Month: September 2021

“Football has lost its soul,” said Tom Thirlwall, Copa90’s CEO. The rapid rise and fall of the European Super League is proof, he continued. It’s also proof that embers of that soul can flicker back into life. Otherwise, European soccer’s proposed Super League might still be about, said Thirlwall. It took a mere 56 hours from the news of the tournament first breaking to its collapse under the weight of pressure from fans. Indeed, it showed the voice of fans still has sway over the sport, even now when those who run it are more likely to refer to them as consumers. Unsurprisingly, Thirlwall believes Copa90, the football-focused media business he set up in 2012, is the perfect, trusted medium for this.

And he may have a point. Copa90 has always acted as the voice of the modern soccer fan. Execs there create and distribute content that straddles the connection between fans, clubs and leagues. A £70 million ($9.6 million) valuation in 2018 shows how lucrative a niche it has been for Thirlwall and his team. They haven’t, however, mined that platform in a coordinated, structured way — the business was in high-growth mode, after all. 

As Thirlwall explained: “Any changes to the business have been done at 300 miles an hour at 30,000 feet.” But the pandemic grounded the business and gave the team time to take stock of what has been achieved since it launched almost a decade ago, and map out what it wants to achieve over the next 10 years. Now, sustainability and profitability are top of mind, he said. “During that period of reflection, we realized that we had to maximize our differences in the market,” said Thirlwall. New areas like crypto were marked out for growth, while the company’s reliance on big-name talent was revised as part of a myriad of changes. It also set up Copa90 Studios with a view to selling more content to broadcasters and streaming services. 

Strategic resets like this tend to be good for some parts of a business and bad for others  — Copa90 is no different. Since it rung in the changes last summer its creator network has thrived, while costly productions in far-flung locations have been reigned in. Initially, this was done out of necessity. To be more precise, the pandemic wiped out between 60% to 80% of Copa90’s revenues during those early months last year, said Thirlwall. Soon, however, it became clear that the network of 3,000 creators could become as much a point of differentiation as it is an efficiency play. In fact, nearly all (95%) of its content has come from the network at times over the last 18 months. In many ways, these changes were long overdue, especially when it came to production. Consider this: in 2018, Copa90 spent a million pounds on travel in 2018, according to Thirlwall. Today, it helps fund, but not pay for, the productions of its creators. The benefits are being felt both creatively and financially.

Creatively there’s an unprecedented breadth and depth of content from a diverse range of creators on Copa90. Some of it is longer-form like Canadian filmmaker Adrijan Assoufi’s six-minute documentary about one of the last matches legendary footballer Diego Maradona played before he retired. Financially, the numbers speak for themselves, as Thirlwall explained: “The decisions we made at the height of the pandemic really bore fruit in the 18 months that followed given that we have a strong second half of the year and the start of this year has been encouraging too. We’re on track to reach around £18 million ($24.6 million) in revenue and £2m ($2.7 million in profit this year, which is up 20% on 2019 and a £6 million ($8.2 million) swing in profitability performance.”

It suggests Copa90 is one of the few media businesses to find a way around the pivot to video trap that caught out so many of its counterparts. It currently has around 471,000 followers on TikTok, 1.77 million subscribers to its main Copa90 Football channel on YouTube, and 1.1 million followers on Instagram. 

“Video has proven itself again and again as a brilliant platform for brand building, so if Copa90 can cut some meaningful (long-lasting) partnership deals that will certainly be a lucrative avenue to explore,” said Kai Sackmann, director of sports strategy and partnerships at contextual video platform Video Intelligence. “Copa90’s current collaborations are along the right lines but could be expanded. There are also brands beyond the immediate space who would want to reach their audience, convincing them to be involved will be useful.”

Expect more of those opportunities to coalesce around TikTok. Copa90’s creator network published on TikTok earlier this summer as part of a media deal with the video-sharing app during the Uefa European Championships soccer tournament. It developed 60 different formats for the event including an alternative half-time show called “The Flare Button”, which was billed as TikTok’s first live, vertical, soccer studio format. More content like this is in the works with the partnership having since been extended. The hope is that it leads to more commercial opportunities. 

