Month: June 2018

Consultants, in-housing and other negative talk about the agency business doesn’t bother IPG CEO Michael Roth. Rather, he sees it as a validation of his sector. “Clients are faced with disparate questions about how to navigate their dollars,” he said. “Our job is to help them do that.” IPG, which outperformed its peer set in… Continue reading »

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“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Evan Rutchik, general manager at Ogury US. When app publishers advertise their platform on other apps to increase their own visitors, they’re often just trading app audiences and not growing… Continue reading »

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 Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The GDPR Pipe Cleaner Programmatic ad spend has rebounded a bit in Europe after contracting a month ago when GDPR came into effect. Clients cut programmatic by as much as 50% in the days following enforcement, since many publishers lacked consent technology and advertisers… Continue reading »

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CNN International wants in on the consultancy game.

The media owner has created a new consultancy unit, called CNN Reach, based out of its London office. The goal: Help clients plan and create campaign content; advise on and execute distribution and media buying both on and off its own platforms; and offer first-, second- and third-party audience targeting across CNN and its parent company Turner’s portfolio.

CNN International already has a branded content studio, which now accounts for 60 percent of its revenue. But to maintain growth, the media owner felt it must widen its services capabilities. Previously, CNN International hadn’t had a centralized unit to manage campaigns from conception to execution, as well as audience targeting analysis and media planning. CNN International has hired a four-person team to launch Reach that will be dedicated to the division, but it plans to grow that head count, though it wouldn’t reveal by how many.

“It’s imperative we continue to evolve the [business] model like this,” said Rob Bradley, vp of digital commercial strategy and revenue at CNN International. “We can’t just be media companies anymore, and this is one step toward that. If you look at the rise of the management consultancies in this space and who they are hiring, it’s people from media owners and media agencies because we’re well-placed to offer these services.”

The CNN Reach team will specialize in data and analytics so it can build custom audience segments for targeting across CNN International properties as well as those on social platforms and voice-based devices like Amazon Alexa. CNN Reach will also manage campaigns and optimize them on the fly depending on what’s working. If CNN data shows a piece of content isn’t working on a particular platform, the team can switch courses or create new content that works on a different platform, rather than stick rigidly to fulfilling a fixed amount of bought impressions being allocated to one platform, for example.

CNN Reach, led by Leo Urushibata, CNN’s director of content optimization, will sit within CNN International’s commercial team. The rest of the team will share skill sets — including content strategy, planning, paid media buyers and digital marketers, and audience development — will be trained in what kind of content has worked well on CNN International properties as well as those off-site like social platforms. The team will also draw on CNN editorial and staff members who have experience testing content for distribution channels tested by CNN editorial and branded content teams, whether across social apps or voice-activated devices like Alexa, to advise clients on what works and what doesn’t, according to Bradley.

Video campaigns will be sold on a cost-per-view basis. The team will also advise clients on what kind of content should be created for campaigns and draw on resources across the London office to assist.

Publishers have tried to mimic the agency model with the creation of branded content studios in order to diversify revenue streams beyond standard digital advertising — with mixed success. By developing a dedicated consultancy business, CNN International puts itself, in theory, even closer to competing as an agency. However, Bradley stressed that’s not the intention of the new unit.

“CNN Reach will bring in new clients and new incremental revenue,” he said. “The kind of insights we’ll give to clients and agencies will bring us much closer to them. The aim is to give them real business value beyond just delivering the [campaign] message.

“The agency will have a view across what else the client is doing and across how what they’re doing with us compares to their competitors. It’s different to what some media owners are saying, which is that they’re eating agency business. This is just as much for agencies as it is for brands direct.”

CNN Reach is an indicator of how media agencies and media owners are increasingly working in partnership rather than transactionally, and is therefore welcomed, said Liz Duff, head of media and investment for media agency Total Media.

“For the CNN offering, it’s a good way for them to combine their content with data and provide integration across their platforms,” Duff said. “Media owners have a great level of understanding and data about their audiences, so by being closely involved in major campaigns, all parties will be able to benefit from these insights.”

That said, a service like CNN Reach won’t come cheaply. Agencies will want hard evidence of the return before jumping in. “With budgets under pressure, adding an additional consultancy fee will need rigorous justification,” Duff said. “We would need to see tangible benefits in terms of quality of offering, ease of process, efficiencies and scale. The use of Reach would need to enhance the agency and client relationship rather than complicate it.”

