Month: June 2021

Nicky Badenoch, co-founder of GENIE, a creative talent agency which uses AI to match companies with talent, said: “There has been a fundamental shift of mindset from companies, from one of owning talent, to wanting access to best-in-class talent. As companies have adapted to having their workforce spread between bathrooms, kitchens and gardens, they now realize that their creative department is in fact the whole world.”

Last September, Jack Ferris, an account director with B2B marketing agency, The OCTOPUS Group sold his flat in London and he and his wife moved into a converted campervan. It was a decision enabled by no longer being office-based full-time. “We have spent most of this year working remotely from Cornwall and Devon. I’m still tied to 9-to-5 hours but we make the most of the time outside of this, running or walking on the beach before breakfast. The hour’s commute has been replaced with anything we want. It’s been a game changer for workplace happiness.” He will soon have to go into the office two days a week but says the company is “super flexible”.

While it is a revelation for some companies, others have enjoyed the benefits of this model for some time. David Robinson, founder of digital and inbound marketing agency, Red Evolution employs 10 people and has always worked with nomadic workers. Robinson is based in Aberdeen, Scotland but travels regularly in his motorhome to Wales, Dorset and Cornwall in the U.K.

He currently has one staff member working in a co-working space in Newcastle, northern England — “He was living in Paris when he first joined, learning French” — and another who is in the process of moving from Barcelona to San Diego. “We would not be the agency we are if we were limited to local talent. I’m more interested in the quality of the people than having them in the office.”

Badenoch believes employers who don’t obsess about keeping employees within their four walls often benefit from better work. “Sure, nomadic talent will be searching high and low for signal on mountain tops or 4G in village hotspots, but feeling and living freely, liberates them to make work that is in fact braver.” 

Like many trends that existed before the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, the uptake of nomadic working has accelerated over the last 18 months, as a result of the living conditions dictated by rolling global lockdowns and worldwide remote working. And with a large number of employers now introducing additional flexibility to reflect employees’ post-pandemic expectations, it’s a trend that is expected to keep growing.

Natasha Carlisle, a paid media executive at performance marketing agency, Journey Further has lived and worked in a campervan for a year. Mainly based in Leeds, where she works from the office a couple of times a week, she and her partner — both keen climbers and wild swimmers — travel around the Yorkshire Dales and the Peak District. “Being in a new environment away from the office has had a really positive impact on my mental health. The freedom to explore, whilst also knowing that work life is entirely possible, is the modern dream.” 

She says Journey Further lets employees work the hours that suit them. “As long as you get the work done and keep clients happy, it doesn’t matter where you work.”

Of course there are practicalities to consider when working on the road. Ferris has a mobile wifi receiver (a MiFi box). If he can’t access a mobile signal, he has an antennae to put on the outside of the van, enabling wifi. “In some spots where we don’t have an internet connection, I plug it in and it is good enough for us both to do conference calls and access files.”

And electricity can be a challenge. “We have our own power supply with solar panels and a leisure battery system that tops up from the engine when driving, however since laptops drain after a day’s work, it is quite easy to deplete the electricity,” said Carlisle.

Robinson added that individuals have to be professional and disciplined. “If you are parked in your motorhome watching beautiful waves and you want to surf, but you have a deadline looming, you have to say, ‘I live here because of the work I am doing and I have to deliver’. Nomadic workers need to be uber professional [so] others won’t question you if you’re delivering great work.”

Done well, nomadic working can unlock creativity for both individuals and employers. “Want ideas that shake the world then work with people whose eyes, spirits, and souls are open, hungry, and curious,” said Emma Banks, a freelance writer and art director at Genie who is currently living in the Portuguese mountains. “I may be sitting in a yurt having just washed in a river but my mind is far from fluffy. We bring new energy to calls and a pioneering fearless sense of can-do to briefs.”

A mid-year review

During the first six months of 2021, the TV, streaming and digital video industry wended its way toward the new normal that resembles the old one in many respects, though not all.

