Month: May 2018

Netflix is casting a shadow, not just in the U.S. but globally, boasting an $8 billion (£6 billion) content budget that in the U.K. far exceeds homegrown public service broadcaster the BBC, with a budget of $1.4 billion (£1 billion), and ad-funded ITV, with $1.35 billion (£1 billion). Netflix has 118 million global subscribers, with roughly 8.5 million in the U.K.

Netflix has the advantage in speed, price and scale, while U.K. broadcast players like the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV have local knowledge and relationships. The resounding sentiment from production companies is that Netflix moves a lot faster than U.K. broadcasters. One U.K. production company with a show running on Netflix said the platform doesn’t wait for audience data before making commissioning decisions. Equally, it can take a U.K. broadcaster between three and six months to read a script, while a senior buyer in the U.S. will read it in two days, according to comments from an Enders Analysis report on U.K. TV production.

According to sources, Netflix rarely sends script notes, unlike U.K. broadcasters.

“Working up ideas together is important in keeping U.K. channels engaged,” said Jason Mitchell, creative director at production company The Connected Set, which has pitched shows to Netflix. “They feel the need to be shaping ideas with you.”

Typically, Netflix pays between 125 and 130 percent of the production cost to own the intellectual property of the show and international rights. The upfront price tag sounds enticing, but Netflix is looking for something already fleshed out when it’s pitched, which could cost the production company in the region of $13,400 (£10,000) for a nonscripted show, according to Mitchell. If Netflix doesn’t pick up the show, finding another buyer that can match the budget is tricky.

In some cases, the long tail of revenue from keeping the IP and selling rights abroad is what makes a program profitable. For a low-cost show like “Drag Queens of London,” the production margins were so thin that selling it to seven additional countries made The Connected Set significantly more revenue.

“The budget was so small it was hard to make money from the show,” said Mitchell. “Netflix has a healthy tariff, but that needs to remain high, although there’s talk of lowering tariffs for nonscripted shows, which will challenge the economics of production if you don’t control the rights.”

As to whether TV broadcasters struggle with the competition from Netflix, it depends on whom you ask.

“I think this ‘fear’ is generally overstated,” said Ben Keen, chairman of TV drama consultancy MediaXchange. “The balance of commissioning power is still with broadcasters. But they need to explore more creative co-financing and co-producing partnerships in order to keep in the ultra-high budget drama game.”

According to one source, a commissioner at a U.K. broadcaster is concerned the channel won’t have enough drama shows to fill its schedule because of the increased competition from platforms.

“U.K. broadcasters deny Netflix is killing them, but no U.K. linear TV business is growing due to the loss of advertising market share,” said Alex DeGroote, an independent media analyst at DeGroote Consulting. Although in cases broadcaster revenues are slightly increasing. “Advertising is still easily the biggest revenue stream, and it funds drama budgets. This is why co-production should be the model going forward.”

Co-production, where typically the broadcaster gets U.K. linear rights and online catch-up while the other partner takes the rest-of-the-world rights in exchange for partial funding, also has potential long-term downfalls. Production companies have to deal with the tussle of multiple partners, and create a show with local nuance and global appeal, while broadcasters add to the growing threat of Netflix. Meanwhile, producers complain that broadcasters need to be more realistic about creative control when they are only minority funders.

Sources estimate 80 percent of the work U.K. production companies do is with local broadcasters. Thanks to existing relationships, U.K. producers have a good idea of what broadcasters want.

“The issue we have is trying to define what is a Netflix show,” said Howard Burch, creative director for scripted shows at Keshet UK. “It’s like hitting a moving target. The criticism we’ve had is it’s not ‘noisy’ enough. ‘Noisy’ is a word we hear a lot. But Netflix money can attract big stars.”

Even if a show is released on Netflix, there’s no guarantee it will get an audience. The platform is inundated with content, and people watch content on Netflix in a different way than they do with broadcasters, which market heavily to a domestic audience. The marketing support for Netflix shows is opaque.