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Digital video creators’ frustrations with YouTube over their videos being demonetized and not always reaching their audiences has created an opening for competing platforms like Facebook and Instagram to poach them. Those rival platforms may miss the opportunity unless they put up more money, though.

With 8.8 million subscribers to his main YouTube channel, lifestyle vlogger Joey Graceffa has been able to make a living from the platform. YouTube also financed three seasons of his original show, “Escape the Night,” which premiered its third season on YouTube’s subscription-only tier, YouTube Premium, on June 21. But YouTube’s constant algorithm changes can lead to lower view counts for Graceffa’s videos, sometimes his videos don’t appear in his subscribers’ feeds, and YouTube doesn’t communicate enough with its top creators, he said.

Graceffa isn’t alone in his gripes. “It’s so frustrating,” said Cody Ko, a comedian with 1.1 million subscribers on YouTube. Recently, Ko has been running up against YouTube’s crackdown on running ads on videos considered unsafe for advertisers. YouTube would initially run ads against his videos, then yank them for reasons unclear to Ko, who said he filled out all the video-related information to help YouTube’s automated system understand the video’s content.

“I didn’t even have the chance to try and change the video [to make it more compliant with YouTube’s standards], but then all of a sudden the monetization will come back an hour later,” he said. “That’s very demotivating.”

YouTube has more competition for creators than ever. Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram, in particular, made two moves last week to each make more direct runs at YouTube. Facebook opened up its video section Watch to videos from any page, including creators’. Instagram released IGTV, where users can post videos up to an hour long. And Amazon’s Twitch appears to be ramping up its creator charm offensive.

Facebook does let some creators make money by attaching pre-roll and mid-rolls ads to their videos. Digital video creator Nuseir Yassin said he expects to make more than $300,000 this year in this way on his Facebook Watch show, “Nas Daily.” Twitter and Twitch also share ad revenue this way, and Snapchat revealed last week that it plans to start doing the same. Instagram doesn’t share ad revenue with creators, but lets them publish sponsored posts and keep all the money.

But while 1.45 billion people use Facebook every day, the platform does not especially resonate with YouTube’s core audience of 20-somethings and younger. For a video to succeed on Facebook, “you’ve gotta get 40-year-olds to share it,” said Ko. Twitter’s advertising program is “not at the level of what YouTube is offering,” said Graceffa. Twitch, meanwhile, is still considered a livestreaming platform for gaming creators, and Snapchat’s advertising program for creators is still in the experimental stage.

Instagram’s audience is closer to YouTube’s than Facebook’s is. However, until Instagram starts paying creators to post to IGTV or letting them monetize those videos through ads, creators are unlikely to make videos for it.

Other creators are willing to overlook the lack of financial incentive, but only so much. Lifestyle vlogger Remi Cruz, whose YouTube channel counts 2.3 million subscribers, plans to post videos to IGTV, but only teaser videos that link to the full version on her YouTube channel. “Since I can’t monetize on it and this is my job, right now it’s not a huge priority for me,” said Cruz.

On the flip side, since creators can still make money on YouTube, they don’t plan on going anywhere. Creators like Cruz, Ko and Graceffa are often one-person operations, unlike major media companies that can afford to experiment. “While there is a lot of negative, the positive outweighs that with what they do offer,” said Graceffa, of YouTube’s ad program and video distribution infrastructure.

And YouTube continues to offer them more reasons to stay, easing creators’ irritations with the platform. Last week, the platform announced that creators with more than 100,000 subscribers can sell monthly subscriptions to their channels. Frustrated as Ko has become with YouTube’s advertising program, he has found workarounds, such as selling merchandise through his YouTube channel and starting an ad-supported podcast that he also distributes in video form on YouTube.

“I’ve got to stay focused on YouTube,” Ko said. “It’s working well, so it doesn’t make sense to move over to IGTV.”

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The post ‘It’s so frustrating’: YouTube’s top creators have gripes but few better options appeared first on Digiday.

AT&T will soon fully own Otter Media, its $500 million streaming video joint venture with The Chernin Group. Within that group, AT&T will own a distribution platform that gives the telecommunications giant the chance to become a bigger player in a growing area for TV networks and digital video programmers: direct-to-consumer streaming channels.

