Month: June 2020

The $61 billion figure “might surprise people because you hear people talk about the $70 billion TV market,” said Brian Wieser, global president of business intelligence at GroupM. For years, people have described TV advertising as a $70 billion market after it crossed that threshold in 2011. But the description has become dated.

The TV ad market has shrunk over the past several years as linear viewership has fallen. In 2016, total digital ad dollars overtook traditional TV in the U.S. for the first time, according to Magna. Exacerbating that trend, the coronavirus has advertisers canceling campaigns and pulling back on brand advertising to redirect dollars to direct-response channels like search and social.

In the first half of 2020, advertisers reduced the total money spent on linear TV advertising in the U.S. by 22% to 29%, according to an estimate from eMarketer, which excluded digital from the forecast. And TV networks’ business prospects may not improve anytime soon — the amount of money that advertisers will spend in this year’s TV upfront marketplace is expected to drop 28% year over year to $14.78 billion, per Emarketer.

Aofid the grim projections, there is a ray of hope for TV networks’ ad fortunes. Of the $38 billion that advertisers will spend on national TV ads overall this year, 13%, or $4.5 billion, will go toward digital extensions, such as connected TV platforms and the networks’ streaming properties, according to GroupM. That’s a small share and a minor increase from 12% of national TV ad dollars last year. But in an economic downturn, growth is growth.

The TV networks appear to recognize where the growth opportunity is. In the past, networks had prioritized their linear channels in their upfront pitches and positioned their digital inventory as a complement to round out advertisers’ abilities to reach people.

That is changing this year. Network groups including Disney and ViacomCBS are making their streaming properties a more central part of their upfront pitches. That could help them to retain dollars that advertisers may otherwise look to reallocate to other homes, such as digital video platforms like YouTube and Facebook. 

“The idea of dollars moving from linear to digital implied TV networks losing money to Google and Facebook. Really now it means taking from ABC prime time and moving to Hulu or taking from USA Network and moving to Peacock in the future,” said an agency executive.

A large gap still remains between the money going to networks’ linear channels and those going to their streaming properties. That’s because linear TV continues to account for a larger share of viewership. In the fourth quarter of 2019, streaming represented 19% of total TV usage, according to Nielsen. Even with people spending more time in front of the TV during quarantine, streaming’s share of overall TV viewership only inched up to 23% for the week of March 16, per the measurement firm.

As a result, advertisers continue to see streaming primarily as a way to get in front of incremental audiences that are more difficult to reach on traditional TV. Streaming is “more than a complement but certainly not a majority of where spend is going,” said the agency executive.

“Our employees are our most important asset, so we always do everything we can to make sure they feel supported and that they can do their best work,” said Axios’ svp of people operations Dominique Taylor. 

The common challenges of working remotely include an abundance of Zoom calls, leading to Zoom fatigue, as well as not knowing when to click out of the Slack window at the end of the day. But on top of the daily work load, there is the constant overhead gloom of the coronavirus threatening the health of individuals as well as the economy. That combined with a new series of protests tied to police brutality and institutionalized racism that are understandably weighing on people’s minds.

Naturally, for news publishers, not only is the tension and turmoil occupying staffer’s thoughts during non-work hours, but they are at forefront of their minds as they report on this challenging time.

In general, according to a survey of 1099 U.S. employees done by the Society for Human Resource Management in May, 41% of U.S. employees said they felt burnt out from work, while another 23% reported feeling depressed as a result of the psychological costs of coronavirus.

Wanting to combat this, Axios, as well as Politico, The Guardian and Bloomberg have been rushing to add new benefits and extra perks for their entire workforce. This includes additional PTO, company holidays and training that focuses on mental health. (Shopify has gone a step further: It has instituted no meetings Wednesdays and will give employees Fridays off throughout the summer.)

Taylor said her team realized through a series of surveys and one-on-one meetings that Axios staffers were struggling to set boundaries between work and home life since moving remote. So in March the company started giving employees an extra day of dedicated PTO each month. The staffers can use it whenever they feel like they need a break, she said. 

Then, the company also implemented monetary benefits for workers to have a healthy and productive work environment at home, including transitioning its commuter benefit into a WFH benefit of a $100 monthly stipend. And for those staffers impacted by coronavirus in particular, the company created a $100,000 Family Fund to provide additional financial support.

