--Issues "State of VOD Report"
Portland, Oregon-based Rentrak has hired Kristie Fortner as VP of
syndication and Gordon Jones as director of business development for
its Essentials suite of business-intelligence products (note: those
products include OnDemand Essentials, a Web-based ASP service
which measures and reports anonymous, aggregate VOD usage data,
such as viewership volumes and trends, and which is intended to
provide cable operators, content providers and advertisers with
customizable reports designed to help them better understand viewers'
VOD content preferences; Cox recently became the last remaining
top-10 US cable operator to sign up for the service). Fortner, who
reports to VP of operations, Sandra Kilbridge, will be tasked with
leveraging Rentrak's media-usage data across multiple platforms to
create reports that provide additional insight for Rentrak clients and
other parties interested in overall industry trends. Jones, meanwhile,
who reports to Carol Hinnant, VP of business development for
OnDemand Essentials, will be tasked with using his industry
experience in VOD, broadband and linear platforms to drive future
business growth, Rentrak says.
Fortner's resume includes stints at Paramount Pictures, where she
focused on program research and on the implementation of marketing
strategies for the VOD space, and at Ripe Digital Entertainment, where
she managed VOD, broadband and mobile initiatives for the company's
RipeTV, OctaneTV and FlowTV programming services. Jones worked
most recently as VP of affiliate sales and business development at Expo
Communications, where he led the company's VOD and broadband
distribution efforts with such partners as AOL, Comcast, Time Warner
Cable and Yahoo! His resume also includes stints at Bloomberg and
HBO.
In other Rentrak news: The company has released a "State of VOD
Report." The 42-page report, priced at $495, is based on data
accrued from the company's OnDemand Essentials MSO partners
from January, 2006 through March, 2008. According to Rentrak,
the report provides an overview of VOD usage trends and growth,
examines playtime hours across calendar quarters, and reveals the
types of content and programming categories that are providing
most popular with consumers. Among other things, it includes a
break-down of the top 100 VOD movies in 2007 by genre, special
sections analyzing HD VOD and adult transactional VOD
performance, and benchmarks for the top five free-on-demand
categories. Highlights of the new report, according to Rentrak,
include:
- The fact that in 2007 the company measured over 3 billion VOD
orders (excluding adult content) from its operator partners.
- The fact that in 2007 free-on-demand content accounted for 70%
of non-adult orders, subscription VOD for 27%, and transactional
VOD for 3%.
- The fact that, adjusting for its addition of new MSO partners
during the year, it tracked a 43% year-over-year increase in orders
and a 29% increase in unique set-top boxes accessing VOD.
- The fact that all the top five VOD categories enjoyed
year-over-year growth, with TV Entertainment proving the
fastest-growing category (orders increased 120%, the company
says, and the number of unique set-tops accessing the category
increased 68%).
