Author: rssmasher

The Trade Desk is using artificial intelligence to give marketers a clearer picture of where their programmatic dollars actually go. The ad platform announced three new tools on Tuesday meant to simplify the programmatic buying process and better predict who exactly advertisers can expect to reach ahead of each campaign. The rollout comes as brands…

The Trade Desk on Tuesday released a campaign planning tool called Planner. Powered by company’s first branded AI product, called Koa, which was also released Tuesday, Planner is designed to drive pre-campaign and in-flight optimization. The vendor hopes the two products will accelerate spend in emerging categories such as streaming audio and connected TV and… Continue reading »

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Consultants, in-housing and other negative talk about the agency business doesn’t bother IPG CEO Michael Roth. Rather, he sees it as a validation of his sector. “Clients are faced with disparate questions about how to navigate their dollars,” he said. “Our job is to help them do that.” IPG, which outperformed its peer set in… Continue reading »

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“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 Evan Rutchik, general manager at Ogury US. When app publishers advertise their platform on other apps to increase their own visitors, they’re often just trading app audiences and not growing… Continue reading »

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 Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The GDPR Pipe Cleaner Programmatic ad spend has rebounded a bit in Europe after contracting a month ago when GDPR came into effect. Clients cut programmatic by as much as 50% in the days following enforcement, since many publishers lacked consent technology and advertisers… Continue reading »

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CNN International wants in on the consultancy game.

The media owner has created a new consultancy unit, called CNN Reach, based out of its London office. The goal: Help clients plan and create campaign content; advise on and execute distribution and media buying both on and off its own platforms; and offer first-, second- and third-party audience targeting across CNN and its parent company Turner’s portfolio.

CNN International already has a branded content studio, which now accounts for 60 percent of its revenue. But to maintain growth, the media owner felt it must widen its services capabilities. Previously, CNN International hadn’t had a centralized unit to manage campaigns from conception to execution, as well as audience targeting analysis and media planning. CNN International has hired a four-person team to launch Reach that will be dedicated to the division, but it plans to grow that head count, though it wouldn’t reveal by how many.

“It’s imperative we continue to evolve the [business] model like this,” said Rob Bradley, vp of digital commercial strategy and revenue at CNN International. “We can’t just be media companies anymore, and this is one step toward that. If you look at the rise of the management consultancies in this space and who they are hiring, it’s people from media owners and media agencies because we’re well-placed to offer these services.”

The CNN Reach team will specialize in data and analytics so it can build custom audience segments for targeting across CNN International properties as well as those on social platforms and voice-based devices like Amazon Alexa. CNN Reach will also manage campaigns and optimize them on the fly depending on what’s working. If CNN data shows a piece of content isn’t working on a particular platform, the team can switch courses or create new content that works on a different platform, rather than stick rigidly to fulfilling a fixed amount of bought impressions being allocated to one platform, for example.

CNN Reach, led by Leo Urushibata, CNN’s director of content optimization, will sit within CNN International’s commercial team. The rest of the team will share skill sets — including content strategy, planning, paid media buyers and digital marketers, and audience development — will be trained in what kind of content has worked well on CNN International properties as well as those off-site like social platforms. The team will also draw on CNN editorial and staff members who have experience testing content for distribution channels tested by CNN editorial and branded content teams, whether across social apps or voice-activated devices like Alexa, to advise clients on what works and what doesn’t, according to Bradley.

Video campaigns will be sold on a cost-per-view basis. The team will also advise clients on what kind of content should be created for campaigns and draw on resources across the London office to assist.

Publishers have tried to mimic the agency model with the creation of branded content studios in order to diversify revenue streams beyond standard digital advertising — with mixed success. By developing a dedicated consultancy business, CNN International puts itself, in theory, even closer to competing as an agency. However, Bradley stressed that’s not the intention of the new unit.

“CNN Reach will bring in new clients and new incremental revenue,” he said. “The kind of insights we’ll give to clients and agencies will bring us much closer to them. The aim is to give them real business value beyond just delivering the [campaign] message.

“The agency will have a view across what else the client is doing and across how what they’re doing with us compares to their competitors. It’s different to what some media owners are saying, which is that they’re eating agency business. This is just as much for agencies as it is for brands direct.”