“As it stands, any commercial partner or football organization we’re working with is either interested in reaching fans via a long-form storytelling play or they’re considering a TikTok play,” said Thirlwall.

It’s a circuitous rise to prominence for a part of the business that started in 2013. The timing of the creator network couldn’t be better. 

Creativity in media is being dispersed through more creators than ever. Consequently, the media businesses of tomorrow look a lot like the record labels of today in so far as they’re requiring themselves to monetize individuals as a proxy for attention. Snapchat, Instagram and LinkedIn have made moves since the turn of the month to shore up their connections to the best and brightest talent, for example. 

“In the past, we’ve had between 10 to 15 individuals on our roster of talent who were well recognized for what they did in and around football whereas now we’re able to work with a  dizzying array of talent anywhere in the world,” said Thirlwall. “We’ve gone from being seen as a business through the individual talent behind ‘Fifa and Chill’ or ‘Timbsy vs the World’ to one that’s reflective of a broader range of stories across the world of football and the culture that defines it.”

Copa90’s measured approach to the reset has also reinforced how the company wins media dollars. Copa90’s commercial execs are prioritizing stronger relationships with existing partners like Bud Light and Nike rather than chasing new ones that aren’t as lucrative. What had been a pragmatic way to focus the company on where the media dollars were during austere times last year, is now a way to go narrow and deep into the coffers of its existing advertisers. So much so that Copa90 hired its first business development lead in Latin America in April after it became clear that it was going to be a priority for many of its advertisers. 

“The chances of these relationships netting out anytime soon are unlikely, said Thirlwall. “Not all of those partners are working with us globally so there are a lot of opportunities there as well as the chance to work with more of our partners across the full range of commercial products that we offer.”

Plans are also underway to move the business into the crypto space. Those efforts will be led by Petrit Berisha, who joined Copa90 earlier this summer as Cpa90’s first head of crypto media. “His focus is to help us establish a hypothesis as to how we’ll able to tokenize our community through crypto technology and explore how we use blockchain to further unite and reward our fans,” said Thirlwall.

The new broadcast news

The key hits:

• ABC News, CBS News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News are each stepping up their streaming news operations.
• The recent activity indicates how streaming is becoming more central to TV networks’ news organizations.
• The networks are also increasing their original programming efforts for streaming.

The news never stops, and increasingly it is streamed. While TV news networks like ABC News and CBS News stepped into streaming years ago, a recent flurry of activity indicates the central role that streaming is taking in the news organizations’ future.

“The idea of what does news on streaming look like is really starting to crystallize,” said Beth Hoppe, svp of longform at ABC News.

News networks race to streaming

“We all look at the landscape and see the numbers of more and more people leaving the linear space and going over to streaming,” said Justin Dial, senior executive producer at ABC News Live, of the recent streaming activity among TV news networks. “The model we take here at ABC and ABC News Live is we want to be the network people find when they come to streaming.”

As Dial’s and Hoppe’s comments indicate, though, the Disney-owned news organization is far from alone in its ambition to be streaming audiences’ news network of choice. CBS News, CNN, Fox News and NBC News are similarly stepping up their streaming efforts.

ABC News plans to hire an svp of streaming and increase its streaming content production over the next year, per a memo sent to employees by ABC News president Kim Godwin on Sept. 2. “We continue to invest more in live programming and resources for ABC News Live and we’re exponentially growing our narrative non-fiction slate of original programs for Hulu,” said Godwin in an emailed statement.

CBS News plans to rename its news streaming service CBSN to CBS News later this year and will convert the former “CBS This Morning” studio into the organization’s streaming studio, according to a CBS News spokesperson. Neeraj Khemlani, president and co-head of the ViacomCBS-owned news organization, announced the upcoming name change during an internal CBS town hall on Sept. 14. The move is meant to reflect how CBS News is unifying its efforts across traditional TV and streaming as well as between its national and local coverage, with its CBSN local streams set to be similarly renamed (ex. from CBSN Los Angeles to CBS News Los Angeles).

