Month: June 2021

Pinterest had the choice to start the auditing process over in the hopes of garnering certification in the future, but instead, the company decided to withdraw from the audit of its self-reported video ad impressions metrics, also referred to by the MRC as “first-party” metrics. “Based on our video product roadmap, we made the decision to withdraw this metric from accreditation,” a Pinterest spokesperson told Digiday for this exclusive.

While it’s unclear how the denial of MRC accreditation may hurt Pinterest’s advertising business, MRC approval would have helped the platform’s pitch to advertisers. MRC accreditation for standardized ad metrics is important for Pinterest because without them video advertisers can only compare their Pinterest campaigns against other Pinterest data, rather than seeing how ads on the platform perform in relation to ads placed on other platforms, said an agency executive who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Pinterest’s biggest challenge is they get caught in the middle,” said the agency executive. This person said that Pinterest attracts people while they’re in the middle of the sales funnel, not at the top when brands want to reach people to create awareness and not at the bottom where people click and make a purchase. 

MRC certification matters because it enables advertisers to compare ad impressions in a standardized way across platforms, according to Nancy Smith, president and CEO of Analytic Partners, which helps advertisers measure and optimize marketing campaigns and partners to receive ad measurement data from digital platforms including Pinterest, Facebook, Google, Amazon and Snap. “Advertisers want to understand that they’re looking [at] a common metric,” she said.

The meaning of an impression

The accreditation denial appears to be based on a discrepancy over impression criteria and at which moment Pinterest registers or logs a video ad impression. Currently, the platform measures both display and video impressions using the same methodology, counting an impression if at least one pixel of an ad is on screen for at least one second, even if the video has not actually played. The MRC, on the other hand, logs a video ad impression only when a video is viewable and begins to play.

The Pinterest denial showed up in a list posted to the MRC website alongside approvals for various metrics from media firms and third-party measurement companies. The council, which oversees audits conducted by outside firms including Deloitte and Ernst & Young (EY), typically doesn’t broadcast its ad measurement audit decisions.

Pinterest remains in regular discussion with MRC regarding potential certification for ad metrics including its self-provided display impressions, clicks on organic posts (called “pin clicks”) and metrics provided by third parties for display and video viewability reporting. The Pinterest spokesperson said, “We will continue to evaluate resourcing for future video impression accreditation and align with the standards across feed-based platforms.” The company also stressed that it measures views for videos using the MRC’s standard which only counts a video view if 50% of it has appeared on screen and it has played for at least two seconds. 

Pinterest is not alone in being denied MRC verification. For instance, in April 2019, the MRC announced it had revoked accreditation for Hulu’s mobile web display, video and rich media ad impressions. According to the MRC site, the company’s display, video and rich media rendered impressions for desktop, in-app and streaming currently have the OK from MRC. 

Pinterest argues most other social sites — other than YouTube — also do not have MRC certification for various self-reported video metrics. However, MRC representatives said that, while that’s true among social media platforms, the auditing body has approved video ad impression metrics for “at least a dozen” ad servers and third-party verification services. 

“Work is something that takes up such a huge part of my life, so doing different types of work keeps it more interesting and exciting,” she said. “People have the ability now more than ever to collaborate, create and just do things that don’t fall into one bucket. We’re past the age of being just one type of worker.”

Then there’s Richard Fearn, based in London, who runs a nonprofit, manages investments — and is in the middle of producing a musical. “I’ve never liked the idea of just doing the same thing every day,” he said. “I have multiple interests that I’m passionate about and they’ve naturally become different streams of income for me. Modern working attitudes and flexible technology allows my generation to juggle a multitude of things in a way we’ve never been able to before.”

The professional workforce, particularly millennials (aged between 25 and 40 years old) and Gen Z (up to 24 years old), is increasingly rejecting the concept of a full-time job and a single boss in favor of something that’s being dubbed “polywork,” or having multiple jobs at once.

A study of this blooming workforce by a new social network, also called Polywork, found that 55% of the 1,000 workers it polled, aged 21 to 40 years old, said an exciting professional life was more important than money. Just 35% said they could envision sticking with a single job for life, while nearly 64% said they already were doing more than one job or hoped to in the future. More than 70% of those surveyed believe the pandemic accelerated the trend. 

The rise of polywork dovetails with the much-documented decline in job satisfaction amid the pandemic, which left employees feeling undervalued, as well as lacking communication and a connection to their bosses. In a recent survey, Skynova, a small business support firm, just 53% of employees said they were given goals directly related to the quality of their work, while 45% of employers rewarded workers who exceed performance standards.

