Month: December 2021

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Why was it important to have an official set of transgender guidelines?

I want to create a space that’s safe for anyone who is coming out. You’re constantly coming out, it feels like when you’re transgender. People talk about how scary it is to come out to family, but coming out to work is terrifying. Even though we live in a society where there was the recent Supreme Court ruling that you could not be discriminated against at work for being transgender, that doesn’t necessarily mean that protections are in place to ensure your safety and essentially your own self-care and mental health throughout the process. What I really love about these guidelines is that they offer that to anybody who is ready to make the step, live as their authentic self.

We’re always nervous to talk to people that are different from us because we’re always afraid of offending someone. Being able to help educate employees on ways to interact and engage with people who are different really helps. I’m someone who always approaches it [from] a place of, “There’s positive intent behind it.” People aren’t trying to be offensive. If we can approach it that way and use everything as a learning experience, it’s a really good opportunity to help drive change for the better.

Let’s back up. What are the guidelines?

The document itself has four primary sections. [There’s] guidance for our HR and talent professionals on how to engage with someone who comes to you as being transgender with a desire to transition at work. We try to set guidelines on how long a person can expect it to take from the time that they announce it to the time that we’re ready to make sure that everything is done. We also have a section that’s dedicated to managers because managers are very important in this process. We give the employee flexibility in how they want to alert the manager. One thing that’s very important is that a person’s transition is not one size fits all.

The third [part] of this guidance is for the transitioning employee. It sets standards, ideas and baselines for what they can expect throughout their process. We’re also working on the opportunity to pair with one of our members of the BRG to be an advocate for them through the process. It can be difficult and challenging, and it’s nice to know that you have someone within the community who has your back and is looking to advocate for you. The fourth part, which is critical, is guidance on travel. There are countries in the world where we may have agencies where a trans person cannot exist without the repercussion of illegality or the penalty of death. There are parts of the United States where it is unsafe for trans people to travel.

How does this tie into the conversation around the future of work?

We’re in the middle of what’s known as the Great Resignation. There are a ton of things that feed into this, but the fact of the matter is we’ve been able to work from home for so long that we haven’t had to code switch. We haven’t had to go into an office where we’ve had to present as somebody other than who we are. We can exist as ourselves. A big part of what we’re seeing from a community standpoint is when people have to go back into the office, they don’t want to have to code switch. So they’re looking for opportunities to go elsewhere, opportunities where they can live as their authentic selves. My hope is that work like this is changing things.

What should other agencies be doing?

I want to see other agencies adopt these. I want to see other companies across the country adopt these. This should be standard for every company. We need to get past talking about pronouns in bathrooms. That should be table stakes. We’re almost to 2022. We should be beyond that. We need to be talking about transition guidelines, inclusive healthcare and how to guarantee the rights of our transgender employees in the workplace.

Consequently, media insiders see a lot to like in Monday night’s news that Vox Media will merge with Group Nine Media in an all-stock transaction. While the two companies reach different audiences using different strengths, observers say those skill-sets should be transferable, giving credence to Group Nine CEO Ben Lerer and Vox Media CEO Jim Bankoff’s pitch that the former can teach the latter about social distribution and video, and the latter can help the former with formats including podcasting and long-form video licensing. 

Though the timing of the deal, which is expected to close early next year, may mean that it could take a while to unlock the full potential of the combined companies, the merger also buys them time to figure out a satisfactory outcome for their backers. 

“This is Bankoff and Lerer realizing that, to move the needle for major marketers, you need both breadth and depth,” said Matt Prohaska, the CEO of Prohaska Consulting. “It’s sort of a throwback to folks from the late ’90s…What’s different now is people are monetizing it, instead of just reporting phantom traffic.” 

Size

Viewed purely through the lens of the startups’ owned-and-operated properties, the merger means an improvement, but not a transformational one. In October 2021, Vox Media’s properties reached 91 million unique users across their desktop and mobile sites, and Group Nine Media reached 42 million, per Comscore. Even if the respective audiences were completely incremental to one another, that total would rank 24th in Comscore’s digital multi-platform property rankings, behind publishers including Red Ventures, Hearst and Penske Media Corporation. 

