Month: July 2022

As should be no surprise to anyone in the publishing industry, posting on Instagram is not quite as ubiquitous as its Meta-owned sibling platform among media titles (Digiday’s survey found that 99% of publishers had posted to Facebook in the past month). But publishers’ use of Instagram is still significant, and it has bumped upward slightly since last year: 86% of this year’s survey respondents said they had posted on Instagram in the past month, up from 84% last year.

In terms of posting frequency, publishers don’t seem to have adjusted their strategies much since last year. In fact, the number of survey respondents who told Digiday their titles post on Instagram every day stayed exactly the same between last year and this year at 64%. Publisher execs who said they post at least once a week ticked down very slightly this year (from 34% in 2021 to 31% in 2022), and those who post at least once a month was up a bit from 2% last year to 6% this year.

The way publishers are investing in Instagram content has seen a change from last year, although the trend here is a bit complicated. When it comes to how much publishers are investing in creating original content for Instagram, the majority of respondents to Digiday’s survey landed in the middle, investing a little or a moderate amount, just as they did last year. However, this year, that middle is smaller, and those on the edges who said they invest a lot or not at all represent a growing number.

This year, a combined 58% of publisher pros said they’re investing a little or a moderate amount on original Instagram content, down significantly from 72% last year. Meanwhile, 15% said they’re not investing at all in original content on Instagram this year, up from 9% last year, and 26% said they’re investing a lot, up from 19%.

Far fewer publishers are investing in advertising on Instagram than on Facebook (where we learned last week three-quarters of publishers are buying ads): Digiday’s survey found that nearly half of publishers (46%) said they bought Instagram ads in the past month. However, when comparing this number to how much publishers are spending on ads with other social media platforms (which we will explore more in future deep dives), 46% is still a lot. This is potentially due to the fact that it’s an easy extension for publishers buying ads on one Meta-owned platform (Facebook) to add on and buy them on Instagram, as well.

Regardless of how publishers are investing in Instagram content, the social platform’s value has grown significantly in the eyes of publishing pros, Digiday’s survey found. When comparing the different social media platforms, Facebook was No. 1 for driving publishers’ revenues last year. But Instagram has turned the tables.

While the number of survey respondents who said Facebook is valuable or extremely valuable to driving their titles’ revenues fell significantly from 49% last year to 38% this year, the number of those who said Instagram is valuable or extremely valuable grew just as significantly from 27% last year to 39% this year – putting Instagram at No. 1.

And Instagram has not only maintained the top spot among publishers when it comes to brand-building this year – it has made meaningful gains. This year, more than three-quarters of survey respondents (76%) said Instagram is valuable or extremely valuable to building their titles’ brands, compared with 64% last year. It’s clear that publishers are really starting to see how Instagram fits into their business strategies.

Publishers’ utilization of Instagram also shows in how brand-appropriate they see Instagram for their titles. Just as with Facebook, zero respondents to Digiday’s survey said Instagram is not appropriate at all for their brands. And those who said Instagram is brand appropriate held steady: 70% of publisher pros said the platform is extremely appropriate or appropriate for their brands this year, compared with 71% last year. One interesting jump to note: Those who said Instagram is not very brand-appropriate jumped to 8% this year from 1% last year.

Tremor International yesterday (July 25) confirmed it has entered into an agreement to purchase Amobee in a proposed $239 million transaction that would be enabled by a new $100 million debt facility.

The proposed deal is expected to close in the coming weeks with Tremor also expected to obtain a $50 million revolving credit facility which the company claimed would be used to facilitate “future strategic investments and initiatives.”

And what’s the idea here?

In a statement, Tremor CEO Ofer Druker noted how the addition of Amobee’s capabilities would complement its existing ad stack, particularly as it seeks to progress its online video and CTV ambitions.

“Additionally, the Transaction would fulfill our strategy to add significant global scale and self-service growth to our demand side platform, increase our U.S. and international customer reach and data footprint, and drive more advertiser spend to our SSP [supply-side platform], Unruly,” he added.

Among the expected benefits highlighted by Tremor was the ability to scale its demand-side platform, particularly its self-service platform, within 12 months of the closure of the proposed deal. Additionally, Amobee’s CTV relationships (including a lucrative deal with U.K. broadcaster ITV) were cited as a potential boon.

