Month: July 2022

The documentary “very much punctuates where we are [with Stay Tuned], which is we’re ready to really aggressively expand the footprint of Stay Tuned and our Gen Z brand,” said Kim.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

A year ago, I spoke with Chris Berend about Stay Tuned’s four-year anniversary, and the gist was that Stay Tuned had pretty much stayed the course and not much had changed in terms of it being very much a Snapchat-centric news show. A year later, is that still the case?

No. We have been focused this year and will continue to accelerate or increase that focus on expanding the footprint of Stay Tuned across TikTok and YouTube. Sometime in late December [2021], we invested in a seven-person team to focus on expanding the footprint of Stay Tuned on TikTok, creating news content that’s native to the platform [and] speaks to the voice, tone and style of our Gen Z brand. And in the fall, we will also take on producing original programming for Stay Tuned’s YouTube account, which has been dormant for a while. I was a part of that first iteration; I’m very excited to get it going again.

Why start that expansion with TikTok?

NBC News has been on TikTok since 2019. So we were fairly early to the platform itself, but we just saw it explode, of course, during the pandemic especially. And as we started to see engagement skyrocket and notice the scale, we started to think about its popularity, its influence on culture increasingly, its popularity with Gen Zers and young audience and felt like it was a platform we had to be on, similar to the opportunity we saw when Snapchat first debuted.

We were programming for our Stay Tuned TikTok account all along the way. But it was sort of humming along, growing slowly. And at that point in late December, we weren’t seeing a lot of traditional news brands really catching on with news content on the platform. But we thought that there was a possibility to start to create Gen Z news content for TikTok.

We had to invest further on the platform and really think much more aggressively about what we wanted to do with Stay Tuned on TikTok. That started with hiring a small team and establishing that team. And we started to play around and experiment with all kinds of stories and format types. And it took a while. As you may know from the folks at TikTok, they don’t necessarily make a point of featuring or want to feature news content. 

But we have started to hit our stride beginning last month, and we’re seeing that engagement, that scale start to emerge. We just crossed 1 million followers on TikTok. We saw somewhere around 7 million views for our Stay Tuned content in June on TikTok. This month — and we’re only 12 days in — we’re already at 15 million views for Stay Tuned content on TikTok.

You mentioned you have a seven-person team focused on expanding Stay Tuned on TikTok. What’s the makeup of that team in terms of their roles?

We have an executive producer Devan Joseph who’s just terrific. He is an executive producer of original social video; he runs the team. We’ve got producers who have experience producing and hosting Twitch shows. All net-new staff to NBC News. A lot of folks were native to the platform. We have one producer who had an influencer account based on her cat, and she came over about five months ago. Several [associate producers] who support our production, story ideation, look for trends on the platform, pitch ideas, of course. And all of this happens, thankfully, under the high standards of NBC News, so while we may speak native to the platform, have an informal voice, we’re still all under the high standards of NBC News.

A lot of news publishers are active on TikTok today. And for the most part, they’re posting traditional news clips with text on screen and then either voiceover or a host using the green screen effect. Does Stay Tuned do anything to differentiate itself?

We did a lot of green screen effect reporting and TikToks. But we have started to feel like you’ve got to start with the story first and do what’s right for the story on that platform. There’s not one format that we’re trying to adhere to, but we’re trying to serve the story best on that platform. And so you’re starting to see a lot of different styles break out on the Stay Tuned TikTok account. But really what we’re trying to do is say, “Here’s a story we want to tell. How do we best tell it? Is it a green screen? Is it just a 15-second clip of the key action?”

There are a good number of stories that you cover on Stay Tuned’s Snapchat Discover channel as well as on TikTok, but there are some differences. On Snapchat, you generally show the hosts in the studio. When they’re talking on TikTok, it’s the green screen effect. But what really stood out to me as the bigger difference is the voice on Snapchat feels more straight-news delivery whereas on TikTok it feels like there’s more looseness with the delivery. Is that fair to say?

That’s fair to say. There’s a levity. TikTok likes things that seem more organic, a little messier, a little more raw, and we are certainly trying to fit in with that style. Our Snapchat show is a very polished, well edited, well-produced briefing of the day’s top stories. I mean, we are playful and have some flair there. But for TikTok, it’s much looser. It’s usually a single-subject story, and the format types are dictated by what do we think the story requires rather than conforming to one style. And I think that’s been really liberating for the Stay Tuned team, but it certainly reflects that platform and the organic style of TikTok, which is raw, not afraid to be sloppy or show rough edges. It’s not meant to be polished.

