Month: June 2019

Hearst has hired two execs who will aid in developing the company’s YouTube programming and revenue. Earlier this month, Hearst announced it had hired longtime Viacom exec Zuri Rice to be svp and head of video development and content strategy for Hearst Originals as well as former Defy Media exec Todd Joyce to be the division’s vp of video sales. Joyce’s position is a new one and the result of Hearst’s video ad business having “achieved critical mass,” according to Haskell.

“Our massive footprint on YouTube has opened the doors to much larger investments from brands for whom YouTube is the largest priority and, in some cases, entirely new clients for whom YouTube has been the priority,” said Haskell. He added that the company still does “a tremendous amount of video business” on platforms other YouTube, including its owned-and-operated sites, and Hearst Originals continues to produce videos for Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.

In addition to advertising, Hearst generates video revenue from developing shows that it can sell to other companies. Last year Hearst Originals produced the docuseries “Ready, Set, Pet” for The CW, which is going into its second season, said Haskell.

As Hearst’s video operations have grown — with production studios now in both New York and Los Angeles — so has its video revenue, increasing by 300% over the past year, according to Haskell, who wouldn’t give the base it grew from. To boost its video business, Hearst focused on producing serialized shows for YouTube that give viewers a better idea of what to expect from a channel, making them more likely to subscribe to the channel and become consistent viewers, as opposed to one-off videos that are less likely to cultivate repeat viewership and, by extension, consistent ad inventory.

Despite the brand-safety issues that have plagued YouTube since March 2017, publishers have increasingly taken advantage of the platform’s audience of 2 billion monthly viewers as well as its advertising program that enables publishers, including Hearst, to directly sell ads against their YouTube inventory. Hearst is no different.

Clevver, which operates three YouTube channels, has specialized in quickly producing short videos for YouTube that delve into entertainment and pop culture news, posting five or more original videos a day, said Haskell. Now Hearst is working on “cross-pollinating” Clevver’s quick-hit chops with Hearst’s other publications, like Elle and Cosmopolitan, by having the publications’ video teams work with or learn from the Clevver team on how to cover major entertainment news, he said.

In addition to acquiring those short-form video skills, Hearst also picked up a 20,000 square-foot production facility in Santa Monica, CA, that complements the 25,000 square-foot facility that Hearst has in New York. Clevver’s studio has become the “West Coast anchor for our video efforts,” said Haskell.

That West Coast anchor will also serve as a home for Delish to produce more videos as it grows its YouTube channel. Delish’s YouTube channel received 4.1 million video views in May 2019 versus the 597 million views Delish received on Facebook that month, per data from Tubular Labs. The food publication is beginning to produce programming that’s more akin to reality TV, and having a production team on the ground in LA offers access to more on-air talent, Haskell said.

This summer Delish will premiere two reality TV-style shows that will each air three episodes, with each episode running nine to 12 minutes in length, in keeping with the YouTube sweet spot. “Date My Plate” will put a culinary spin on dating competition shows by having two amateur chefs prepare a meal for a blind date who will be asked to choose between the two. And “Fake It Til You Bake It” will have pastry chef Kriss Harvey assist wannabe bakers prepare pastries for a panel of judges.

In addition to those two shows, Delish plans to produce three more pilots later this year out of the studio. If those pilots are developed into full series, that will add to the 50 original series that Haskell said Hearst Originals already has in production at the moment.

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Alper Guler, co-founder of QReal, an augmented reality-focused subsidiary of the Glimpse Group, recently renamed his company to align with the growth in the AR industry. Kabaq was known for its work in 3D and AR food, such as with Bareburger on Snapchat. But now the company is working with brands in fashion, CPG and automative.

“For years, we perfected our modeling process to present dishes that look completely real, are platform agnostic and optimized for AR. We knew the same process would work for a whole myriad of brands and items,” Guler said.

AR makes sense for the beauty industry, Guler said. The experience aligns with consumers’ love for selfies and AR lenses, available previously on Snapchat and Instagram. And the technology for facial recognition is strong, compared to image recognition of feet, arms and the rest of the human body. Guler said he expects that to improve in the coming years where there will then be more virtual try-ons for jewelry and clothing.

Patrick Givens, vp of VaynerSmart, said his agency has seen increased interest in AR from clients in beauty, fashion and CPGs. These categories are looking to AR as a way to provide some utility to customers, but it’s been difficult to get these experiences in front of customers at scale, Givens said. YouTube helps with that scale problem.