Vrv, a subscription streaming video distribution platform owned by Otter Media, is in discussions with traditional TV programmers to bring some of their cable TV channels to the platform, according to multiple sources. For $10 per month, Vrv offers a bundle of a dozen channels from digital companies such as the Otter Media-owned Crunchyroll and Rooster Teeth, as well as external programming partners such as AMC Networks (for its horror service Shudder), DramaFever and Frederator (for its animation channel Cartoon Hangover). Users can also subscribe to and pay for individual channels instead of the bundle.

“Some of these networks want to build better direct-to-consumer relationships, which [Vrv] can offer them,” said one source.

A spokesperson for Vrv wouldn’t comment on the platform’s discussions with more traditional TV programmers. Arlen Marmel, gm of Vrv, said that even if Vrv expands its channel lineup, the focus will remain on video programmers that make sense for its core audience of gaming, anime, animation, horror and sci-fi fans.

“Today, we are hyperfocused on the sci-fi, gaming, anime and animation audience,” said Marmel. “We’ll see how that evolves, but we do not have the intention of being in a general market [for all types of streaming video channels].”

Vrv does present Otter Media — and soon AT&T, which plans to buy out The Chernin Group’s stake in the digital holding company, as Digiday has reported — an opportunity in an area that Amazon, Apple and Roku are keying in on. With its Prime Video Channels program, Amazon has become a significant source of subscription revenue for TV networks and digital publishers. Its success is propelling competitors, including Apple and Roku, to reportedly invest in a marketplace for users to subscribe to multiple channels at once.

AT&T has already become a significant player in the traditional TV bundle, with its acquisition of DirecTV, and the growing crop of streaming TV bundles, with its DirecTV Now and WatchTV products. By buying all of Otter Media and making investments in direct-to-consumer streaming apps, AT&T “wants it all when it comes to video,” and not just the digital video ad market primarily controlled by Google and Facebook, said Peter Csathy, founder of digital media consulting firm Creatv Media.

“They already have full bundles and skinny bundles, so what’s next? Taking a stab at the ‘channel store’ strategy of Amazon and Roku, which offer no bundles at all, but instead offer individual subscriptions all conveniently accessed through one app and on one bill,” said Csathy.

Marmel stressed that Vrv is not looking to take Amazon on directly — yet. His focus is on building a “mass niche” service and helping programming partners figure out how to make money beyond subscription and advertising dollars. As Crunchyroll grows its merchandising, video game publishing and events businesses, Vrv wants to use what it learns to support other channel partners interested in exploring these areas, Marmel said. These are also areas that Amazon, Roku and others are not pursuing, which allows Vrv to remain differentiated.

Still, Vrv, AT&T and Otter Media have the infrastructure in place to become a meaningful distributor for video programmers — even if the initial focus is on niche services. A Vrv spokesperson wouldn’t say how many subscribers the platform has, but said the platform has more than 3 million registered users and has generated more than 3.5 billion minutes watched to date. (Vrv collects 30 percent of ad and subscription revenue and also pays a fixed fee for channels that are included in the $10 bundle.)

Marmel did not rule out the possibility of pursuing other communities outside of its current core by taking advantage of Vrv’s underlying infrastructure. This would likely come under a different media brand and happen several years down the road, he said.

“I don’t know if you want to stretch the brand too far,” he said. “But if you believe that we can succeed at this notion of creating value for specialty channels in an increasingly specialized world, then there’s no reason to limit that to just fans of anime, sci-fi and gaming — but you have to be thoughtful about it.”

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The launch of Instagram’s IGTV has brought out the early adopter marketers. Companies like Chipotle, Nike, Netflix, Warby Parker, Trader Joe’s, Everlane and Gucci are testing IGTV with content ranging from silly one-offs to interviews with influencers.

IGTV, a long-form video section within Instagram as well as its own stand-alone app, is Instagram’s jab at YouTube and comes five years after the launch of Instagram video. It allows any user to set up their own IGTV channel and post video content as long as an hour. While most brands are repurposing content they might otherwise use for Instagram Stories, some companies are creating entirely new content for the channel.

Chipotle, for instance, was one of the first companies to create an IGTV channel and develop a completely new video for IGTV. The company worked with Day One Agency, which began refining concepts to leverage the new channel immediately after watching Instagram’s live announcement. It landed on a “Mary Poppins”-esque video of a man removing a seemingly endless assortment of Chipotle burritos, chips and other menu items from a Chipotle bag to play off the idea that customers can create limitless combinations at Chipotle. The concept did not take advantage of the new 60-minute video length, but it did pass Instagram’s original 1-minute limit. So far, the video has amassed nearly 10,000 views and 30 comments, pretty good numbers considering that Chipotle’s Instagram videos get, on average, between 15,000 to 50,000 views and around 30 to 50 comments.