As for the site Polywork, it lets users create a free personal webpage, share what they’re up to personally and professionally, and send collaboration requests to other members. Its backers include a who’s who of Silicon Valley, including Ray Tonsing (early investor in Clubhouse, Airtable and Brex), YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, VSCO co-founder Joel Flory, Behance founder Scott Belsky and Worklife Ventures founder Brianne Kimmel.

“The data from our community shows that there will no longer be such a thing as a single job for life and that people are rejecting the single job titles that have been bestowed upon them for the last 10 years in favor of representing all the different types of things they do, and working in multiple ways at once on their own terms,” said Polywork’s founder Peter Johnston, a Belfast native and a former designer at Google and M&C Saatchi London. 

While Polywork is targeted to Gen Z and millennials, it is open to those of all life and career stages, Johnston stressed. While it’s free to members, the team is working on a premium version so users can share more.

Johnston points to the dramatic power shift from boss to talent during the pandemic. “We are seeing the largest shift to entrepreneurs in history,” he said. “Think about what just happened in the world — it was such a collectively intense situation we all went through. I don’t know if there could be a bigger kick in the butt [to inspire people] to do what they want to do. You can become a full-time writer or start a business.”

That desire to live a multifaceted professional life must be understood and supported by employers, as Johnston sees it. “If businesses do not listen to their talent, we will see those companies start to become dinosaurs,” he said.

San Francisco-based Idan Gazit, director of research, future projects at the software developer GitHub, who has also advised on Polywork, said: “If you look at a lot of job descriptions, they are one-dimensional: write code and more code. Where can you find people and opportunities to write code but also grow professionally, be given responsibility for outcomes? That’s what professional growth is.”

Millennials like himself often don’t see themselves portrayed as who they really are, Gazit related, and like so many professionals of all generations, it’s easy to feel pigeonholed — something the social network aims to change. “People are saying, I want something where the product understands I do a lot of different things and derive value from those different things,” he said. “Now you can define yourself how you want.”

Leading the team will be new hire and senior vp Steve Grant, who has spent nearly 20 years working in the fields of behavioral science and behavioral economics, not only in academia and consultancies, but also with marketers including Prudential. Grant said he expects to get involved with clients from the product/service planning stage (not ordinarily a place where media agency folk rear their heads) all the way through to messaging, planning and advertising.

“Behavioral science and market research need to cover every step of what a client is putting together,” said Grant, who most recently ran his own consultancy called Animal Spirits before joining Horizon. Agencies “are good at looking at the extrinsic factors, from pricing to brand to attitude, but we need to dive deeper. We want to understand not only what’s important to influence people’s decisions, but also where and when, and most importantly, why.”

Grant started about a month ago at Horizon, and though he wouldn’t identify specific clients, he cited entertainment-category clients as ideal for the type of insights the Human Intelligence unit can unearth. Consumers “have never been more spoiled for choice of entertainment sources, and the pandemic only expanded on that,” he explained. “Behavioral science can help tell you what drives some [TV show or other form of entertainment] to get consideration, beyond traditional marketing – especially when the primary constraint is time.” Horizon’s entertainment clients include A+E Networks and Turner Networks.

Roder, to whom Grant reports, added that the skill-set lends itself also to other Horizon clients in healthcare, financial services and sports (both properties and teams).

“We want to understand business problems at a pre-[marketing] level, and then change the trajectory of their marketing, investment or messaging to influence the outcome,” she said. “And Steve has specific skill-sets and specialized applied techniques that help us understand peoples’ idiosyncracies.”

Whether or not Gen Z is currently a target demographic in your business strategy, creating a positive connection with this generation and beginning to build brand affinity now is important to ensure the longevity of your brand or publication in a decade or two down the road.

Here is a guide for a comprehensive look at Gen Zers’ media consumption habits based on interviews with new and legacy publishers, marketers, strategists and a Gen Z TikTok creator. Links to additional Digiday coverage on this generation will be interspersed throughout the guide, in addition to research and data about this audience.

Gen Z, defined as those between the ages of 9-24, have wildly varying interests. It’s left established media brands trying to find content and growth strategies that work for both older and younger audiences, whose media consumption habits are vastly different, from the mediums they use, the platforms they engage with and the types of content they prefer.

Consumer brands that have relied on more traditional ad spots (like print campaigns and Super Bowl commercials), as well as old school digital campaigns (like banner ads and pre-roll video), need to also figure out the best way to reach Gen Zers, who have been raised alongside ads and have a keen sense of what’s authentic.