“BBC is still in a good position because it gets people talking about a show at the same time, but that will change,” said Burch. “The signs are Netflix will move to become a serious rival to local players.”

For Netflix to grow its U.K. subscribers, it needs to commission more local shows, and the platform is reportedly building out its U.K. drama commissioning hub.

“They want British shows that will travel,” Burch said. “They use the word ‘glocalized.’”

The platform reportedly pays between $6.5 million (£4.8 million) and $13 million (£9.7 million) per hourlong episode of hit royal series “The Crown,” which has clear global appeal. The question is: Will Netflix commission shows that primarily work in the U.K., and how much of a threat will this pose to TV broadcasters?

With such wildly different budgets, some argue Netflix will just attract the premium TV shows, leaving lower production value programs to the local broadcaster.

“You don’t get the sense there’s much of an overlap,” said Burch. “There will just be lots of different content at different production budgets. People don’t only want to watch $10 million-an-episode TV. A great story is a great story.”

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The Weather Channel is no longer publishing videos to Facebook.

“[Facebook video] hasn’t been beneficial,” said Neil Katz, global head of content and engagement at The Weather Channel, during a speech at the Digiday Video Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona. “It has been good for Facebook, but it hasn’t been good for us.”

Over the past few years, The Weather Channel built up a network of six pages on Facebook that grew to 500 million video views per month by last May, according to Katz. (For comparison, The Weather Channel’s main page was down to 1.8 million views on Facebook in April, according to Tubular Labs.) The Weather Channel’s Facebook presence included its main page as well as “weather-adjacent” science, nature and travel verticals such as Rockets Are Cool, Crazimals and United States of Awesome. The Weather Channel was part of Facebook’s funding program for live and on-demand news feed videos and also produced three shows for Facebook Watch last fall.

The Weather Channel’s deal to produce live and on-demand news feed videos for Facebook, for which Katz said it received a seven-figure fee, shined a light on how difficult it is to make money on Facebook. Paid to produce a predetermined number of minutes per month, The Weather Channel found it was only making $28 per minute of video produced. For comparison, Katz pointed out how the CBS reality show “Survivor” cost $45,000 per minute to make in 2009.

Even during big weather events such as Hurricane Harvey, when The Weather Channel would cut and distribute hundreds of videos on Facebook and capture a lot of views, Katz said revenue was close to negligible.

“That was a wake-up call to let us know that though this was a fun adventure, it was not a business,” Katz said. “We’re not watching the cash register when these events happen, but later on, when we do the financial analysis, we want to understand if we were revenue-positive — and on TV and [nonsocial] digital, these are profitable events.”

Katz didn’t lay all of the blame on Facebook, however, as he argued that publishers should bear some responsibility for being too eager to work with and distribute their content on Facebook.

Not all is lost, though. Enough people still come to The Weather Channel’s website and apps to ensure the brand remains relevant and meaningful. “Turns out, we have a good business,” said Katz, adding that The Weather Channel’s sites and apps receive 6 billion visits, up 25 percent year over year. It’s an area The Weather Channel will continue to focus on, not the least of which because it’s a platform the publisher can fully control.

“We went along for the ride every single step of the way,” Katz said. “But we noticed, over the course of two years, that we were being paid in all types of currencies — followers, shares, views — that did not feel like money.”

For more on what the industry is saying about the evolving world of video, subscribe to our weekly video briefing email. 

The post ‘A fun adventure, not a business’: The Weather Channel stopped publishing video on Facebook appeared first on Digiday.

Viacom has caught summer festival fever. In June alone, the home of cable channels including MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon will put on three new live events in the United States for the first time: Nickelodeon SlimeFest; a 30th anniversary concert for “Yo! MTV Raps,” the MTV show that debuted in 1988; and its first VidCon, the YouTuber convention and festival that Viacom acquired from YouTube stars and brothers Hank and John Green in February.