The key hits:

• The streaming wars continued to heat up among subscription-based and ad-supported services. However, streaming subscriber growth started to cool some, though it continued to grow unlike pay-TV subscriber bases. 
• Meanwhile, streaming has yet to overtake the upfront, but it’s come as close as it ever has. 
• And the allure of more streaming ad dollars is pushing more free, ad-supported services to push into original programming. 
• That original programming push is made even more feasible by the continued ramping up of physical production. 
• Finally, Quibi may have fallen, but it didn’t take the short-form video market with it. YouTube, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok continue to provide audiences and money-making opportunities for abbreviated entertainment, though video makers are best off using them in aggregate. 

Last year’s streaming surge ebbed a bit

Among the clearest evidence of the industry settling down in first half of 2021 was the slowing streaming subscriber growth that Netflix and Disney+ experienced. Both streamers saw subscriptions surge in the wake of the pandemic’s onset, and a spring later, both reported a deceleration in new subscribers. 

In the first three months of 2021, Netflix added 2 million fewer subscribers than the company had expected, and Disney+ added 5.7 million fewer subscribers than the average forecasted by Wall Street analysts.

To be clear, both Netflix and Disney+ still added subscribers, and overall the shift toward streaming is very much still happening. The planned merger between WarnerMedia and Discovery and Amazon’s plan to acquire MGM will likely only spur that shift even more, as both deals are intended to boost the companies’ respective streaming businesses, though that’s only if they receive regulatory approval (a big if).

But for as much as the pandemic may have accelerated that shift, there’s still a ways to go before streaming overtakes traditional TV. 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. 

Then again, while streaming continues to grow, traditional TV continues to shrink. Top pay-TV providers in the U.S. lost 1.9 million customers during the first quarter of 2021, and streaming pay-TV providers shed 241,000 subscribers in the same period.

The ad-supported streaming onslaught

Subscription-based services may dominate streaming viewership, accounting for 52% of total streams in May, per Nielsen. But that has not deterred companies from continuing to push out ad-supported streaming properties in hopes of catching the money that advertisers are bringing back into the market after 2020’s budget pullbacks and are struggling to spend in a tight linear TV market. 

The first half of the year saw Discovery, ViacomCBS and WarnerMedia each roll out ad-supported streaming services to join the likes of Disney’s Hulu and NBCUniversal’s Peacock. Meanwhile, YouTube’s connected TV footprint has continued to grow, with 40% of its ads reportedly now being served on CTV screens. And publishers continue to push out 24/7 channels for free, ad-supported streaming TV services like ViacomCBS’s Pluto TV and Samsung TV Plus.

As with overall TV viewership, linear still represents the lion’s share of the overall TV ad market. But the tipping point is near. In this year’s upfront, streaming and digital accounted for 40% of the ad dollars that Disney secured, and multiple TV network executives said they were able to negotiate price increases and saw an influx of streaming-first advertisers.

All in on originals

As Netflix demonstrated years ago with “House of Cards,” original programming is imperative for attracting and retaining audiences. Increasingly, companies are catching on to that approach. 

After previously claiming no ambition to get into the original programming business, Roku did exactly that in January when it acquired Quibi and its library of short-form shows that the CTV platform owner has stitched into TV-length series to distribute on its free, ad-supported service The Roku Channel. Roku wasn’t the only one to step into original programming. Fox’s free, ad-supported streaming TV service Tubi announced it will debut its first original shows in the fall.

Original programming also played into the industry’s two biggest M&A announcements of the year (so far). After announcing his company’s plan to merge with WarnerMedia, Discovery CEO David Zaslav touted the combined company’s $20 billion annual programming budget and how it matches Netflix’s allotment. Amazon’s planned acquisition of MGM may pad Prime Video’s programming library, but it will also give the e-commerce giant rights to the James Bond and “Rocky” franchises, which Amazon could parlay into spin-off productions for its subscription-based and ad-supported streamers.

On set again

All the original programming activity would be for naught without the means of production. Fortunately, the industry’s return to production has ramped up.

After last spring’s physical production hiatus, some producers returned to in-person shoots in the summer, but the rise of coronavirus cases in the fall and early winter slowed the resumption until February and March, as stay-at-home orders and advisories lifted. That has enabled TV, film, commercial and digital video productions to assume some semblance of normalcy, at least in front of the camera. 