Include distributed video, and the picture changes. Group Nine has long been one of the leading producers of platform video content. Group Nine alone generates 7 billion video views per month, per Nielsen.

Over time, the skills that built those respective audiences could be brought to bear on their counterparts. “Most of the capabilities that Vox, GroupNine, HuffPost, VICE et cetera compete on are extensible to any audience target,” said Rob Gabel, the founder of Tubular Labs.

But if the media mergers or acquisitions that preceded this one involved similar kinds of audiences — BuzzFeed-Complex brought together a ton of millennials; Dotdash and Meredith created an intent media monster — Vox Media and Group Nine Media have lots of distinct audiences. Though there’s overlap in news (Vox, Recode, NowThis) and food and drink (Thrillist, Grub Street, Eater), Group Nine’s The Dodo and Popsugar bring lifestyle ingredients that Vox Media’s portfolio didn’t yet have.

Group Nine’s audience skews more female, while Vox’s skews more male. Vox Media’s audience is significantly more affluent — a majority of its unique users earn over $100,000 per year, per Comscore.

The extra heft should broaden their appeal. “They’ll appeal to a much broader range of buyers, given the additional audiences they can provide,” said Justin Sous, vp of optimization and innovation at Kepler Group.

And while selling different kinds of audiences can sometimes be challenging, few had concerns about that in this case. “BuzzFeed is low brow and high brow at the same time,” said Brian Wieser, president of media intelligence at GroupM. “As long as there’s a predictable quality level, that’s what matters.” 

Though it is expected to take a lot of work, observers said the additions should enrich the audience profiles that Vox has built with Forte, its first party data platform. “They will be at an advantage if they can integrate their user data to create a (1) larger user graph across a (2) larger network of publishers,” Sous wrote in an email.

The fruits of the merger likely won’t be edible right away. With most publishers well into planning for 2022, it’s unlikely that they’ll be able to pitch deals that involve properties from both companies. 

“They’re not going to be able to realize the benefits of this sale for the first half year, at least,” said Michael Wertheim, a longtime media advisor and consultant who most recently served as the chief operating officer of Fatherly and headed up business development for Money. “To be able to come to the table as one entity is going to be difficult for them, in the beginning.” 

But more than anything, being one, larger company buys them time to plot their next move, whether that involves going public, raising more money or something else.

“These companies are no longer startups,” Wertheim added. “They’ve been around 10, 15 years…They’re looking for their exit plan, if it’s not happening right away.” 

The show goes on

The key hits:

• TV, streaming and video producers are as busy as ever, even compared to the pre-pandemic era.
• At this point, producers feel like they are able to be in production on all of the same types of projects they could shoot prior to the pandemic.
• COVID-related production changes have not only become an inherent part of production but also have enabled projects to remain in production despite the pandemic’s different waves.

As 2021 comes to a close, the productions of TV and streaming shows, digital videos and commercials are bearing a close resemblance to their pre-pandemic incarnations. OK, not too close. There remain mask mandates and testing requirements in place. But while productions have not completely returned to normal, they have settled into a new normal, according to producers.

“It’s definitely a new normal. I wouldn’t say it’s normal,” said Mike Larocca, co-founder and vice chairman of AGBO, which has produced movies and TV shows for Apple, Amazon and Netflix. “I think people have adjusted to [the production-related changes necessitated by the pandemic] and gotten used to it, and the practices have gotten pretty advanced and pretty resourceful, and we’ve managed to absorb any issues pretty effectively.”

“It feels totally normal now. There is no show that has been pushed or held because of an inability to be made during COVID. We’ve figured out a way to do pretty much anything that we would do [under normal conditions],” said Chad Mumm, svp and head of entertainment for Vox Media’s Vox Media Studios, which has produced shows for HBO Max, Hulu and Netflix.

“As things stand now at the end of 2021, ‘business as usual’ is not the exact right phrase, but having adapted to the new normal, it does feel like business as usual,” said Aaron Saidman, president of Industrial Media and president and co-founder of Industrial Media-owned production studio The Intellectual Property Corporation, which has produced shows for HBO Max, Hulu and Netflix.

