delivering content files in chunks, and we’re using the open, unmanaged internet as the transport layer. While there are changes on the horizon, the majority of OTT delivery today is unicast—one stream to one device—as opposed to one-to-many broadcast delivery.”

But although the underlying technologies are very different, Akamai is working to enable the same experience, he said.

“The bar for consumer expectations has been set by broadcast, so we’re aiming to reach and ultimately exceed those expectations by tuning every layer of the delivery stack from the client and network transport protocols all the way through the application,” he added. “This helps enable efficient video delivery across the internet from the origin to the end-viewer device, whatever or wherever it may be.”

Aspera, an IBM operating unit, has developed a range of streaming video solutions, based on its Fast Adaptive Secure Protocol (FASP), a large data transport protocol that eliminates TCP’s loss and error handling and the resulting erratic transfer rate swings.

“FASPStream enables centralized, real-time production of high bit-rate programming, eliminating the need to colocate costly production staff at remote venues,” Todd Kelly, director of product marketing, explained. “It also supports in-line transcoding, packaging and delivery to accelerate live video delivery and facilitates open file workflows for real-time editing and production. By lowering the production costs for all kinds of events, especially ‘tier 2’ and ‘tier 3’ events, broadcasters can create and deliver new content [that targets] new audiences.”

Kelly also emphasized the value of collaboration, citing his company’s work with Telestream to build a joint solution that integrates FASPStream technology into Telestream’s Vantage and Lightspeed Live software.

“This API-level integration provides a truly innovative approach to delivering live, broadcast-quality video streams from the venue to the remote production facility, enabling workflows never before possible,” Kelly said.

SeaChange International is also focusing on the multiplatform ecosystem with its new “cFlow solutions” portfolio, which debuted in June. According to SeaChange Marketing Vice President Kurt Michel, the solution was developed to serve broadcast, cable and OTT customers who “want a single workflow management system that handles all of the associated workflows.” In addition, SeaChange’s PanoramiC platform, a pre-integrated end-to-end cloud-based video delivery platform, can be used by content producers, broadcasters, cable and mobile operators and aggregators (such as vMVPDs) for multiplatform delivery.

“We have customers who perform over 1,000 quality checks on incoming content, before they even start processing it,” Michel explained. “With adaptive bitrate streaming, their workflows can literally produce dozens of variations of a given title,” including content rights, geo restrictions and other factors.

He characterized SeaChange’s “medium-agnostic” approach as a “cohesive, viewer-centric system” with modular elements that are “medium-specific where technical requirement dictate.”

Michel cited ad insertion technologies that can be adapted to the mechanisms used on different networks.

“Our session management capabilities allow a viewer to stop watching a title on their traditional TV, and pick up where they left off on their smartphone,” he explained.

VIDEO LATENCY & SPORTS SPEEDS

IBM Aspera’s Kelly underscored the importance of low-latency for streamed content.

“Capturing and producing content for live events such as sports, news, training or education programs poses unique challenges, and true real-time, remote production has long been one of the ‘holy grails’ for broadcasters that produce live events,” he said.

The issue of latency in high-speed streaming of sports has become more prominent due to the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing sports betting in the U.S., Kelly added.

Akamai’s Alexander agrees that latency is one of the most significant differences between traditional broadcast/cable delivery and OTT systems.

“We’ve done a lot of development to reduce end-to-end latency to 10 seconds on our generally available delivery and live origin products... equivalent to the latency you see on traditional television,” Alexander told TV Technology. “This is especially important for the live sports experience, where you want viewers—no matter how they’re watching—to see a big play at roughly the same time rather than hear cheers or groans or see something on social media before they actually see it live.”

“While 10-second latency is acceptable for most applications, we continue to push for lower latency,” Alexander added. “We have demonstrated two- to three-second end-to-end latency using chunked-transfer encoding, which is being successfully tested with several customers at the moment.”

SeaChange’s Michel also addressed the latency challenges for sports events and other live programming, which he characterized as part of a bigger reality: “workflow complexity is increasing.”

“Real-time content protection [adds]... an additional layer of complexity,” he said. “Viewer tolerance for problems with live sporting events is usually very low, since they are emotionally attached and the content is highly perishable. The live experience is everything.”

He emphasized that providers are not satisfied with an either/or for live video-on-demand.”

“They require both live and VOD,” he said.

PROMISING OUTLOOK

As vendors look toward the next steps in managing conventional and future video delivery, one theme comes through: the need for a consistent experience.

“A consistent experience across viewing devices and platforms” is the objective of SeaChange’s portfolio of content management systems, advertising management and back office systems, explained Kurt Michel, vice president of marketing for the Acton, Mass.-based company.

“Consistency of the viewing experience,” is Akamai’s goal, said Jon Alexander, senior director of product management for Akamai.

“Uniform, unaltered, in-order byte stream that equally supports constant bit rate and adaptive bit rate formats,” according to Todd Kelly director of product marketing for IBM Aspera, in more technical terms.

“Reliable functioning of many large platforms,” is how Accenture’s Yelen summed it up.

