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Sustainability is one of the hot-button issues in the 21st century and one that’s increasingly generating discussion at the highest echelons of the advertising industry.
True, the cause is noble, but now ad execs are increasingly starting to see the opportunity for cost-efficiencies as well as new business opportunities posed by embracing such thinking.
The Ad Net Zero report from the Advertising Association cites a 2020 study of U.K. execs noting that 71% of respondents are worried over the potential negative impact the ad industry could have on the environment. Not only that, 91% claimed employers taking positive steps to reduce their carbon footprint will likely lead to an increase in their job satisfaction.
Harriet Kingaby, co-chair of the Conscious Advertising Network, explained to Digiday how the rise of technologies such as AI has prompted multiple marketers to ponder how digital is impacting their brands’ CSR commitments.
“A lot of these technologies such as NFTs etc. are using a lot of carbon,” she said referencing a study from the University of Cambridge that details how mining for Bitcoins uses more electricity than nations the size of Argentina, Pakistan or Sweden.
“As we use these kinds of technologies more and more, it’s really important that they are not increasing the carbon load of their advertising placements,” added Kingaby. “If we think of how brands have been trying to think about making their physical supply chains carbon-neutral, then it only makes sense that their digital supply chains follow suit.”
Such notions have also caught the attention of some of the industry’s leading names with serial ad tech entrepreneur Brian O’Kelley making sustainability the central purpose of his latest venture Scope3. Both Kingaby and O’Kelley, claim media agencies have increasingly started to mirror the public sustainability pledges of their consumer-facing clients in the past 12-months with the latter noting how ad tech companies using such wares are starting to see material benefits.
Scope3 uses multiple data points to help companies model the carbon footprint of their activity. “There are four major components for emissions to a web page,” he explained to Digiday. “There’s the device or browser, like, when the CPU from Javascript and rendering page, then there’s the energy from data transmission when things are going through 5G or WiFi, the production cost of the content, then there’s the targeting and analytics.”
It’s on the final aspect where O’Kelley, an executive who helped usher ad tech into the mainstream of the ad industry, aims to help the media industry realize the benefit of more responsible thinking by aggregating data from multiple sources to assess the carbon footprint of an ad impression.
“We’ve built one of the most accurate pictures of the advertising supply chain that’s ever been put together by building a proprietary model for how a DSP or SSP works … we can run a full simulation of the internet,” he explained.
For instance, Scope3 recently ran an analysis of The Trade Desk’s recent decision to stop bidding on ad inventory sold via Google’s Open Bidding platform, estimating that the demand-side platform saved 5,387 tons of Co2 in the process.
O’Kelley told Digiday that such thinking is increasingly top of mind for both consumer-facing brands, their media agencies, and even for potential investors in, otherwise, potentially niche areas such as ad tech. For instance, those companies taking a responsible approach to their carbon footprint are less likely to experience employee disgruntlement, or even a consumer boycott, over such issues in the future, he points out.
“I would say that in the U.K., France and Australia it is the number one [CSR] topic from [media] agencies and brands,” he added. “I think in the U.S. it is, probably number two or three, but definitely rising.”
Speaking separately with Digiday, Kevin Flood, a partner at investment firm First Party Capital, explained his theory on how a low carbon mindset could also equate to savings when it comes to running ad campaigns.
Presently, the high number of transactions processed across multiple trading platforms means the carbon footprint involved in the monetization of a single web page — not to mention the processing fees involved — can escalate quickly.
However, Flood claimed that a ‘batch-based’ approach to media buying (as opposed to constantly listening to bid requests in real-time) could reduce the carbon footprint required for each ad loaded on a page. For instance, if a buy-side player seeks to purchase ad impressions on search or social, they can push an API-based order into the walled garden of their choosing on an intermittent basis.
“If sellers are going stop communicating IDs in the bid stream then increasingly, audience execution will be done in the publisher ad server,” he explained. “So there’s no need for impression-by-impression real-time buying. Then you pull the results every one-or-10 minutes, or every hour, update your pricing, targeting algorithm so it’s not done in real-time … [then] there’s no need for all of those server costs and that high-bandwidth or the environmental impact of that.”
Meanwhile, Scope3 is also partnering with Blockthrough, a company that helps publishers recover revenue that could potentially be lost to adblocking software, to help buyers access low carbon ad inventory from a single trading platform by the close of June.
Marty Krátký-Katz, CEO of Blockthrough, told Digiday the impending launch demonstrates that publishers don’t have to trade off “doing what’s right” and revenue and that the platform is on course to host inventory from up to 20 publishers by the close of the second quarter.
“We’ll be packaging up low carbon ad products in PMPs [private marketplaces],” explained Krátký-Katz. “Interestingly, it turns out that some of the ad experiences that consumers find the most annoying are also bad for the environment.”
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This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at how Netflix’s and Disney+’s plans to add ad-supported tiers are ushering in the broadcast era of streaming.