Off-screen, cast and crew members are still wearing masks, being tested and maintaining some distance, and those measures will likely remain in place through the end of the year. But producers have been able to strike a balance between adopting health and safety protocols without those procedures affecting what’s captured by the camera. As a result, what people watch on their TV screens no longer resembles what they see on Zoom. 

Social video free-for-all

Making short-form videos to distribute on platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Snapchat is not necessarily a massive business for media companies on the scale of traditional TV and streaming. But it’s becoming a better business.

The viewership increases that social video publishers saw last spring have continued into 2021 and corresponded with rises in revenue. One media company reduced its video output on Facebook by 30% in May and still recorded the highest monthly revenue in the company’s history on the platform, according to an executive at the company who declined to share revenue figures. A second media executive similarly said their company recorded more revenue on Facebook in February and March of this year than in all of 2020.

Meanwhile, more revenue opportunities are emerging. Snapchat, like Facebook, has materialized as a platform for publishers to repurpose videos posted elsewhere (with some alterations, like faster-paced edits or vertical formatting), and Instagram presents another potential opportunity as it reportedly expands its IGTV monetization test. While newer, shorter social video options, like TikTok and its clones Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, have yet to spawn revenue-sharing programs, other money-making opportunities are on the table. TikTok and YouTube have or will be rolling out creator funds to pay video makers to post content to their platforms, and Instagram is considering following suit. At the least, all three platforms provide distribution for sponsored videos.

“Still one of the biggest misconceptions people have is, when something is posted one place first, then it’s not as valuable elsewhere,” said the second media executive.

What we’ve heard

“I was watching Paramount+ last night and getting 90-second commercials. Then I hit rewind over an ad break and had to watch the same ads again.”

— Agency executive on streaming ad loads

Trend watch: Upfront flexibility — the sequel

For the second year in a row, flexibility was a focal point in the annual TV advertising upfront negotiations. This time around, advertisers and agencies haggled with TV networks over how to handle cancelation options for the networks’ streaming and digital inventory.

Historically, TV networks have adhered to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s standard terms for guaranteed digital ad deals, which allows an advertiser to cancel a campaign up to 14 days before it was scheduled to launch and keep 100% of the money it had committed to spend. But, as a larger share of networks’ streaming and digital inventory consists of actual TV shows versus short-form clips, the networks have lobbied for applying their more rigid linear cancelation terms — allowing an advertiser to typically only cancel up to 50% of the committed spend and at least 30 to 45 days out — to the streaming and digital sides of their upfront deals.

“If you treat streaming and digital video like it’s a network, then we’re going to demand the same type of cancelation options or firmness,” said a TV network executive. “I don’t want to say it’s been a battle, but it’s definitely been a topic of conversation. But it’s not held up negotiations.”

In a way, extending linear’s flexibility terms can help negotiations because it gives buyers and sellers another item to haggle over. Some TV networks were open to either linear terms or the IAB standard to use the option as a lever to pull in exchange for more favorable pricing or other considerations, or simply to position themselves as more cooperative than others and competitive with the likes of Roku, which offered a two-day, 100% cancelation option.

However, other networks took a hard line in demanding linear terms for their streaming inventory. “We just say, ‘No way, we’re not doing it’ because we’ve been talking about this as full-episode video,” said a second TV network executive.

Numbers to know

40%: Percentage of YouTube ads in the U.S. that reportedly air on TV screens.

3,015: Number of streaming services that were in the market in the U.S., U.K. and European Union, as of last year.

27%: Percentage of U.S. streaming watch time in May that went to ad-supported services.

$1.99: Monthly price for Fuse Media’s subscription-based streaming service.

What we’ve covered

Streamers see the sales on Amazon Live, but brands are still hesitant:

• YouTubers April and Justin Moore are pulling in up to tens of thousands of dollars in revenue on Amazon Live per day.
• However, brands aren’t sure about the hassle of making a video or hiring a creator to invest in Amazon Live.

Read more about Amazon Live here.