Those events join the BET Experience, a three-day event in Los Angeles that attracted over 130,000 people last year; and Comedy Central’s Clusterfest, with performances by comedians including John Mulaney and Jon Stewart, and artists including Wu-Tang Clan. Overall, the number of events Viacom brands will throw during the 2018 fiscal year will increase 135 percent year over year.

Events represent a small share of Viacom’s revenue, which totaled over $3.15 billion in its most recent quarterly earnings. It’s reported as part of ancillary revenues, which also include merchandise, and accounted for $168 million during the same period, with strong year-over-year growth both domestically (26 percent) and abroad (36 percent). Viacom expects its event revenues to nearly double in 2018, and it projects “strong, double-digit” growth in 2019 as well.

Events also draw a big crowd: More than 2 million people attended a Viacom-branded event in 2017, a 54 percent increase from 2016 and a total the company expects to grow this year.

“This is a healthily growing business,” said Jason Jordan, evp of strategy and operations at Viacom. “From [CEO] Bob [Bakish] on down, we’re committed to our live events strategy.”

Jordan said events offer more access to the talent it needs for programming, whether it’s established stars or up-and-coming YouTubers who flock to VidCon. “There’s a nice symbiosis,” Jordan said. “For creators who come to participate [at VidCon], they’ve come to grow their brands. Now, there’s an additional opportunity: ‘I might have some inroads to work with one of [Viacom]’s brands.’”

Events also generate content that Viacom can distribute through platforms like Snapchat, which it recently renewed a content deal with that includes Stories coverage of Viacom events, including the BET Experience.

“Platforms like Snapchat love this kind of coverage,” Jordan said. “That’s the kind of content that’s tailored for them.”

In addition, events provide audience data that can be used to sell advertisers that want to target consumers in live event settings.

Each of Viacom’s cable TV brands handles its own events. Jordan’s corporate group helps with things like securing production partnerships — it helped pair Comedy Central with Superfly, which produced Clusterfest — or delivering audience and market research, which speeds up the event development process. It also helps Viacom’s marketing partner solutions group with insights when they pitch advertisers.

“With live events, you need to set expectations,” Jordan said. “We can help the brands budget and think about spending, profitability and growth.”

The post Why Viacom is expanding its live events appeared first on Digiday.

Chinese phone maker OnePlus launched a new smartphone this week with one-night pop-up stores. For attendees, some who spent more than 12 hours outside in line, the events weren’t just about getting early access to a phone or analyzing the device in real life. It was an experience with accessory giveaways, free ice cream and access to YouTube gadget reviewers Marques Brownlee (“MKBHD”), Linus Sebastian (“Linus Tech Tips”) and Justine Ezarik (“iJustine”).

OnePlus is an aesthetic. Inside New York’s pop-up nearby the Flatiron building, two attendees brought in their Boosted Boards, which are electric skateboards. Others had shirts featuring the Android logo eating an Apple. One friend of a phone buyer was wearing a 2-year-old Huawei watch. Many wore large backpacks with ample pockets (another OnePlus product).

The people buying OnePlus phones clearly like tech, and they enjoy showing it off. While an Apple fan may carry a plethora of Apple devices, from iPhones to MacBooks to Apple Watches, OnePlus fans typically have one OnePlus device with them. But the brand affinity is clear. As the backpacks and tolerance for waiting in long lines show, OnePlus has locked in brand loyalty in the competitive tech industry.

The OnePlus fandom is less than five years old. It was created in 2013 by two former vps at Oppo, a top Chinese smartphone maker. OnePlus was marketed as something new and exclusive, while practical in quality and in price. Back then, interested buyers had to be added to an invite-only list. Before releasing their first product, the OnePlus One, in April 2014, the founders launched community message board forums to ask people what was really important to them in a smartphone.

