Author: rssmasher

The 2018 World Cup has featured an exciting range of upsets and contenders, but some World Cup marketers see early signs of trouble thanks to GDPR throwing a wrench into digital advertising and the absence of the US team. GDPR, which became law less than a month before the soccer tournament, is especially painful for… Continue reading »

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The company’s new CEO is Xu Ziyang, the former head of the company’s business in Germany. ZTE also named a new chief financial officer, as well as a new chief technology officer.

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Lux Narayan, co-founder and CEO at Unmetric. Data is often likened to oil, but the similarities go deeper than you might think. The first oil drills in North America were… Continue reading »

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Google and Facebook are making a big show of demonstrating their interest in helping news publishers. Subscriptions are a good way for them to do this; subscription publishers include powerful news outlets that are good for platforms to cozy up to, and it also lets the platforms show they’re looking out for high-quality news, especially after taking major heat for letting fake news spread on their platforms.

To that end, Google and Facebook — the tech companies that so far have gone the furthest in working with publishers — have rolled out tools to let publishers sell subscriptions through their platforms. These initiatives are long in coming, but it’s too soon to pop the Champagne just yet. Both are limited to a handful of publishers — Subscribe with Google rolled out in April with 17 publishers, while Facebook has been testing its subscription tool with a dozen publishers. Neither has given a time frame for when those tools will be available to all publishers.

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“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community. Today’s column is written by Devlin Jefferson, vice president of product at Operative. Bauer Xcel recently gave publishers advice about working directly with brands that take programmatic in-house. Note that the advice was written by Bauer’s new in-house programmatic… Continue reading »

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The Guardian is finding when it comes to Instagram, less is more — at least when it comes to how polished videos are.

Two months ago the Guardian started tracking and analyzing its Instagram audience data on a more granular basis, to test what formats and topics it should develop and evolve and what should be scrapped. The upshot: video drives more new followers than static posts, but time and resources spent on creating polished Instagram videos, simply aren’t worth the pay-off.

After crunching data, the Guardian found that videos heavily produced videos with scripts and shot in a studio and professionally edited were simply not worth the effort. (Example: a short video series in which a Guardian presenter gave daily updates on gender pay gap-related news).

“It was just too laborious for the return on investment,” said Eleni Stefanou, acting social platforms editor at the Guardian.

Less labor-intensive posts have been introduced instead — static graphics or quick video explainers on news topics — have proved more popular. The average completion rate for these explainers is 45 percent, according to the publisher though it wouldn’t break out exact numbers.

These explainers will typically be about 15 slides that delve into topics such as the Russia spy poisoning story that dominate headlines through March. The Guardian is publishing around two of these a week and plans to increase its output in coming weeks. It will also keep its Instagram Stories series such as “Fake or For Real,” which were introduced earlier this year as a method of building return viewing.

“What the Guardian publishes now feel much more like news stories that are very much the culture of the internet — a it more like BuzzFeed’s style,” said Charlie Cottrell, head of editorial at agency We Are Social. “The language and use of emoji, and more low-fi sets, having younger presenters from all different kinds of backgrounds that will likely resonate more with the young audience they want to reach. The Guardian is a publisher and a brand that people have a very strong emotive relationship with.”

The publisher’s five-person social media team now meets daily to talk through the week’s Instagram metrics, and get under the skin of what works and what doesn’t.

The channel has already proved a useful marketing vehicle for driving traffic to its website, and reaching new readers. In the last four months the publisher’s main Instagram account has grown from 860,000 to 1 million followers, and 80 percent of those followers are new to the Guardian, according to the publisher. Its Royal Wedding Instagram coverage, which included a mix of static images, Instagram Stories, and other videos attracted 30,000 more followers within 24 hours. The Guardian Instagram account typically adds between 500 and 1,000 new followers a day, according to the publisher.

Source: NewsWhip

Of course, fuzzy engagement metrics aren’t enough these days. Reader revenue has become a core pillar of the Guardian’s business model, and as such, figuring out whether Instagram can become a useful vehicle for driving paid memberships, is also a priority. “We want to crack how we can use Instagram to drive membership at some point,” said Stefanou.

Options that it will consider include putting calls-to-actions into Instagram posts, though the publisher is wary of doing so prematurely. Before that the publisher is more likely to try more indirect methods, such as correlating whether people become members on its main website, after clicking through from an Instagram videos or regular posts. Currently, it’s not possible to measure that.

“That will be the next step,”” said Stefanou. “What we have managed to do is track all the links we can see from Google Analytics and our Ophan [analytics] software. We can see the behavior of the audience who land on the page, but it’s hard to track the conversion. We can’t see what they do after they land on the page.”

