Month: August 2018

The CBS board has hired two separate law firms to investigate the sexual harassment allegations against CBS Corp. chairman and CEO Leslie Moonves in last Friday’s New Yorker story. Meanwhile, Moonves is still scheduled to participate in his company’s quarterly earnings call on Thursday afternoon. In a statement on Wednesday night, the board said it…

“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 Adrian Newby, chief technology officer at Crownpeak. After months of planning, budgeting and restructuring ahead of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), it seems many organizations are still struggling to… Continue reading »

The post GDPR Compliance: Why Some Companies Are Still Missing The Mark appeared first on AdExchanger.

Last week, Facebook and YouTube took action against Infowars, taking down four of its videos for hate speech and violence. Facebook also banned the site’s founder and chief rabble-rouser Alex Jones for 30 days. Both platforms have been under growing pressure to curb violent and controversial content, and while Jones always seems to win the Whack-a-Mole game, it looked like the platforms were really starting to take the problem seriously.

But the major platforms aren’t the only ways conspiracy peddlers sites find audiences and monetization to fuel their cause. The digital ecosystem is full of other, lesser-known companies that enable — and profit from — such content.

The post The Rundown: Conspiracy peddlers and their digital enablers appeared first on Digiday.

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Frank Sinton, founder and CEO at Beachfront Media. AT&T’s move to acquire AppNexus is a strategic one to position the company within its growing digital footprint. While AT&T has long been one of the… Continue reading »

The post Three Things AT&T And AppNexus Must Do Next appeared first on AdExchanger.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Good While It Lasted Facebook’s data partner program will shut down on Aug. 15, a result of policy changes following the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, and some marketers dread the impending loss. The program included data brokers like Acxiom, Oracle Data Cloud, Epsilon… Continue reading »

The post Marketers Mourn Facebook Data Partner Program; Ads Come To WhatsApp appeared first on AdExchanger.

Betting is poised to get more prominent in sports media since the Supreme Court overturned a ban on sports gambling in May 2018. Chernin Group-owned The Action Network wants to make sure it grows along with it.

The subscription-based sports publisher has been ramping up its editorial output, hunting for content syndication partnerships and overhauling its product to capitalize on interest in sports betting.

“This is kind of the Wild West right now,” said Noah Szubski, the Action Network’s CEO. “The goal for us is to lower the psychological barrier [to betting].”

Action Network’s own research says that 50 million to 70 million Americans place one sports bet per year, while 8 million to 10 million place one sports bet per week. The Action Network wants to grow both audiences while sticking to its core coverage.

It publishes 25 to 30 stories per day — that average will rise to 40-45 stories during football season — a mixture of news about the growth of sports betting, articles analyzing the bets available on a given day’s sporting events and occasionally, non-sports stories. On Tuesday, a story looked at the odds that Democrats will take back the House of Representatives during the midterm elections. About a quarter of the stories published sit behind a paywall, which costs subscribers $9.99 per month.

The Action Network wants to grow traffic — it claimed 500,000 unique visitors in March, up 67 percent year over year — but is also interested in growing loyalty, tracking metrics like average daily users. Articles are assessed based not only on how much traffic they drive, but which ones convert to subscriptions. As golf and WNBA stories have performed well, the site has done more of them.

The site’s top source of referral traffic is Twitter, but Szubski sees growth potential in search, so he plans to convert the entire site to Google’s fast-loading articles format, AMP.

Beyond the platforms, the Action Network will focus on partnerships and syndication to get exposure. One example is a new show about sports betting, “I’ll Take That Bet,” produced by the Action Network and co-hosted by Action Network editor in chief Chad Millman, that will air on ESPN’s new subscription site, ESPN+. Szubski said the Action Network is talking with a half-dozen other publishers and networks about content production and syndication partnerships.

Szubski also sees opportunity in affiliate commerce, with sports books offering hefty commissions to publishers that can drive people to place bets with them. Affiliate marketing for sports books is a marginal business in the United States but it’s a mature part of gambling in markets like the U.K., and the payouts can be substantial. The cost per acquisition can be upwards of $100, according to gambling industry portal Gaffg. The Action Network also sees itself growing advertising through sports books and casinos wanting to target gamblers.

The post How Chernin Group’s The Action Network plans to capitalize on sports betting appeared first on Digiday.

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Times were good for AwesomenessTV in the fall of 2015. Verizon was about to launch Go90, and Awesomeness had landed a pretty lucrative deal to produce TV-quality shows for the much-hyped mobile video streaming platform. Verizon clearly was enamored with Awesomeness, which had Jeffrey Katzenberg and his movie studio, DreamWorks Animation, as majority owner. A year later, the phone company paid $159 million for a 24.5 percent stake in Awesomeness, which created an implied value of $650 million.