The original pitch of “never settle” continues as the tagline for the brand. OnePlus doesn’t mimic competitors on every feature. For example, the new phone is not completely waterproof (aka don’t swim with it), doesn’t have wireless charging and still has a headphone jack.

“We’re not a company that makes a phone to have one selling point. Users tell us they still want [the headphone jack]. We don’t believe in upselling people,” said Kyle Kiang, global head of marketing at OnePlus. “People reward us by spreading the word and staying very loyal in an industry that’s flat and not a ton of innovation.”

At the pop-up events, OnePlus gifted attendees with white shirts, black hats and tan tote bags that each displayed the words “NEVER SETTLE.” These fans aren’t shy about expressing their opinions. One interested buyer walked to the tables of phones immediately after entering the shop to test the new camera.

“I’m not impressed with the camera. It looks grainy,” he told his friend. The friend refuted that statement, and with another try, they agreed it was better than the last model.

Another buyer craved a midnight black model and repeatedly asked workers in the store, as he was waiting in line, if they would have enough, or if he would have to decide between settling for mirror black right then or reserve one for later.

Many customers knew all about the OnePlus — and that it would be exactly what they wanted — before they entered the pop-up shops. MKBHD’s video review was one motivator, getting nearly 2.5 million views since its release last week. Some customers have continuously been keeping up to date with the phone’s progress in online forums or in offline community events called Open Ears, Kiang said.

OnePlus does little paid marketing due to its origins in digital and its continuous organic efforts like the beta program, community events or giving YouTube influencers review units. It’s spent on some traditional TV ads in Europe and India, where the Android market is more competitive.

All paid ads “come back to us pointing to word-of-mouth. Even in ‘Can’t Tell’ television campaigns in India, we point back to customer preferences. For us, no matter what, that’s what matters,” Kiang said.

The pop-ups drew 1,700 attendees, split between New York and San Francisco, and 900 in London. Globally, they attracted 14,500.

“Each year, they get bigger,” Kiang said. “You’ll see a user we remember from last time, and they brought a friend or a family member. You can feel that the trust continues to grow.”

The post How Chinese phone maker OnePlus markets its smartphones without a big paid media budget appeared first on Digiday.

At the Digiday Hot Topic: Commerce for Publishers event in May in New York City, we surveyed 53 publisher executives to learn how publishers are approaching commerce initiatives. Check out our earlier research on where publishers get their revenues here. Learn more about our upcoming events here.

Quick takeaways:

• Just over half of publishers surveyed said at least 75 percent of their commerce revenue comes from affiliate sales.
• Forty percent said their websites had an online store.
• Only 17 percent sells products on Amazon.

Given that few publishers operate brick-and-mortar stores, the bulk of their commerce revenue comes from e-commerce. Based on earlier research from 133 publishers at the Digiday Publishing Summit in March, 43 percent of companies reported e-commerce revenues. While publishers have conducted e-commerce sales for years, e-commerce is often just a small portion of a company’s revenues. Only 4 percent of the publishers that reported e-commerce revenues said more than 50 percent of their revenues came from e-commerce.

The post Digiday Research: For e-commerce, publishers prefer owned stores over Amazon appeared first on Digiday.

Live trivia app HQ has taken the world by storm, with nearly 2 million people tuning into every live game. Imitators like The Q, FleetWit and Under Armour’s Stephen Curry-themed live trivia app have cropped up to cash in on the momentum. But now they’re realizing they have to differentiate their marketing from HQ’s.

After gaining popularity through word-of-mouth, HQ got its first sponsorships from big companies like Nike and Warner Bros. Winners got special HQ-Nike shoes, while Warner Bros. got to promote its “Ready Player One” film. HQ also uses celebrity influencers like Jimmy Kimmel, The Rock and Vampire Weekend to promote and host games with large cash prizes.

The Q (short for The Question), launched in December, has also moved into branded sponsorships, running sponsored games with the Dallas Mavericks, Fox Sports, MLB and NCAA basketball.

