Month: July 2018

“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 Victor Wong, CEO at Thunder Experience Cloud. After investing in big data for the last few years, enterprises found themselves drowning in so much data that they didn’t know what… Continue reading »

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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Read Favored To Run WPP Speculation has swirled for months about who will succeed Martin Sorrell as CEO of WPP, and we may finally have an answer. Mark Read, CEO of Wunderman and co-COO at WPP since Sorrell’s departure, has emerged as the top… Continue reading »

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Reuters is taking a less-is-more approach to its newly designed news app. Users can now customize their feed by up to 5,000 different topics, including countries, markets and people. Each article also has a short summary so users can get the gist without having the read the whole post, and the app will adapt to users over time, sending push alerts at the time of the day they’ve show a willingness to reading them, for example.

The app will now be measured on total time spent in the app per month rather than pageviews — which means that if people read less, it’ll be considered a success.

“If we’re doing our job well — which is to inform people to make better business decisions — then they don’t need to read five pieces of content to do that,” said Isaac Showman, managing director of Reuters Consumer. “This will impact our pageview numbers but ultimately it will drive better engagement.”

The redesign was a big investment for the financial news and information publisher. About 60 people worked on the app over the last 12 months, including content strategists, product specialists, developers and sales teams. Reuters has six data scientists analyzing app-user profiles, supported by engineers who work on all Reuters Consumer products.

Customization can feel creepy, but as long as the content is editorial rather than advertising, users probably won’t mind, said Greg Harwood, director at strategy and marketing consultant Simon-Kucher & Partners. “They would probably walk away with an improved user experience.”

“It all comes down creating habit and getting the right content in front of you, encouraging people to visit a second and third time rather than spending 20 minutes in the app playing a game,” he said. “Historically, publishers flagged those most likely to convert as those spending the longest in app, but people will convert if you maximize the relevant engagement, not just engagement.”

The app also represents a deliberate shift from Reuters in focusing on business professionals rather than a general-news audience.

“Publishers have been concerned with maximizing the size of the audience because it’s tangentially linked to the value of selling advertising,” said Harwood. “In a world where ad yield is going down, there’s been a change of focus on quality audience, and advertisers are going to market with this.”

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Competition in the TV distribution business is heating up as streaming TV services such as YouTube TV, Hulu’s live TV and DirecTV Now compete for subscribers. For an executive whose job is to get TV channels distributed as widely as possible, all these newer entrants mean more buyers. But plenty of questions still hang over the future of this ecosystem and who will be in it for the long haul. In our latest Confessions, we spoke with a distribution executive at a major TV company about the evolving distribution landscape.

Do you treat streaming TV services such as YouTube TV any differently than traditional distributors such as Comcast?
We don’t see them any differently than a more traditional distributor other than the fact that the service is available through an app. We want to be in every skinny bundle possible so from a pure distribution perspective, that’s why you do these deals. But all of the services, individually and collectively, are very, very small compared to the incumbents.

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Snapchat’s charm offense with creators continues with the trial of creator-made stickers. This comes on the heels of the launch of Storytellers, a program launched last week that connects brands with top creators to make ad campaigns on Snapchat.

Last week, Geir Ove Pederson, aka Geeohsnap, launched the first creator-made sticker pack for Snapchat. It showed up when users clicked the star button within the sticker section of the app.

On July 29, Ketnipz, a popular cartoon created by Harry Hambley, appeared as a sticker pack. Hambley had previously worked with Instagram on a ketnipz sticker.

Made some stickers with Snapchat ✨ click the link to unlock the pack! https://t.co/OQKkKzW4gi
Available for a limited period of time ‍♀️‍♀️‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/0QlehtFv83

— Ketnipz (@Ketnipz) July 29, 2018

Also coming soon are sticker packs from Cyrene Quiamco, aka CyreneQ, whose pack features a character commonly featured on her snaps named Ele; Alex Richter, aka decalex, is creating one of calligraphy; Audrey Spencer, aka cakes1todough1, is launching a sticker pack of cats; and Mike Metzler, aka Metz044, made one of corgis, a common element of his Snapchat Stories.

“Being able to include our own branding as a native part of the platform is incredible for us creators. The fact that Snapchat is partnering with creators to roll this out is another way to show they are investing in the creator community,” Metzler said.

With these moves, Snap is trying to win over this community after years of neglect and change the perception that creators can’t find success on Snapchat by finding more ways for them to share their talents. It’s also a time when other platforms, notably Instagram, can offer creators larger user bases and more sophisticated ad networks.

Each of these creators has been working with Snapchat on new initiatives since Snap held its first Creators Summit with them in May. It was Shaun McBride, aka Shonduras, who gained fame for his doodles on Snapchat, who came up with the Storytellers program, a Snap spokesperson said.

Mike Platco is one of the five creators involved in Storytellers, as well as Shonduras, CyreneQ, GeeOhSnap and Georgia Copter. They are now listed as creative partners that Snap’s sales team provides clients to help them create ads on Snapchat.