“Social is definitely not one-size-fits-all,” said Tressie Lieberman, executive director of customer engagement marketing at Chipotle. “It’s a different format, so we want to make sure we are designing specifically for long-form and vertical content.”

Netflix used Instagram’s new 60-minute video feature to play a full hour of actor Cole Sprouse eating a burger. The video has brought in 676,000 views and nearly 5,000 comments. Nike posted to its new IGTV channel on Monday, sharing an animation featuring Cristiano Ronaldo as part of its World Cup campaign, and Everlane took its #DamnGoodDemin Day photo series and created a video that works for IGTV.

Other companies are testing the new channel with repurposed content. Louis Vuitton and Gucci, for instance, shared videos from their recent fashion shows. Warby Parker posted an Instagram Stories interview with a graphic designer who uses the company’s glasses to create her designs and most publishers. Most publishers, like BuzzFeed, NBC, Attn, Cosmopolitan, Betches and National Geographic, and shows such as “Saturday Night Live” and “The Tonight Show” already post multiple videos a day, but with content originally created for Instagram Stories that is already natively vertical and therefore easily adaptable to IGTV.

“One area that the Instagram team needs to focus on is ensuring that IGTV doesn’t simply become a place for Stories to live,” said Neil Waller, co-founder of influencer marketing agency Whalar. “It should not be a place where users simply post their Stories, unless Instagam’s end goal is for IGTV to become a replacement for Stories.”

So far, posting to IGTV is a relatively easy way to gain views in the new IGTV content hub since the IGTV feed is not yet flooded with content. Marketers are also praising the channel’s integration with the original Instagram app, the focus on vertical video and the ability to create longer-form content. And with YouTube creators increasingly becoming disillusioned with YouTube, IGTV might end up being a new home for influencers fed up with YouTube, marketers said.

Limited search capabilities are also a concern for some marketers. Videos are divided on IGTV by a section curated based on a user’s interests, followed accounts and most popular videos. Users can search for individual creators, but there is no option to search for content based on genre or topic.

For now, the platform is not showing ads, but an Instagram spokesperson said that might change in the future, and the platform is exploring and testing news ways to help creators monetize through the platform. When it does, expect it to be at a premium, said Maryam Hosseini, senior strategist at digital agency The Community.

“Full-screen mobile real estate appears to consistently be more pricey,” she said.

Regardless, advertisers are already anticipating a way to create paid content for brands on IGTV, said Kinzi Sparks, lead for paid social at iProspect.

“IGTV presents a unique opportunity to engage with users at a deeper level,” said Sparks. “When your customers are thoughtfully seeking and opting into a more in-depth viewing experience, there’s a stronger chance that your brand’s message will be received with welcome captivation.”

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The post How brands are using Instagram’s new long-form video feature, IGTV appeared first on Digiday.

Vogue is changing the way it supports its editorial tentpoles.

In May, the Condé Nast-owned fashion glossy attracted a record 13.6 million unique visitors, according to comScore, boosted by coverage of the Met Gala and the royal wedding. But whereas Facebook drove traffic around such events in years past, the traffic this year came from Google, email and Instagram.

In May, search traffic — which accounts for 54 percent of Vogue’s desktop traffic, according to SimilarWeb — was up 73 percent year over year, per Vogue. Newsletter traffic grew 32 percent, and Instagram traffic increased 139 percent. Facebook unique visits were down 30 percent on the same basis; Vogue wouldn’t share exact traffic numbers.

That diversification is the result of a longterm push to grow search traffic overall as Facebook has steadily cut back the amount of referral traffic it sends publishers.

“With the impending decline of Facebook, we had to get in on focusing on search early on, knowing the benefits could take quite some time to pay off,” Vogue digital director Anna-Lisa Yabsley said. “I really think we laid the groundwork very successfully.”

Vogue’s editors, audience development team and Condé Nast’s corporate SEO team started focusing on long-tail, evergreen content like posts about specific designers’ collections, where ranking high in searches for information about a designer or collection was a priority.

“If we can’t win in that, then we’re not supporting this brand appropriately,” said Sally Singer, Vogue’s creative digital director.

Yabsley said upward of 25 to 30 percent of weekly editorial output is now evergreen, in the form of new or updated pieces.