To set itself apart, starting this week, The Q is selling its technology to brands and publishers to produce their own live trivia games. The first company on board is music-streaming service Pandora, which bought a time slot on May 23 at 5:30 p.m. Eastern time and is offering winners a $2,000 prize and annual premium subscriptions (worth $120). Other publishers are in line to produce their own shows, too. “Our strength is not in creating the shows,” said The Q’s CEO Will Jamieson, “it’s the technology behind it.”

The idea is to set The Q apart by making shows for specific audiences. Pandora, for instance, is producing a show that contains only music-related trivia. “Trivia and music is such a natural marriage,” said Bill Crandall, vp of editorial content at Pandora. “Trivia players are among the most engaged audience on mobile, which is also true of passionate music fans.”

The Q has a category-specific leaderboard where players can win prizes in categories like pop culture and geography even after they are eliminated from a live game, an option that HQ does not offer.

The Q is also looking overseas for users, with an app in India and a beta version for several European countries. Jamieson said India is already The Q’s largest market, with around 100,000 people tuning in per game.

As for Under Armour’s Steph IQ live trivia game, its focus is on male basketball fans between ages 13 and 18. It goes live when the Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry makes his first 3-point shot in an upcoming game. To connect with that audience, the app gives away prizes like Warriors tickets and Under Armour merchandise. Gen Z influencer Bdot hosts the trivia game, and Under Armour promotes the app through Curry’s social channels, the NBA and Foot Locker.

FleetWit, meanwhile, has gone the route of a pay-to-play strategy, influencer marketing and offering trivia around the clock. FleetWit, which has gotten 12,000 users since launching in August, is selling an ad-free experience. For instance, for a live trivia game that offers $500 as a cash prize for winners to split, it costs $100, or 400 credits, to register. The result is there are fewer players, but more opportunity to win a higher cash prize.

Unlike HQ, which is aligning itself with movie and TV show stars, FleetWit is partnering with trivia world celebrities like Ken Jennings, 2014 winner of “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire”; “Jeopardy!” 2017 winner Buzzy Cohen; and Mark Labbett, star of TV quiz show “The Chase” to create videos.

“We believe that everybody is an expert at something, and we use our partnerships to tell that story,” said Mary Zakheim, director of marketing at FleetWit.

The post How HQ trivia competitors are differentiating their marketing appeared first on Digiday.

Google will tell publishers how it plans to integrate with the independent industry standard for compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation at meetings on May 24 at four of its global offices, including London and New York, according to publisher sources.

Details are still to be worked out on exactly how Google will address some of the more tricky technical integrations that will arise from aligning its own ad tools with the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe’s and IAB Tech Lab’s Transparency & Consent framework. But Google will put a time stamp on its full integration with the framework at the meetings — to be no later than July, according to people familiar with the matter. It will also commit to being an official listed vendor within the framework later this week.

“We absolutely want to be a part of the IAB framework,” Scott Spencer, Google’s director of product management, said to AdExchanger. “We plan to register.”

Richard Reeves, managing director of the Association of Online Publishers, said in a statement: “The ongoing dialogue between Google, AOP, and its members continues and the confirmation that Google plans to integrate with the IAB Framework demonstrates a significant step forward. We’ll always seek to work collaboratively with industry partners, and this is a great example of how our concerns have been listened to and responded to in a constructive and positive manner.”

Google confirmed the meeting will take place, but not the details of the meeting.

In theory, Google’s move to make its own ad tools compatible with the IAB framework is a victory for publishers, despite the fact that the framework itself hasn’t been an immediate hit with publishers. Many regarded it as a tool to serve the business purposes of ad tech vendors, at their own expense.

The IAB Europe has been working to rectify those concerns and provide more granular controls for publishers. But Google’s noticeable absence from the list of 166 vendors that have already signed up to the IAB framework — the only attempt at an industry standard for complying with GDPR, has unnerved publishers.