“Younger audiences have grown up in an environment that’s free, so the content has to be relevant and important to them, if they’re to build that relationship with the Guardian,” said Cottrell. “It’s about building relevance with an audience and helping them understand why good journalism should be paid for. The content has to be relevant and important to them in order to start building that relationship.”

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Amazon’s livestream video subscription product, Amazon Channels, has been live in the U.K. and Germany since May 2017, and the platform is inching closer to building up its linear broadcast ad offering. But it will need to lure more broadcasters with attractive deals to beef up its content catalog and drive new subscribers.

Amazon Channels gives Prime subscribers access to channel content for additional costs ranging from £1.49 ($1.97) to £9.99 ($13.22) a month. Since its launch last year in the U.K., Amazon has added another 30 channels, making 70 in total, according to the platform. The most recognizable at launch were Discovery, Eurosport Player and ITV Hub+. Some of these channels come with ads in the feed, which aren’t sold by Amazon, while Amazon shares the monthly subscription fee with the channel, the cut varies depending on the partner, according to people familiar with the matter.

Amazon hasn’t disclosed how many U.K viewers it has to its video service but according to estimates by Ampere Analysis, at the end of 2017, Amazon Prime Video had 6 million subscribers in the U.K. and 8 million subscribers in Germany (39 million in the U.S.).

Currently, all Amazon Video is accessed and monetized through monthly subscriptions. In London, the company is hiring an exec to work with European broadcasters and develop Amazon Channel’s free and advertising-funded channels. As it stands, there is a long tail of niche channels on the platform, including, for instance, Pongalo Next (Latin American movies and series) and Horse & Country Play (“the home of equestrianism”). Getting more free-to-air content on the platform will strengthen Amazon’s position and bring in more audiences from traditional TV and platforms like Netflix, YouTube or Facebook Watch, according to experts.

“This is Amazon’s first push into the free-to-view space,” said Richard Broughton, director at Ampere Analysis. “The broadcasters have an advantage, they have the content that Amazon wants.”

For broadcasters looking to diversify beyond linear ad revenue, which can be volatile, monthly subscriptions fees from Amazon, no matter how many viewers it gets, could seem compelling. As does the prospect of reaching more global viewers who aren’t tuning into linear broadcast, as long as they retain some exclusive content and aren’t cannibalizing direct access to their channel less expensively and more easily by other means, said Dino Myers Lamptey, managing director at agency MullenLowe Mediahub.

U.K. and European broadcasters have typically been wary of ceding distribution, audience data collection and monetization prospects to digital platforms. Added to that, video on demand is an area traditional broadcasters have long dominated, controlling the ad rates in the process. Although there is a large potential to extend their audiences further through Amazon’s reach, the platform isn’t bringing in huge numbers for individual content, according to sources who work with channel broadcasters. That’s partly because there’s so much of it and so little curated live appointment-to-view programming. 

According to a panel survey from Ampere Analysis, 3 percent of Amazon Prime subscribers use Amazon Channels to watch Discovery, while 2 percent use it to watch Eurosport.

“For most European broadcasters the core free-to-air business is still relatively robust, supplemented by growing video-on-demand ad revenue from their own over-the-top services,” said Matti Littunen, senior research analyst at Enders Analysis. “They are much less desperate than publishers to jump at every partnership opportunity. The deal would have to be very sweet in terms of promotion of content, revenue share and transparency. No one wants to strengthen Amazon’s gatekeeper position any further,” he added.

Amazon has ambitions to grow its ad-funded channels in Europe, and while the e-commerce giant is not yet talking to media agencies about an evolved ad offering for Amazon Prime Video, it’s clearly in the cards, according to ad buyers.

Analysts agree that while Amazon’s ad execution is improving, it still has a way to go. For years, it’s been selling video inventory through slots in Prime to cross-promote its own content, and through video ad units across other areas of the Amazon network for other advertisers. In the fourth quarter of 2017, the ad business grew to about $1.7 billion (£1.3 billion), up about 60 percent year over year.

More popular content, plus its push into sports content and streaming Premier League football games, will make Amazon’s play for selling livestreamed inventory more compelling to advertisers, as well as make Amazon’s other ad products stronger, as advertisers have more options for cross-channel campaigns.

An Amazon spokesperson was unable to comment on whether Amazon will sell ads within broadcaster livestreamed content within Channels, or whether this will remain with the broadcaster and a monthly revenue share would continue as the model.

“Even the broadcasters who are fine to partner with the U.S. platforms on subscriptions are hesitant to give up ad inventory,” said Littunen, adding that linear viewing needs to plummet further for European broadcasters to allow Amazon to sell ads on their programs.