The key hits:
With Netflix and Disney+ planning to add ad-supported tiers, the ad-supported streaming market is entering its broadcast era. The rounding out of major ad-supported streamers should help to shore up the relative lack of supply in the streaming ad market for advertisers. However, ad buyers are wary of consolidation at the top recreating and reinforcing the unfavorable-to-advertisers economics of traditional TV.
Credit to Brad Stockton, svp of U.S. national video innovation at Dentsu, for coming up with the concept that, by adding ad-supported tiers, major subscription-based streamers are becoming the streaming equivalent to traditional broadcast TV networks (and for doing so even before Netflix’s announcement). It’s an analogy that other agency executives agree with and welcome.
“I love the idea of the broadcast era because that’s gonna change things dramatically. Obviously, people went to those services so that they didn’t see ads, and now there’s an option there, but we get to crack into that space too,” said Connelly Partners partner and director of media services Michelle Capasso during the Digiday Business of TV Forum on April 21.
The idea of streaming broadcasters is also a concept that broadcast TV network owners seem to be embracing.
Consider what’s happening with Hulu. Originally jointly owned by broadcasters ABC, Fox and NBC to serve as their streaming outlet, Disney assuming ownership of Hulu has coincided with NBCUniversal beginning to take its programming off Hulu to put it on Peacock, which is now its chosen streaming outlet.
Other major broadcasters are making similar moves by plugging their own streamers with their linear programming — Paramount-owned CBS with Paramount+ and Disney-owned ABC with Hulu and Disney+ — all of which will be ad-supported by the end of this year. Add Warner Bros. Discovery’s HBO Max and Discovery+, which are slated to combine into a single service, and eventually Netflix to the mix, and this is the lineup of streaming broadcasters that Stockton and others are referring to.
“The big six apps are the broadcast partners,” said one agency executive.
This streaming broadcaster concept would seem to overlook the free, ad-supported streaming TV services, like Paramount’s Pluto TV, Roku’s The Roku Channel and Amazon’s Amazon Freevee, which would seem better suited to become broadcast TV’s heirs apparent given audiences’ free access to them. But for years, the FAST services have been considered akin to cable TV with their lineups of always-on channels that largely serve as wallpaper entertainment for people to put on while doing other tasks. So they serve a role in the streaming ad market as a tier-two inventory source and something of a safety net for advertisers to ensure they are reaching the audiences they may be missing on traditional TV or on the so-called streaming broadcasters.
The rise of these streaming broadcasters is a welcome development among advertisers, especially if it helps to address the supply and reach challenges they face in streaming. In the first quarter of 2022, only 20% of U.S. households used an ad-supported, on-demand streaming service in the first quarter of 2022, while FAST services had a slightly higher penetration at 25%, according to Kantar’s Entertainment on Demand. By comparison, 81% of U.S. households used a subscription-based streamer in the period.
“There’s a limited supply of eyeballs going to ad-supported streaming,” said a second agency executive.
Furthermore, audiences have fragmented across the major streaming services. Nearly two years after Peacock’s debut, a little more than a year after Discovery+’s launch and nearly a year after HBO Max and Paramount+ added ad-supported tiers, agency executives said they are still having to advertise across the services because audiences have yet to consistently coalesce around certain services. “Not all streamers contribute equally to reach, and the reality is that they’re still growing penetration,” said GroupM executive director of research and investment analytics Bharad Ramesh during the Digiday Business of TV Forum.
However, while the potential for advertisers to at least consolidate the bulk of their streaming ad buys to the streaming broadcasters would make ad buyers’ jobs easier, the risk inherent in that consolidation is that it could recreate traditional a TV’s seller’s market where the broadcast TV network owners hold the bargaining power and are able to press for higher prices and a higher share of advertisers’ budgets.
This scenario is where those FAST services and especially platforms like YouTube and even TikTok come in. By expanding the definition of what advertisers consider premium video beyond traditional TV and streaming services stocked with TV programming to include digital videos that people may watch on TV — YouTube’s CTV viewership has been on the rise, and TikTok does have a CTV app — advertisers are able to widen the supply of inventory, which can help to keep prices in check and give buyers leverage when dealing with the streaming broadcasters.
“We are looking to include some of the social partners [in upfront deals], and we’ve done some work with them where we’re saying, ‘We need to expand the definition of premium video,’” said the second agency executive.
That is to say, ad-supported streaming’s broadcast era may instead be better considered an epoch within the era of TV’s broadening to encompass all video.
“The current number of [free, ad-supported streaming TV] platforms and how similar they are is unsustainable. That’s part of the reason why we’re bullish on being on all of them because we don’t know who’s going to win.”
— Streaming executive
Paramount’s first quarter earnings report featured some strong numbers related to its streaming business. Its streaming subscriber base grew, as did its streaming subscription and advertising revenues. But the biggest year-over-year uptick was the amount of money that Paramount is spending on its streaming business — which the company labels as “direct-to-consumer” — which had the effect of increasing the amount of money the company is losing in streaming.
