Month: July 2018

Geek culture is ascendant, with comic book franchises smashing box office records and platforms spending eye-popping sums on fantasy rights, and the NBCUniversal cable channel Syfy has been taking a third crack at building a digital news hub.

Syfy launched Syfy Wire on its homepage in June 2017, and the site has more than tripled its monthly average users to more than 6 million uniques since then, according to comScore. Syfy has tried to create a news hub twice before, with Sci Fi Wire and then Blastr, which it launched in 2010 and shut down a year ago.

Over the past year or so, Syfy Wire has more than tripled its daily content output, to around 70 stories per day, and branched out into new forms of content — it now publishes about half a dozen videos per day across platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat. It’s also begun producing segments that air on Syfy’s linear TV channel.

“Wire, and Blastr, in their various incarnations, had been done on extremely limited scales as far as resources go,” said Matthew Chiavelli, Syfy’s svp of digital. “Instead of it feeling ancillary, it’s the thing that’s driving everything we’re doing.”

Syfy has experimented with different ways to market its shows before, including partnering with companies including MakerBot and Philips.

Like other cable TV networks, Syfy wants to increase the number of authenticated users; get people to tune into its linear programming; and grow its digital advertising, which is dominated by pre-roll advertising.

Though those are all important — TV authentication landing pages rank among the top destinations for Syfy’s outbound referral traffic, according to SimilarWeb data — Chiavelli said that Syfy Wire’s priority is to make its eponymous cable channel synonymous with genres of sci-fi, horror and fantasy, rather than just its original programs.

As a result, while Syfy Wire covers Syfy original shows, such as the TV adaptation of “12 Monkeys” or “The Expanse,” it also covers hits such as “Westworld” or “Game of Thrones.” It doesn’t dedicate any staffers to covering Syfy original shows; instead, it relies on contributors who pitch content about them.

“I’ve never been told, ‘You have to cover Syfy shows more,’” said Adam Swiderski, editor-in-chief of Syfy Wire and the former editor-in-chief of Blastr.

The site’s goal is to attract enthusiasts and casual fans. That means doing tried-and-true search-focused content like the “cast revealed” stories, but also long-form and specialty content. This past year, it began courting female sci-fi fans with a sub-brand called Fangrrls. Fangrrls has its own team of  contributing authors, including the political commentator Ana Marie Cox, writing about everything from comic books to science fiction. Fangrrls also has a stand-alone podcast, one of seven that Syfy Wire’s produced.

To attract other pockets of die-hards, it’s also begun hosting livestreams of events, such as Emerald City Comic Con, an area it expects to grow, Chiavelli said. Those livestreams piled up over 4.6 million views, with an average viewtime of 25 minutes.

The post How Syfy is trying — again — to build a digital news hub for geek culture appeared first on Digiday.

“Courtney watched the condensation drip down the side of the Berry Cherry Fruit Tea,” begins Wendy’s first story on Wattpad, the story-sharing app with 65 million users worldwide.

The fast-food company is experimenting on Wattpad for the first time, promoting Wendy’s summer drinks in six stories that parody the romance genre, where each drink is featured as the love interest.

With the stories, created by Wendy’s agency VML, the company is hoping to reach a young, female demographic on a platform growing in popularity. Wendy’s is not paying Wattpad for the campaign, so the stories for now are appearing within lists of other users’ stories on Wattpad’s online site as well as mobile app, where users post and discover user-written stories on topics ranging in genres such as fanfiction and thrillers.

Wattpad has also worked with over 100 brands, such as AT&T, Coca-Cola and Kraft, on branded content campaigns. In the past, brands have worked with the platform to create branded lists, sponsored posts and story contests that ask users to write about a certain topic. AT&T, for instance, ran a contest on Wattpad earlier this year asking users to write essays as part of its Later Haters campaign.

“We want to make sure that we are ahead of where the active participation is and we definitely see Wattpad as a way to open a dialogue with our audience,” said Bennett. “Paid conversations are on the horizon right now.”

Wendy’s first approached Wattpad a couple months ago to discuss their options on how to use the platform, said Bennett. The stories, which take on the same amount of sassiness and humor that the company has become known for on Twitter and other platforms, will be rolled out over the next few weeks and are part of a larger digital and social campaign promoting Wendy’s summer drinks.

Another area of Wattpad Wendy’s is interested in is the platform’s Wattpad Studios, its division that works with brands and movie studios to turn Wattpad stories into video content. “Recognizing that that is an opportunity that exists makes this relationship that much more impactful and invaluable,” said Bennett. “We would love to see some of these stories turned into video content. I think that would be the next evolution of what we’re trying to accomplish.”

The post Wendy’s tests out teen story platform Wattpad appeared first on Digiday.

Amazon has changed shopping expectations. Look no further than its patented one-click button for checking out.

Now, PayPal wants to even the playing field with its own one-stop checkout button. While PayPal has been available as a checkout option for merchants for years, and PayPal’s One Touch lets customers stay logged in so they don’t have to enter payment information again, PayPal’s “smart buttons” put the customer’s most relevant payment vehicles to the front of the merchant checkout platform.

A clunky online checkout process is the reason for a high rate of cart abandonment. In other words, Amazon closes sales better because it’s just easier.

Brendan Miller, principal analyst at Forrester Research, said cart abandonment rates are as high as 60 percent. PayPal’s “smart buttons” attempt to make that easier.

“[Consumers] are abandoning transactions a lot of times, especially on mobile checkout when it’s complicated and there are too many fields, options and details,” he said. “This is about helping retailers that are competing with Amazon to make their checkout faster and more convenient.”

A key part of PayPal’s pitch to merchants is the ability to add Venmo as payment option. While Venmo is already accepted by 2 million online retailers, including Grubhub, Seamless and Williams Sonoma, adding Venmo as default payment option makes that integration easier for smaller merchants and Venmo only appears when it’s relevant to users’ behavior.

Venmo offers merchants a unique opportunity to reach younger customers through their enthusiastic use of the platform, and possibilities to amplify brands through its social feed, said Bill Friend, vp of Fluent Commerce, a company that develops e-commerce platforms for merchants.

“Venmo is important for millennials and Generation Z — if you don’t support it, it could be a reason for them not to shop on the site,” he said.

For smaller online merchants, PayPal’s seamless checkout theoretically lets them avoid Amazon dependence by offering an on-site checkout experience on par with Amazon’s.

“It’s a path to the market that doesn’t go through Amazon,” he said. So while Amazon may make it easier for merchants, there’s also the looming threat of Amazon cannibalizing retailers’ business.

The post PayPal wants to give retailers a ‘one-click’ alternative appeared first on Digiday.

Three years after its ‘Dieselgate’ emissions scandal, VW is rebuilding its image with an electric supercar—one that shattered the Pikes Peak hill climb record. Dan Neil reports.

Stock markets in Europe and Asia edged down as spats between the U.S. and China related to trade and technology firms continued to dampen investor mood.

The debate over whether Google and Facebook are too big usually centers on whether they suppress competition for goods and services. A potentially more troubling possibility: that they sap competition for values and ideas.

An email inbox is a vault of secrets. In recent years, millions of users have been giving out the combination.

Ever since Emily Weiss announced that her cult-status beauty blog, Into the Gloss, was expanding out of editorial and into product development with a skincare brand called Glossier, the concepts of “customer-centricity” and “brand community” have evolved from marketing buzzwords into a standalone business strategy. Today, the disruptive beauty brand has yet to launch a…

On the Fourth of July, Americans celebrate the birth of the nation and the values that have sustained the country and its democracy. Read key findings about how Americans see their country and their democracy.