“To compete in the same arena [as TV] and start to move toward an ad-funded model, they will need to reassure agencies and brands that they are working to a common measurement model,” said Liz Duff, head of media and investment at Total Media. After Amazon streamed NFL content on Amazon Channels in the U.S. last year, the platform quoted 1.9 million viewers, but average viewing times went down to 372,000 people who watched for over 30 seconds, added Duff.

Amazon Channel broadcasters see how many subscribers they get, but visibility into which shows’ audiences tune into is slim. “Amazon has been cagey about sharing that information,” said Myers Lamptey.

Even so, ad revenue will likely be a secondary focus for Amazon, which will prioritize ramping up video content to build subscribers. People who watch Prime Video renew their Prime memberships and convert from free trials at higher rates, according to Amazon. The platform has data scientists working on how video impacts shopping behavior. For every new Prime subscriber, Amazon makes an incremental margin, which is used to subsidize video content acquisitions. And with $5 billion (£3.8 billion) to spend on content, still shy of Netflix’s $8 billion ($6.1 billion), it has the scope to compete with TV stations and over-the-top players.

“This is really all about the battle over who aggregates whom,” said Ben Keen, chairman of TV drama consultancy MediaXchange, “and Amazon is determined to be a winner.”

The post One year in: How Amazon is expanding its pay TV service in Europe appeared first on Digiday.

When Bayer began searching for an analytics and programmatic lead for its team of internal strategists in mid-2017, Joshua Palau, vp of digital strategy and platforms at the pharma giant, reviewed 25 applicants, but only three qualified to advance to the interview stage. Hiring is proving to be a challenge for Bayer, as it seeks to take more marketing in-house and more than double its existing 10-person team by the end of the year.

“We have a strong opinion on the types of people we want, and those are the people who understand how these marketplaces work,” said Palau. “It’s a combination of having people who not only have the right skill set but also client-side experience. Clients — especially ones as big and established as Bayer — can be very different if you came from a startup or agency, so cultural fit becomes a bigger consideration sometimes.”

Like Bayer, companies bringing more marketing resources in-house are struggling to find the talent they need, with a range of reasons why, from making sure a person fits the culture to archaic human resources systems to finding talent outside of a few coastal cities.

Tired internal operations can play a big part in delaying the hiring process. When it comes to recruiting for teams, some companies have a general HR department that recruits for the company as a whole but lack a person or team dedicated to finding people specifically for the internal agency. This leads agency heads to resort to their own internal networks to find the people they need. While this might be effective, one executive, who asked for anonymity, said a single post to LinkedIn asking for referrals returned at least 10 potential options. This person said their network is siloed from all varying degrees of talent such as junior talent.

Even The Wonderful Company, whose internal full-service agency has existed for 11 years working on the company’s portfolio of brands including Fiji Water, Teleflora and Wonderful Pistachios, and has talent seeking it out, has needed to separate its recruiting efforts from the company’s HR department, according to Michael Perdigao, president at The Wonderful Company and head of Wonderful Agency.

Perdigao said the company’s HR department didn’t “understand the creative needs” of the agency when it came to hiring media buyers and creatives. So, a year and a half ago, the agency hired Marisa Ruiz to head up recruiting efforts for the internal agency alone. Her background as a recruiter at several ad agencies, including senior talent acquisition manager at SapientRazorfish and talent director at Havas Worldwide, gives her a network of contacts she pulls from to find the right talent.

“It makes it a lot more efficient to have someone devoted to talent acquisition in our space,” said Perdigao. Today, of the 150 people who work at Wonderful Agency, 95 percent come from traditional ad agencies, said Perdigao.

Still, not all companies are interested in hiring from agencies anymore, believing they no longer bring in the best talent. While this is motivation to move in-house, it also cuts out an additional path for talent discovery. One executive marketer who works at a national company claims that platforms and tech companies like Apple, Facebook and Google get the best digital and media talent, so “why even look at ad agencies anymore?” The problem then becomes competing with the high paychecks and other incentives like shares tech companies often give employees, this person said.

The administrative work behind the hiring process also hinders lot of companies. An executive at a large international company pointed to speed as a major factor in what is holding up their company from hiring in-house positions they need, saying that hiring even five people in search by the end of the year would be remarkable with all the paperwork the company would have to execute initially and then continue to manage.

Another issue that shouldn’t be overlooked is location. Companies that are not located in major cities like New York and Los Angeles are finding it significantly harder to find the talent they need for any open positions on their in-house teams.

One marketer, who is recruiting for an international company’s new in-house team for both media buying and planning roles and creative roles, said that even being based in New Jersey with its proximity to New York is a challenge. “While I do have people on my team who love working out here because they don’t have to commute to the city,” said this person, “there’s still a lot of people who want to live and work in New York.”