How TV networks managed between securing upfront commitments and saving inventory for scatter advertisers:

• TV networks tried to maximize money in the upfront negotiations while preserving inventory to rake in even more from the scatter market.
• Companies can also increase their streaming supply as they attract viewers and find ways to create new inventory.

Read more about TV networks’ inventory management here.

Buyers insist they ‘can’t let this happen again’ after an insane upfront:

• ViacomCBS notched 22% to 25% ad price increases for its primetime inventory in this year’s upfront.
• The TV network owner benefited from advertisers and agencies being unable to secure enough inventory from other TV networks.

Read more about the TV upfront market here.

How Vice TV became the fastest-growing entertainment network without losing its brand recognition:

• Vice’s six-year-old TV network has expanded beyond cannabis-related programming into explanatory, investigative journalism.
• Vice TV programs for what someone in the “cool parent” demographic might want to see.

Read more about Vice TV here.

What we’re reading

Why Kenya Barris called off his Netflix deal:
“Black-ish” creator Kenya Barris signed a $100 million deal with Netflix to create shows that were edgier than the butterknife of broadcast TV, but that wasn’t what Netflix wanted, according to The Hollywood Reporter. So Barris got out of his deal to sign with one with ViacomCBS that gives him equity in BET Studios. While Netflix may have once been trying to become HBO, the dominant streaming service instead, in Barris’s words, “became CBS.”

How Comcast can compete with Amazon and Roku:
Comcast is developing its own connected TV platform to rival Amazon and Roku, according to The Wall Street Journal. To be clear, Comcast already has a connected TV platform with Xfinity Flex. But that product is limited to Comcast’s internet subscribers, whereas the CTV platform reportedly in the works sounds like it will extend beyond the company’s existing customer base.

Who’s catching up to Netflix in the streaming war:
Netflix is the reigning MVP of the streaming playing field, and HBO Max has eked out Disney+ for the second-place spot, according to Vulture. While Disney’s streaming service has seen its subscriber base shoot up over the past year-plus, WarnerMedia’s streamer has bested it in terms of original programming and critical adoration. On the other end of the spectrum is NBCUniversal’s Peacock.

The Key Hits:

• The new Payments Platform will replace Shopify’s legacy integration points and will allow third-party payment partners to create payment gateways as Shopify apps.
• Shopify is adding Checkout Extensions, which will allow developers to build apps into the Shopify Checkout and Shop Pay, such as upsells and donation requests that render after checkout.
• Last year, Shopify’s global payment partners processed more than $65 billion in gross merchandise value, according to Shopify. For context, PayPal reported that it processed $285 billion in its first quarter 2021 earnings.

Everyone is a Partner

Shopify seems to be taking an “everyone is welcome” approach when it comes to payment options. The new Payments Platform will allow third-party partners to build their own gateways as apps, which will be a direct competitor to Shopify’s own Shop Pay. 

“We care more about giving our merchants access to the critical tools they need than we do about competition,” said Kaz Nejatian, vp of product and merchant services at Shopify. “Anything that reduces the barriers to entrepreneurship is good for merchants, good for consumers, and good for Shopify.”

By installing these third-party payment providers as apps, merchants will get access to a broader system of payments apps, in theory helping them sell more based on customers’ payment methods of choice.

There are currently hundreds of payment providers available to Shopify merchants around the world. These include some of the largest global payment providers, like PayPal and Amazon Pay, as well as popular cryptocurrency gateways like Coinbase Commerce and BitPay.

Plug and Pay

The announcements at Unite come after several moves this year by Shopify to put Shop Pay on more platforms. 

In February, Shop Pay became available to Facebook and Instagram Shops. Then in April, Shopify expanded its partnership with Pinterest to 27 additional countries, allowing 1.7 million Shopify merchants to post their products on Pinterest and drive more payments through Shop Pay. Shopify most recently expanded Shop Pay to integrate with Google’s native checkout in May.

The investments in payments could be a way for Shopify to bring in another revenue stream, or drive payment users to look at other products.

“Shopify is not going to take on Adyen, Stripe or WorldPay. But, they know that payments is a goldmine of data and a landmine of complexity,” said Lily Varon, a senior analyst at Forrester Research via email. “On one hand, they want to hold the keys, and, on the other, they want to reduce the barrier to entry for merchants and make Shopify stickier for them, too.”