Business as usual

“Business as usual” doesn’t capture the entire situation, though. Production businesses are unusually busy — even compared to their pre-pandemic project loads.

• Industrial Media has more than 100 series in different stages of production across 35 networks and streaming services, according to Saidman. “We’re making more content than we’ve ever made,” he said.
• Vox Media has more than a dozen shows in production that span scripted and unscripted series as well as a scripted feature-length film.
• “We’re actually busier in December 2021 than we were in December 2019 due to growth in our video team and the breadth of what we’re responsible for creating now!” said Gabriella Mangino, executive producer at food publisher Food52, in an email.

Producers are unusually busy because of a mix of reasons: the streaming wars are intensifying, video viewership is surging and companies have ironed out how to deal with the complications of producing during a pandemic. From TV and streaming shows to digital video and commercial shoots, projects began returning to in-person productions in the summer of 2020, taking health and safety measures like requiring people to get tested before showing up for a shoot and to wear masks and maintain physical distance on set.

“Now [following those protocols] is basically instantaneous. We all know what the testing policy is and what the [personal protective equipment] policy is. Food is packaged individually. All those things have become totally automatic,” said a production executive who works on digital video and commercial projects.

Even the COVID-related costs added to production budgets have become considered conventional, according to the executives interviewed for this article. “It doesn’t feel like a financial burden to us. It’s an industry standard now,” Mumm said.

Agile productions

Of course, the pandemic can still impact productions beyond requiring them to maintain the aforementioned health and safety protocols. AGBO, for example, has had situations where people working on projects have tested positive for COVID, but the company has been able to adapt by pausing only parts of production or temporarily shutting down a given department without putting an entire project on a hiatus. “We’re good at being able to not shut down a production but keeping the effects to specific cohorts so we don’t lose the production,” Larocca said.

The ability for productions to not only protect their casts and crews against the coronavirus but also to adjust when people tested positive meant that the delta variant’s rise this past summer did not derail the return to production. “It certainly didn’t slow us down,” Saidman said.

In fact, companies have picked up the pace of production during the pandemic, thanks to newfound efficiencies like remote production capabilities and in response to the surge in demand for programming. 

“We’ve doubled the number of projects in production from this time last year. It’s unquestionably the busiest we’ve ever been, so we’ve had to staff up to meet that demand,” said Mumm. He added, “some of our creative execs went from overseeing two shows to overseeing six, and that’s a lot.”

Shooting abroad

Among the most recent signs of how productions have arrived at a state of relative normalcy is the expansion of shooting locations. For the first two seasons of “Selena + Chef,” which IPC produced for HBO Max during the pandemic, the production was largely remote — with professional chefs effectively teaching star Selena Gomez to cook via video calls — and even then limited to featuring chefs who lived within some proximity to Gomez’s home in Los Angeles.

But for the third season, which premiered in October, IPC was able to set up shoots internationally. “For example, there’s an episode with Jamie Oliver where he’s in the U.K. That was owed in part to being able to figure technically how to be farther away and still have a really sound connection between the chef and Selena in real time and having a very well-thought-out system for how the remote production team sets up and films that chef wherever he or she may be located,” Saidman said.

Similarly, Food52 hosted its first international shoot since the pandemic’s onset in September. The publisher sent a two-person crew to France for a video about cookware maker Poterie Renault as part of its “Maker” series. “As a result of being able to work with talent in so many locations with a self-shot style there is an expectation from other teams now that we can figure out a way to work with talent in a number of locations,” Mangino said.

Still in pandemic-era production

For as stable as the production business seems to be after the ups and downs of the early pandemic, the pandemic continues to be a reality that producers must acknowledge and expect to be working under for the foreseeable future, even after the general population has discarded their masks. “The reality is we’ll be in this new normal for at least several years, but hopefully will not take a step backward from this,” said the digital video and commercial production executive.

The omicron variant would seem to pose a threat to the status of production. However, so did the delta variant, and as mentioned above, the health and safety protocols put in place enable productions to withstand that wave. At this point, the production industry has proven its resilience through what has been (hopefully) the worst of the pandemic and is willing to continue to do so. 

