Foxtel

• BOSTON, Nov. 14, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- OfferFit, the trailblazing marketing technology company empowering marketers to replace traditional A/B testing with automated experimentation, today announced its $25M Series B funding round led by Menlo Ventures.
• Ridge Ventures joined the round, along with earlier investors Canvas Ventures, Harmony Partners, Alumni Ventures Group, Carbide Ventures, and Burst Capital.
• Capital One Ventures, the strategic investment arm of Capital One, also participated in the round following Capital One's success with OfferFit.
• JP Sanday from Menlo Ventures has joined the board, with Alexander Rosen from Ridge Ventures joining as an observer.

• ClickUp customers subscribed to the company's Enterprise plan will now have the option to host and keep their data in ClickUp's APAC region at no additional cost.
• This offering provides customers in APAC with complete ownership of their data and peace of mind that all data will meet regional data hosting requirements.
• Furthermore, due to high demand, a second data centre will be added in APAC in the upcoming months.
• In addition to the new data centre, ClickUp announced the hire of Ankesh Chopra, Vice President, APAC.

• Streaming services have dramatically transformed the media landscape, allowing consumers unparalleled access to vast libraries of content.
• This increase in competition has created many challenges for streaming services and resulted in many services recently reporting losses of both subscribers and profits.

Content removal: for the consumer experience or just a tax write-off?

• Previously, content has been usually removed from streaming services due to licensing agreements.
• But the more recent content removal discussion raises questions associated with streaming services – and their overarching corporations – wanting to save money.
• The removal of original content from streaming services, in most instances, means they will not be accessible to viewers anywhere.
• More content is expected to disappear in upcoming quarters, which could also include original content.

Has the streaming bubble burst?

• It was reported Netflix lost 200,000 subscribers worldwide, the complete opposite of Wall Street’s expectation that the service would add 2.5 million subscribers.
• This was only exacerbated by the loss of 3.8 million subscribers to its Disney+ Hotstar streaming services (the Disney+ service offered in India and parts of Southeast Asia).
• Warner Bros Discovery also reported a financial loss of US$217 million across its streaming services.

The impact on viewers and creators

• Eliza Skinner, head writer for Earth to Ned, which was removed from Disney+, says they were not aware of the decision until seeing it reported in an article.
• Band of Brothers, The Pacific, Six Feet Under and Ballers will also be available on Netflix as part of the deal.
• This is a significant shift in the previous approach by streaming services to create “originals” as a way to increase subscriptions.

Too many chefs in the production kitchen

• For television series, licensing and agreements can become extremely complicated when multiple studios are involved across multiple seasons.
• This resulted in the first three seasons streaming on Disney’s Hulu service, while Netlfix had all five on its service.
• This was due to a “first run” agreement Foxtel had signed many years prior to Netflix’s involvement.

Will there be resurgence of physical media?

• That is, if you can find a store that sells physical media – Kmart removed the sale of physical media more than five years ago.
• But for much of the new content being produced, physical media are not available.
• This means consumers will not be able to access the content once it has been removed from a streaming service.

• With the rapid growth of its global client-base, Cumulus VFX faced critical storage capacity challenges, a common problem in the industry as the amount of technology and data applications continue to grow.
• Cumulus VFX now operates its entire production environment on a 7x52 TB FlashBlade – including current projects for Disney, Warner Bros and Bazmark.
• Pure Storage enables enhanced data security as mission-critical data can be encrypted at rest.
• Cumulus VFX's decision to move to Pure Storage FlashBlade was a no-brainer - the company is leaps ahead of the competition."