In part, this is because this generation is outspoken online in what they believe, pressuring both brands and publishers to not just be on the right platforms, but to also be a part of the rapidly changing and trending internet culture. For legacy companies, this is not always an easy strategy to implement, particularly for those businesses still in the early stages of building their social media presences on emerging platforms like TikTok.

“The thing about Gen Z being digitally native is that, yes, they are hyper-aware, but they are also way more critical. They expect the most out of their content,” said Christian Kenoly, a junior cultural strategist at sparks & honey, Omnicom’s tech-led cultural consultancy. A brand with an entire TikTok strategy of doing dance trends will be called out and mocked by this audience, Kenoly added. “There are entire meme cultures behind not just brand fails, but how certain industries and certain institutions are completely disconnected,” they said. 

Digital publishers built for Gen Z audiences and brands targeted to younger consumers have put social media at the center of their content and distribution strategies. Publishers such as Group Nine, Yahoo’s In the Know and Overtime have all prioritized building a brand on social media either before or while simultaneously creating owned and operated platforms. Meanwhile, established newspapers, including The Washington Post, have wisely embraced emerging platforms to fill the funnel with future subscribers.

Marketers, on the other hand, see Gen Z championing authenticity and transparency above all when it comes to ads and influencer marketing. The glossy fashion spreads and airbrushed commercials don’t fit with the ethos that this generation holds dearly.

While Gen Z does not exclusively live online and does venture to other mediums, not being a part of the cultural conversation and voicing support for activism and ethical business, publishers, marketers and brands run the risk of losing out on building brand affinity with this demographic, or worse — being canceled.

Age: 9 – 24, born between 1997 to 2012, according to Pew Research. 

Zillennials: The year delineating between millennial and Gen Z is pretty contended, so a third category called “zillennials” was created to describe the 20-somethings who were born between 1994 and 1996, but don’t quite identify with their older millennial counterparts from the early 1990s or the younger counterparts born later in the decade.

• 41%: percentage of U.S. adults aged 18-29 (young millennials and Gen Zers born in 2002 and later) who said they primarily get their political news from social media, according to a survey of more than 12,000 individuals conducted by Pew Research on a rolling basis between November 2019 and December 2020. 
• 30%: percentage of U.S. adults aged 18-29 who get their political/election news from a news website or app, according to the Pew Research study.
• 57%: percentage of Gen Zers who report their first interaction with news in the morning is on social media platforms, including messaging apps, according to the Reuter’s Institute for the Study of Journalism’s 2019 study covering Gen Z’s news consumption.
• 2X: Gen Zers are twice as dependent on their smartphone as people over 45, but the majority of their time is spent only on a small number of apps, Reuters Institute found.
• Top 5: Of the few apps Gen Zers frequent, Instagram is the top used with WhatsApp, Snapchat, YouTube and TikTok. No news apps were in the top 25 collectively across respondents, according to Reuters Institute’s study.

Publishers pursuing Gen Z either as their primary audience or in conjunction with an older readership are realizing that video is critical to initially introduce their brands to the generation.

“The unique thing about Gen Z is that while millennials have grown up with social media, Gen Z has grown up with video-first social media,” said said Nick Cicero, vp of strategy at streaming and social intelligence company Conviva. However, Gen Z’s perception of a media publication and the way they form connections to their properties has “shifted from the logo of the brand to the people that make up the brand itself,” he said.

About one-quarter of The Washington Post’s digital audience is between the ages of 19-35, which is a segment that the D.C.-based national news publisher is looking to build up, said managing editor Kat Downs Mulder. 

The Post gained some steam with this audience early in the pandemic by taking a personality-led approach on TikTok. Video producer Dave Jorgenson, who had been creating content for the platform in 2019, was able to turn his “uncool guy” persona into a relatable pseudo-influencer for news and political content while posting from his home during the pandemic. The minute-long videos are created specifically for TikTok and focus on being both informational and comedic. The TikTok page is now nearing 1 million followers and 40 million likes across all of its videos. 

While the Post has done some promotion for its subscription product on the platform, with Jorgenson plugging discounted trial offers in videos, Mulder said that the goal is not to necessarily convert all Gen Zers that come across the Post’s social content. 

“With our focus on reader revenue at the bottom of the funnel, loyalty is incredibly important to us. But in order to get to a place of loyalty, it starts with a relationship at the top of the funnel,” said Mulder. “A lot of what we’re doing is exposing people to The Washington Post [and] getting them to start to develop that affinity to trust in our brand.” She did not share the number of subscriptions that have come in through TikTok.