Even now, publishers aren’t convinced their questions will be fully answered during the May 24 meeting. In fact, many of the biggest publishers have not decided yet whether they want to attend the meeting. Instead, they would prefer Google to respond publicly to the open letter that media trade bodies Digital Content Next, European Publishers Council, News Media Alliance and News Media Association sent to Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai. Together, the bodies represent 4,000 publishers and have said they will not attend. Each trade body head has declined to attend the meeting. Google has since invited more publishers individually.

“We want them to answer publicly, so we’d reject any invite to attend Thursday’s meeting in any event,” said a U.K. publishing executive who agreed to speak anonymously.

The concern is that if all publishers agree to a closed-door meeting, they will receive vague verbal assurances and walk away with nothing in writing, according to publishing sources. Among the more cynical viewpoints: Google has arranged the meeting as a public relations exercise, but with no real intention of change.

The fact that two days prior to the meeting, many major publishers have not yet decided whether or not to attend speaks to the level of distrust between Google and publishers, exacerbated by GDPR. The law itself, so open to interpretation, has caused much confusion and last-minute scrambling across the industry.

Google’s GDPR stance, which it updated just weeks before the deadline for enforcement, has been regarded as an unwelcome distraction and pressure by publishers, who are still being inundated with data protection addenda from agencies and vendors with only days to go before the law takes effect.

Download our newly updated guide to GDPR, including recent developments, research, checklists and much more to know before May 25.

The post Google plans to commit to the IAB’s GDPR approach appeared first on Digiday.

Publishers are preaching balancing ads with subscriptions now more than ever, but the models conflict. The ads side wants as much audience as possible, and putting up a paywall or meter inevitably limits ad inventory — even if the ad side can be mollified a bit by the prospect of more first-party data for targeting.

This basic conflict bubbles up to the organizational level, as publishers decide whether to split off the ad revenue function from the subscriptions role. Like a lot of things in publishing, the right setup depends on company history, business model and talent.

Some publishers, where consumer revenue is at the heart of the business, have both functions reporting to the same person. When The New York Times in 2015 promoted Meredith Kopit Levien to chief revenue officer, she also got oversight for consumer revenue.

Politico in December named Bobby Moran as CRO, overseeing all revenue, including its subscription service for professionals, Politico Pro, to make sure Politico is speaking with one voice when it comes to revenue and to support the company’s interest in creating more recurring revenue-based products, said Moran.

Stat, a $299-per-year health care news and information site for professionals, had advertising and consumer revenue reporting to Angus Macaulay when it started two years ago. The benefit of this, Macaulay said, is he’s not focused on one over the other.

“I’m incentivized to care about both, so both are important to me,” he said. “If we broke a bunch of stories about a company that weren’t positive, for my subscription side, that’s good, but that company could be an advertiser, who would be upset.”

The Times took a similar organizational approach when it declared itself to be a consumer-driven business, and its digital subscription revenue has surpassed print advertising. Having the right person helps. Levien isn’t just an ad sales exec; she worked early on in consulting and has a history of working well with the editorial side at different stops in her career.

The type of subscription model also matters. Publishers with very high-priced subscription tiers that are for professionals, like Politico or Stat, or very porous paywalls don’t necessarily worry about that business cannibalizing their ad business. At Politico, the Pro clients are often also advertisers in Politico, Moran said.

Stat had a few factors that supported putting all revenue under its CRO. It’s young (with no legacy ad business to prop up). It’s also a business-to-business publication with plans for subscription revenue to be a substantial part of the business, not a small add-on. The company’s also small — it’s around 40 people. This approach can get harder at a big organization, though, where there’s more disconnection. “The biggest challenge when it’s really siloed is how good the communication is,” Macaulay said.

For legacy publishers that are trying to grow or bolt on consumer revenue, there are pitfalls to having consumer revenue and ad sales under different people. When two divisions have competing goals, the one that’s loudest and able to generate short-term revenue (usually advertising) can hog shared resources like engineering and product, to the detriment of the other (usually consumer revenue).

