Rebecca Day

With a full holiday shopping season wrap slated for Tuesday, Adobe Analytics reported the November-December period had a total online spend of $188.2 billion, up 32% over 2019, to a record. Cyber Week sales were slower compared with the overall season, with Thanksgiving-Cyber Monday growing 21% year on year, Adobe emailed Wednesday. For the first time, more than half of online spending came from smartphones Christmas Day. Average daily online revenue topped $3.1 billion during the season vs. $2.3 billion in 2019, and for the first time, every day of the two-month season exceeded $1 billion in sales. Fifty days had revenue over $2 billion, nine days passed $4 billion, and Thanksgiving Day sales exceeded $5 billion. Curbside pickup orders were up 36% overall but dropped to 26% in the seven days leading up to Christmas. Smartphones were 40% of the season’s e-commerce growth.

Quibi didn't comment Monday on a Sunday report that it's in talks to sell its catalog to Roku. The short-form video service shut down in October after six months (see report in this publication, Oct. 23). Roku has been pushing into content with its ad-supported Roku Channel that offers movies and TV shows from others. A deal with Quibi would give Roku exclusive programming. A spokesperson emailed that Roku doesn’t comment on market speculation.

It could be a breakout year for augmented reality hardware, said an ABI Research 2021 trends report, as Nreal and Mad Gaze expand their AR efforts, and Facebook is expected to debut its AR smart glasses from the Reality Labs initiative. Google could take another stab at smart glasses after buying North and facing pressure from Facebook and others, said analyst Eric Abbruzzese. Apple, a “wild card,” is expected to have a dedicated AR product launch in 2022.

Aggregation, security and voice control are key areas in the surging pay-TV streaming video market as consumers continue their exodus from traditional pay TV, panelists told Parks Associates’ recent Future of Video virtual conference. “The value of aggregation is huge,” said Ben Grad, fuboTV head-content strategy and acquisition, saying over-the-top video customers will “continue to flock” to services that offer a wide range of content “all in one place, on one platform, on devices they already have in their home.” Consumers don’t want to split their viewership among a dozen different apps, he said. More viewers are moving to aggregation platforms for streaming channels to simplify billing and access services through a single interface, said Parks analyst Kristen Hanich. Content aggregation will be “interesting” amid a fragmented OTT market, said Lu Bolden, Verimatrix chief revenue officer. It’s a challenge for the industry when a customer searches for content to “figure out what that end user’s authorized for through what platform,” he said. “Did they sign up through fubo for this particular piece of content, or this channel, or through Philo?” Services will want to keep subscribers in an environment that gives them access to applications and content “so that everyone can monetize this along the way,” said Bolden. That requires “complex insight” into data, authorization information and agreements among intermediaries. Voice control has an essential role in helping consumers find content in a fragmented space, panelists said, though Megan Dover, Cox executive director-video and entertainment product management and development, sees it as evolutionary technology. On whether far-field mics might be built into a set-top boxes vs. integrated into the handheld remote, Dover said Cox is studying the possibility as an “ideal” offering for the future. “It would be great to be able to not touch a remote control and say, ‘I want to watch …,' and it starts playing,” she said, but customers are also used to being able to pause, rewind and fast-forward within a program. Those commands are still cumbersome for voice control, Dover said. Sports betting is also becoming more popular on TV services, and security will be important as that segment expands, said Verimatrix’s Bolden. Implementing monetary transactions on platforms previously used only for viewing entertainment will be an issue, he said. It’s challenging to tie in authentication of users “as they’re moving from platform to platform” and make it easy for them to move from a smartphone to a TV to another device while having to remember passwords, Bolden said: “You want to make the experience for the end user easy, so they’ll stay on your platform -- but still secure.”

Stay-at-home viewing raised the profile of ad-supported VOD, a Parks Associates virtual conference was told last week. Acquisitions in AVOD including Pluto TV by ViacomCBS in 2019 (see 1903040002), Xumo by Comcast in February (see 2002250059) and Tubi by Fox in April (see 2004200070) raised the profile of the category, said Parks analyst Steve Nason. NBCUniversal further disrupted this space, launching the hybrid Peacock service first through its affiliate Comcast and with Cox customers, then broadly in July. Parks believes AVOD will continue to gain on subscription VOD services as they offer more exclusive content and other benefits. Among U.S. broadband households viewing AVOD in Q3, 9% watched Pluto TV, 8% The Roku Channel, 7% Tubi TV and 6% Peacock. Tubi got more engagement before the pandemic, said Vice President-Business Development Andrea Clarke-Hall. “The pandemic accelerated what was already happening.” Stefan Van Engen, Xumo senior vice president-content programming and partnerships, said fewer commercials and better overall user experience drive engagement. Ad targeting helps, said Henry Embleton, head-ad products and revenue at hybrid AVOD-SVOD anime streamer Crunchyroll.