Group Nine has five brands that it’s built and acquired over a decade-long period — including Thrillist, The Dodo, NowThis, Seeker and PopSugar — and a central strategy for growth is prioritizing social media. So while Gen Z is not the only audience the digital publisher caters to, its strategy of recognizing that each platform has its own purpose in the minds’ of young internet users has helped it hone its Gen Z audience, according to the company’s evp of growth Noah Keil.

TikTok and Snapchat are two platforms that Group Nine is bullish on to reach Gen Z and has worked with both platforms to create original content and programming that fits in the “bite sized” video format for quick consumption — something the publisher has found appeals to this generation, Keil said. 

More than 400 million people watched shows on Snapchat in 2020, including over 90% of the Gen Z population in the U.S., Variety reported. This led to an increase of original content deals signed with celebrities, content creators and publishers.

While it is “too simplistic to say, ‘Let’s do it all in video and that will attract young people,’” video is an incredibly important entertainment medium for Gen Zers, said Nic Newman, senior research associate at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism. For breaking news and important information, however, text is preferred for speed and control, therefore platforms like Twitter come into play for quick, curated information on a subject, he added.

In The Know, which was created to produce evergreen video content for younger audiences that was distributed across Yahoo’s suite of sites and channels, has grown a large Gen Z following of its own since it launched in 2017. It ended up launching its own standalone site, InTheKnow.com, in February 2020, which led to 25 million monthly unique visitors in March, per Comscore. Of that, more than three-fourths of its audience comes from mobile platforms, which saw a 900% growth rate year over year, according to Andrea Wasserman, head of global commerce at Verizon Media. She did not give exact figures.

Part of the reason why In The Know was created was to test what successful commerce content looked like for a Gen Z, according to Wasserman. In 2019, the brand began integrating affiliate shopping links and pushing this forward, In The Know started producing shoppable video that includes demonstrations, try-ons and product reviews from the editorial staff that viewers can buy while watching. In the past year, gross merchandise value has increased by 125%, she said. 

As for social media growth, Wasserman said that platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and even Facebook pull in a large viewership as social video is a key component of the brand’s content distribution strategy. One video on Snapchat is able to drive over 1 million unique views from users ages 13 to 24, she said. 

When it comes to audience growth, Overtime’s “bread and butter” from its launch in 2016 is its distributed content strategy across social media platforms, according to the company’s CRO Rich Calacci. “Quite frankly, we don’t see that changing. That’s going to be a very critical part of our growth and development, especially as it relates to Gen Z and millennials,” he said. 

The digital video sports publisher has 16.6 million followers on its main TikTok account and over 1 billion likes across the 2,000-plus videos it’s posted since joining the platform in March of 2019. On Instagram, it has 5 million followers. On Snapchat, its show Overtime Now, which has 12 seasons, has nearly 3 million subscribers. 

“To some extent, our success drafts off Snapchat’s growth or Google’s success. But at the same time, we’ve been able to create our own opportunity on TikTok,” where Calacci said they’ve been able to organically grow one of the largest followings for sports brands on the platform.

Still, to diversify revenue with advertisers, last year Overtime created its first content-focused O&O property, its app, that Calacci said is focused on the diehard fans. He did not disclose the number of users on the app.

Gen Z’s “consumption behavior is driving them towards these platforms and it’s creating digital daily habits, and those digital daily habits are where we want to be,” said Calacci. An app is a prime location for those intense fans who already follow Overtime on a number of social platforms to connect with the brand in an even more direct way, with the hope that the app will become a regular destination on the viewer’s phone. 

Calacci said he does not think the app would have been as successful if it launched three or four years ago. Those relationships that lead to daily habits take longer to form when first introduced on a platform with many profiles and brands present. Four year later, however, the sports publisher has been able to find that audience on social media that it can then translate into a following on its app.

Read more: 

• TikTok pays Group Nine Media to create science videos as Gen Z segment grows
• After sluggish starts, more publishers are finding Snapchat a moneymaker
• How Overtime is building sports media for Gen Z
• How BDG grew its TikTok channel as one of the first ‘serious’ publishers on the app
• Crooked Media will use Team Whistle’s Snapchat Discover channel to drive viewers to its YouTube show

By now it may not come as a surprise that Gen Z spends a lot of time on social media — particularly TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. So it stands to reason that social campaigns and influencer marketing are two of the most powerful ways to sell this generation on a product, brand or service.

One notable trait about Gen Z’s reception of ads, according to Kenoly, is their inherent blinders for display advertising. They are being “inundated with more advertisements, and more PR than [people] really ever have before. They’re not even registering” ads when they’re scrolling on a webpage, they said.