You mentioned Stay Tuned is going to start producing original programming for YouTube this fall. What will that programming be?

We’re going to look at five- to 10-minute[-long] weekly videos regularly publishing from Stay Tuned and looking at a number of topics we know that our Gen Z audience care deeply about: mental health, climate, some personal finance, identity. We will look through the lens of trending topics where we think there’s great interest from the Gen Z audience, of course. 

Some of it will be explainer in nature, human interest, human narrative. We’ll do callout formats. For instance, during the height of the pandemic, we might have done a callout to our audience on Snapchat: “Are you hiding your positive COVID tests from your schools or your parents and your teachers? Share your stories.” We’re going to probably lean into callouts a little bit more on YouTube, which is a callout-friendly format. But that will be a net-new product for Stay Tuned. Original content, really thinking about what the audience is looking for on YouTube from the brand. 

We loved producing content way back when we started for YouTube, but it’s a very tough platform to build on. And I think we feel like we’re at the point now where we’ve learned a lot more about our audience. We think there’s an opportunity to show up in a way that could be distinct and a public service. And we’re ready to grow this brand across YouTube. Ideally, it will be sometime [in] October, early November, but we’re pretty excited about the opportunity to see Stay Tuned with new content in a different light producing programming native to YouTube.

Are you standing up a specific team for YouTube as you have done with TikTok?

Yeah, in fact that seven-person team is dedicated both to TikTok and YouTube. Since we’re doing such short-form [videos] on TikTok for Stay Tuned, the approach is going to be different. Part of what we’re really interested in doing is flexing the brand itself and making sure what we do on Snapchat has a very specific value prop to that Gen Z audience as it does for TikTok and now for YouTube.

What will make YouTube feel distinct from the TikTok approach given that it’s the same team that will be working on it?

What’s really interesting is Stay Tuned on Snapchat, Stay Tuned on TikTok are relatively short video formats. As we begin to think about what is Stay Tuned in the five- to 10-minute range, it’s going to be fun to see that voice begin to expand and develop. And then we’re going to look for longer shelf life content. You can watch past episodes on Snapchat, but what we’re really excited to do is to create content we hope has some evergreen appeal that continues to be of value and interest to Gen Zers.

So you have this team working on TikTok and soon YouTube. And then you still have the Snapchat channel. There’s also a daily podcast that’s being piloted and a documentary in the works. How are the different teams that working on these different projects collaborating on a day-to-day basis to compare notes but also to figure out how they don’t step on each other’s toes?

We have an [executive producer] of the Snapchat show Lindsay Dyner, who’s just terrific. We have an EP of original social video Devan Joseph. And then on the doc side, we have a distinct EP for the digital docs as well. So part of what we’re trying to do is say, “You determine what’s best for your platform or your format.” But the ideas are shared across the team. In fact, it’s even broader than that. The Stay Tuned team is in constant contact with the reporters on NBC News Digital who may be covering the influencer economy or influencers in general, covering digital culture and producing accountability journalism around the creator economy or the platforms.

Some stories only get picked up by the Snapchat show. Other stories travel to TikTok, and we’ll see if any of those travel to YouTube once we stand up that team and get them going. Let me put it this way. We do cross-post content across our social channels. But there isn’t a feeling that it’s a must. It’s more, if we think it works for that platform, sure, let’s share the content. But we don’t do blanket cross-posting across our accounts or shows. We may do versioning, or we may find a moment from a particular story that would work on a different platform. Having EPs own the different formats or their different platforms helps a lot in making sure that we’re doing something that’s distinct and standout for that platform.

Jim Caruso, co-founder and CEO of Apollo Group, has some history with Stagwell — or at least part of its predecessor company. Apollo was incubated within Anomaly (now a Stagwell agency) around 2016 but was never owned by the agency. The two have been working together, but this represents a full merging of the companies. 

The mission, as Caruso put it, is to generate “puddles of insights” out of “oceans of data.” “Unbundling in the media and advertising ecosystem has caused a lot of specialists within data and within insights and analytics, but very few people who understand how to holistically tie data together to impact everything in brands from creative to content, to strategy to media,” explained Caruso. 