The key details:
To be fair, every major TV network owner is losing money while building up their respective streaming businesses. So Paramount is no different in that respect. However, Paramount’s streaming costs and losses are not the only numbers cited above that stand out.
You may have noticed that Paramount+ added 6.8 million streaming subscribers in Q1, but Paramount’s overall streaming subscriber base only increased by 6.3 million subscribers. In other words, Paramount’s other subscription-based streamers — Showtime, BET+ and Noggin — collectively lost 500,000 subscribers in the period. Paramount did not break out what percentage of its streaming expenses went to those three streamers, which account for roughly a third of its streaming subscriber base.
Another number worth calling out is Pluto TV’s monthly active user count — not for the number itself but for what it actually represents. Typically, user refers to an individual person using a given service. Not in Pluto TV’s case. “The Monthly Active Users (“MAUs”) count reflects the number of unique devices interacting with the Pluto TV service in a calendar month,” according to an earnings document that Paramount released on Tuesday. In other words, the number of people using Pluto TV each month could not have grown at all, and instead its existing user base may just be using the FAST service on more connected TVs, phones, computers and other devices. To be clear, that’s unlikely, but we have no way of knowing either way from the provided number.
>13 million: Number of paid subscribers that NBCUniversal’s Peacock had at the end of the first quarter of 202.
>20%: Percentage share of time people spend on Instagram that is spent watching Reels.
-112,000: Number of pay-TV subscribers that Charter lost in the first quarter of 2022.
37%: Percentage share of U.S. streaming subscribers that do not subscribe to a traditional pay-TV service.
Given the ad-supported streaming boom covered above, it should be unsurprising that connected TV continues to increase its share of advertisers’ digital video dollars. What is surprising, though, is that CTV has yet to overtake the money going to other forms of online video, including the out-stream video ads appearing on article pages, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s 2021 Video Ad Spend and 2022 Outlook Report.
The surprising thing about the dominance of the “other digital video” category is that it excludes what are typically considered the primary recipients of advertisers’ digital video dollars. It does not include major ad-supported streamers like Hulu, Pluto TV or YouTube TV. And it doesn’t include digital video platforms like YouTube and TikTok, both of which are bucketed as “social video” to their likely chagrin.
Instead, the IAB’s report defines “other digital video” as “short-form video from web/app-based publishers.” Vague as that definition is, by deducing the excluded digital video sources, “other digital video” seems to refer to the not-so-premium forms of digital video, such as the videos that publishers inject into text-based article pages simply in order to have video ad inventory to sell.
To be clear, CTV is ascendant. The amount of money going to CTV advertising is growing at a quicker clip than either “other digital video” or social video. And CTV seems to be on pace to take the leading share of digital video dollars next year. But among the factors fueling that will be the deprecation of third-party cookies and mobile IDs.
In other words, as much as CTV on its own may be attractive to advertisers, it is being aided by the fact that that “other digital video” bucket — appealing to advertisers for being cheap and easy to measure and attribute — is becoming unappealing because of the looming limitations advertisers will face in measuring and attributing their online video ads. And even then, only 25% of an undisclosed number of surveyed ad buyers said they plan to shift money away from social video or other digital video ads.
CTV platforms and ad-supported streamers kick off NewFronts Day 1:
Read more about NewFronts Day 1 here.
With commerce at the center, how an Instagram influencer turned Amazon Live host:
Listen to the latest Digiday Podcast episode here.
How the creator economy is growing amid the pandemic:
Read Digiday’s Creator Machine article collection here.
Roku’s active account base reaches 61 million, but growth weighed down by ongoing supply chain issues:
Read more about Roku’s latest earnings report here.
Roku sees Starz:
Roku and private equity firm Apollo Global Management — which owns Yahoo — are looking to place a joint bid for up to a 20% ownership stake in Starz, according to The Wall Street Journal.
For sale: Vice Studios:
Vice Media Group is looking to sell Vice Studios, which happens to be the media company’s biggest source of revenue, according to The Information.
Comcast-Charter join the CTV platform war:
Connected TV platforms are often described by industry executives as the streaming equivalent of traditional pay-TV providers. Little wonder then that traditional TV providers Comcast and Charter have formed a joint venture to operate a CTV platform and take on the likes of Amazon, Roku and Samsung according to CNBC.
Twitch considers tweaks to creators’ financial take:
Amazon-owned Twitch is weighing whether to incentivize streamers to run more ads as well as to lower the cut some streamers receive for subscription sales, according to Bloomberg.
The counterintuitive upfront pitch:
Linear TV may be eroding, and streaming may be the future, but some TV network owners are seizing on the former as the centerpiece of their upfront pitches to advertisers this year. Those network owners see the subscription-based streaming fight as opening an opportunity for their networks to better compete in the linear TV ad market, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Hollywood’s COVID guidelines extended:
Film and TV unions have agreed to keep the industry’s COVID protocols in place as they wait to agree to an updated set of guidelines with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, according to Deadline.