“We’re not just seeing streaming growth nationally. CBS local news streaming is growing year-over-year as well. By unifying these organizations, we’re building on this momentum. When you bring together a highly relevant local streaming service with a national and even globally resonant CBS News streaming network — that’s where you really see the audience fully served,” said CBS News and Stations president and co-head Wendy McMahon in an emailed statement.

NBC News, meanwhile, plans to hire people for nearly 200 news positions over the next year, “with the majority of these new roles supporting NBC News NOW’s growing streaming operations,” NBCUniversal News Group chairman Cesar Conde said in an internal memo sent to employees on July 27. An NBC News spokesperson said that a majority of those NBC News NOW staff have been hired as of this writing.

Additionally, Fox News and CNN are preparing to debut new streaming services. In October, Fox News will roll out its free Fox Weather streamer to pair with its Fox Nation subscription-based service. And in the first quarter of 2022, CNN will join the fray with subscription-based service CNN+.

Streaming becomes a centerpiece

The flood of streaming news moves follows a year in which both streaming viewership and news consumption surged. While TV news networks like ABC News and CBS News staked their claims in streaming years ago — having rolled out their streaming services in 2018 and 2014, respectively — they and others are building on the past 18 months’ momentum to solidify streaming not as an offshoot of their linear TV efforts but as part of the same stem. “Both linear and streaming can and do exist side by side,” Dial said.

This junction is similar to how TV networks overall have spent the past couple of years reorganizing themselves by putting streaming alongside linear at the center of their operations. And it suggests that news is becoming yet another heated battleground in the broader streaming wars.

The importance of original programming

In addition to the trend of streaming taking center stage at news organizations, the recent flurry of activity indicates a push to step up the networks’ streaming programming. 

That push toward more original streaming shows and specials is important for two reasons. First, it will give linear TV audiences more reason to check out the networks’ streaming properties. And second, it will provide the networks a means of separating themselves, especially those that have maintained a more straightforward approach to traditional news coverage, which can engender trust but also relative homogeneity.

To push out more original news programming, CBS News has formed See It Now Studios. Run by former CBS News President Susan Zirinsky, the studio is producing programs, including documentaries, for ViacomCBSs linear TV networks and streaming properties, such as “The 26th Street Garage: The FBI’s Untold Story of 9/11,” which premiered on Paramount+ on Sept. 9.

Beyond the breaking news coverage streamed on ABC News Live and newsy documentaries like “24 Hours: Assault on the Capitol,” which was released on Hulu after the Jan. 6 domestic terrorism attack on the U.S. Capitol building, ABC News is pushing out more original, long-form news programming on streaming that stretches into true crime and pop culture. Later this month, ABC News will debut a four-part true crime series called “Wild Crime” on sibling streamer Hulu. 

“That’s what we’ve been building capacity on my side of the house for. We’re going to be delivering fast and furiously from here on out,” Hoppe said.

What we’ve heard

“The things happening in the data privacy world are going to relax a bit. When people start to get many more commercials and the frustration of them not being personalized, you’ll see those standards ease up a bit.”

— Streaming ad tech executive

Trend watch: TV-streaming viewership share shifts stagnate

Remember a month ago when Nielsen’s monthly TV-streaming viewership breakdown for July 2021 showed streaming cutting into traditional TV’s watch time, little by little? And remember how the trend of traditional TV giving up a percentage point to streaming each month meant that streaming should overtake traditional TV’s watch time by February 2023?

Well, we may need to update that timeline.

Nielsen’s latest Gauge viewership report for August 2021 showed that traditional TV’s and streaming’s share of overall TV watch time held steady. As in stagnant. As in the viewership pie chart for August 2021 looks (almost) identical to the one for July 2021.

So what’s to be gleaned from the latest Gauge study?

Well, in August 2021, traditional TV had the Olympics and the news of the U.S. pulling out of Afghanistan. People could have — and would have — streamed both events as well, but linear TV still has a lock on live events, which likely helped it to keep a lock on people’s TV time.