“Ad salespeople have to have the biggest behavior change because a lot of the internal support resources have catered to advertising relationships,” said Keith Hernandez, a former publishing exec who’s consulting to publishers on monetization. “Salespeople are taught they have the most overall impact on the company’s revenue and that they need to protect their resources and relationships. But more and more revenue is coming from diverse places, and they should embrace that.”

Many traditional and newer digital companies argue for keeping the CRO and consumer revenue arms separate, though. One reason is that both serve different interests — ad sales serving advertisers, consumer revenue serving readers.

At New York Media, consumer revenue, which comes from the print magazine, e-commerce and membership, reports to the CEO, Pam Wasserstein, as does the CRO. One reason is that this is the way it was historically, when consumer revenue was just the print magazine. It also serves to clarify each leader’s priorities, Wasserstein said.

“We want the leader of e-commerce just doing affiliate commerce and making it the best it can be,” she said. “And same with our CRO, leading a sales force. Those are different business lines and should be treated a little bit differently.”

That argument can apply to commerce, too. BuzzFeed doesn’t have a paywall, but it has a growing e-commerce arm that it’s looking to as it diversifies away from native advertising. Commerce reports to the CEO, Jonah Peretti, as does CRO Lee Brown. Commerce and advertising have a lot of opportunity to collaborate. If BuzzFeed licenses a product, BuzzFeed can get a cut of the sales and probably get the licensing partner to use BuzzFeed to advertise the product, for example. But they’re fundamentally different.

“The biggest difference between advertising, commerce and studio revenue is that advertising, often you’re working with a client, so you have to really understand their needs and what matters to them,” Peretti said. “With commerce, you have to be very close to the consumer. What are they in the market for, and how do they transact?”

Perhaps the biggest factor is the people. A lot of chief revenue officers came up through transaction-driven ad sales and lack the experience needed to run consumer marketing. In theory, it might be a good idea to have all revenue report to one person, but there aren’t that many people who can pull it off.

“If you’re the publisher of a premium publication, nothing I do is going to make up for declines in print,” said a former print publisher. “You could make the argument that shouldn’t they be responsible for generating new opportunities? You’re probably setting them up to fail if you don’t. You could also argue that, ‘What the fuck do you know about video licensing, opening a restaurant or nightclub?’”

Short-term, a solution could be to build checks and balances into the process or another role entirely, like a chief customer officer who’s mandated to look after readers and advertisers’ interests, said Raju Narisetti, former CEO of Gizmodo Media Group. “Changing structure is easier said than done.”

The post The pivot to paid poses organizational-chart challenges for publishers appeared first on Digiday.

SoFi is personalizing its digital customer experience by fusing event planning, career services and personal finance insights inside its mobile app.

SoFi is joining a group of financial institutions that are letting customers aggregate accounts to get a full financial picture — even if they’re not with the same institution, with recent examples including Citi and HSBC.

Advice, the company’s digital financial insights and advice tool, will roll out later this year, along with the SoFi Money mobile banking services. Through the bundle of product offerings, the company is turning its app into a full-stack financial control center. The objective is to meet the needs of millennial SoFi customers who prefer to organize multiple aspects of their lives digitally, including having an overview of their financial situation at their fingertips.

SoFi is building out its app to become more of a personalized financial hub beyond a tool to check loan or investment accounts. It will soon roll out capabilities to book offline career coaching appointments and access automated financial advice based on insights from all financial accounts. Customers can currently reach out to other customers who attended the same events and book calls with financial planners through the app.

Read the full story on tearsheet.co

The post How SoFi is personalizing its mobile experience appeared first on Digiday.

Lawmakers are moving to thwart Trump administration efforts to ease restrictions on Chinese telecom giant ZTE and other sensitive technology, citing fears the positions would compromise national security in the latest twist in trade negotiations.