Two years later, Verizon wants out of the media business and Awesomeness has been sold to Viacom for a mere $50 million or so, according to a Variety report and sources. It’s a dramatic drop in value for a company that’s still on track to make more than $100 million in revenue in 2018, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The problem? Thirty-three to 40 percent of Awesomeness’s revenue was coming from Go90, which has paid up to $180 million to Awesomeness over several years, sources said. With Verizon shutting the app down and planning to leave the media business altogether, that has left a hole in Awesomeness’s wallet that the company can’t easily fill. The Go90 fallout, combined with Awesomeness’ complicated ownership structure that included Comcast/NBCUniversal, Verizon and Hearst, resulted in a sell well below what Awesomeness was once said to be worth.

This account is based on conversations with six current and former employees of Awesomeness and its former owners, all of whom requested anonymity. Reps for Comcast and NBCU, which managed the deal with Viacom, did not respond to a request for comment. Reps for Verizon, Viacom and Awesomeness declined to comment.

A digital entertainment network for teens
On the surface, Awesomeness seemed to be doing some things right. It was building a consumer brand aimed squarely at teenagers. On YouTube, where Awesomeness once self-produced as many as 10 shows per week, its main channel has close to 6.5 million subscribers.

The company is also selling shows to streaming platforms, including two show for Hulu and two for YouTube Premium. It’s also sold and licensed programming to Netflix and Nickelodeon in the past, and has three feature films in the pipeline.

Overall, about two-thirds of Awesomeness’ revenue came from its production and licensing businesses, with the rest coming from mostly advertising, sources said.

“The business has been consistently growing across all areas, but how do you adjust to losing the Go90 money?” said a source. “We knew there was uncertainty around Go90’s future, but the size, scope and scale of change in Verizon’s leadership and broad strategy shift toward 5G and back to its wireless business was of a greater magnitude than expected.”

Live by the Verizon money, die by the Verizon money
Awesomeness’ business has been inextricably reliant on Verizon. According to multiple sources, Awesomeness’ Go90 deal was between $150 million and $180 million dollars paid out over multiple years.

The deal was further impacted by Made for Mobile, a subscription video joint venture between Awesomeness and Verizon announced in 2016. Once Comcast bought Awesomeness’ majority owner DreamWorks Animation, plans for the joint venture were scuttled. Some of the money that Verizon was planning to put into Made for Mobile was then rerouted to Awesomeness through a revised Go90 deal, which ended up netting Awesomeness up to $30 million in additional payments from Verizon.

But once Made for Mobile was shut down, Awesomeness kept the people and infrastructure — including an expensive office space in Los Angeles — in place. More recently, with a new leadership team including CEO Jordan Levin (who will be leaving Awesomeness following the Viacom acquisition), there were plans to downsize the company that has grown to more than 200 employees, not including freelancers.

“Where other companies make adjustments, this company never made adjustments,” said a source.

A complicated ownership structure
Some of the more recent troubles at Awesomeness can be attributed to the fact that the company had three different, independent bosses — two of which, Comcast and Verizon, didn’t want to be in a content-centric joint venture with each other, sources said.

Meanwhile, even though Awesomeness had an implied valuation of $650 million based on the money Verizon put in it, those dollars went to investors instead of being put back into the company, sources said. This meant the company was operating at a lower level than its implied value suggested and also frequently flip-flopped the line of profitability, sources said.

Awesomeness was an afterthought for Comcast when the broadband and media giant bought DreamWorks Animation for $3.8 billion in 2016, sources said. As part of the sale to Comcast, DreamWorks Animation CEO Katzenberg was set to leave the film and TV studio. A few months after the Comcast-DreamWorks deal closed, Awesomeness’ founder and CEO Brian Robbins left the company. These moves blindsided Verizon executives, who had made investments in Awesomeness based on the idea of being in business with a Hollywood mogul (Katzenberg) and a legendary producer (Robbins), sources said.

Soon after Comcast and NBCUniversal assumed majority ownership of Awesomeness, Jordan Levin was hired as CEO in part to determine the future of Awesomeness — whether it would receive additional investments, whether it would be sold off, or something else, sources said.

As rival broadband and TV providers, Comcast and Verizon had little interest in working together on a digital content venture like Awesomeness, sources said. The third owner, Hearst, had always been a silent investor with an equity stake in the company but no heavy involvement in the strategy, sources said.

“The complexity of the joint venture made unilateral decisions difficult,” a source said. “It takes all of the partners to be aligned, and no partners were aligned.”

Verizon was increasingly dissatisfied with Go90 and its streaming video investments and was beginning to consider pulling out of the mobile video business, sources said. And Comcast never saw a fit for Awesomeness in its portfolio of digital media investments, which include BuzzFeed, Vox Media and Snapchat. (As part of the Viacom deal, Comcast will retain DreamWorksTV and related properties that Awesomeness used to oversee.)

“[Comcast and NBCU] have a lot of flyers and investments in a variety of different things that give them a seat at the table in digital media,” said a source. “But Comcast bought DreamWorks [Animation] for DreamWorks and then realized they had also bought Awesomeness with it. There was no emotional or intellectual ownership of having Awesomeness.”

Said another source: “No one wanted it.”