Keeping a pulse on the payment space could also help Shopify capitalize on long-term changes in online shopping. According to a June 2021 survey of 2,000 online shoppers by Pitney Bowes, 17% of respondents said that they would do more online shopping, even as mask mandates start to lift.

“The pandemic really accelerated the adoption of buying anywhere along the shopping journey,” Suzy Davidhanian, a principal analyst at Insider Intelligence wrote in an email. “And Shopify is definitely helping make that easy for its clients based on all the different partnerships it has forged.”

The efforts come as part of Webex’s recent rebrand, which was launched in response to the coronavirus pandemic and remote work making web conferencing tools more available to corporate and casual environments alike. It includes new product features such as real-time language translation, a new logo and global campaign, which rolled out earlier this summer with broadcast and cable television, connected television, online video, digital, print and paid social.

Overall, the brand plans to increase ad spend on digital marketing efforts (Webex declined to provide further details on said ad spend), relying on influencers to better help them reach the everyday user, especially Gen Z and millennial entrepreneurs who will soon enter the workforce, said Singleton.

Like many other brands, Webex is using a hybrid approach, leveraging both paid and organic social strategy across platforms such as TikTok and Instagram. So far, they’ve worked paid sponsorship deals with influencers such as TikToker influencer Jenna Ezarik, who has more than 93,000 followers on the app, and Instagram influencer Helen Wu, who has nearly 70,000 followers.

To get traffic back to the website and increase digital sales, the influencer campaigns link to Webex.com, where online shoppers can purchase products. While Webex declined to provide details on ad spend, a spokesperson for the brand said they’ll continue with digital efforts, especially when it comes to influencer marketing. According to Kantar, Cisco’s Webex spent an estimated $4.9 million on media in 2019 and $6.2 million in 2020. So far this year, the brand has spent an estimated $6.8 million on media. Those figures exclude spending on social channels, however, as Kantar doesn’t track social media spending.

“We are doubling down on digital marketing efforts for Webex. For instance, we’ve increased our spend year over year and you’ll see us continue to invest in this area,” the spokesperson said.

It could be considered an unconventional approach for a business-to-business brand like Webex, and a strategy the brand hasn’t used before, according to Aruna Ravichandran, Webex Collaboration CMO and vp. But as the business-facing brand’s rebrand marketing efforts move forward, Webex is hoping influencer marketing will get them in front of the next generation of entrepreneurs.

“With the pandemic, so many people have created new businesses and business models,” Ravichandran said. “We used to actually do campaigns [geared] toward the IT decision makers, but given the shift and change which happened during the pandemic, we believe that end users’ voices are important.”

And influencer marketing plays like Webex’s have become increasingly important to nearly all brands due to Apple’s privacy changes, Google’s crumbling of the third-party cookie and other privacy and data factors, said Courtney Spritzer, co-founder and CEO of digital marketing agency Socialfly.

At present, at least half of Socialfly’s leads pertain to influencer marketing offerings, up from an estimated 30% in years prior, Spritzer said. And it’s not just B2B businesses looking to get in on the action. Medical professionals too have inquired about influencer marketing strategy, she said.

“When people think about influencer marketing, they’re thinking about the fashion influencer, the fitness influencer. But there are many many types of influencers, specifically in the business community or gaming community,” Spritzer said. “There’s basically an influencer for almost anything you can think of.”

And there’s no slowing down any time soon. As the influencer ecosystem continues to grow, Spritzer predicts brands will expect influencers to incorporate platform technologies like livestreaming, short form video and e-commerce features into their strategy.

“There’s a lot of demand for this type of service, and e-commerce capabilities are increasing as well because a lot of brands are selling direct-to-consumer,” she said “Before, they were reliant on retail. That’s a change that I believe is here to stay,” she said.

As for Webex, they’ll continue to forge the path ahead, said Singleton. In the future, there are plans to fold Out-of- Home advertising into the core strategy as vaccine rollout continues to usher in the new normal. However, Singleton says digital and social, increasing shaped by influencers, will continue to take the lead.