Nielsen’s Gracenote unit introduced a new set of data that tells content owners and distributors whether individual programs are binged by consumers, viewed loyally or performed similarly to other programs.

The new product, called the Distribution Dynamics and Program Availability Archive, is designed to provide the content marketplace with additional insights and help buyers and sellers optimize their licensing and acquisition strategies by understanding how certain titles drive subscribers' acquisition and retention.

The company also launched the Gracenote Program Availability Archive, which provides information about the past placement of programs across various streaming services over a five-year span. The data includes episode titles, season and episode number, original air data, and availability start and end dates.

Also: Nielsen’s Gracenote Unit Launches Product for Streaming Platforms

“As the streaming business continues to put huge investment into creating content, we are seeing the need for new metrics and insights to help guide monetization efforts,” said Simon Adams, chief product officer at Gracenote. “Gracenote’s Content Analytics solutions, including our new Distribution Dynamics and Program Availability Archive datasets, meet these needs by providing owners and buyers trusted data and intelligence to inform decision-making around their content strategies.”

The new products are anchored by Gracenote’s Inclusion Analytics and Audience Predict offerings. The company says the portfolio helps creators, buyers and distributors develop, release and promote content for their target audiences in the smartest ways. The data sets utilize Gracenote’s program metadata and content IDs linked to Nielsen’s current audience measurement system. ■

Streaming service Xumo, which was acquired by Comcast in February, said it has begun offering original content through a partnership with Bold Soul Studios.

Bold Soul’s new movie, White Elephant is premiering exclusively on Xumo.

Xumo also said it has begun offering a dozen films from Magnolia Pictures that are exclusive to Xumo through the end of the year. 

Related: Cinedigm Brushes Bob Ross Channel Onto Xumo

“As our audience continues to grow, and has more time for streaming and less opportunity for going out to holiday parties this season, we’re excited to invest in increasing the caliber of our content while adding to our incredible library of top-tier free movies from premium partners, as well as bring fresh, original, never-been-seen before entertainment to our users,” said Stefan Van Engen, senior VP of programming and partnerships at Xumo. “Xumo is committed to bringing the best content into the FAST space.”

White Elephant, written by Corey Moss, follows eight friends who get together for an annual white elephant gift exchange. The movie stars Devin Druid, Carmela Zumbado, CoCo Jones, Lana McKissack, Paul Karmiryan, Nathan Moore, Matthew Hancock and Avery Norris.

“We love the idea of disrupting traditional models and debuting directly on an AVOD platform,” said Moss, who co-founded Bold Soul Studios with Brad T. Gottfred. “Xumo is a pioneer in the space, and we are thrilled that audiences will be able to watch White Elephant for free this holiday season.”

The Magnolia Pictures titles streaming on Xumo include 2:22, Person to Person, Bronson, Centurion and Night Catches Us.

"Xumo is among the very best in terms of streaming content, offering millions of users the highest quality premium entertainment,” said Randy Wells, head of home entertainment at Magnolia Pictures. “Making more of our award-winning films available on Xumo extends our reach to an important audience, and gives movie fans even greater access to the best in cinema."

Streaming continued to grow in the third quarter, according to a new report from Conviva.

In its latest State of Streaming Report, Conviva found that time spent streaming was up 57% year over year during the quarter. 

Advertisers appear to be following consumer eyeballs. After a big drop in the second quarter caused by the pandemic and a lack of live sports, Conviva found that ad demand bounced back in the third quarter. There was a 22% increase in impressions, resulting from a 14% increase in ad attempts and a 22% decrease in failed ad attempts

Ad quality improved with time spent waiting for ads to buffer down 28% and picture quality11% better.

While connected TV devices--Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV, Chromecast--were dominant in streaming viewership with 55% of global viewing time, streaming through apps on smart TVs doubled its share to 14.8%. Viewing on smart sets made by Samsung, LG and Vizio  grew faster grew 200%, compared to the overall 57% growth rate.

Among streaming devices, Roku led with a 47.7% share, followed by Amazon Fire with a 27.6% share.

The most powerful video content is the NFL and more fans are streaming when they watch games. Conviva said that the number of fans streaming was up 41% compared to last season. Daytime games were up 63% with nearly 70% of viewing happening on a big screen.

Streaming on TV sets accounted for 67% of NFL viewing, with mobile getting a 13% share and 6% happening on PCs during the quarter.

Conviva collected data for the survey from its sensor technology embedded in three billion streaming video applications, which measure more than 500 million unique viewers watching 150 billion streams per year.

Consumers are pushing subscription services in new directions to get what they want on their own terms. Our latest study, “Super Subscribers: Disrupting the Subscription Services Model,” explored how consumers choose and use subscription services, including Internet, mobile phone, streaming entertainment and cable TV plans. We found that not only are their service preferences changing, but so too are the incentives that motivate them.

“Super Subscribers,” as we have identified them, are savvy shoppers of subscription services. They once accounted for a small portion of all shoppers, but today they account for most of them.

Super Subscribers are also consumers who are migrating their entertainment content delivery and traditional shopping — through expanded broadband and wireless data pipes — to get the specific content and service they desire, for a better-value price and convenient schedule.

That’s why broadband Internet services and smartphone data plans have the largest subscription bases. Cable TV subscriptions, while still very popular, are seeing a macro trend we identified as “cord-shortening.” The majority are keeping their cable, but downgrading to basic from premium, and supplementing with streaming services. At this moment, subscribers of premium and basic cable packages are roughly the same size; however, basic plans are approaching the inflection point of eclipsing premium bundles.

Streaming content is 50% bigger than basic or premium cable individually. More people are starting to “cut the cable cord” as they migrate to streaming and on-demand entertainment options, but cable shortening is more prevalent than cord-cutting at this point in time. That’s why HBO Now is at a must-launch stage for HBO. Netflix has already surpassed HBO’s subscriber base, and with a shrinking group of premium subscribers and growing streaming subscribers who outnumber premiums by almost 50%, HBO really has no choice.

We found that for entertainment content, be it movies, television or music, the best incentives that attract the most customers are post-purchase rewards offering open loop prepaid cards that can be spent anywhere. When these rewards are branded with the issuer’s logo and have an accompanying offer, they can extend initial subscription periods, and also work effectively to drive cross-sell services.

Post-purchase rewards that offer consumers 20–50% more value — but at the same cost to the issuer which is significantly less than an “instant discount” — are now a very popular acquisition incentive in many key subscription categories.

Our “Super Subscribers: Disrupting the Subscription Services Model” study identifies which consumer groups (including views by income, age and ethnicity) are using disruptive subscriptions the most and how to acquire these customers. The research, conducted online in March, questioned 1,757 U.S. consumers representative of the country’s demographics.

Rodney Mason is group vice president, marketing, at Blackhawk Engagement Solutions.