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Digiday’s NewFronts coverage is presented by Amazon.
Day two of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s four-day NewFronts digital video advertising presentations featured platforms, streamers and publishers pitching celebrity —and creator —driven content. Samsung’s advertising division highlighted a new measurement tool, while Roku, Condé Nast and Snap focused on new and returning programming in their pitches to video buyers — and Meta didn’t announce any new ad products.
The key details:
Samsung
At its first in-person NewFronts presentation, Samsung Ads spotlighted its Total Media Solution tool, which provides buyers with management and measurement of cross-platform media buys, using Samsung’s demand-side platform. The fact that this platform gives buyers the ability to manage their buys across linear and streaming apps was the theme of Samsung’s pitch: Buyers should be spending more in CTV, but Samsung Ads’ data can also help inform advertisers’ linear TV buys.
Advertisers can “bring your own media that you negotiated with both traditional media companies and other streaming partners directly to us, so you can control and manage everything in one place,” said Joe Melaragno, head of platform sales and agency development at Samsung Ads.
Samsung has “a footprint of 60 million smart TVs,” representing one-third of all U.S. TV households, according to Cathy Oh, vp, global head of marketing & analytics at Samsung Ads. Michael Scott, Samsung Ads’ vp of brand sales, claimed Samsung’s automatic content recognition data shows that “for the first time, AVOD growth is exceeding SVOD growth” — the former is up 10% in total time spent year-over-year, while the latter is down 11%.
That being said, ad-supported, on-demand streamers have only 20% penetration among U.S. households compared to 81% for subscription-based streamers, according to Kantar’s Entertainment on Demand.
Samsung TV Plus, Samsung’s free, ad-supported streaming TV service, is pre-installed in 75 million devices in the U.S., according to Sang Kim, Samsung Electronics svp. The FAST service now has nearly double the amount of viewers watching three-times more content per month year over year, he said. In 2019, the service had 30 channels; it now has more than 200 channels and will add four new owned-and-operated FAST channels this year, around DIY, cooking, automotive and holiday. A new cloud-based gaming hub will also launch later this year on the Samsung service as well as new programming, including “Hotel Inspector” and Designer Networks’ “Rucker’s Reno.”
In 2021, more than a third of viewers’ time spent on Samsung TV Plus was spent watching Samsung’s owned-and operated-channels. Eight of the top 10 most-watched channels on the service were O&O channels.
This year, Samsung will roll out its updated Smart TV user interface — which features a new home screen discovery masthead ad unit that advertisers can buy — to more markets. In the select markets where the ad unit is already available, the curated and personalized masthead led to two to three times improved click-through rate and a three-times increase in app opens, according to Dennis Yuscavitch, global head of product marketing at Samsung Ads.
Roku
Roku brought a number of celebrities on stage — ranging from Daniel Radcliffe to Martha Stewart — during its NewFront presentation to promote its original programming on its FAST service The Roku Channel. The CTV platform owner also pitched branded content opportunities, as well as dynamic and shopping ad formats. Roku had 61.3 million active accounts as of the first quarter of 2022.
“Roku Recommends,” Roku’s weekly show hosted by Maria Menounos and Andrew “Hawk” Hawkins to highlight content on the platform, will return for a second season in September. Roku is also working with Variety on a segment sharing the top 10 Roku searches each month. Three new weekly shows will highlight streaming content in the categories of pop culture, social media trends and DIY projects.
The Roku Channel will add more original content, in three categories in particular: drama & comedy, lifestyle and reality & competition. Thanks to a new co-production deal announced Tuesday with Marquee Brands and Milk Street Studios, new lifestyle shows are coming to The Roku Channel starring lifestyle and culinary personalities Martha Stewart, Emeril Lagasse and Christopher Kimball. Libraries of content featuring those stars will move to The Roku Channel as part of the deal. Another show the studio is shopping to advertisers is “The Short List,” which is being produced by Reese Witherspoon’s production company Hello Sunshine and will include 12 short-form films in the drama, comedy, documentary and animation genres.
Brands can buy ads against Roku’s original programming in a variety of ways, including promotions on Roku’s home screen, season premiere sponsorships and pause ads.
OneView, Roku’s ad platform, combines Roku’s audience and identity data for marketers and is the only ad buying platform with access to The Roku Channel. Roku recently introduced dynamic linear ads, which allows advertisers to use OneView to swap out their linear ads’ creative with a more targeted ad when people are tuning in via a Roku-powered smart TV. Paramount, AMC Networks and Hallmark are among the TV networks that have agreed to support Roku’s dynamic linear ad product for ads running on their linear networks.
Roku is adding more shoppable features to its platform too. Roku said it can add an overlay to an existing ad so streaming viewers can use their remotes to click on the ad and have a message sent to the viewer’s phone number that Roku has on file with a link to shop for the advertised product. Advertisers will be able to track these ads’ performance in OneView. By this year’s holiday season, Roku wants to provide retailers with the ability to pair shoppable ads with Roku Pay to sell the products from ads on the TV screen.
