Author: rssmasher

Snapchat still appeals to media companies looking to find young audiences for their content, but it can be hard to make money there. Publishers that have editions on Snapchat’s 3-year-old Discover section have complained about the difficulty selling ads there; CNN pulled the plug on its news show, “The Update,” last year after four months.

Top partner NBCUniversal (also a Snap investor) won’t discuss profitability, but said it’s making “real money” on the app, including tens of millions from its Olympics-related content and more than a million dollars from E!’s “The Rundown,” its first show. Aside from the fact that NBCU sells the ads itself, a key to its results is that it develops the shows centrally from the NBCU Digital Content Lab, a group that NBCU formed a year ago to fuel its broad partnership with the app. The lab, which ranges from 12 to 30 people depending on production needs, develops Discover content based on existing NBCU shows and original concepts and is an outlier among Snapchat partners in taking this centralized approach.

In September 2016, NBCU launched its first original Discover show, “The Rundown,” a lighthearted take on big pop culture stories. It wanted to do more, but realized that hiring Snapchat teams for each individual network would easily run up to 100 people.

“We realized it really is a different skill set than to produce a TV show, so we realized we should build out a studio,” said Maggie Suniewick, president of NBCU Digital Enterprises, who manages NBCU’s digital partnerships and investments.

Bryce Kristensen, a vp at E! who had been handling its relationships with social platforms, was named head of the lab. He hired a staff of development managers, editors and producers who were specialists in taking the DNA and raw material from E!, Oxygen, Bravo, NBC News and the like and translating them into the specific kind of content Snapchat wanted, with the right tone, pacing and graphics. (“You only have one shot with this audience,” Kristensen said.) A dedicated NBCU partnerships sales team sells ads for the content that the lab produces.

Having the ability to draft off existing brands and their video and photo output makes producing these shows efficient. At the lower end, episodes of “The Rundown” cost a thrifty $10,000 each; at 4 million views per episode in March, that’s under a penny a view. “If we didn’t have this group, these Snapchat shows would cost a lot more,” said John Najarian, evp and gm of E news and digital, who oversees Kristensen’s team. (A couple shows like “The Voice on Snapchat” and “The Rundown” have their own staffs, but the lab still advises on them.)

As it built its relationship with Snapchat, NBCU also saw the lab as a way to limit the number of people Snapchat dealt with from the media company.

The lab is part of an expansive relationship between NBCU and Snapchat. In 2016, NBCU was the first media partner to make a Snapchat “show,” the app’s attempt at a TV-like format for Discover. The result, “The Voice on Snapchat,” an adaptation of the NBC singing competition “The Voice,” was nominated for an Emmy. In 2017, NBCU invested $500 million in Snap as part of its initial public offering. In the fall of that year, NBCU and Snap announced they would co-create a digital studio in Santa Monica, California, separate from Kristensen’s team, to make more original Snapchat shows. Today, NBCU is Snapchat’s biggest producer of shows.

NBCU saw that audiences are leaving TV in droves, so it bet big on Snapchat, said Nick Cicero, CEO of Delmondo, which provides Snapchat analytics to Discover publishers. But media companies have gone from viewing social media as a place to promote their existing content to using it to launch entirely new programming, where the costs are lower.

“If we were going to launch the next ‘Friends,’ maybe it could be on Snapchat; ‘Stay Tuned’ could be their next cable franchise,” he said.

Like any platform, Snap’s relationship with publishers has its ups and downs. Some say Snapchat’s curated approach is good for established publishers. But the relationship has been strained, as some publishers say it’s hard to make money on their content there and Snapchat’s recent redesign has negatively affected their traffic.

NBCU insists that it values its relationship with Snapchat, but it doesn’t just want to churn out shows based on existing series and just for Snapchat; it also wants to incubate brand-new shows that start on places like Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, and could make their way to TV one day.

Today, roughly two-thirds of the lab’s output is tied to existing shows in the NBCU portfolio. The goal is to shift that balance in favor of more original concepts, like “The Rundown”; “Face Forward,” a beauty makeover show; and the forthcoming “How Far Will You Go,” which could be described as game show-meets-“Jackass: The Movie.” The World Cup this summer, with its global, bilingual appeal, will be the ideal showcase for this expansive approach; NBCU will produce World Cup shows that run across Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook.