“We’re aware the pandemic hasn’t gone away,” said Saidman. “Safety and responsibility is our first priority on any set, on any production. So you know going in what the reality is. You go in with a set of safety protocols you’re confident in because you’ve had time to work with them and refine them and adapt them — and the rest of it is that old saying, ‘The show must go on.’”

What we’ve heard

“I feel like [repurposing user-generated videos on TikTok] is a cheat code, but the algorithm rewards that shit. I’m trying to get us to rally and commit to original content only on TikTok. We’re not there yet, but we’re moving in that direction.”

— Media executive

Stay tuned: Ad-supported streamers carve up ad loads

As much as ad-supported streaming services don’t want to overwhelm audiences with ads, they are also wary of limiting their ad revenue opportunities. To split the difference, some are carving up their existing ad loads to create new pockets of inventory.

In October, Discovery’s Discovery+ began running ads that appear when people pause a show, which is an ad format that Hulu introduced in January 2019. Meanwhile, others like Rakuten’s Viki are looking to shorter-length ads that can multiply the number of ads that can be inserted into an ad break without extending the break’s duration.

“What we’re seeing and are actually starting to play around with is, if it is a 6-second [spot] — it’s a weird time globally, I want to say it’s like 12 seconds, which is not as common in the U.S. — we can get higher price points and the consumer reacts the same way to that spot because it’s the same timeframe [for the overall ad break],” said Amber Lockwood, vp of media sales for North America at Rakuten Advertising.

One TV network executive said they are considering specifically adding 6-second ads to their company’s streaming ad portfolio as a way to attract the digital-native advertisers that are likely to be running these spots on YouTube. This executive said they are also looking into add-ons to standard ads, like ways for people to click on an ad to send a link for the advertiser’s site to their phone or computer, as a way to increase the prices of those ads and raise revenue without expanding the overall ad load.

“We’re forcibly constraining the ad experience to make for a better user experience. But we also have a business to run,” said the TV network executive.

Numbers to know

$3.5 billion: How much money advertisers spent on Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock and Tubi from October 2020 through September 2021.

12: Months that Charter’s Spectrum TV customers will receive free subscriptions to Peacock’s otherwise paid, ad-supported tier.

>$250 million: How much money Snap paid to creators in 2021 through its Snapchat Spotlight program.

4: Number of acquired shows that accounted for at least 1.5% of U.S. watch time in the third quarter of 2021. None of Netflix’s original shows reached that threshold.

1.98 million: Average number of viewers who tuned into college football games on Disney’s TV networks, including ESPN, this season, a 2% increase compared to the 2019 mark.

What we’ve covered

How Duolingo is using its ‘unhinged content’ with Duo the Owl to make people laugh on TikTok:

• The language-learning platform has found success on TikTok via videos starring an employee dressed up as the brand’s mascot.
• The brand posts TikTok videos three to five times per week, and they take 15 minutes to a couple hours to produce.

Read more about Duolingo’s TikTok strategy here.

How Vivid Seats is using video to diversify its media mix:

• The ticket marketplace is advertising on traditional TV, streaming and digital video platforms like YouTube.
• Vivid Seats usually focuses its advertising on performance advertising channels like search.

Read more about Vivd Seat’s video ad approach here.

What we’re reading

Paramount+ goes live:
ViacomCBS is adding 18 linear channels to its Paramount+ streaming service. The addition of TV-style always-on channels to the streamer is not necessarily surprising, considering the company owns one of the preeminent linear streaming services Pluto TV. What is surprising — in addition to the channels being ad-free for now — is that these are not Pluto TV channels being ported to Paramount+, presaging a roll-up of the services — though that door remains open. In an interview with Vulture, ViacomCBS CEO of streaming Tom Ryan said there are no plans to combine Paramount+ and Pluto TV “to announce at this time.”

David Zaslav’s streaming wars strategy for Warner Bros. Discovery:
Poised to take the reins of the merging Discovery-WarnerMedia next year and ascend into the highest ranks of media moguldom, Discovery CEO David Zaslav is becoming the subject of myriad profiles. In the latest by Variety, he talked about how an initial focal point will be deciding how Warner Bros. Discovery doles out its content dollars, though he’ll also be needing to decide where to put that content, including whether to combine Discovery+ and HBO Max. Initially, the company will be adopting the bundle approach that has been helping Disney attract and retain streaming subscribers.