What do the numbers look like?

Earlier this year, Digiday obtained documents circulated by parties attempting to facilitate Singtel’s hopes of offloading its ad tech subsidiary which suggested that gross spending on Amobee in 2020 was $700 million.

However, net spend on the platform, which includes a DSP, email marketing services plus other ad tech capabilities, was closer to $160 million that year, according to Digiday sources. In its latest announcement, Tremor claimed that spending on the platform was close to $150 million after traffic acquisition costs in the 12 months to June 30, 2022.

Another telco divests its ad tech

The completion of the deal will mean (yet another) telco has written off its earlier ad tech assets, a series of investments that Singtel had assembled at a cost of more than $1 billion over the course of 10 years.

This trend has been spelled out through several high-profile deals such as the May 2021 sale of Yahoo to private equity firm Apollo Management by Verizon, meanwhile, rival U.S. telco AT&T drew a line under its ad tech aspirations with the sale of Xandr to Microsoft later in the year.

Both of these sales were understood to have come at a significant write-down compared to the telcos’ initial investment with concerns over privacy thought to be at the heart of both companies making a U-turn on their earlier strategies.

“Slowburn,” “Decoder Ring” and “One Year” are all narrative podcast series at Slate that will move from one season per year to two or three, to increase listenership as well as give advertisers the opportunity to advertise in those products at different points of the year. Meanwhile, some of the publisher’s weekly series will increase to a biweekly schedule to achieve the same goal of having more sellable inventory.

On the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast, Slate’s CRO and president Charlie Krammerer discussed why his team has prioritized the frequency of existing shows instead of chasing scale like other podcast networks, as well as how his team of sellers is prioritizing a specific mix of custom content ads while investing in the host-read model.

Making up about half of the company’s revenue, the podcast business is primarily advertising-dependent, although there has been a trend of podcast listeners turning into paid subscribers with Slate putting certain episodes of its most popular series behind its paywall.

Below are highlights from the conversation, which have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

The frequency play 

One of the things that is driving our strategy [in 2022] is frequency. Our shows are bifurcated between narrative and then everything else. When we look at our narrative stuff, our biggest [show] “Slowburn,” we just launched [our seventh season on Roe v. Wade] when SCOTUS came out with their decisions. This was a little bit of a mini-season — it was only four episodes — but might there be another shorter season later in the year? Maybe. Might there be two seasons next year that are a little shorter? Probably.

We’re doing the same thing with our other two narrative shows: “Decoder Ring” and “One Year.” We’re coming in with basically three seasons of six or seven episodes, and it allows us to do a couple of things. One, create deeper engagement with our listener. So instead of them coming in and out once a year, they can come in and out two or three times a year. It’s also really important for the advertiser. [If] in a year, you do one narrative season with seven or eight episodes, if a bunch of big advertisers [are] not advertising during that time frame, you’re not going to get them to [spend]. If they don’t have something that they want to say, then [they’re] not [going to advertise]. So a frequency thing also allows us to have a lot more downloads and impressions available for when the money’s available.

Podcasting drives subscriptions

[Podcast revenue] will probably get to 50% [of total revenue this year]. A lot of that depends on how the other lines are growing. We have three lines of business: digital business, audio business, and subscription business that we’re leaning into quite hard. And you know, we attribute a lot of those new subscribers to our podcasting. Depending on what kind of listener comes in, podcasting a lot of times is the number one reason they choose to be a subscriber.

When SCOTUS came out with all their decisions in the last couple of months, we had a podcast called “Amicus,” and it’s our podcast about the law, basically. That was a great time for us to lean into what was happening and so we did a lot of extra episodes of “Amicus.” We took three [of them] and made them only available to Slate+ listeners. We had the best Slate+ month in three years and a lot of that had to do with that. So it just gives you an idea of how we use audio and how we are able to monetize audio, not just for advertising, but to drive loyalty and subscription money as well.

Believing host reads

The majority of our advertising dollars come from brand advertisers. Our direct response advertising dollars have continued to grow, but really that’s a reflection on the fact that it’s how quickly the brand advertisers have come into the whole space.