“The ultimate plan is, we’re creating new IP,” Suniewick said. “Snap is unique, but with shows that make sense, we’ll expand to other platforms as well.” “‘Comedians in Cars [Getting Coffee]’ started as a digital show,” Kristensen said hopefully. “Maybe we could start something that a network would want.”

The post How NBCU’s specialized unit makes shows for Snapchat and beyond appeared first on Digiday.

There’s nothing like a deadline to spur action. The May 25 date for enforcement of the General Data Protection Regulation has led to a flurry of activity, as players large and small look to get compliant.

While attention is squarely on Facebook’s data practices, Google has raised concerns among several publishers with how it plans to make its ad services GDPR-compliant. In late March, Google announced that it will require publishers to take “extra steps” in obtaining their consent from users for the use of Google’s ad services. As part of its approach, Google has asked to be a “co-controller” of data, along with the publisher.

The idea of a co-controller scenario with Google or any other company when it comes to an asset as precious as a publisher’s audience data isn’t likely to be a popular one for any publisher. Not when first-party audience data is the lifeblood of both product and commercial sustainability. The reason Google wants this status is because under GDPR law, a “controller” is the company that determines how the personal data will be processed.

For some time now, the GDPR has been recognized by most publishers as a chance to regain their place as the custodians of audience data. That optimism is starting to falter. Some publishers have expressed frustration that players with a dominant market position are skirting the whole premise of the GDPR — to course-correct some of the bad practices that have been allowed to persist in digital advertising. “The policy work around the GDPR is not intended to allow the status quo to perpetuate. We all need to act responsibly, and we certainly did not expect it to be used to try and steal more value from publishers,” said a different publisher executive.

“This is a commercial agenda that’s being wrapped up in a GDPR and privacy-language narrative, but it looks very much like large vendors seeking to steal ground,” said the same publisher executive.

For others, it’s more that the timing is suspicious. “It would have been best to have all these conversations last year, not with weeks before the deadline,” said a publishing executive. “It’s put publishers in a bit of a tricky situation, as they look to protect themselves and ensure they can still keep working with the ad tech partners they rely on.”

Even in Germany, where publishers have been far more concerned about the potential ePrivacy Regulation’s arrival than the GDPR, Google’s latest updates have caused consternation. “Many publishers in Germany are currently unsettled by the Google push because detailed information is missing,” said Oliver von Wersch, independent publisher consultant and former Gruner + Jahr executive, “and because the legal understanding of Google toward consent under GDPR is not shared by the publishers.”

Getting large businesses compliant with the GDPR is a highly complex, arduous undertaking. The vagueness in the law around exactly how the law will be enforced hasn’t helped expedite businesses strategies on it. It’s also meant that interpretations of what’s allowed under the law are still totally confused and differ largely across the industry. The result is that everyone is rushing to update products and alter contracts that cover their own liability, to get their businesses compliant in a way that can secure their own revenue streams under the GDPR, and in the process, some publishers feel they are being thrown under the bus. GroupM is also in discussions with publishers over the terms of its own data protection contract recently pushed out to publisher partners.

The premise of the GDPR is to give consumers more transparency and control over how their personal data is used. It should, in theory, put premium publishers in a very strong position. “Because GDPR is likely to scale back the Wild West of data collection by ad tech companies and the duopoly, premium publishers are in a uniquely strong position by virtue of their direct, trusted relationships with consumers,” said Jason Kint, CEO of publisher trade body Digital Content Next.

“These ridiculous and far-fetched proposals from Google and GroupM are last-minute, desperate attempts to preserve their business models,” said Kint. “Time to pay attention to what is happening to the industry and society, and move on to a better place that actually respects the audience and the media they love.”

A legal analysis on Google’s stance conducted by law firm Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, commissioned by DCN, determined that Google’s approach has left publishers “in the lurch” by transferring the GDPR’s “heightened consent burdens” to Google’s publisher customers. The conclusion of the law firm’s analysis was that Google should modify its recent announcement.

“While it may be the case that Google is sometimes operating as a controller … that does not mean that Google has the right to make unilateral decisions about the use of personal data collected from publisher properties. … The publishers are the primary eight controllers of that data and, perhaps more importantly, have the direct relationship with the consumer,” the analysis read.