“OTT will continue to grow and to dislodge traditional viewing experiences, with mobile traffic growing even further in prominence,” Yelen said. “The rollout of 5G services will be an additional accelerator because it will provide much higher quality and less compressed images when streamed to a device or television. Better connectivity in highly populated urban areas as a result of 5G may also boost consumers’ desire and ability to stream videos.”

Alexander expects to see more mainstream adoption of the HEVC and CMAF [Common Media Application Format] standards for streaming this year.

“We’re still early in the OTT adoption cycle, so consistently meeting performance expectations at 10x or 100x current traffic levels is a major point of emphasis for Akamai,” Alexander said.

Kelly, citing IBM Aspera’s work with Fox Sports on World Cup coverage, pointed out that, waiting for transfers to be complete before editing is “not an option.” He explained that while monitoring the soccer action in Russia, the Fox Sports production team in Los Angeles was “able to create clips while files are still growing,” constantly keeping in mind that delays “would not meet the audience expectation for live viewing.”

Collectively, all that upbeat exuberance seems to justify the forecast of Colin Dixon, chief analyst and founder of nScreenMedia, a Silicon Valley consultancy.

“By 2022, video streaming will scale to TV audience size,” Dixon said in June. “Linear TV broadcasters will be taking advantage of technology to provide fully addressable linear experiences.”

Consistently.

LOS ANGELES—The Walt Disney Studios has appointed Accenture as a founding member and Innovation Partner of its StudioLAB initiative that aims to reimagine, design and prototype entertainment experiences and the production capabilities of the future, the consulting, strategy and technology company said Wednesday.

Accenture Interactive and its design unit Fjord will help to establish StudioLAB, as well as develop new entertainment technology. Guided by Accenture Labs’ R&D, they seek to employ emerging technologies in innovative ways, the company said.

“As we thought about key partners to deliver our vision for StudioLAB, the decision to collaborate with Accenture Interactive was clear,” said Jamie Voris, CTO of The Walt Disney Studios in a press release.

Initially, the focus will be on immersive entertainment, artificial intelligence, IoT, the future of movie production and next-generation cinematic platforms, the company said. Accenture will support operations at StudioLAB as part of its three-year agreement with Disney. It will work with Disney to develop StudioLAB’s charter and governance, physical lab design and business operations.

Accenture employees will work with StudioLAB personnel on incubating and prototyping new concepts to advance how stories are told, it said.

“Technology is an essential component of how we make characters, stories and worlds come alive at Disney, and we’re looking forward to the possibilities of what we can imagine and build together,” said Voris.

NEW YORK—Accenture recently released its predictions for things to watch for at the 2016 NAB Show, noting seven topics ranging from newly released virtual reality technology to ad blockers. TV Technology recently spoke with Accenture Executive Gavin Mann about their prognostications.

This year could see a big step forward for over-the-air television broadcasting with the development of ATSC 3.0, the next-generation broadcast standard, according to Accenture. In late March, the Advanced Television Systems Committee, tasked with developing ATSC 3.0, approved the bootstrap component of the standard. Although this marks the first part to reach standard status, it’s probably not the last for this year, with Accenture reporting that more elements of ATSC 3.0 are expected to be approved in 2016. ATSC 3.0 will make broadcasters more competitive with major digital providers like Netflix. “ATSC 3.0 will be the big disruptor for which this industry has been clamoring,” Accenture said in its report.

Gavin Mann

Also grabbing headlines recently was the release of the Oculus Rift virtual reality platform, just one of many components that has Accenture predicting VR as another major trend for 2016. The NAB Show is planning its own virtual reality pavilion at this year’s show, and Mann says “without doubt, it is going to be an increasingly important part of the overall ecosystem of consumer consumption of various format types.”

Despite all the buzz surrounding the new format, Mann does not see it as a replacement to TV, but instead, views it as a tool for future storytellers that is not yet at its end state. “What you see in the first innovation cycle is people want to show how it works,” said Mann, “but I think the future will be more interesting than that.”

The report also indicates the importance of delivering digital content, with Accenture pointing primarily to sports, and how networks’ efforts to maintain exclusivity don’t always succeed. As an example, the Accenture report described “the expansion of sports content on mobile devices and the Internet,” including the NFL’s recent partnership with Twitter on exclusive streaming rights for 10 games during the upcoming regular season.

Developments like this, as well as the emergence of OTT streaming services like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, have led many to fear for cable’s future over the last few years. However, Accenture is firmly in the camp that cable is not dead yet. “This is not the year when cable is about to die,” said Mann. “Cable is in a healthy place. Albeit, we are seeing subscription numbers go down, but it’s not going at a rate at a rate of change where the industry won’t respond to that. Again, it’s changing, but it’s not falling off a cliff.”

Accenture’s remaining predictions were that “super platforms” would help create new live broadcasters, specifically referring to services like “Facebook Live,” which allows users to watch and stream live video from mobile devices, and how such videos could soon be used by news outlets; the invasion of ad blockers threatening the digital advertising industry; and the emergence of data driven broadcast/video business.

If Accenture’s predictions come true, it certainly sounds like it will be a busy year for the media industry, but as Mann pointed out, “pace of change is faster than ever, fueled by consumer’s expectations increasing faster than ever,” calling the current state of the industry “a modern renaissance period for content."