CNN Reach is an indicator of how media agencies and media owners are increasingly working in partnership rather than transactionally, and is therefore welcomed, said Liz Duff, head of media and investment for media agency Total Media.

“For the CNN offering, it’s a good way for them to combine their content with data and provide integration across their platforms,” Duff said. “Media owners have a great level of understanding and data about their audiences, so by being closely involved in major campaigns, all parties will be able to benefit from these insights.”

That said, a service like CNN Reach won’t come cheaply. Agencies will want hard evidence of the return before jumping in. “With budgets under pressure, adding an additional consultancy fee will need rigorous justification,” Duff said. “We would need to see tangible benefits in terms of quality of offering, ease of process, efficiencies and scale. The use of Reach would need to enhance the agency and client relationship rather than complicate it.”

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Digital video creators’ frustrations with YouTube over their videos being demonetized and not always reaching their audiences has created an opening for competing platforms like Facebook and Instagram to poach them. Those rival platforms may miss the opportunity unless they put up more money, though.

With 8.8 million subscribers to his main YouTube channel, lifestyle vlogger Joey Graceffa has been able to make a living from the platform. YouTube also financed three seasons of his original show, “Escape the Night,” which premiered its third season on YouTube’s subscription-only tier, YouTube Premium, on June 21. But YouTube’s constant algorithm changes can lead to lower view counts for Graceffa’s videos, sometimes his videos don’t appear in his subscribers’ feeds, and YouTube doesn’t communicate enough with its top creators, he said.

Graceffa isn’t alone in his gripes. “It’s so frustrating,” said Cody Ko, a comedian with 1.1 million subscribers on YouTube. Recently, Ko has been running up against YouTube’s crackdown on running ads on videos considered unsafe for advertisers. YouTube would initially run ads against his videos, then yank them for reasons unclear to Ko, who said he filled out all the video-related information to help YouTube’s automated system understand the video’s content.

“I didn’t even have the chance to try and change the video [to make it more compliant with YouTube’s standards], but then all of a sudden the monetization will come back an hour later,” he said. “That’s very demotivating.”

YouTube has more competition for creators than ever. Facebook and Facebook-owned Instagram, in particular, made two moves last week to each make more direct runs at YouTube. Facebook opened up its video section Watch to videos from any page, including creators’. Instagram released IGTV, where users can post videos up to an hour long. And Amazon’s Twitch appears to be ramping up its creator charm offensive.

Facebook does let some creators make money by attaching pre-roll and mid-rolls ads to their videos. Digital video creator Nuseir Yassin said he expects to make more than $300,000 this year in this way on his Facebook Watch show, “Nas Daily.” Twitter and Twitch also share ad revenue this way, and Snapchat revealed last week that it plans to start doing the same. Instagram doesn’t share ad revenue with creators, but lets them publish sponsored posts and keep all the money.

But while 1.45 billion people use Facebook every day, the platform does not especially resonate with YouTube’s core audience of 20-somethings and younger. For a video to succeed on Facebook, “you’ve gotta get 40-year-olds to share it,” said Ko. Twitter’s advertising program is “not at the level of what YouTube is offering,” said Graceffa. Twitch, meanwhile, is still considered a livestreaming platform for gaming creators, and Snapchat’s advertising program for creators is still in the experimental stage.

Instagram’s audience is closer to YouTube’s than Facebook’s is. However, until Instagram starts paying creators to post to IGTV or letting them monetize those videos through ads, creators are unlikely to make videos for it.

Other creators are willing to overlook the lack of financial incentive, but only so much. Lifestyle vlogger Remi Cruz, whose YouTube channel counts 2.3 million subscribers, plans to post videos to IGTV, but only teaser videos that link to the full version on her YouTube channel. “Since I can’t monetize on it and this is my job, right now it’s not a huge priority for me,” said Cruz.

On the flip side, since creators can still make money on YouTube, they don’t plan on going anywhere. Creators like Cruz, Ko and Graceffa are often one-person operations, unlike major media companies that can afford to experiment. “While there is a lot of negative, the positive outweighs that with what they do offer,” said Graceffa, of YouTube’s ad program and video distribution infrastructure.