Google has said its intention is not to interrupt publishers’ relationships with their users. “Google already requires publishers and advertisers using our advertising services to get consent from end users to use our services, as required under existing EU law, said Carlo d’Asaro Biondo, president for Europe, Middle East and Asia partnerships, in a statement. “However, the GDPR will further refine these requirements. We don’t want to stand between publishers and their users. That’s why we are asking our partners to get consent for the way they use our services on their sites.”

The post Google’s GDPR approach raises publisher concerns appeared first on Digiday.

Google is expanding its tool for publishers to deal with ad-block software users.

The tool, launched a year ago in the U.S and a handful of other markets, is expanding to 31 other countries in Europe and Canada, Google is announcing today. Called Funding Choices, the tool works by asking or requiring users to turn off their ad blockers after seeing a given number of articles. Publishers can serve a dismissible message; serve a message that requires ad blocker users to pay after viewing a certain number of articles; or block their access until they turn off their ad blocker or pay for an ad-free experience through another program called Google Contributor.

Google takes a 10 percent cut when publishers collect revenue. More than 100 publishers in the U.S. and Europe are using Funding Choices, including Popular Mechanics and Business Insider UK, though it was designed with midsized newspapers in mind that meet Google’s standard for acceptable ads. The Missoulian and St. Louis Post-Dispatch are among those that Google says are testing Funding Choices. In another bone it’s throwing to publishers, Google is also testing allowing them to use their own subscription services.

Across the publishers using the tool, most are seeing ad-blocking rates in the 25 to 30 percent range, with some as high as 37 percent. Google has found Funding Choices’ results to be similar to what other publishers have found when they counter people who ad block. On average, Google said, publishers using Funding Choices are seeing 16 percent of visitors allow ads on their sites, with some seeing rates as high as 37 percent. Across the publishers that put up a hard wall, 22 percent of visitors whitelisted the site. For sites that just asked people to whitelist, 15 percent complied.

Still, the uptake has been low and Funding Choices has had its critics. One site ran a long, detailed post saying it was dumping Funding Choices due to issues like its whole site being blocked, stats not being updated and ad blockers figuring out how to get around it.

A Google rep said the company addressed most of the issues brought up in that post within a few days. Still, Funding Choices comes at a cost; publishers have to meet the Coalition for Better Ads’ Better Ads standards, which Google’s Chrome ad filter enforces and which some consider another way Google is dictating the rules of the web. Publishers also have to share the revenue with Google if they get readers to pay. Finally, few publishers are able to get people to pay for online access in the first place.

“The main pro is the ease of implementation,” said Daniel Hallac, chief product officer at New York Media, which has tested Funding Choices on its Grub Street vertical. “You can address the ad blocker problem with little effort. The con is that we don’t see a lot of people paying for an ad-free experience. That said, I really don’t have any point of comparison to know if we are doing better or worse than publishers who built their own solutions.”

Among local publishers, uptake has been slow because there are a growing number of options to recoup money from ad blockers and monetize audiences for publishers to evaluate, said Rusty Coats, who until recently was CEO of the Local Media Consortium. “It’s becoming a crowded field. With multiple options — and without a real champion for the effort at most companies — opportunities such as Funding Choices too often become No. 7 on a five-item to-do list,” he said.

The post Google expands its tool for publishers to combat ad blocking appeared first on Digiday.

The race is on for banks to comply with GDPR, the European Union’s landmark data privacy regulation.

On May 25, EU companies will no longer be able to collect and use personal data without the individual’s consent, under the General Data Protection Regulation. U.S.-headquartered banks and fintech companies with global operations are anxiously preparing to comply with the new rules, anticipating a time when U.S. customers will demand the same protections from their home institutions.

GDPR applies to any organization operating within the EU, as well as those located outside of the EU which offer goods or services to customers or businesses in the EU. “Personal data” can include basic personal identifiers like a name, photo, email address or bank details, as well as things like posts on social networking websites, medical information or computer IP addresses. Customers have the right to a copy of the data institutions keep about them, as well as the right to be forgotten, or demand those institutions delete that data.

For U.S.-based banks with a global reach, it opens up questions about how to handle EU customer data and make sure they obtain customers’ consent to collect and hold their personal information.

Read the full story on tearsheet.co

The post How US banks are preparing for the GDPR appeared first on Digiday.

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