Conversely, the major streaming services broken out by Nielsen didn’t seem to have any standout new premieres in August. In late July, Netflix debuted a new season of “Outer Banks,” and Disney released “Jungle Cruise” for Disney+ subscribers to purchase. Meanwhile, Hulu premiered “Reservation Dogs” and “Nine Perfect Strangers” in August, but neither seems to be bona fide hits. The same seems true for Amazon Prime Video’s “Val” and “Annette.”

Interestingly, the category of “other” streaming services did register a percentage point increase in watch time. This rise could be simply a change from 8.4% to 8.5%, which Nielsen would have then rounded up to 9% rather than down to 8%. Nonetheless, with Apple TV+ riding the new season of “Ted Lasso” and HBO Max buoyed by “The White Lotus” finale and “Suicide Squad” release, the increase may be more meaningful than a rounding error. Considering that streaming’s percentage of watch time overall did not change — at least not enough to trigger a round-number difference — the group of “other” services cutting into the overall streaming watch time seems to be yet another signal of the streaming landscape starting to flatten.

Numbers to know

11%: Percentage of Netflix’s and Disney+’s subscribers, respectively, who canceled their subscriptions to the respective services and then resubscribed within the past six months.

19%: Percentage of survey respondents who said they lived in streaming-only households, compared to 10% who said they lived in traditional TV-only households.

44: Numbers of Emmy Awards that Netflix received this year, tying a record.

What we’ve covered

As non-endemic brands eye gaming, a lack of industry standards is delaying their arrival:

• A lack of gaming expertise at non-endemic brands is hampering their investment in gaming creators.
• The industry is in need of basic terminology, video formats and sizing for in-game billboards and improved measurement.

Read more about gaming advertising here.

With user-generated content on the rise, platforms are emerging to support this new type of creator:

• Companies continue to spring up to help non-professionals make money from the YouTube videos, memes and in-game applications they create.
• Similar to creator networks on YouTube, these companies claim to want to help creators build businesses of which the creators are in control.

Read more about UGC creators here.

How Lockard & Wechsler Direct navigates clients through a tight TV marketplace:

• Performance advertisers have struggled in a tight TV market where lowest-cost pricing has become harder to come by.
• TV networks are pushing advertisers to commit a share of their ad spend to streaming.

Read more about Lockard & Wechsler Direct here.

TV networks, video platforms and publishers pitch advertisers at the IAB’s Fall Marketplace:

• TV, streaming and digital video ad sellers pitched programming and ad products.
• Industry executives discussed topics like diversity in media and the fragmentation of streaming video audiences.

Read more about the IAB’s Fall Marketplace here.

What we’re reading

Advertisers angle for position in TV measurement shift:
TV’s measurement mess appears primed to get messier. TV networks have been largely responsible for pushing measurement to the brink of an overhaul, but ad buyers are wary of ceding control to ad sellers, according to Variety. In short, the trade group representing TV networks — the VAB — has been spearheading a move away from Nielsen, and now the trade group representing advertisers — the Association of National Advertisers — seems to be looking to take a more active role so that whatever ends up happening doesn’t serve ad sellers at the expense of ad buyers.

Google preps its own FAST foray:
Google is looking to join the increasingly crowded free, ad-supported streaming TV market, according to Protocol. The maker of Chromecast streaming dongles and Google TV connected TV platform is reportedly talking to 24/7 streaming channel owners about distributing their FAST channels on Google TV, potentially starting as soon as this fall.

TikTok is losing Black creators:
Black creators are leaving TikTok because they feel they are being subject to unfair treatment and provided unequal protection on the platform, according to Los Angeles Times. In addition to facing racist comments and the trend of white creators gaining popularity for appropriating memes and dance moves originating from Black creators, Black creators are taking issue with TikTok’s unequal moderation practices, such as Black creators’ videos being taken down while similar videos from non-Black creators remaining available.