Sometimes the disrupted win
Now Viacom owns Awesomeness, which was built to disrupt networks like Viacom’s own Nickelodeon and MTV. But Viacom’s acquisition is also a homecoming of sorts for Awesomeness. Founder Brian Robbins is now working with Viacom’s film studio Paramount and was present when the deal was announced internally at Awesomeness’s offices.

Meanwhile, Kelly Day, a former chief business officer for Awesomeness, is now the president of Viacom Digital Studios, a new unit at the media giant focused on creating video programming for digital platforms. Awesomeness will be integrated within the Viacom Digital Studios unit following the acquisition. Some layoffs are expected to occur, sources said.

Still, the move is seen as a sensible one by industry insiders, especially as Viacom tries to regain the relevance it used to have with teenagers and young adults. Other recent company acquisitions include VidCon and influencer marketing platform WhoSay.

“Viacom’s influence and ability to reach teens has waned dramatically in recent years as TV viewership has declined. MTV used to be the route to teens but is arguably irrelevant today as YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat have captured the eyeballs of teens,” said Brendan Gahan, founder of agency Epic Signal. “These seemingly calculated moves will help Viacom reassert its position as the media company that speaks to youth and drives youth culture.”

The move will also help Awesomeness grow its licensing business and advertising business, which is largely being driven by growth in branded content partnerships — up 53.5 percent year over year — with clients such as Hollister and Zephora, sources said. Under Viacom, Awesomeness also won’t need to grow new revenue streams at the pace it needed to as a quasi-independent company under three owners.

“I do believe there is a need for something that sits between expensive TV and inexpensive crap on YouTube — especially for a young demo that feels deserted by mainstream media,” said a source. “But I don’t know yet how to make such a business economically viable.”

The post Go90 or bust: How AwesomenessTV’s fate was tied to Verizon appeared first on Digiday.

HP has been entrenched in esports through its products for gamers such as PCs with powerful graphics cards, comfortable keyboards and fast-response mice. But recently, the hardware maker has expanded its esports investments by creating long-form video content for gamers.

On Aug. 1, OMEN by HP, the company’s gaming division, launched a video titled “Good Game, Well Played” that profiles top competitive gamers. In the first episode, available on YouTube and on Facebook Watch, competitive League of Legends player Vincent Wang, also known as Biofrost, talks with esports reporter Travis Gafford about his personal and professional life and separately talks gameplay with Amine Issa, co-creator of performance improvement platform Mobalytics.

The 35-minute video — HP is calling it part of a series but wouldn’t say how many more it will do — is part of HP’s effort to ultimately sell products and services to competitive gamers and fans. The esports industry has been rapidly growing and could be worth as much as $138 billion in 2018, according to a recent report from market research company Newzoo. Last weekend, the Grand Finals of Overwatch League sold out Barclays Center in New York. HP employees were in attendance.

“Our ethos is, we want to make everyone a better gamer. One of the sentences we talk the most is helping gamers perform better today than they did yesterday. We make some of the best technology out there, and with gaming that’s no different,” said Josh Kocurek, senior manager of global marketing at HP.

HP hired the agency Giant Spoon to help create the video series. Giant Spoon itself has been investing more in esports and has about 15 people dedicated to it, including Albert Kugel, director of strategy.

“On our end, we’re living and breathing gaming as well and building a team from the ground up that knows the space as well. Our community manager is a streamer. One of the strategists on our team plays Halo 5 competitively,” Kugel said.

Kugel said the agency has worked with marketers to adapt their strategy to gaming, which is known for its passionate participants and niche audiences.

“There’s so many subcultures inside of it, whether it’s indie gaming community, modding, esports, live-streaming on Twitch, creators on YouTube. We’ve learned that you can’t go out the door and dictate like a brand does,” Kugel said.

As to future episodes of the series, OMEN by HP and Giant Spoon said they’re waiting to see how the first video performs before committing to more. As for talent, HP is looking for people who are “really camera-friendly and break down the gameplay process,” Kocurek said. HP also wants to spotlight diversity in gaming, including by types of games and gender.

“We are treating this like a new product release in a way. If there is fanfare with the competitive gaming community, we will absolutely begin cranking out new episodes,” Kugel said.

Beyond the video series, Giant Spoon has been working with OMEN by HP on its Instagram account. It launched the account on June 1 and has reached 13,400 followers. The account features photos of HP products, such as its laptops and headsets, and photos of popular gamers. It’s also teasing the new video series.

“One of the things we identified early on for OMEN marketing strategy is content is king, and it’s critical to what we’re doing,” Kocurek said. “We’re looking for great viewership and great feedback.”

The post ‘Living and breathing gaming’: OMEN by HP launches long-form video series for the esports community appeared first on Digiday.

Facebook will give advertisers more control over what videos their ads appear in to assure them their money won’t pay for in-stream ads in inappropriate videos, according to three ad tech executives with knowledge of the plan.

Facebook declined to comment on the record. The executives said the social network is seeking to work with companies including OpenSlate and Precise.TV, which helped YouTube and its advertisers deal with its brand-safety crisis of 2017.

The post Facebook is stepping up its brand-safety controls for news-feed video appeared first on Digiday.