At Slate, we’re not chasing scale. We just know we can’t win that game. It’s honestly not what we can deliver anyway. We’re all about trying to deliver an engaged, curious, educated listener. So what does that mean for us and our ad formats? For the advertisers that want to work with us this way, and that want to be creative, we want to understand their business as best we can. We leaned into host reads in a really aggressive way, we know they work with all the data out there. If anytime that you can get a host to sound authentic and intimate and personal, with somebody’s ad message, great.

“Kind of unbeknownst to us, as we were doing all the due diligence, we uncovered how much business they were breaking by leaning into comedy,” said Jason Wagenheim, president and CRO of BDG. The comedy studio has worked with 22 different advertisers in under a year, he added, including Walmart, Hasbro, Mattress Firm, Eggo, Ragu and Huggies. About 90% of those sponsors are new to BDG but an undisclosed portion of them used to be clients of Some Spider before the acquisition, according to the company.

These sponsors have primarily advertised on BDG’s parenting vertical, which makes sense considering the studio originated within Some Spider Studios — the company that owned The Dad, Scary Mommy and Fatherly prior to the acquisition.

Food, CPG and mass retail have been the most active categories in the comedy studio, paying an average of six figures of revenue per deal, though Wagenheim did not provide exact figures. And the typical campaign takes approximately eight weeks from RFP to execution, said Emily DeSear, evp of creative and marketing at BDG.

“Comedy work is actually more turnkey than some of our other work. A lot of the other work that we do leans into celebrity or influencer talent and has super high production value,” said DeSear, who said the other categories are on par with the eight-week timeline, but require a heavier lift when it comes to casting.

Most of the team that operates the comedy studio came over from the acquisition, including Ben Stumpf, currently BDG’s executive creative director of scripted video, and leads the comedy writing and voiceovers for campaigns that come through the studio. DeSear said there are four full-time staffers, but they also work with a network of freelancers and actors to complete projects.

Comedy has been particularly successful for brands advertising to parents, Wagenheim said. Comedic content posted on Facebook and Instagram is 125% more engaging than regular promotional content, 200% more engaging than educational content and 500% more engaging than heartwarming content, he said, though he did not provide exact figures. The company measures engagement on views, time watched, likes, shares and other metrics based on brands’ KPIs, he said.

“We know that [audiences] stay to watch comedic content longer than any other content formats that we have. And 46% of viewers are more likely to consider purchases when they are genuinely entertained by a piece of branded content,” Wagenheim said, without providing specific examples.

Wagenheim said he accepts that not all advertisers will be interested in comedy content, nor will all of the brands under the BDG umbrella have success in making this content work for its audiences. For example, luxury brands “don’t have the appetite for it. Comedy is not going to happen with Gucci and Balenciaga,” Wagenheim said. 

Beauty is another category that could run into issues with selling comedic content, according to Marcy Greenberger, evp and managing partner of integrated investment at media agency UM. That’s because there is significant interest from marketers in this category to create aspirational content and achieve the “ultimate before and after,” which will compete with humor as being the key takeaway message, she said.

Comedy could also create brand safety concerns.

“I’ve historically worked with CPG brands that are very concerned with brand safety and with positioning their brand in a respectful space. Some comedy leans a little bit less brand-safe,” Greenberger said, pointing to foul language and sexual or adult themes as being standard go-to’s for producing comedic content. “But if they are grounding it in parenting content, that inherently is bound to be more brand-safe, and I think does open up opportunities for brands that otherwise might have shied away from the custom comedic space,” she said.

Even Romper, the fourth brand in BDG’s parenting vertical, tends to steer more seriously when it comes to its content so there haven’t been any branded comedy campaigns to come out of the studio for this parenting title, yet, according to a company spokesperson. 

The focus, for now, will be on the other three parenting brands, Wagenheim said, but he said he sees an opportunity for advertisers wanting to hit dating and relationships content from BDG’s Elite Daily and Nylon brands. Alcohol and food are also categories his team will pursue for comedy campaigns, and when it makes sense, he said his team will pitch it to clients with RFPs that showcase that appetite. 

Published by Wiley today, “Get in the Game” is not just a guide for game-industry newbies; it’s a first-of-its-kind treatise that details how game developers and non-endemic brands are both important parts of a growing ecosystem.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. 