“Brands want to support a good shopping or product usage experience and ultimately build relationships, and often AR would be a great way to do so. As the YouTube and MAC collaboration demonstrates, the platforms are starting to lean-in to use cases that might provide a bit more value to users beyond simple entertainment,” Givens said.

For QReal, Snapchat has been its main platform for distributing AR. But the company has been working more with web-based AR via Apple and Google. Guler said his company also plans to work more with Instagram once it also opens itself up to more brands later this summer.

Now with YouTube, a platform with 2 billion monthly active users, that potential for reach with AR only grows. Through YouTube’s FameBit, advertisers can track brand interest, lift and view-through-conversion as well as impact on Google search.

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Altogether, Quartz has seen 25 people, close to 10% of the company headcount, depart either voluntarily or through layoffs over the past 12 months, a majority of them from the business side.

Though Quartz has done some hiring over that same stretch, including a pair of membership editors and several community and customer service specialists, it employs slightly fewer people today than it did at the start of 2019, down from 243 in January to 235, according to a company spokesperson.

The layoffs come as Quartz shifts its focus to paid subscriptions. Site traffic is down 50% year over year, according to Comscore data, sliding from 12 million monthly unique users in May 2018 to 6 million unique users in May 2019. That slide began in 2018, months before Quartz introduced a metered paywall in May 2019. The paywall has had a negligible effect on Quartz’s traffic, multiple sources said. A number of factors, including a focus on content that creates loyal readers rather than fly-by ones, and reporters working on members-only content in addition to their daily responsibilities, played a role in the drop, a source inside Quartz said.

In addition to the rounds of layoffs, several long-standing, high-profile employees have left on their own, including chief revenue officer Joy Robins, who joined The Washington Post in March. Two sources familiar with the matter said that some of the sales-side departures were motivated by feelings that there is a lack of opportunity in the department, as most of Quartz’s resources going toward the site’s membership program.

“People are expected to do more with less,” one source said.

“Yesterday we informed seven employees that their roles are being eliminated as we rebalance our team and resources to deliver on our strategy of fewer, bigger client engagements,” a Quartz rep said in a statement. “We are still hiring and investing in areas with high growth potential and look forward to several new product launches in the second half of the year.”

Ever since Quartz was acquired by the Japanese media company Uzabase last July, it has been busy transforming itself from an ad-supported publication powered by branded content into a membership-focused title dependent on several kinds of revenue, including membership dues, branded content, programmatic display and video production.

The membership program, which costs $14.99 per month or $150 per year, launched in November.

During that time, Quartz has shifted its advertising strategy toward bigger, more elaborate partnerships forged with fewer advertising partners. For example, where previous relationships with advertisers might have been transactional deals that cost advertisers a sum in the mid-five figures, Quartz’s sales team has emphasized working on larger programs, which might include custom research and digital product development, in addition to the creation of content that lives both on and off Quartz’s owned properties. Yet the layoffs have also strained the site’s sales and creative studio teams, sources said.

“Some [of these layoffs] make zero sense from a biz perspective,” a former employee wrote. “Unclear why those happened given the volume of work and quality we were expected to turn around.

Concentrating its resources and product around supporting the membership product has also compelled Quartz to get rid of things that defined its brand in the early going, including the Quartz Brief, an award-winning mobile app that delivered the news in a text message-style format marked by the use of emoji and gifs. The app will formally shut down July 1.

The post Quartz lays off business-side employees for second time this year appeared first on Digiday.

As more OTT services enter the market, finding ways to reach potential subscribers is getting more competitive. In 2023, the U.K. is expected to be the world’s third-largest OTT market with revenues of £5.3 billion ($6.8 billion), according to predictions from Digital TV Research. 

Hayu, the reality show-focused SVOD service, which carries shows like “Keeping Up with the Kardashians,” “Made in Chelsea” and “The Real Housewives,” launched in 2016 as a way for NBCUniversal to capitalize on growing OTT revenues and audiences outside of the U.S. Using paid social on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, it drives people to sign up to its service. Since launch in 2016, more and more of Hayu’s marketing budget has moved to social platforms because of their proven ability to drive performance, according to the company.

The amount of video content at the disposal of OTT platforms makes Facebook a clear bet even outside of advertising. The same Grabyo report found two-thirds of U.K. social media users are influenced to buy products by social video.