“It’s early, but I’m excited. I’ve worked on some of the largest branded Snapchat activation on the platforms history, including the single most viewed branded Snapchat activation ever (with Marriott Rewards), so I feel like this is a huge opportunity to get new brand deals,” Platco said.

No offers have come in from brands yet, Platco said, although it’s early; the program only launched on July 26.

The creator community on Snapchat also even been promoting the app themselves. For example, Quiamco helped coordinate a YouTube video that features a bunch of the creators she knows explaining what Snapchat is.

Along with stickers and Storytellers, Snapchat has been promoting creator-made augmented reality lenses as its pushes for more AR experiences on the app. Snap also has been working with more creators in Snapchat Discover, taking the section beyond its original base of traditional publishers. Last week, Jerry Media, the studio behind the FuckJerry Instagram account, launched an exclusive Snapchat Show. Snap is experimenting with ad revenue sharing, too, similar to what YouTube makes available to creators.

But is it too little, too late? Ryan Schram, chief operating officer at influencer marketing company Izea, said the majority of its creator community is focused on YouTube and on Facebook.

“I think Facebook still does the best part of connections for creators,” Schram said. “Facebook serves as the hub even for some of our influencers that are on Musical.ly. You have high decay in a platform like Twitter. There isn’t necessarily a place on Snap to do it.”

Schram was skeptical about Snapchat’s ability to win over creators, given marketers’s focus on the microinfluencer that’s most commonly found on Instagram and creators’ own desire to get in front of as big an audience as possible.

“It’s phenomenal for creators to be awarded a series upfront, but we’re talking about such a small segment of the broader creator economy. What’s ultimately driving the growth right now is the rise of the microinfluencer,” Schram said.

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House of Highlights has steadily grown a strong community around young NBA fans to the tune of 10 million Instagram followers, but now the question is whether it can replicate that success elsewhere.

Turner’s Bleacher Report bought House of Highlights in 2015 and after a few years of letting it grow naturally, it decided to turn on the monetization tap this year. So far, House of Highlights has sold 21 campaigns around its Instagram account to advertisers including Under Armour, Gatorade and Taco Bell. Most of them were existing Bleacher Report clients; two, Takis and Paramount, were new to the company.

House of Highlights benefits from parent Bleacher Report for various shared services. But even accounting for that, the account turned a profit earlier this year on the branded content deals, said Doug Bernstein, gm of House of Highlights. Bernstein wouldn’t say how much money the business is making, but it’s enough to give the company confidence to plan on doubling the staff by the end of the year.

“This year, [the goal] was proving we could make money off House of Highlights. I think we’ve proven the ability to monetize House of Highlights very successfully,” Bernstein said.

It’s tricky to introduce branded content to any publication in a natural way. Branded content also often entails promotional costs, which cuts into the publisher’s profits. “While a strong follower count for any social page is always a good indicator of interest and awareness, traditionally there still needs to be a paid investment by the page on any sponsored content in order to get the reach needed for the advertiser,” said Lisa Cucinotta, vp of accounts at Adaptly, which helps advertisers scale campaigns on social media.

Bleacher Report’s polished branded videos wouldn’t work on House of Highlights, which has a raw and relatable quality. So House of Highlights has shown videos with people wearing Under Armor clothes or carrying bottles of Gatorade, two of the sponsors. In other instances, the content was “brought to you by” the brand. Judging from the comments, there hasn’t been much pushback from fans to the encroachment of advertising. So far five of the branded Instagram Stories posts have outperformed its non-branded Stories posts by 30 percent, the company said, citing Brandtale data.

“The question was, how do we create content with the brands that’s not super commercial,” Bernstein said. “We have a community that has a deep, deep affinity with House of Highlights that you just don’t see with other brands.”

Every platform has its natural limit in how much advertising users will support, so to keep growing, House of Highlights has to expand beyond Instagram. House of Highlights is planting seeds on YouTube and Twitter, which are appealing for their ability to monetize and build community (YouTube) and promote live viewing (Twitter).

House of Highlights launched two shows on YouTube this year: A sketch comedy video show called “Supreme Dreams Show” and “Through the Wire Podcast,” featuring four guys sitting around riffing about sports. Two more YouTube shows are in development, likely centered around Gen Z culture like gaming or comedy. Come October, House of Highlights plans to launch a live Twitter show starring the account’s founder, Omar Raja.

To support all this expansion, House of Highlights is getting more people. Today, it has a staff of seven full-timers, including its first salesperson; by year’s end, that figure will be at 14 full- and part-timers, including two people dedicated to the forthcoming Twitter show.

Instagram still accounts for the vast majority of House of Highlights’ business, but over time, Bernstein would like to see YouTube and other platforms become significant contributors. He’s encouraged that while House of Highlights only has about 260,000 followers on YouTube and the first three episodes of “Through the Wire” averaged 20,000 views — the podcast, which runs around 50 minutes, has an average watch time of 20 minutes.

“We are aware Instagram can only support a certain level of monetization; that’s why scaling across other platforms is so important,” Bernstein said. “We never want to be at the whims of any one platform.”

The post Bleacher Report’s House of Highlights is starting to build a business from its Instagram base appeared first on Digiday.