And YouTube continues to offer them more reasons to stay, easing creators’ irritations with the platform. Last week, the platform announced that creators with more than 100,000 subscribers can sell monthly subscriptions to their channels. Frustrated as Ko has become with YouTube’s advertising program, he has found workarounds, such as selling merchandise through his YouTube channel and starting an ad-supported podcast that he also distributes in video form on YouTube.

“I’ve got to stay focused on YouTube,” Ko said. “It’s working well, so it doesn’t make sense to move over to IGTV.”

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The post ‘It’s so frustrating’: YouTube’s top creators have gripes but few better options appeared first on Digiday.

AT&T will soon fully own Otter Media, its $500 million streaming video joint venture with The Chernin Group. Within that group, AT&T will own a distribution platform that gives the telecommunications giant the chance to become a bigger player in a growing area for TV networks and digital video programmers: direct-to-consumer streaming channels.

Vrv, a subscription streaming video distribution platform owned by Otter Media, is in discussions with traditional TV programmers to bring some of their cable TV channels to the platform, according to multiple sources. For $10 per month, Vrv offers a bundle of a dozen channels from digital companies such as the Otter Media-owned Crunchyroll and Rooster Teeth, as well as external programming partners such as AMC Networks (for its horror service Shudder), DramaFever and Frederator (for its animation channel Cartoon Hangover). Users can also subscribe to and pay for individual channels instead of the bundle.

“Some of these networks want to build better direct-to-consumer relationships, which [Vrv] can offer them,” said one source.

A spokesperson for Vrv wouldn’t comment on the platform’s discussions with more traditional TV programmers. Arlen Marmel, gm of Vrv, said that even if Vrv expands its channel lineup, the focus will remain on video programmers that make sense for its core audience of gaming, anime, animation, horror and sci-fi fans.

“Today, we are hyperfocused on the sci-fi, gaming, anime and animation audience,” said Marmel. “We’ll see how that evolves, but we do not have the intention of being in a general market [for all types of streaming video channels].”

Vrv does present Otter Media — and soon AT&T, which plans to buy out The Chernin Group’s stake in the digital holding company, as Digiday has reported — an opportunity in an area that Amazon, Apple and Roku are keying in on. With its Prime Video Channels program, Amazon has become a significant source of subscription revenue for TV networks and digital publishers. Its success is propelling competitors, including Apple and Roku, to reportedly invest in a marketplace for users to subscribe to multiple channels at once.

AT&T has already become a significant player in the traditional TV bundle, with its acquisition of DirecTV, and the growing crop of streaming TV bundles, with its DirecTV Now and WatchTV products. By buying all of Otter Media and making investments in direct-to-consumer streaming apps, AT&T “wants it all when it comes to video,” and not just the digital video ad market primarily controlled by Google and Facebook, said Peter Csathy, founder of digital media consulting firm Creatv Media.

“They already have full bundles and skinny bundles, so what’s next? Taking a stab at the ‘channel store’ strategy of Amazon and Roku, which offer no bundles at all, but instead offer individual subscriptions all conveniently accessed through one app and on one bill,” said Csathy.

Marmel stressed that Vrv is not looking to take Amazon on directly — yet. His focus is on building a “mass niche” service and helping programming partners figure out how to make money beyond subscription and advertising dollars. As Crunchyroll grows its merchandising, video game publishing and events businesses, Vrv wants to use what it learns to support other channel partners interested in exploring these areas, Marmel said. These are also areas that Amazon, Roku and others are not pursuing, which allows Vrv to remain differentiated.

Still, Vrv, AT&T and Otter Media have the infrastructure in place to become a meaningful distributor for video programmers — even if the initial focus is on niche services. A Vrv spokesperson wouldn’t say how many subscribers the platform has, but said the platform has more than 3 million registered users and has generated more than 3.5 billion minutes watched to date. (Vrv collects 30 percent of ad and subscription revenue and also pays a fixed fee for channels that are included in the $10 bundle.)

Marmel did not rule out the possibility of pursuing other communities outside of its current core by taking advantage of Vrv’s underlying infrastructure. This would likely come under a different media brand and happen several years down the road, he said.

“I don’t know if you want to stretch the brand too far,” he said. “But if you believe that we can succeed at this notion of creating value for specialty channels in an increasingly specialized world, then there’s no reason to limit that to just fans of anime, sci-fi and gaming — but you have to be thoughtful about it.”

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