“[The] Gen Z audience has grown up on these platforms [so] they’re used to being marketed to. They’re used to understanding that there could be product placement, they’re used to buying through Instagram and buying things through watching unboxing videos or live videos. They’re more naturally attuned to this world,” said Group Nine’s Keil. 

The natural progression for advertisers and marketers then is to make ad spots as seamlessly engrained in everyday life as possible, Kenoly added, pointing to influencers as being a predominant way to do just that. And while a few years ago marketing budgets were being sunk into programmatic, they said it is likely influencer marketing will become the new programmatic advertising.

The key to influencer marketing, however, is authenticity because just as quickly as a Gen Zer can identify an ad on a website, they will be able to spot product placements in an Instagram story or see that a sponsored post on YouTube or TikTok is scripted. Influencers and content creators themselves have been able to build massive followings based on their personalities, likes, and passions, so a brand deal that does not fit into their typical content will seem disingenuous.

Kenoly said that the best way to avoid inauthenticity when working with influencers to create ads is to give them the wheel to talk about the product or brand as they see fit. “Brands have to start approaching influencers as brands, not as mouthpieces. They are themselves a brand. And this is a partnership,” they said.

Know your role on social media

Gen Z uses each social media platform for different reasons and so should marketers:

• TikTok is an impermanent platform with fleeting content. While posts remain on creators’ pages, the For You Page is refilled with new content on a regular basis and therefore people rarely build highly curated portfolios of content on the app, said Cicero.
• Snapchat is also an impermanent communications app that Gen Z spends a lot of time on, not only sending snapchat messages, but viewing written and video content on the Discover page. “Instead of flipping over to YouTube to watch a cool video or jumping to TikTok, there’s all this really awesome content that is from premium publishers that are for the Snapchat viewers,” Cicero said.
• Instagram is still relevant, according to Cicero, but the content posted there is very intentional and tends to be polished. Therefore, it is not a fleeting platform.
• Twitter has its finger on the pulse of the world, Cicero said. It is where Gen Z goes for breaking news and learn more about major cultural moments. This platform stands out from the others as it is not a visual platform, so creators without video editing skills can still share their thoughts and build a following on Twitter.
• Facebook is not generally used by Gen Z. The only area that might gain some traction, according to Cicero, is Facebook Groups.

For brands that are still on the fence about joining the newest platform, TikTok, Kenoly said, “if you’re not already on TikTok, you’re already behind.” At the same time, however, only posting content with trendy dances or popular songs is limiting and can even potentially be seen as “cheugy” (out of date or trying too hard) as well. 

To make an impact on the platform, they said they advise brands to try and make content for the different “sides” of TikTok, which are communities of interests and lifestyles that form within the platform’s audience — like sustainability, fashion, or cooking. 

“It has to be targeted all the way down. A lot of brands wonder, ‘why aren’t we going viral? Why aren’t we getting as many views or likes?’ And I think what we try to really hit home most is it’s not about those vanity metrics,” said Kenoly.

Read more: 

• To get the attention of millennials and Gen Z, Ace Hardware is turning to influencers
• ‘Brands are relying on influencers’: Why Instagram is starting its first training week for creators

Brie D’Elia, 20, is a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and a social media marketing intern at men’s athletic wear company Wolaco. Outside of work and school, D’Elia has spent the past eight months building a personal brand on TikTok, where she has accumulated a following of over 120,000 that has enabled her to start signing brand deals and make a bit of money on the side. 

In this conversation, D’Elia talks about the roles that publications play in her daily life, including the forms in which she prefers to read them, and how the various social media platforms serve different purposes for conveying one’s presence online. 

This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

What are your go-to platforms for news?

Probably Twitter. I really don’t go on Twitter a lot, but when I want a specific trending piece of information, I always go there because you can see the hashtags and what’s going viral. I just want that [information] fast, like with the TikToker versus YouTuber boxing match, I went straight to Twitter because I knew I’d get that information right away. There are some celebrity gossip videos that pop up on my For You Page on TikTok that are interesting. I don’t follow any of them, but I’ve seen them lately.

How do you use the other social media platforms?

I’ll do Instagram for more fashion inspiration. So, I’ll follow people for outfit ideas or more specific aesthetic things. Instagram is definitely more curated. I would almost put Instagram and Pinterest hand in hand. Definitely not for real, vulnerable things but the pretty side of social media. I don’t think Instagram is as authentic as TikTok is. I think it used to be like that, but TikTok is definitely taking over that domain. Everyone is so vulnerable on that app. You don’t see that realness on Instagram anymore. And I’m literally never on Facebook unless I have to for work if I’m running ads and things like that for business purposes.