Sports-focused SVOD platform Dazn uses a mixture of live content and short clips on Facebook to drive awareness and, ultimately, subscriptions. During Ultimate Fighting Championship Bellator 206 last September, Dazn live-streamed the supporting fight to Facebook, and attracted over 350,000 viewers. The streams were also used to promote the main event on Dazn.

“That’s 350,000 UFC fans who know where to go for the content they want most,” said Aaron Duckmanton, head of marketing at Grabyo, which worked with Dazn on the stream. “The smart OTT services are taking some of this premium content from behind the paywall and using it to promote sign-up offers, trials and future events. It’s especially effective for sports or live events.”

Marketing via Facebook is useful for discovery or re-engaging lapsed subscribers, particularly with video. According to a study on global video trends from social video production and analytics platform, Grabyo, 42% of people aged between 18 and 25 have purchased online media subscription services after watching ads on social media.

Facebook’s audience-based, biddable ad platform has let small and medium-sized marketers compete on an equal playing field with big-budget brand marketers. But recently DTC brands have moved away after realizing achieving cut-through on social media is getting harder, and brands increasingly have to pay more for a smaller return on investment.

“Facebook is a channel that works but it’s hard to plan consistently because of fluctuations outside of our control,” said Deborah King, head of paid social for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at media agency Essence. Changes in CPMs, algorithms and a more crowded landscape means the platform needs constant supervision.

“Things always get more competitive in summer and Christmas,” she added. “We either double or at least add a third on average, [to CPMs or CPAs]. There’s the added inflexibility of not knowing.”

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Today, the four additional internal media buying teams are planning and buying more local campaigns in their respective markets. The advertiser also has plans to set up its first European regional hub in Spain — one of its largest markets for total ad spending. Like it did for the other regional hubs, Pernod Ricard plans to hire five permanent employees and up to five freelancers depending on when there are seasonal campaign spikes.

Similar to other advertisers, the business has gradually bought more of its search, social and programmatic ads in-house, rather than attempt to do it all at once. That way, Pernod Ricard’s media teams take on more of the day-to-day ad spending tasks, such as managing whitelists of publishers in local markets, while its agencies are increasingly used as consultants, according to Pierre-Yves Calloc’h, global digital acceleration director at Pernod Ricard.

Calloc’h wouldn’t reveal what percentage split of online media Pernod Ricard’s marketers buy in-house, but added that it wasn’t as high as the amount of content they produce, which is around 25%-30% at a global level and 35%-55% at a regional level. In fact, the amount is likely closer to what the advertiser bought in 2017, when a quarter of its online media was bought internally. Even if that amount has risen since then, based on Calloc’h’s vague estimate it would still mean only a fraction of Pernod Ricard’s media budget is spent by its own marketers given online media accounted for a third of the $150 million the advertiser spent on media last year.

As it stands, agencies still handle the bulk of Pernod Ricard’s media budget even if the advertiser has previously expressed a desire to reduce what business they allocate to them in order to cut fees.

“Our agencies have to use our global accounts so all the buying they do is linked to those profiles, which gives us access to the data,” said Calloc’h. “The majority of our ad tech is done through Google and Facebook but in local markets we’re working with more platforms.”

Bringing ad spending in-house is theoretically supposed to make marketing simpler for advertisers because they should have more control over how their money is spent. But Pernod Ricard could be forgiven for wondering how sometimes. “Building a team isn’t easy,” said Calloc’h. “We’re looking for experts that cover programmatic, search and social but more importantly we need senior executives who understand how media has an impact on the wider business,” said Calloc’h.

To entice people with the right level of talent Pernod Ricard’s offers them shorter contracts. Advertisers struggle to attract the brightest talent in digital advertising partly because it’s hard to convince those candidates to ignore the lack of variety and clear career progression on the client side and leave their agencies or tech companies. But Pernod Ricard has made in-roads by offering talent shorter seasonal contracts, effectively freelance gigs, to plan and buy its media during peak periods like Christmas.

“Brands are still struggling to recruit in-house talent, particularly in smaller markets, and we’ve found that freelancers are not the solution,” said Brian Leder, chief strategy officer at consultancy Promatica. “We’re still seeing brands hire ‘hands on keyboards’ or other media staff, and more often than not they’re siloed and disconnected.”

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