Not that Vogue is above covering news stories it knows its audience will like. It assigned two writers to cover the wedding between Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, and royal wedding coverage accounted for 15 percent of Vogue’s traffic in May.

Vogue also gets a lot more traffic from Facebook-owned Instagram, where its follower count on its core Instagram account (@voguemagazine, not to be confused with @vogue) grew about 13 percent to 18.5 million followers in the past year. In that time, traffic from Instagram grew over 130 percent, in part by focusing on news like Anthony Bourdain’s death and the NBA Finals. Vogue drives traffic through links in its Instagram bio and Instagram Stories, which has become an increasingly common source of referral traffic for publishers.

“It’s used as a news source now,” Yabsley said. “We increased our posting schedule to include breaking news and exclusives, solely as a reaction to the audience.”

That was especially true in May. Vogue’s main account more than doubled its weekly Instagram post output during the week of the Met Gala, according to CrowdTangle. Its Met Gala Instagram videos amassed over 37 million views within 72 hours of the event.

“It’s really important for us not to focus on any of our platforms as solely a distribution method for our content,” Yabsley said. “We’re not going to do something just because we know it’s going to get traffic.”

The post How Vogue diversified away from Facebook appeared first on Digiday.

While many publishers are diversifying revenue and exploring commerce, advertising has never been the dominant revenue model for French Facebook publisher Chefclub.

Launched in 2016, the team now has 35 people based in Paris producing just 12 videos a month. Popular videos include this recipe of gratin Parmentier with 107 million Facebook views and this recipe for a hazelnut ice cream cake with 22 million views. Despite posting little content, Chefclub tops the Tubular Labs leaderboard ranking for cross-platform creators in France. In May, it had 270 million video views on Facebook, where 80 percent of its viewing occurs, per Tubular Labs.

“We decided not to make advertising our core business. It’s not a personal passion. We want to grow a commerce company built on content,” said Chefclub co-founder Thomas Lang. “We’d rather keep ad-free content that promotes Chefclub products at the end rather than inserting the content with a Facebook ad. That’s much healthier.”

Lang said 20 percent of Chefclub’s revenue comes from branded content, but it wants to grow that share by running more global branded content campaigns. Chefclub has raised €4 million ($4.7 million) in funding and plans to generate €5 million ($5.9 million) in revenue this year. To prove to investors that commerce could be its dominant revenue stream, the publisher released a French-language cookbook at the end of last year — as publishers Tastemade, Tasty and Twisted have done before — and sold out its 50,000 copies, priced at €25 ($29.26), in three months. In the coming weeks, the book will be available internationally, and another four, including one on desserts, raclette and weight loss, will launch.

Expanding into physical products is a move that digital native publishers like Tastemade, BuzzFeed and Jungle Creations have also made. After the summer, Chefclub plans to launch its own range of cooking sauces because “a lot of the videos end with dipping sauce,” said Lang. The publisher will develop the products, with a third-party company handling shipping.

Unlike a lot of publishers, Chefclub’s video views have continued to grow since Facebook’s algorithm changes at the beginning of the year. According to Tubular Labs data, each Chefclub video gets on average 17.2 million views in the first 30 days after being posted. In May, Chefclub had the highest average views at 30 days of food and drink creators globally; First Media’s So Yummy was No. 2 with 16 million views, and Tasty was No. 7 with 7.7 million views.

Completion rate is what Chefclub examines closely, as it uses video end cards to push people to other parts of its brand, either other channels it’s launching or products like its book. On Facebook, 50 percent of views last 10 seconds, and 44 percent of viewers watch until the end of the videos, which typically last between 90 and 120 seconds, according to Lang.

Because Chefclub monetizes the audience within Facebook by selling physical products rather than driving traffic back to a site, it’s been more able to weather the storm of Facebook’s algorithm change, according to Mathieu Luquet, social video strategist based in France.

Chefclub is also getting into subscriptions, said Lang, launching an app next month that will house the 12 videos it releases each month plus an additional 12 that viewers can access for €4.99 ($5.84), driven by viewers’ frustration that Chefclub doesn’t publish enough content. Asking people to pay for the same product could be challenging, though, said Luquet.

Chefclub broadcasts in 10 countries, where it adds subtitles to videos in the local language. Country managers based in Paris create 30 percent of Chefclub’s videos for those markets. “French cuisine is a positive image worldwide,” Luquet said. “The opportunity [to scale globally] is definitely there.”

The post How France’s top Facebook publisher Chefclub is growing commerce appeared first on Digiday.