Are there any media sites that you’re particularly a fan of?

I get the Business of Fashion emails in my inbox every day and that kind of gives me a recap of what’s going on in the fashion space, just because I like to be well versed since it’s the industry that I’m currently working in and going into. But I also think that all the other magazines and media platforms are just so saturated with the same thing, that I like Business of Fashion because it’s super straightforward and a lot more professional. If I’m looking for unprofessional things, I’ll go to a social media site before I go to Vogue or Refinery29. 

[I read] The Wall Street Journal every day. And same with Adweek. The Zoe Report, I look at, and Women’s Wear Daily. When I’m on my laptop in the morning, I’m checking my calendar, my Gmail, and then those news sites.

What about ads? What types of advertisements or marketing strategies do you find work best on you? 

I would say that a greater impact for me is seeing influencers use specific products or wear a certain thing, rather than just seeing a dress pop up as a paid ad. I’m less likely to click on that. I’d rather click on somebody that I’m following, who I trust, and she’s talking about it — then I’ll make a purchase. It goes back to the whole more authentic [and] real. It’s a person and she’s saying, “I like this, this is what size I am, you should get it,” and then typically, they have a discount code that’s an even bigger incentive for me to shop. Those are the types of ads that I will make a purchase off of, not really something that’s in my Instagram stories that’s like “swipe-up to shop.”

Which platforms are these influencers the most impactful on?

YouTube for sure. I think that YouTubers, you almost know exactly who they are and I think a longer-form content helps. When I talk about an influencer on YouTube that I follow, I feel like I know them. So I definitely make purchases based on specific YouTubers, because this is authentic to them.

What about your role as an influencer and someone who is building a brand on social media? What have you learned since you’ve started posting on TikTok yourself? 

I remember starting to post in October and taking it, quote-unquote, a little bit more seriously — trying to build a brand off of it. I have over 120,000 [followers]. I used to post every single day in the very beginning, and that’s definitely how I grew fast because I think consistency is totally key. And now I’m on this every other day posting schedule just because I have my internship.

I started on YouTube filming myself when I was super young — just random videos — and I just love having an audience and talking about things, definitely fashion-related or just fun stuff. But, as I’ve gotten older, and realized that I really have somewhat of a following, it’s turned into more of, I want to start my own business and have a brand. I want people to buy my things or subscribe to this and so building a following will help me with that, because I need customers.

Are you part of the TikTok Creator Fund, or are you monetizing your channel in any way?

I opted out of the Creator Fund [after three weeks] because once you’re in the Creator Fund, they put you in this box and you aren’t really pushed by TikTok to get more views and comments. But there’s definitely other outlets I used to make money off of on TikTok. I have a website where I have certain links that if people click, I get a percentage of [the sale]. I work with Amazon, so if someone’s shopping on my Amazon page, I get a percentage of [the transaction]. And I’ll do different brand deals where companies will pay me “x” amount of money to post a video talking about it, or will send me free products.

At this point, I’ve done probably about a dozen [brand deals], but I like to be selective. I do get offers on a daily basis in my inbox but you have to pick and choose. I don’t want to share with my followers something that I don’t love and that doesn’t make sense or isn’t on brand, and it’s just for the money.

Digiday Magazine Issue 17: Youth

In this issue, the subject of youth and how the media, marketing, retail, beauty and fashion industries address this young cohort of readers and consumers is examined by the entire Digiday Media editorial staff.

This Gen Z agency ‘eliminates the learning curve’ to connect brands with its generation

Since launching four years ago, CarsonDoyle has grown to become an agency that toes the line between creative and advertising, snapping up work with clients like direct-to-consumer brand Backcountry Access, active water bottle company Modl Outdoors and even the dating app Tinder.

How a content creation company set out to become ‘the BuzzFeed of TikTok’

Jacob Pace, CEO of Flighthouse, a digital content studio and marketing agency, has tapped into creating content for the digital age — a maneuver that has helped popularize the videos on his company’s TikTok page.

No major plays yet: Why Clubhouse has yet to become part of the brand social playbook

Brands are still using Clubhouse to experiment, but don’t see it as a must-buy channel or something to build a permanent strategy around.

‘The situation is the same as it was last year’: Black creators say TikTok’s problems with race and diversity persist

Months after TikTok apologized to Black creators, its attempts to bring more onto the platform remain a work in progress.

‘The Cicada Upfront’

Last year’s annual TV upfront market may not have undergone the seismic shift that many ad buyers and sellers had expected in the spring of 2020. But in hindsight, it served as the foreshock for what has transpired this year as TV networks’ streaming and digital video inventory became centerpieces of their upfront deals.