Why are you the right person to write this book — why should readers trust your authority on this subject?

I think where I can add unique value even goes beyond my career in gaming. Prior to that, working at platforms like Twitter and Facebook, I was working with top brands to speak with them through an empirically serious lens, using things like research, about why this new technology, this new mode of communication, this new media that they didn’t understand was something they should be interested in. So, to a certain degree, I’ve seen this play out in a bit of a different flavor.

Now, looking at gaming, we have the same things going on. We have advertisers that have constraints — again, having worked with them before, I understand what those are — and we have publishers that have needs, and being now part of the gaming industry I have a sense of what those are. And then how do we connect these up and make sure that there’s a way to reach consumers through a technologically mediated lens that makes sense both for the folks providing the media and those that want to reach them.

What is the intended audience for this book? There’s probably a younger gaming consumer for whom some of the takeaways in the book are second nature, right?

100 percent. My expectation would be that, obviously, if you’re very gaming-savvy, a lot of this should be like, “well, yeah, no shit.” But pay attention to the fact that, because I have to point that out, that is kind of where we are in terms of that level of knowledge. I don’t mean to be overly flippant about it; of course, there are a ton of people working in the ad industry that are very knowledgeable about gaming and so on. But really, the intended audience is ostensibly that business decision-maker, who realistically, by merit of generational effects, just haven’t had that exposure. To that person, they’re just hearing things like, “gaming’s big, esports is big” — to them, that’s kind of one and the same, right? “Oh, I thought gaming was esports.” And it is, but with a “but.” All of those fine-line distinctions are not native to them.

Being able to establish that level of clarity is probably one of the most impactful takeaways; at least we’re starting to speak the same language. Because what I think is discounted to a certain degree by folks within the industry is just how far that gap is, and how we want to think about working with advertisers or media is very orthogonal to how they buy media, and how they think about media consumption. 

Esports is growing, but it is still a relatively niche facet of the broader gaming industry. With this in mind, why did you dedicate a third of your book to esports and game streaming?

Ways of integrating into core gaming are going to be a little bit different because it’s not television, it’s not radio, it’s not social. Whereas much of how opportunities in something like esports are structured is very similar to traditional sports, somewhat deliberately and somewhat by historical happenstance that a lot of folks that worked in traditional sports migrated over to the esports world. Which is then to say that that language of sponsorship, that budget of sponsorship or whatnot, is available. 

So I spend a lot of time on esports because there’s exciting opportunities for marketers there, allowing them to reach a demographic that might not be attainable in core gaming, but also as a good means of ingress into things that are esports-adjacent — because obviously I talk about streaming opportunities and the influencer marketing that comes along with it, which is going to be super important and impactful in coming years. Arguably, these gaming organizations are going to be more oriented towards doing gaming lifestyle marketing than esports, per se, if you look at how some of these groups are starting to orient themselves.

The final third of your book is focused on the metaverse and the integral role of gaming within it. You make it clear that you don’t believe there’s an inherent connection between the concept of the metaverse and blockchain technology. Do you anticipate you’ll get pushback from the Web3 crowd for taking this stance?

There’s the metaverse, and there’s Web3. They may converge, they may not. But we’re doing neither side of the technology favors by smashing them together, right? At best, it makes it confusing; at worst, it kind of looks a little scammy that you’re using one concept to pull the other up, candidly, for gain. In terms of which of these sides I’m more bullish on, it’s the metaverse, way beyond Web3, only insofar as I think we’re still at a place where the tech of Web3 needs to be oriented more towards, what are the human problems it’s solving? And I don’t want to hear about scarcity and things of that nature, or anything that’s intrinsically a financial instrument. That’s okay, but that’s not solving a human need.

So my biggest problem with Web3 is a lack of humanistic thinking. Look at Web3-based metaverse worlds; there’s nothing to do there. But then, in the gaming worlds that we like to look at as the closest analog to the metaverse, there’s a lot to do. Generally, they’re games that are solving for basic human needs: they’re fun, they’re sociable, things like that. That’s a vision of a metaverse that’s appealing to me, not one where we’ve already cut out suburbs that you can buy land for and do little with.