The competition for top talent, even in avenues beyond in-house agencies, has been pushing companies, which have strategically grown away from the spotlight, into the central hubs of major cities. It’s a primary reason why McDonald’s moved its headquarters in June from a suburb outside Chicago back to the city after 47 years. At the opening, McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook welcomed McDonald’s employees, saying, “Now that you’re here, we’re not letting you go ever again.” And in May, GE moved away from the Connecticut suburbs to Boston in an effort to be closer to graduating students.

Of course, having a central location is also a double-edged sword. Companies located in the heart of a city have to face a larger swath of competition. Wonderful Agency, for example, is not only working to win talent from other ad agencies in Los Angeles but also from movie studios and entertainment companies. “It magnifies the fight for talent,” said Perdigao. “There’s just a lot more opportunities for good creative people to find a home.”

At the same time, being in Los Angeles gives the company an advantage when hiring people out of state or out of country. “It doesn’t seem so scary to move to a big market because, if for any reason things didn’t work out here,” said Perdigao, “they’re in a space that affords them other opportunities.”

The post Brands wanting to handle more marketing internally find staffing challenges appeared first on Digiday.

Wired has launched its first streaming channel to reach people who are spending more time in over-the-top video environments.

Launched on July 1, Wired’s streaming channel is available on Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Android TV. The service will also launch on Roku in the next week, the publisher said. Wired’s channel will be the first of several streaming video channels planned by parent Condé Nast, which announced at its NewFronts earlier this year that it will create channels for Wired and, in 2019, GQ and Bon Appétit.

At launch, Wired’s channel features the most popular videos and shows from Wired.com and the publisher’s YouTube channel, including shows such as “Autocomplete Interviews,” “Almost Impossible” and “Technique Critique.” As Wired nears its 25th anniversary later this year, the publication will roll out more programming made specifically for the streaming channel. Licensed movies and TV shows will round out the library.

Condé Nast’s decision to launch streaming video channels for some of its media properties was driven in part by growing consumer adoption of connected TV devices, said Kim Kelleher, Condé Nast’s chief brand officer for Wired Media Group, GQ, Pitchfork and Golf Digest.

“OTT has become a very viable and growing option for people who want a TV experience in an on-demand way,” said Kelleher. “For us as a content company, but specifically for Wired as a brand, to not take part in this opportunity would be a huge miss.”

There are 14.1 million OTT-only households in the U.S., according to a report from the Video Advertising Bureau released earlier this year. That’s triple the number of households from five years ago, but still just 11 percent of all U.S. TV households today.

Even with growing consumer adoption and usage of connected TV devices, it’s still difficult for small and mid-tier streaming channels to get noticed on these platforms. Roku alone offers more than 5,000 channels across all categories, which makes discoverability tough.

“Wired is fortunate that it’s a big-enough name,” said Alan Wolk, lead analyst for consulting firm TVRev. “I don’t know if enough people associate it with video programming, but their fans and people who are curious about tech will give it a shot — that’s the benefit of having a solid brand.”

Kelleher is confident in Wired’s ability to draw in OTT viewers as well as getting them to stick around. She points to the success that Wired has seen on YouTube, where it now has 2.3 million subscribers and 688 million video views per year. Maybe more importantly, Wired is getting people to stick around and spend time with its YouTube videos. “Technique Critique,” for instance, has an average watch time of nearly 11 minutes (episodes of the show range from 16 minutes to 29 minutes); the average watch time for “Autocomplete Interviews,” which has episodes ranging from four to six minutes, is well over four minutes, the company said.

As part of Condé Nast’s deals with Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, Roku and Android TV, the connected TV platforms have also committed to marketing and promoting the Wired channel on their platforms, Kelleher said.

“[The TV platforms] are looking for reputable, quality content and brands that can help define their platforms and draw in viewers,” she said.

Wired’s OTT channel will be free and ad-supported. Announced at Condé Nast’s NewFronts presentation, the publisher said it was able to land four launch sponsors: Audi, HP, Quicken Loans and Verizon. These four sponsors will run ads on the channel through mid-September, Kelleher said.

Many publishers — and even some phone companies — build over-the-top streaming businesses in the hopes that these “premium, well-lit” environments will translate into ad revenue. That hasn’t always worked out.

But the allure of ad dollars was not the biggest reason Wired launched a streaming channel, Kelleher said. “This was something we had anticipated launching for our viewers — it felt like a natural extension of our editorial content,” she said. “It was later in the process that we decided to package it and bring it to market — and we’ve seen immediate interest from advertisers — but that wasn’t the catalyst.”

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