Roku also spotlighted the recent launches of its advertising watermark, its clean room, an expanded measurement partner program with marketing mix modeling, and the company announced a collaboration with Microsoft to explore how linear and streaming TV advertising impacts online searches.
Condé Nast
Coming off Monday’s Met Gala, Condé Nast’s NewFront focused on live programming and the expansion of three main titles: GQ, Vogue and Vanity Fair. The pitch seemed to be: more celebrities + more programming = more viewership – and more opportunities for brands.
Condé Nast said this year’s presentation features their “largest video slate ever,” with 250 new and returning digital series, over 50 pilots across 17 brand channels and a tripling of GQ Sports’ content production. Forty new and returning social series are planned for this year, said Condé Nast Entertainment president Agnes Chu.
The company’s video viewership is up 22% from last year, according to Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch. Conde Nast says it drove 14.3 billion total global video views and currently drives an average of 1.3 billion monthly views, up 18% year over year.
With success from Vogue’s live streams of the Met Gala red carpet and Vanity Fair’s red carpet live show at the Oscars, this treatment will extend to two new live pilots: Allure Best of Beauty and Glamour Women of the Year. GQ Sports’ will also live–stream “everything but the game” at the next year’s Super Bowl.
Condé Nast has tripled its live viewership overall, according to Condé Nast chief revenue officer Pamela Drucker Mann. The Met Gala drove 7 billion impressions in 2021, and viewership for Vanity Fair’s Oscars red carpet show was up 51% this year compared to last. Drucker Mann told Digiday advertisers can buy spots in a live stream “the same way they buy TV spots during the Super Bowl.”
Snap
Snap wants advertisers to buy more augmented reality ads. On average, over 250 million Snapchat users engage with AR on Snap’s platform every day, according to Snap’s chief business officer Jeremi Gorman. While previously it took up to 16 weeks to build an AR experience, it now takes “a matter of days,” she said.
Snap is entering a multi-year partnership with Live Nation to build immersive experiences around concerts and music artists, according to Resh Sidhu, global director of Arcadia, Snap’s creative studio dedicated to AR. She also touted “AR commerce” — or using augmented reality filters to drive product sales. A recent filter created by Ulta Beauty had 30 million people try on products via the AR “lens” for their holiday campaign, which led to $6 million in incremental purchases, according to Sidhu. Advertisers can work with Snap to build 3D assets from their own products. Puma is working with Snap on a new Snapchat destination called Dress Up, where users can try on shoes using an AR lens.
Snap also announced a new creator program, created in collaboration with personalized celebrity greeting app Cameo, called the Snap x Cameo Advertiser Program. Snap’s advertisers can hire the over 45,000 celebrities on Cameo to film short-form videos with a frame or overlay featuring an advertiser’s branding. Snap also introduced marketers to the first class of creators in its new content accelerator, 523, which aims to provide resources and a platform to Snapchatters from underrepresented groups. Its first class of 523 creators will produce content for Discover over the next 6 months.
Snap’s ad revenue grew by 64% in 2021, according to Peter Naylor, Snap’s vp of sales. During the NewFront presentation, Naylor announced a new ad format called Snap Promote, where advertisers can pay to promote the content they have published directly on Snapchat’s Discover feed.
Snap’s head of original content Vanessa Guthrie announced extended deals with the NFL, NBA and WNBA. New original shows include “Daring Simone Biles,” “La’Ron in a Million,” “Reclaim(ed)” and “Run for Office.” “Charli vs Dixie” and “The Me & You Show” are getting renewed.
Meta
Meta spotlighted a number of creators on Instagram and Facebook producing personality-driven content that can serve as an opportunity for brands to reach specific audiences. The company said 50% of time spent on Meta’s platforms is spent watching video. 45% of Instagram accounts interact with Reels once a week, said Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg.
Sandberg highlighted in-stream video ads, which can be bought upfront at a fixed rate or through Meta’s ad auction. Mercedes-Benz saw a 47% higher conversion to sale rate when in-stream video was added to its always-on direct response and strategy in the U.S.
Dating and networking app Bumble tested running video ads in Meta’s feeds and stories and saw a 53% increase in brand favorability, when it ran ads in both placements compared to ads in feeds alone, Sandberg said.
Like Snap, Meta pushed for marketers to embrace the opportunities in AR and other emerging technology. Over 700 million people are using AR effects each month, according to the company.
Carl Loredo, Wendy’s CMO, shared the value of creating a “Wendyverse” — or a world created for Meta’s social VR app Horizon Worlds, timed around March Madness. Wendy’s is the first brand to create a world in Horizon Worlds. Loredo said there are more worlds to come this year.
The post The Rundown: Platforms, streamers and publishers pitch celebrity- & creator-driven content and measurement tools on NewFronts Day 2 appeared first on Digiday.