Walmart stepped up its efforts to combat bots and encouraged other retailers to petition lawmakers to do more to prevent unwanted bots on e-commerce sites “so customers have equal access to the products they want,” blogged Jerry Geisler, Walmart Global Tech chief information security officer. Higher-than-normal online shopping volume due to COVID-19 and the seven-year release cycle of game consoles combined to create Walmart.com traffic patterns “we’ve previously never seen,” Geisler said Tuesday. Additional traffic came from what he called “grinch bots” used by resellers, which can “complete many transactions before a human has the chance to complete one.” He said the retailer “built, deployed and are continuously updating our own bot detection tools allowing us to successfully block the vast majority of bots we see.” Thursday, Walmart U.S. Chief Marketing Officer William White blogged that his company will hold the first “livestream shopping experience” on TikTok Friday.

Amazon is working with about 20 live TV providers to create a more “unified experience” for customers’ preferences, said Sandeep Gupta, general manager of Fire TV. The increasingly complex TV landscape presents viewing challenges for customers, along with opportunities for much more content selection, he told a Parks Associates virtual conference Tuesday. “The landscape has changed, and how people use content has changed, and we’ve had to adapt the experience to meet that.” Amazon said this week it passed 50 million monthly active users, up from the 40 million announced at CES in January. Amid the vast amount of programming available, “it’s not always easy for customers to figure out where to go, what to watch,” Gupta said now. His group is focused on ensuring that all its content providers -- Prime Video, Netflix and Disney+, for instance -- “are having a great experience via voice and interactions.”

COVID-19’s closure of theaters in 2020 disrupted Hollywood’s movie release schedule, and with many theater release windows gone for now as a result of the pandemic, “content producers have the opportunity to go try things in a new way without crashing the system,” said Interpret Vice President Brett Sappington on a Tuesday Brightcove webinar. With Universal, Warner and Disney capable of monetizing movies through company-owned streaming services, “what do theaters look like?” post-coronavirus, he asked. “Do they come back and at what scale?” He offered the possibility of a distributor buying a movie chain to control distribution. The market for theaters will “erode significantly, more than we want to talk about,” said Brightcove analyst Jim O’Neill. Studios have been trying to control theatrical outlets for some time, said Allan McLennan, CEO of Padem Media Group. “Now, being able to get in and actually have a little bit of leverage to keep themselves alive is very key.” AT&T is putting its completed 2021 film slate out through its HBO Max service in a one-month streaming exclusive that’s simultaneous with theater releases (see 2012080063). Brian Carroll, Ladies Professional Golf Association senior vice president-global media distribution, said streamers are “nibbling” into live sports content under different approaches including nonexclusive deals, documentaries, previews and highlights: The LPGA hopes to make more content available over streaming.

Sidewalk, Amazon's low-bandwidth network enabler, isn't yet live even as Echo smart speaker users saw the feature activated by default on the Alexa app beginning in late November. “We started notifying existing Echo customers with eligible Echo devices that their devices will be a part of Sidewalk and how they can change their preferences before the feature turns on,” an Amazon spokesperson emailed. Customers can update their Sidewalk preferences, including turning off the feature, during device setup or anytime in the Alexa app settings, the spokesperson said.

Respondents in Cowen's November shopping survey were “somewhat negative” about holiday spending, it emailed investors Thursday. Despite the “soft macro backdrop” from COVID-19, e-commerce spending is expected to “rise significantly,” as 59% of respondents said they would bump up their online holiday shopping; 11% planned to spend less online. Survey data aligned with 44% year-on-year e-commerce growth over the Thanksgiving-Cyber Monday shopfest, as reported by the National Retail Federation (see 2012010042). Cowen estimates U.S. Amazon Prime households rose to 73 million in November: Two-thirds of those expect their online holiday shopping to rise year on year, said analyst John Blackledge, noting that Amazon kicked off holiday shopping with its delayed Prime Day event in early October. Amazon is the most popular site, said the survey, with 84% of respondents planning to shop the leading e-commerce site over the holidays, followed by 50% at retailer sites and 21% each for brand sites and eBay. Amazon’s third-party gross merchandise value grew nearly 60% year on year after Prime Day; it topped 60% over the “Cyber 5” shopping period. Some 44% of survey respondents said they planned to start shopping earlier this year, 42% the same as last year, and 14% later. The elongated season is a positive for e-commerce, said Blackledge, noting that consumers who begin buying earlier could end up spending more overall. Sixteen percent expected to spend more, 29% less, and half about the same as last year. Delivery anxiety is a logical driver behind early buying, dating back to longer delivery times early in the pandemic, said Blackledge. About 56% of respondents said they aren’t worried about delivery times, 36% were moderately worried, and 7% “very worried.” Similar percentages played out among Prime members, with 8% very worried.