“Last year and this year are two years that none of us had ever seen before. A lot of people refer to this upfront as ‘The Cicada Upfront,’” said one TV network executive, referring to the 17-year cycle in which some cicadas emerge. “The industry hasn’t seen anything like this in well over a decade.”

“If you look at the peak of TV spending in the upfront, it was probably the 2003-04 upfront, and that was all linear [advertisers spent an estimated $14.8 billion with broadcast and cable TV networks in the 2003-04 upfront]. If you fast-forward to this year, the amount of money being spent in prime time plus [ad-supported streaming and digital video] is definitely going to surpass that,” said a second TV network executive.

To be clear, the majority of money that advertisers and agencies have committed to spend with TV networks in this year’s upfront market has gone to the latter’s linear inventory, with the amounts buoyed by tightening supply that is pushing up ad prices. Nonetheless, streaming and digital video have seized their largest share of spending to date, according to TV network executives.

“Unanimously folks are talking about rates of change on the linear side at historically high levels and investments in streaming in the upfront greater than they’ve ever been and greater than last year,” said a third TV network executive.

The key hits:

• TV networks’ streaming and digital video inventory accounted for a bigger share of upfront commitments this year than in previous years.
• After reducing streaming ad prices last year, some TV networks secured price increases this year.
• Networks also saw influx of new and streaming-first advertisers.

Disney offers the most prominent and public example of the part streaming played in TV networks’ upfront dealings this year. The company has said that more than 40% of the upfront ad dollars it secured was earmarked for its streaming and digital video inventory. It helps that Disney owns Hulu, which has historically been one of the foremost ad-supported streaming players in the upfront marketplace. But Disney wasn’t alone in seeing streaming and digital video account for a sizable chunk of commitments. Executives from multiple other TV networks said that streaming and digital video accounted for roughly 30% of the money they had secured.

Some TV networks issued requirements that a certain share of advertisers’ upfront commitments go to their streaming and digital video inventory. Others, however, found that they didn’t need to force money to move in that direction. “We haven’t had to mandate against digital because it’s been coming. The demand has been extremely high, just as the demand for linear has been high,” said a fourth TV network executive.

Considering that some agency executives said that 25% to 30% of the money they spent in last year’s upfront went to streaming and digital video, the roughly 30% streaming and digital video share of some TV networks’ upfront commitments this year may not seem like such a dramatic increase. But then you have to consider how that money was secured.

In the 2020 upfront negotiations, many TV networks lowered their streaming ad prices. Their strategy was to get advertisers to spend more money on streaming overall, and then over time, the networks could increase their prices as advertiser demand for their streaming inventory increased. That bet paid off this year.

Multiple TV network executives said they secured price increases for their streaming inventory this year. They declined to provide specific figures, but they described the increases as being in the single- to double-digit percentages. That may only amount to upfront streaming ad prices returning to their pre-pandemic levels, but it’s indicative of a checkmark-shaped recovery — and trajectory — for networks’ streaming ad rates.

“There’s an acknowledgement that the price sort of bottomed out last year,” said the second TV network executive.

“We’ve seen a tipping point in the marketplace where this inventory is in high demand, there’s not infinite supply and the value is there in terms of targeting, engagement and measurement,” said a fifth TV network executive.

Fueling the streaming price increases was the flood of advertiser demand for networks’ streaming inventory. Some of that heightened demand was the result of TV networks capping out on linear inventory, and advertisers snapping up the networks’ streaming inventory as a means of maintaining their ability to reach audiences tuning into TV-quality programming. But some advertisers also sought out networks’ streaming inventory as their first priority over linear.

“For advertisers that are are trying to go after a specific demographic, for example the coveted 18- to 34-year-olds, streaming was the base” of their upfront deals, said the fifth TV network executive.

Streaming also brought new advertisers into the upfront fold. More direct-to-consumer brands populated this year’s upfront marketplace, as did programmatic-only advertisers, according to TV network executives. “In general, we’re going to see in this marketplace significantly more advertisers participating because of the continued proliferation of streaming and digital,” said a sixth TV network executive.

“We had up to 30% new business in more than one [agency group], which is enormous, and all of the new business wrote digital,” said one of the TV network executives.

What we’ve heard

“Roku has I-don’t-know-how-many different versions of [its operating system] out there, and the app has to work perfectly with every version.”