TV’s bunny ears are back:
People may have traded in their cable boxes and satellite dishes for streaming devices, but they are also picking up the original TV distribution product: antennae, according to The Wall Street Journal. Sales of TV antennae — which provide free access to local channels, including broadcast networks — have inched up over the past year, as cord-cutters seem to be looking to supplement their streaming with some traditional TV sans subscription.

Even as Apple continues to introduce data privacy measures that hinder targeting and attribution capabilities for social media advertising, the sustainable footwear brand hasn’t lowered its budget dedicated to Instagram. (Fulton declined a request for details around its ad budget). As a brand selling arch support, Fulton launched just a few short months ago, offering a more modern spin on a traditional and medically technical space. That being said, they’re targeting millennials, many of which are on Instagram, making Fulton bullish on the platform even as a number of DTC brands are de-prioritizing it. So far, about 65% of the brand’s sales are attributed to Facebook and Instagram, per a spokesperson for the brand.

“Instagram has been really effective because it’s where our key customers are,” Motchan said. “It’s definitely becoming more challenging over time with iOS 14, but retargeting is the most critical thing.” 

Per Motchan, social media users don’t typically purchase during the first interaction with a brand. Retargeting works by getting brand ads in front of shoppers after they’ve left the site, reintroducing the potential customer to the brand and encouraging them to purchase, making retargeting increasingly important for Fulton as the new brand builds up its audience, Motchan said.

It’s a strategy that makes sense, marketers say. Per Elijah Schneider, CEO and founder of social marketing agency Modifly, nearly half of the client ad budget goes to Facebook and Instagram specifically because of the platforms’ ability to convert online shoppers into customers. Modifly has worked with Mercedes, Nordstrom and the Celsius drink brand.

Per Facebook analytics, Fulton started running paid ads on Facebook and Instagram back in March, after a soft launch with organic posts to gauge customer interest. Since then, the brand has layered in influencer marketing in a play to present the millennial, modern brand as conversational and relatable, according to Motchan.

“We see it as a tool to help us destigmatize the category,” Motchan said. “[Shoe insoles] could not be a less cool product or category, but it was very critical for us to develop a curated Instagram.”

At least half of Instagram users are reportedly more interested in a brand after seeing an Instagram ad, according to recently published research from social media management platform Hootsuite. For a newly launched DTC brand, marketers say a rich media mix is key, but it makes sense for social media platforms to be at the helm.

“The algorithms have made it increasingly more difficult for new brands to break through the clutter and that’s what paid dollars allow for: To amplify your message to the right audience,” said Ashley Karim-Kincey, vice president of media at Dagger, a full-service creative agency. 

Motchan admits Apple’s crackdown on data privacy has complicated the social media advertising retargeting process. But instead of decreasing ad spend on Instagram, the DTC company has dedicated 20% of total ad budget to experiment with incremental channels, such as out-of-home, TikTok, newsletters, and more recently, advertising on the social question-and-answer website Quora.

“No matter how effective Facebook and Instagram are, when you think about the customer journey, it’s incredibly important to hit them in different ways from different angles,” she said.

But if that late-night 2010 ad industry shindig in Washington, D.C. is any indication, the FTC can expect a fight.

Here’s what’s happening and why it matters:

• Senators on Monday sent a letter to FTC chairwoman Lina Khan, urging her to create new rules to protect consumer data.
• In recent incremental steps, the FTC has gradually but methodically moved toward easing its rulemaking process that some believe is too cumbersome to be effective as data-hungry tech steamrolls ahead with few guardrails.
• Congressional members on both sides of the aisle have taken steps this year to get the FTC additional funding for staff and resources to take on more investigations into allegedly deceptive and unfair data practices.
• But Republicans inside the FTC and in Congress have pushed back against giving the FTC more money without parameters for how they’d use it. The advertising industry also could fight against giving more money and rulemaking authority to the agency.

Senators to FTC: make new rules!