This article is part of a cross-brand Digiday Media series that examines how the creator economy has evolved amid the Covid-19 pandemic. Explore the full series here.
BuzzFeed has invested in a program for creators for years. This year the company plans to double how many people are participating in it.
BuzzFeed’s creators program was established four years ago to lean on its fan base of Very Online Readers 
to stay relevant with trends as they were creating them. It has since used that mindset to establish brand agreements that have led to larger deals with BuzzFeed’s recurring advertisers as well as new clients that helped to cement its position as a publisher-led quasi creative agency.
Now, facing an industry wave of new interest in working with creators, BuzzFeed is rebranding its creator program as it eyes fresh opportunities to work with brands and influencers to connect content with avid fan bases. To do so, it’s renaming its creators program to Catalyst, to incorporate the roster of creators and talent at both BuzzFeed and its recently-acquired Complex Networks.
The program was first formed to “broaden the way our internal employees could work at BuzzFeed,” said Andrea Mazey, BuzzFeed’s vp of creator and talent partnerships. That meant giving employees opportunities to experiment with the types of content — video, in particular — that its audience wanted to see. It was how its food vertical Tasty really came to life after experiments with top-down videos led leadership to embrace the format. At first, with a focus on YouTube, and then on Facebook.
The same is happening now with short-form videos. As the format has grown in popularity with the rise of TikTok and Instagram Reels, so has its importance for BuzzFeed’s creator program.
Now, roughly half of the content produced from the program is short-form video, Mazey said. And the team’s expansion reflects that need, too. In the past two years, the program has added more talent specializing in shorter video formats, she added, such as those with expertise in creating Reels and TikToks.
“We want to have our programs reflect what the creator space at large looks like,” Mazey said.
The creator space is seeing notable interest as of late. An estimated 72.5% of U.S. marketers will use influencer marketing for paid or unpaid campaigns in 2022, up from 55.4% in 2019, according to an eMarketer report published last May. The “Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report” published last year found influencer marketing has grown from $9.7 billion in 2020 to an estimated $13.8 billion in 2021.
BuzzFeed hopes to add to that growth — the creators program had over 100 branded content deals in 2021, up from 65 in 2019. BuzzFeed declined to say how much revenue it brought in with the program.
“Influencers are a critical part of the entire marketing funnel — with platforms’ push for in-app shopping, influencers aren’t just an awareness play but brands can leverage them as a lucrative purchase driver,” said Katherine Saxon, vp, content director at ad agency Digitas.
BuzzFeed’s creators program brings together the advertiser, the creator and the BuzzFeed brand. BuzzFeed declined to share the cut it takes from each brand deal featuring a creator. But the opportunity allows brands to reach BuzzFeed’s audience and access the publisher’s alignment with brand suitability.
BuzzFeed has also prioritized building relationships with the creator community, reducing some of the challenges with working with creators, which can range from issues of consistency, communication, timelines and backing out mid-contract. “BuzzFeed will probably vet and do their due diligence to make sure [the creator is] appropriate for the brands,” said Jay Powell, svp of influencer & communications at media agency MMI.
Having that many cooks in the proverbial Tasty kitchen could complicate the content’s ownership and rights, said Alexandra J. Roberts, a professor at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law who specializes in trademark and false advertising law and entertainment law. Because BuzzFeed is “not a silent agency no one’s aware of, but a well-known brand,” it’s important for BuzzFeed to clearly label its branded content when working with creators, she said.
And for BuzzFeed, that gray area of how much a creator gets paid for their work depends on a range of factors, such as whether the project is a one-off or part of a BuzzFeed franchise or show, Mazey said. BuzzFeed’s creators program now has about 100 creators, up from the 12 it started with in 2018, and 36 creators in 2019. The program varies per creator as it pertains to financial compensation and contract terms.
The program has a mix of staffers who are full-time BuzzFeed staff (representing about a third of those in the program), freelance contributors, past BuzzFeed employees and external talent from TikTok, YouTube and other social platforms, as well as celebrities like chef and TV personality Marcus Samuelsson. Mazey did not provide a specific breakdown of how many creators fall into these different categories, due to the fluidity of the way people move in and out of the program to contribute to specific branded and editorial content. Some creators only work on branded partnerships, while others are fully integrated into BuzzFeed’s editorial strategies, Mazey said.
Take Alix Traeger, who joined the creators program in 2018 when she was a producer at Tasty. After gaining experience pitching to brands directly, she quit her full-time job at Tasty to become a freelancer. Now one of BuzzFeed’s external creators with over 370,000 followers on Instagram and over 730,000 followers on TikTok, Traeger does a mix of “bigger” brand deals with Tasty and “smaller-scale” deals she lands on her own. Most of Traeger’s work is now on TikTok. Her live videos are part of a year-long deal in which BuzzFeed airs weekly live video series, with sponsors secured by TikTok.