Analysts credit Stagwell for beefing up its data capabilities, even if it represents a bit of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses. “As third-party signals get harder to come by, any measures taken to enrich first-party data or streamline its use will be critical,” said Evelyn Mitchell, digital advertising and media analyst at Insider Intelligence. “Not all brands have the resources to build and maintain a robust first-party data infrastructure internally, let alone perform and activate on manual analysis. Good data plus automation to surface relevant insights adds up to an appealing product.”

The other part of Apollo’s mission, Caruso said, is to try to put data and insights gathering before the investment takes place. “Most investment actually occurs at the last mile, which is programmatic ad targeting/retargeting/remarketing — all of those things that data can do once you’ve identified someone and they’re about to purchase,” he said. “What if we put that idea on its head and said, ‘Let’s put data at the beginning of the process and made everything else smarter, not just my programmatic media buying?’”

Where Stagwell appears to have a leg up on its competitors is through the Marketing Cloud suite of products, which is designed to win business and revenue from marketers even if they aren’t clients. With SaaS/DaaS tools that marketers can use when in-housing their media efforts, Stagwell still gets a piece of the revenue. 

Abe Geiger, chief product officer, and Elspeth Rollert, CMO of Stagwell Marketing Cloud, which launched in January with a goal of hitting $75 million in revenue by 2025, said the Apollo absorption represents a big step in reaching that goal. And they are working toward making as many elements within the Marketing Cloud interoperable where it makes sense. 

“There’s so many SaaS tools out there, it’s sort of death by a thousand SaaS products,” said Geiger. “And a lot of these tools don’t talk to each other. Being able to connect the dots and make it easier to move from one part of your customer journey to another with these tools that are integrated, that at least loosely federated together, that’s a big thing we’re moving towards.” 

“You don’t want different sources of truth, right?” Rollert added. “Those tend to sit in different organizations that don’t speak to each other so everyone has their own source of truth on how a campaign performs…Those are the types of things that we’re constantly having conversations internally [to solve].”

“A SaaS to in-house market is an interesting line of business for an agency company to develop,” noted Jay Pattisall, vp and principal agency analyst with Forrester. “Based upon the limited amount of digital media in-house that opportunity could grow significantly with a creative and content use case, as nearly 95 percent of corporate in-house groups count creative service as capability.”

Privacy concerns also will exert pressure on parts of the programmatic industry, particularly open-real-time bidding (RTB) forms, said Joanna O’Connell, vp and principal analyst at Forrester. “Those forces are bearing down from many angles, and that has a material impact on one’s ability to do audience-based, data-driven, digital advertising,” she said. “Programmatic was already sort of under the microscope, around concerns of data leakage, for example, because it’s such a complicated digital supply chain, and ecosystem and there are so many players. I have this general feeling that open RTB just generally becomes less popular in favor of other forms of programmatic.”

But the general consensus among sources reached for this story is that programmatic buying, particularly the growing element of private marketplaces or direct-programmatic buying, will not feel the pinch of procurement, for reasons of performance, affordability and flexibility.

“As recessions hit, advertisers tend to cut more from least performant channels,” said Ryan Eusanio, managing director of digital activation for Omnicom Media Group. “Programmatic performs very well for advertisers, both in upper and lower funnel. We’re much more likely to see pull back on harder to quantify media such as traditional channels, or even direct media before we see reduction in programmatic.”

“Expect a sharp initial decline in programmatic spending followed by an even sharper rebound once the economic situation improves,” said Eric Haggstrom, director of forecasting at Advertiser Perceptions. “The ability to reach relevant audiences at scale and efficiently more than make up for fees associated with ad tech. Brands will still need to reach audiences in a tighter economy, but nice-to-have media investments and other fat will be cut in favor of media that can prove its value.”

Oddly enough, recessions also tend to root out waste, which Jared Belsky, CEO and co-founder of mid-market agency Acadia, doesn’t believe programmatic is. “When times are good, people don’t look between the couch cushions,” said Belsky. “What this means for programmatic is that clients will ask far more questions about the media supply chain. These questions will root out wasted dollars around data, visibility, brand safety and viewability. This will help the industry, not hurt it, even if there is a bit of pain along the way.” 

It can also both help and hurt that programmatic buying of media also offers marketers flexibility with their budgets in a few ways. “You can be on today and off tomorrow,” said one head of programmatic and digital buying at a holding company, who declined to speak on the record in order to speak more freely. “A lot of other media channels aren’t as flexible. Typically when we see recessions, we see more programmatic because of the flexibility it does allow.” 