Perform Group’s sports streaming service is Dazn is turning to original lifestyle content such as documentaries, talk shows and podcasts to support its international expansion goals.

When it launches in the U.S. in September, for example, Dazn will have little more than boxing and martial arts fights, so it’s supplementing them with an original daily news show that will offer a lighthearted take on what fighters do outside the ring.

“In a market like the U.S. where we’re very strong in combat sports rights but don’t have much else, we need original content,” said James Rushton, CEO of Dazn. “Part of our challenge is, we have to turn these boxers back into superstars.”

The streaming service wants to get into 20 markets by 2020, up from the five it operates in now. But it can’t get there on sports rights alone because so many of them are locked up in lengthy cycles. Instead, Dazn has built subscriptions by focusing on a given market’s most popular sports such as Major League Baseball (Japan), football (Germany) and NFL (Canada) to gain a foothold until more rights become available.

In the U.S., the focus is boxing. Dazn believes there are 10 million boxing fans, 3 million of whom are hardcore supporters. Those are the people the streaming service is aiming for, with a flat monthly fee rather than the costly pay-per-view rates they have previously have had to pay to watch boxing’s biggest events, like the upcoming fight between Anthony Joshua and Alexander Povetkin fight on Sept. 22.

As fights are watched on the service, Dazn will use viewing data to decide what shows to commission to lure more subscribers. Earlier this summer, Dazn launched its first documentary, which focused on a player — German footballer Mario Gotze — rather than a team.

But making such exclusive content is costly, and Rushton doesn’t want Dazn to become so reliant on original content that production costs have to be passed on to consumers, who already have other services to choose from like ESPN’s recently launched ESPN+ and FuboTV.

“It’s about creating content that adds value but at the same time doesn’t encumber the business with additional costs that have to be passed on to consumers,” he said.

Facebook, Amazon, YouTube and Netflix are also looking at long-form, original content as a way into the costly sports broadcast market. These businesses are less driven by acquiring expensive sports rights and, in the short term, will leverage how people consume sports on their platforms to develop their own content. Amazon already sells ads around the live sports it shows, while Facebook is reportedly prepared to pay footballer Cristiano Ronaldo $10 million to front a reality series for the Watch part of the social network.

The demand from the technology platforms has created some tension between athletes and sports organizations looking to sell the same audiences.

“In a world where your favorite football player is now only ever an Instagram story away, increasingly there is a tension between a football club’s brand aspirations and the commercial opportunities that their players may pursue independently,” said Mark Eaves, founding partner at content agency Gravity Road.

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Gannett is using its USA Today Network to go after a new audience: entrepreneurs.

Last month, the publisher of USA Today and a network of local newspapers launched USA & Main, a service journalism hub for small-business owners. USA & Main is an ad-supported part of USA Today’s Money vertical and has Verizon as a launch sponsor. The plan is for the section to become a standalone site with revenue coming from multiple sources, possibly including events.

To distribute USA & Main’s content, USA Today will use the 100-plus sites, including those of the Tennesseean and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, in the USA Today Network rather than social media, similar to the strategy used to distribute commerce content published by Reviewed or the sports content it creates through dozens of news wire sites that cover sports teams and athletes. USA Today expects that having an editorial footprint and distribution muscle in small markets will be the most important ingredients for USA & Main’s success.

“Any time we’re experimenting with new verticals where we had pre-existing expertise, that cross-pollination effect, we’re able to achieve critical mass,” said Michael Kuntz, president of ad sales and partnerships for the USA Today Network. “We believe we can very quickly scale.”

USA & Main is stocked with articles by USA Today Network staffers as well as content written by USA Today columnists and content syndicated from other publishers, including Motley Fool, the Associated Press and CNBC. Philana Patterson, managing editor of USA Today Money said a majority of the content is original, though declined to give percentages, saying only that she is “leaning more toward assignments” than repurposing existing articles. A pair of video series, “It’s Personal” and “Uncommon Drive,” which focus on entrepreneurs and the challenges they face, were launched specifically for USA & Main, along with a blogging series focused on self-improvement.

“We are in a lot of mid-sized to small communities where our staffers know small-business owners,” she said. “If we want to tell the stories of small-business owners or startups, we can.”

Many advertisers want to reach entrepreneurs and small-business owners, and having a dedicated section just for them was attractive to those marketers, Kuntz said. USA & Main is monetized through display, video and branded content.

Like most news publishers, Gannett is under pressure to prove that it can grow and diversify its revenue streams. Digital revenues did not grow fast enough to offset declines in its print advertising revenue during the first quarter of 2018; the company reports second quarter earnings Aug. 9.

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Twitter filled two key content partnership positions by promoting from within. The social network confirmed that T.J. Adeshola, who has been managing partnerships with major sports leagues in the U.S., will now lead all U.S. sports partnerships. And general manager of news for live video Nick Sallon will now lead all U.S. news partnerships. When…

The woman who spent the past eight-plus months overseeing Under Armour’s global marketing efforts has accepted a position with Nike, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Earlier today, Adweek broke the news that svp, global head of brand management Adrienne Lofton had resigned after approximately nine years and two stints with the athletic…