“With Tasty, I’ve been able to work with some huge brands that I might not have been able to work with otherwise,” Traeger said. She’s worked with brands like Oscar Mayer and Albertsons. Pitching on her own to brands, in comparison, “can be difficult,” Traeger said. Branded content deals are the bulk of her income, too. A June 2021 report by CB Insights found 77% of creators’ revenue comes from brand deals.
BuzzFeed declined to share how much money creators in the program stand to make from deals with brands. Creators’ pay varies depending on the project — including factors such as the length of the video, the number of assets, the type of content and the number of social posts — as well as the size of the creator’s audience, Mazey said.
There is some semblance of protection afforded the pivotable team: recent layoffs at BuzzFeed Inc. primarily impacted “redundancies” in the admin and business sides of BuzzFeed and Complex Networks (which the company acquired last year), such as in sales and legal, a BuzzFeed spokesperson said. About a half dozen were impacted on the content side, at both brands, due to the company putting a heavier focus on vertical video. Because creators at BuzzFeed are producing more short-form, vertical video, the spokesperson said this will be an area of growth rather than a part of the business to shrink. The creators program was not affected by the layoffs, they said.
MMI’s Powell said creator compensation packages can range anywhere from $500 to over $100,000 for a single TikTok or Instagram Reel. Compensation can go up from there for longer-form video content, such as a YouTube video. Some of the main factors that drive rates, Powell said, include coverage commitments, content format (such as videos or stills), exclusivity terms, usage rights and turnaround time. An “expedited timeline” could double or triple the fee a creator charges, Powell said.
BuzzFeed’s creator program has led to partnerships between creators and brands including Samsung and TurboTax.
As the creators program has developed over the years, it’s become “more and more flexible with the way we work with creators… and the types of creators we work with too,” Mazey said. This year, BuzzFeed is looking to add influencers into the program who are creating content around DIY cleaning and parenting. As well as bring Complex Networks’ creators into the fold.
“We’re thinking about all the different ways to scale and to partner across a wider universe of creators,” Mazey said. “We already have talked about a lot of fun ideas.”
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After going viral with a “Hot Girls Have IBS” billboard campaign earlier this year, snack and wellness brand BelliWelli is taking a bigger swing in the out-of-home advertising space to boost brand awareness.
Over the last year, brands have steadily been spending more ad dollars in OOH as people venture back outside, returning to in-person work and other activities. The Out of Home Advertising Association of America’s 2021 OOH Facts and Figures Ad Spend Performance report notes that OOH ad spend reached $7.1 billion last year, up from the $6.1 billion spent in 2020.
With just a year in business, the California-based brand is dedicating between 20 to 30% of this year’s marketing budget to out-of-home advertising. That percentage is likely to ramp up even more after the campaign went viral — including reaching millions of views on the brand’s TikTok.
BelliWelli co-founder Katie Wilson did not provide specific figures on what that increased spend might look like. Last year, the startup spent $13,500 on media, per Kantar; those numbers do not include social spend as Kantar does not track those figures.
“Based on what I know right now, I would still opt to spend $5,000 in the billboard, out-of-home industry all day, every day than I would on Facebook,” Wilson said. Per Wilson, OOH billboards have proven a measurable and cost effective way to boost brand awareness in comparison to the digital marketing landscape, where users are “inundated all the time.”
Last November, BelliWelli launched its campaign with a static billboard in Los Angeles, followed by two more in Portland and Times Square. Since roll out, the billboards themselves have picked up serious steam. A video showing the hot pink Portland-location signage racked up two million views on the brand’s TikTok account, which has more than 28,000 followers since launching last June. It also caught the attention of model and actress Camila Morrone, who shared the image on Instagram to her 3.1 million followers. It saw more than 95,000 likes.
Aside from the social currency, BelliWelli says the LA and Portland billboards drove an estimated $40,000 in product sales.
Prior to the viral campaign, the majority of BelliWelli’s marketing was an organic effort via Facebook groups. The startup now has 20 to 30% of its ad spend dedicated to OOH with another 25% budgeted for digital advertising, according to Wilson. Another 20% goes toward influencer marketing strategy and the remaining ad dollars are dedicated to undisclosed media projects.
Media buyers have long since warned advertisers that going viral is not a strategy. Wilson pushes back against that ideology, noting that going viral early in a brand’s career “means you get to take part in the conversation and you get a seat at the table earlier than you might normally.”
BelliWelli isn’t alone in boosting spending on OOH ads. Advertisers like Fiverr and Andie swimwear have been ramping up their OOH spend since last year as society continues to return to in-person activities.
“As we’ve seen people more comfortable, more vaccinations, people getting back out in the world, it makes total sense to be in that space at this point,” said Michelle Chong, group director of planning at Fitzco advertising agency.
Per Chong, it’s a trend that’ll continue as OOH becomes more digitized, making attribution and measurement easier. Advertisers are also eyeing out-of-home as a way to diversify media spend, especially as the digital marketing landscape becomes increasingly more crowded, expensive and harder to measure thanks to data privacy changes, she added.