That flexibility enables publicly traded marketers to slash marketing spend to return to the bottom line, since they have to answer to Wall Street lest their stocks get pummeled for poor results. But it also could lead to pullbacks for the same reason, noted Bounteous’ Tate, whose prior job was in programmatic investment at OMD. 

“Many Omnicom clients chose to ask, ‘What can I pull back?’ And a lot of digital got cut because digital fell under that two week out clause,” she said. “Whereas an upfront TV buy, or especially a print buy, you can’t claw that cash back … [Brands will] pull back the dollars to make their quarterly returns look better, and are willing to take a temporary hit to have fewer expenses in that quarter. Especially in cases where there’s a sales slowdown in the consumer market.”  

Whether or not programmatic rides out the recession as a necessary vehicle for investment, one vocal critic of programmatic— in part because he once worked in the field — thinks it will face negative scrutiny in the long run because of the current focus on the environmental impacts of media investment.

“I’m betting, and other people are betting, that at this time around [programmatic] doesn’t get the accelerant out of the [economic] trough,” said Tom Triscari, a programmatic consultant and author of newsletter Quo Vadis. “The trough offers a shift to strategies that are more and more prevalent through the likes of Brian O’Kelley and Scope 3 [a startup from the ad-tech veteran that helps advertisers find low-emissions ad investments] and other reporting on the carbon footprint. To me that is a very graceful exit from programmatic if you wanted to shift your budget to other areas.”

Color by numbers

A growing awareness among consumers of how their data is being used by companies is leading to changed behaviors and attitudes, acceding to privacy platform Ketch, which last week issued a report, “The Person Behind the Data,” conducted using Magna Media Trials research. Some highlights out of the 2,751-person study:

• Data collection practices impact purchase intent somewhat differently according to industry vertical: the amount of data collected concerns telecom users at 55%, while retail shoppers cited data sharing practices as their greatest concern at 44%
• While 82% were concerned how data was gathered and used, 83% of respondents said they could see value in sharing their data. Benefits include learning about new products (45%) having a personalized experience (45%) and receiving a benefit from the company (43%) 
• The length of time companies store their data impacted trust (40%) and purchase intent (52%) more than the amount of data collected, level of transparency and data-sharing practices.

Takeoff & landing

• Havas Group took a big step to consolidate its holdings, by merging its global creative unit with its Havas Health network, under the leadership of Donna Murphy, who heads the health unit. Havas Creative CEO Chris Hirst is leaving the company. Meanwhile, Havas North America enhanced its consultative powers in the U.S. by importing Gate One, a London-based management consultancy it acquired back in 2019, which specializes in digital strategy and execution.
• Accenture Song boosted its commerce smarts by acquiring The Stable, a North American commerce agency with mostly consumer clients, led by Chad Hetherington. Though terms were not disclosed, The Stable’s 400 employees will be absorbed into Accenture Song.  
• Personnel moves: GroupM tapped Dr. Brian Dashew as head of learning and development, charged with leading GroupM University, a hub for employee growth … Indie media agency/consultancy Exverus Media hired Sifat Ullah as its vp of performance media. Ullah most recently was senior director of marketing for Pharmapacks.

Direct quote

“Brand marketers are salivating over the potential audience reach of the upcoming Netflix ad-supported tier. The full reasons for them picking Microsoft (over the presumed favorites like Google and Comcast) as their ad tech and ad sales partner aren’t fully known, but it appears smart to bet on a player who doesn’t own directly competitive video assets. The big challenge for Netflix will be to ensure they’re tapping into brand budgets, not only direct-response budgets. That will require sophistication around measurement of various brand metrics. With their war chest, I’m sure they’re up for the test.”

—Chris Kelly, CEO of analytics platform Upwave, on Netflix’s surprise choice of Microsoft as its ad-sales and ad-tech partner.

Speed reading

• The biggest news story — and surprise — of the week was Netflix selecting Microsoft as its ad-sales and ad-tech partner to launch an ad-supported service. Digiday’s Seb Joseph, Tim Peterson and Ronan Shields looked at the positives and drawbacks of the partnership. 
• In the lead story of the latest Media Briefing, Digiday media reporter Sara Guaglione investigates whether Black-owned media will feel the sting of recession, after brands and agencies made commitments to spend on them. 
• I wrote about an up-and-coming independent media agency, Mediastruction, that’s built its reputation on data science and attribution with mid-market clients.