“We urge the Commission to undertake a rulemaking process with the goal of protecting consumer data,” wrote several Democrats in the U.S. Senate in a letter sent this week to Khan. In conjuring new rules, they wrote, the FTC “should consider strong protections for the data of members of marginalized communities, prohibitions on certain practices (such as the exploitative targeting of children and teens), opt-in consent rules on use of personal data, and global opt-out standards.” Additional rules, they said, would complement potential federal privacy legislation. However, there are few signs that any proposed nationwide privacy law has enough momentum to pass this year.

Groundwork for new rules: laid!

Even before Khan took the helm, the FTC began laying groundwork toward easing the rulemaking process. FTC commissioner Rebecca Slaughter established a rulemaking group within the FTC’s Office of the General Counsel in March while she was serving as acting chair of the commission. The goal was to enable the commission to “strengthen existing rules and to undertake new rulemakings to prohibit unfair or deceptive practices and unfair methods of competition.”

In July, the agency took another step, easing procedures for how it initiates rulemaking and altering its process for how members of the public participate in making rules. Slaughter wrote at the time that the change would give more clear guidance to help “honest businesses comply” and would enable the agency “to issue timely rules on issues ranging from data abuses to dark patterns to other unfair and deceptive practices widespread in our economy.”

Existing rules: enforcement coming?

The FTC made yet another move during its most recent open meeting Sept. 15 when it clarified its intent to enforce a rule it has yet to apply in any decision: the Health Breach Notification Rule. When applied, that rule requires companies to notify people affected by a breach of health-related data, such as data gathered by fitness trackers, period-tracking apps or other apps used to monitor health. Violating the Health Breach Notification Rule could pack a punch — resulting in fines of more than $43,000 for each violation per day.

There remains some dispute over just what types of health data the rule should apply to — and that may have been a reason why the agency did not apply it in its recent settlement with Flo Health, maker of the period tracker, Flo. “Flo was improperly sharing extremely sensitive data with Facebook, Google and others, but rather than sending a clear message, that the text of the Health Breach Notification Rule covers this activity, we demonstrated again that we would be unwilling to enforce this law as written,” said FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra during the meeting.

More FTC funding: proposed!

Congress this year has made moves to provide more funding to the FTC to build staff and resources needed to enable meaningful oversight of the rapidly-paced tech industry and its data practices. A Senate antitrust reform bill co-sponsored in February by five of the legislators who sent Khan the letter encouraging more FTC rulemaking — Sens. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Minnesota’s Amy Klobuchar, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Hawaii’s Brian Schatz — would nearly double the FTC’s annual budget.

More recently, a proposal tacked onto President Joe Biden’s jobs and economic recovery plan, which got initial passage on September 15 by a House committee, would — if it makes its way into final legislation — allocate $1 billion to the FTC to use over a period of ten years. The cash infusion is intended to staff a new bureau addressing unfair or deceptive practices related to privacy, data security, identity theft and other data abuses. 

Meanwhile, a bipartisan House bill included in a package of antitrust legislation proposed in June would boost merger filing fees as a means of providing more funding for the federal government’s two antitrust oversight agencies, the Department of Justice and FTC. As the FTC mulls new ways of integrating data monetization considerations into its approach to assessing marketplace competition, data privacy could come into play in its antitrust deliberations.

Pushback: expect it!

But despite a general consensus among lawmakers on both sides of the aisle that the FTC does not have sufficient staff or resources to address today’s data-centric tech industry, efforts to get more funding for the agency have met with blockades. Republican lawmakers have pushed back against giving the agency, which is comprised of unelected commissioners, more power or unrestricted funding. 

Then there’s the advertising industry, which has long fought more FTC rulemaking power. When legislation proposed in 2010 could have given the FTC more rulemaking authority, the Association of National Advertisers cheered its demise and argued that the “changes would have serious implications for every ANA member.” At the time, Dan Jaffe — who still leads the organization’s government relations office — wrote, “ANA and the entire marketing community won a major victory on the day after we celebrated our 100th anniversary!” He concluded, “While our victory in the conference committee is important, it is clear that these issues will not go quietly into the night.”