— Streaming executive on the complexity of developing and managing connected TV apps

Stay tuned: TV still dominates TV

Streaming is becoming a bigger part of the overall TV business. And it will eventually become the biggest part. But as the latest upfront negotiations indicate, and Nielsen’s latest measurements make clear, traditional TV continues to own the TV market by a pretty wide margin.

A majority of the money being committed in this year’s upfront is headed for networks’ linear TV inventory. As the owner of Hulu, Disney would appear to be best positioned to have reached parity between ad dollars committed to streaming versus linear. It came close, with 40% of upfront ad dollars committed to its streaming and digital inventory. But that still leaves the lion’s share for linear.

Traditional TV accounts for an even greater share of the time people spend watching programming on TV screens. In May 2021, 64% of the time people in the U.S. spent watching a TV screen was spent watching linear TV, versus 26% for streaming, according to Nielsen.

All of that being said, TV’s trajectory is clear: Streaming’s share of TV ad dollars and audiences’ attentions is only increasing.

Two years ago, streaming and digital video accounted for around 20% of upfront advertisers’ commitments, agency executives had previously said. This year closer to 30% of the money they’re spending with TV networks is going to streaming, based on conversations with TV network executives. That’s not including the money going to streaming-only sellers, like Roku and YouTube.

Meanwhile, the programming that likely accounts for the largest portions of linear TV’s watch time — live sports and news — is set to become more widely available for streaming audiences sans pay-TV subscriptions. WarnerMedia’s CNN is set to follow other news networks’ forays into streaming by standing up a standalone streaming news property sometime in the next year. And most notably, the NFL’s latest rights renewal deals give TV network owners the option to provide linear TV’s most prized programming to cord cutters.

Numbers to know

30%: Minimum percentage of women and BIPOC that should be working in above-the-line roles for certain Amazon Studios-based TV shows and movies, per the company’s guidelines.

$6 billion: How much money NBCUniversal is reportedly looking to charge for 30-second ads in next year’s Super Bowl.

$34.3 billion: How much revenue TikTok owner ByteDance reportedly made in 2020.

What we’ve covered

Why Showtime will release episodes of ‘The L Word: Generation Q’ early for streaming viewers:

• Showtime is looking to grow its streaming viewership and ease its linear network’s Sunday night programming load.
• The ViacomCBS-owned TV network has started to see streaming viewership of its Sunday night shows eclipse linear viewership.

Read more about Showtime here.

U.K.’s Channel 4 aims for more ad dollars with customer data sharing regime:

• Channel 4 is matching its streaming audience data with advertisers’ customer data.
• The TV network is working with data platform provider InfoSum to match the databases without connecting the two.

Read more about Channel 4 here.

Inside Visible’s influencer marketing strategy for Pride and beyond:

• The Verizon-owned digital-only phone carrier is working with influencers on an ongoing basis, rather than hiring them for one-off posts.
• The brand makes sure LGBTQ+ influencers are represented in each of its influencer marketing campaigns, not just during June for Pride.

Read more about Visible here.

What we’re reading

How Roku is building its streaming business:
Over the past decade, Roku has transformed from a connected TV device maker into a streaming power player, according to CNBC. The company has been parlaying that power into seeking more favorable deals with the media companies building streaming businesses on its CTV platform, and it is increasingly building its own streaming business. After acquiring Quibi’s content library this year, Roku is looking to spend more than $1 billion on programming in 2021, per the report.

Why Apple TV+ is about to face a new test:
Apple is about to reduce the free-trial period for Apple TV+. That may signal that Apple believes the streaming service can attract subscribers on its own, but it may end up showing that it cannot, according to Vulture. As has been the case with Amazon, Apple’s streaming ambitions and streaming’s importance to the company’s overall business have been unclear. But this move seems to be Apple saying that its streaming business needs to be able to stand on its own.

What Hollywood is doing to improve Indigenous representation:
The entertainment industry is addressing the lack of representation for Indigenous people in movies and TV shows, according to Variety. Disney-owned FX Networks and NBCUniversal’s Peacock are airing shows that feature Native Americans in high-profile roles both on- and off-screen. Meanwhile, Indigenous people are also operating their own film festivals and production companies to ensure their stories are being told.

How YouTube is trying to take on TikTok:
After rolling out its TikTok clone worldwide in March, YouTube is stepping up its attempt to rival the short-form phenomenon, according to Bloomberg. This summer YouTube will start paying people to create Shorts, and at that point, it may start to favor original videos posted to its platform rather than recycled TikTok videos. In both cases, YouTube is adopting an established playbook. Last summer TikTok began paying creators to post videos to its platform, and earlier this year, Instagram announced that it would stop promoting Reels that carry a watermark, i.e. the TikTok logo.