Politico has taken a similar approach to giving employees time off as a break from the constant news cycle.

The publisher added a full week’s worth of holidays divided up as one additional day off per month from April to August, according to chief talent officer Traci Schweikert. She said that they chose to do paid holidays because the company already has unlimited PTO, but people were not taking it as liberally as they might need to avoid fatigue.

With the office closed, “everyone has the opportunity to disconnect at the same time without missing out,” Schweikert said. And if breaking news prevents the newsroom from shutting down on those days, she said individual employees are able to make up that day when they can. 

Politico is also discouraging holding any meetings on Friday afternoons, Schweikert said.

At The Guardian, its U.S. operations closed for a day during Mental Health Week at the start of May, according to a company spokesperson, but a major focus for the publisher has been providing additional training around physical health and wellness and offloading stress and getting emotional support.

Managers across the company’s U.S. and U.K. divisions are all required to take a mandatory online training led by a therapist, including courses like “Common mental health problems and how to recognize the symptoms in a team member or colleague.”

Bloomberg also implemented a “resiliency” training and coaching program. The company also has an employee program for counseling services and online resources for both part- and full-time employees to use if in need. It also launched a virtual meditation series in March that has sense expanded into a daily work break.

And in light of the recent protests demanding justice and racial equality following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police offer last month, the company launched an internal discussion series with the Bloomberg Media Diversity and Inclusion Committee to help employees share their own experiences and also process recent events together.

Looking forward at the future of work, Poltico’s Schweikert said “necessity is the mother of invention and that is very much the case for talent and the way we work.” And while there were a lot of benefits to the way that her company operated in February, she expects that the actions her team are taking now will stick around well beyond the pandemic for the betterment of employees.

The business is pumping £13 million ($15 million) into the official launch of #LearnOnTikTok, a content strand that will curate educational videos on the platform across Europe. The hashtag was originally formed by the app’s users earlier this year when they used it to group together videos teaching new skills such as lessons in cooking and science facts and history. TikTok’s investment will work as a grant of sorts for people to create even more educational content for the app.

Some of that money will go toward celebrities like the presenter and mathematician Rachel Riley and actor Sean Sagar, who will share math and acting tips respectively in regular videos. The rest of funds will go to organizations like the University of Cambridge and historical sites across England as well as other professional experts in a variety of fields.

Eventually, there will be hundreds of educators, real-world skills creators, and non-profit organizations creating content for the #LearnOnTikTok content focus, said TikTok’s general manager for Europe, Rich Waterworth. Some of those creators will work directly with the social media app’s in-house creative team to produce videos, while others will create their own.

“We’re using this investment to seed the educational category broadly,” said Waterworth. “Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen views for videos with the #LearnOnTikTok get over 7 billion views for just over a million videos.”

Educational content could also be more attractive to advertisers wary of the outré videos the internet provides in volume. Indeed, TikTok’s large and growing young audience is bright on the radar of marketers at Procter & Gamble, and Kellogg’s who are intrigued by how it has become a form of light relief and engagement during the lockdown. As Waterworth explained: “We certainly hope educational content makes us more appealing to advertisers. They’re looking at how they can get incredible levels of engagement from the platform and educational content could be an extension of how they do that.”

“TikTok has hand-selected 10 high-quality content creators focused on education over an investment of $15 million which on average is $1.5 million per creator — a real sum of investment in talent quality over quantity,” said Andrew Rajanathan, a global director at media agency Zenith. “The time is ripe now for more innovation or new entertainment companies designed for the mobile age.”

Educational content has always been in TikTok’s sights. People increasingly visit the app to learn new skills, from cooking to life hacks. This usage was pronounced enough that the social media app launched an educational program in India, where it has amassed over 200 million users. At the time, the platform said it would fund more educational content on the platform. But the surge in people watching that content while stuck at home convinced the app’s execs to speed up their plans. Indeed, it is launching a similar fund for educational videos in the U.S., albeit with a $50 million pot. 

“This move by TikTok feels like a shift towards maturity for the platform, moving towards becoming a major player within our portfolio of chosen social platforms,” said James Silverstone, account director, at influencer agency The Projects*.

He added that “from a marketing point of view, diversifying the content on the platform opens up the possibilities for more strategic content partnerships, the opportunity for users to engage with brands in an authentic and relevant way and for brands to create content which is helpful and useful, rather than simply commercial.”