“It’s the oldest medium, but it’s been in evolution mode for a while now,” she said. “We’re excited to continue to see how it rebounds.”
For now, BelliWelli says it plans to continue its investment in OOH, planning to launch two more billboards in California, per a spokesperson for the brand.
“The ROI is very clear to us right now,” said Wilson. “We’ve done three [OOH placements] so we can see the direct cause and effect.”
The post Why a startup snack and wellness brand is investing more in OOH advertising after viral moment success appeared first on Digiday.
Digiday’s NewFronts coverage is presented by Amazon.
During Amazon’s IAB NewFronts presentation on Monday, Twitch representative Sarah Iooss spent most of her allotted time reaffirming her company’s commitment to creators. As competition mounts between livestreaming platforms, Twitch is providing new tools and services to support creators in the production of both personal and branded content.
The past year has brought both challenges and opportunities for Twitch. The Amazon-owned livestreaming platform reaped the benefits of the overall rise in streamed content consumption spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, with Twitch viewership increasing by 45 percent in 2021. It remains the dominant livestreaming platform, accounting for 71 percent of total hours watched across Twitch, YouTube and Facebook Gaming in the past year.
But as Twitch’s audience continues to grow, the platform has struggled to keep some of its high-profile creators as engaged and active as they once were. Female creators and streamers of color have had to deal with increased harassment in recent months, though Twitch has responded by creating new tools and policies to boost safety and privacy on the platform.
The initiatives outlined during Monday’s presentation represent Twitch’s most recent effort to keep streamers in front of their cameras and working. “We’re working directly with them to build out new content formats and verticals that really reflect their interests and their passions, as well as the interests and passions of their community,” said Twitch vp of global creators Constance Knight.
Iooss’ talk at the NewFronts covered two new features for Twitch creators. The first was “For Twitch, With Twitch,” a slate of creator-driven content curated specifically for advertisers. The selection includes independent and creator-led passion projects such as a travel show hosted by chess-playing streamer sisters Alexandra and Andrea Botez, in addition to pre-existing Twitch intellectual properties such as Twitch Rivals.
“When ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ was on, there was this sort of lightning-rod moment for chess, and you could see that reflected on Twitch, which was super cool,” said Iooss, who serves as Twitch’s head of sales in the Americas, in an interview with Digiday. “I think examples like that help marketers really understand how much we’re driving culture.” Other “For Twitch, With Twitch” shows will hinge on the touchpoints between Twitch and other areas of popular culture, including shopping and college sports.
The second major announcement was “Co-Op Drops,” a program allowing brands to get involved in Drops, a pre-existing feature wherein viewers could gain in-game rewards for watching livestreams. Twitch did a test-run of the program in March, collaborating with Adobe to put on a series of sponsored streams inside Amazon’s popular MMORPG, “New World.”
For this first round of Co-Op Drops, Amazon art director Charles Bradbury sat down with prominent Twitch streamer Shroud, to design a brand-new armor set and weapon for the game, taking viewers’ input into consideration; the new items then became available for players to claim as a Drop. “Because it’s an Amazon game, it creates a great synergy, especially for marketers to hear about,” Iooss said.
None of these new features represent a drastic pivot for Twitch. Creators have always been the central drivers of conversation and activity on the platform, and Twitch has long involved prominent streamers in original content such as Twitch Rivals events. “Our creators are the heart and the core of everything we do,” Knight said. “We believe that all creators should feel welcome, supported and able to be their authentic selves on our service.”
Still, the NewFronts have come at a moment of some vulnerability for Twitch, making the platform’s recommitment to supporting its creators a logical move.
Over the past year, big-name streamers such as Ludwig Ahgren and TimTheTatman have accepted offers to stream exclusively on YouTube Gaming; Twitch star Sykkuno is the most recent to make the jump, announcing his decision Monday, only a few hours after Twitch’s NewFronts presentation. Last week, Bloomberg reported rumors that Twitch would be switching its revenue split with top creators from a streamer-favoring 70–30 to an even split, cranking up the pressure even further. Twitch representatives declined to comment.
Twitch’s new initiatives are designed to support streamers of all sizes — and ultimately, the big names might not be the ones who provide the most value to brands. Though faces like Sykkuno and Karl Jacobs can generate rabid fan engagement and create splashy brand activations, they are far outnumbered by the mid-level streamers whose smaller audiences are just as likely to engage with their brand partners. The announcements at the NewFronts might not prevent the eyes of high-profile talent from wandering, but they could help keep this key group of mid-tier streamers in the fold.
“What is the value of one creator who has a million views? Could you get 10,000 creators with 100 views?” said Jason Krebs, chief business officer of livestreaming tools and services provider StreamElements. “You have the opportunity to scale an audience now, with technology, with hundreds and thousands of creators at a time, and that is new to the advertising community.”
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