Publishers aim for Oscars:
The New York Times and The New Yorker are in contention to receive Academy Award nominations for short-form documentaries they have produced, according to The Hollywood Reporter. While publishers’ pivots to video are often associated with attempts to attract ad dollars, the potential accolades indicate that some publishers are succeeding in becoming part of the entertainment firmament and that success seems to be tied up in the barrier to entry being lowered by the availability of cheaper production and postproduction tools. It also seems aided by publishers being in a position to secure brand sponsors for short documentaries, which are notorious for facing financial challenges.

“They also have the resources to invest, from a financial perspective,” Arhancet said. Of the five player–investors, two are career competitors who became wealthy via Twitch subscriptions and tournament winnings (Debiedma and Counter-Strike pro Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski) and three are independently wealthy celebrities (Powers, Dutch poker player Alexander “Lex” Veldhuis and actor–gamer Asa Butterfield). Though Team Liquid didn’t share specific amounts, each player–investor made a substantial contribution. “It had to be at least a certain amount,” Powers said, “but it could be more, of course.”

Team Liquid is not the only top esports organization to invite players to become owners. In April, 100 Thieves granted equity to team members Rachel “Valkyrae” Hofstetter and Jack “CouRage” Dunlop; FaZe Clan member Nicholas “Nickmercs” Kolcheff became an equity shareholder in the organization the same month. In 2019, Søren “Bjergsen” Bjerg acquired a stake in TSM, though he was required to sell it off when he exited the team in October 2021. 

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a trend — I mean, at the end of the day, I would love for it to be something that’s kind of the norm,” said Justin Miclat, Kolcheff’s manager at The Kinetic Group. “Hopefully, more and more talent is creative enough to bring that type of value to the table, when it comes to orgs. I don’t think that talent currently exists in the marketplace, beyond maybe a handful.” As esports organizations race to establish diverse and sustainable sources of revenue, bringing players on as owners could bring a valuable perspective to teams’ front offices; at 100 Thieves, for example, Hofstetter and Dunlop are actively involved in the search for revenue streams outside gaming.

Team Liquid’s decision to invite players to invest could signal a coming rise in the phenomenon of player–ownership.

Unlike other recent examples, the move was explicitly an investment on the players’ part — not simply a granting of equity as part of a contract negotiation. “There’s a difference between being awarded equity as a form of compensation, to provide alignment to the organization, versus an elective investment of their own capital into the organization that they’re part of,” Arhancet said. “I think it speaks volumes to their own decision-making and degree of confidence.”

For Debiedma, who quit his engineering job to become a full-time competitor in 2016, the invitation is evidence that a career in esports can be viable in the long-term, despite the relatively short competitive lifespan of most gamers. “I used to work in engineering, and those companies would offer chances for employees to help their retirement, things like 401ks and all that,” Debiedma said. “Well, Liquid being an esports org, they were offering something a lot more unique.”

Powers, who leads Team Liquid’s internal diversity and inclusion task force, views her investment as an endorsement of the organization’s belief in the importance of diversity, an opinion echoed by Arhancet. “When you think of equality and equity, this is the difference,” Powers said. “This is, you know, putting your money where your mouth is. Who would’ve thought a girl from Detroit, Michigan, would have this opportunity and this blessing?”

After becoming player–owners, Debiedma, Powers and their colleagues will continue to do what they do best: compete and create content in their favorite video games. But these players’ opportunity to invest in their own team demonstrates esports organizations’ increasing awareness of the power and importance of team members as fundamental sources of content and value.

“It’s a much more complicated relationship now, but I think for the better,” Miclat said. “Both sides are realizing how much value there is beyond, ‘hey, for this amount of money we’ll compete on your pro team and we’ll throw your logo up.’ That shouldn’t be the case anymore.”

Moving forward, Team Liquid plans to take full advantage of the first-hand experience in its ownership circle. “We’re able to go to these individuals, that we know genuinely from a financial perspective, but also that their heart is in our business, to solicit their feedback before making big decisions at the company,” Arhancet said. “So it’s like joining a consultative team to the leadership here at Team Liquid.”