Category: Data-Labor-Technology Stories

Instagram recently added Stories to its Archive feature, allowing users to save their Stories posts within the application after they’ve expired from public view, as well as to share these posts in Highlights on their profiles. Our guide will show you how to create a Highlight. Note: These screenshots were captured in the Instagram app…

ABC isn’t shy about its American Idol reboot, announcing today that the show will face off directly against The Voice, its biggest music competition revival, when Idol debuts in March. The network revealed its midseason premiere schedule this morning, ahead of its appearance at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour. Meanwhile, one of ABC’s…

MTV International is capitalizing on the January health kick by launching MTV Fit on Facebook and Instagram, the first of several content verticals the entertainment channel plans to launch this year.

The content from MTV Fit focuses on nutrition and mental well-being as well as fitness workouts, but from a body positive and inclusive viewpoint, according to the company. Alongside 60-second upper-body workout videos are social-friendly recipe videos for “mesmerizing” smoothie recipes and reviews of apps that boost mental health.

A fitness editor and a video producer manage the vertical. MTV International’s content team, mostly based in London, produces roughly 10 pieces of fitness content daily across platforms, mainly Facebook and Instagram for now. Videos are roughly 60 seconds, but MTV plans to expand into streaming longer Facebook Live workouts focusing on specific areas, like core or leg workouts. In the coming months, MTV Fit will increase content it produces in areas that prove popular with audiences.

“We’re starting to diversify more, creating an ecosystem of communities, rather than, ‘This is all MTV,’” said Joanna Wells, vp of digital content for MTV International. “Pop culture is so general. People have various different interests; we want to explore those.” She added that beauty and gaming are the next two verticals MTV is exploring. In the U.S., MTV has MTV News but hasn’t pursued content verticals.

MTV Fit videos also feature series with MTV talent, like reality TV celebrity Vicky Pattison, competitive pole dancer David Skowronek and personal trainer Tyrone Brennand. The videos are created to be easy to translate, with limited text, so they can be shared to MTV’s international accounts.

On Facebook, organic video views for MTV Fit videos range from between 20,000 views, like this video about making ice cubes out of leftover wine, and half a million views, like this video of a workout with “Geordie Shore” star Sophie Kasaei. MTV published fitness content on its international and French Snapchat Discover channels when MTV Fit launched Jan. 1. The completion rates on the Snapchat editions in both regions were higher than they were in 2017, according to Wells. It’s still early, but the numbers are an early indicator that audiences are interested in the content, she added.

“Conversations and engagement building is more important than X amount of views,” said Wells. “Repeat usage, strong completion rates, coming back to the site and interacting, that’s the key.”

In crowded Facebook feeds, brands that don’t differentiate struggle. For this reason, hands-in-a-pan recipe videos are declining in engagement. Aside from a focus on inclusive content, Wells noted MTV’s color palette, use of graphics and “simple but quick” visual editing style across all its content, including MTV Fit, as aspects that make its content stand out.

MTV is looking for brands to sponsor its fitness content, a model it has seen some success with in Australia with Adidas, although Wells wouldn’t share which other brands are interested. The move to create more niche content has its pros and cons: Audiences are smaller but usually more targeted and therefore engaged, often proving more effective for advertisers. Verticals could shrink the pool of potential advertisers, but there’s space for mainstream brands to work with MTV Fit, with its inclusivity angle and broad view of fitness and health, according to John Thomson, head of media at 360i.

“One of the key things was, fitness doesn’t have to be expensive, aspirational or unattainable. This can be done at home or in the street rather than spending loads of money at the gym,” said Wells. “We don’t want only ripped people doing the workouts. We won’t pretend people don’t have a Mars bar once in a while. Nobody is perfect; we don’t want to make people feel bad about themselves.”

Image courtesy of MTV Fit via Facebook

The post MTV International starts its vertical push with fitness appeared first on Digiday.

H&M is kicking off 2018 with a tone-deaf product that went viral Sunday night. Twitter users noticed that the brand’s U.K. site was selling a green kids’ hoodie stamped with the phrase “Coolest Monkey in the Jungle.” That could have been nothing more than a cute garment–except for the fact that the Swedish retailer used…

Intuit will kick off its first-ever corporate brand campaign with a 15-second spot in Super Bowl LII. Phenomenon, agency of record for the Intuit parent brand and Passion Animation Studios, will be tasked with creating the ad, which will “introduce two characters who are featured prominently in the company’s new brand campaign,” according to a…

Media giant Viacom is dipping its toes in the influencer marketing waters, announcing an agreement Monday to acquire Whosay. Terms of the transaction were not revealed, nor were any plans to reduce headcount at the New York-based influencer marketing shop. The two companies have a history together, as Whosay has worked with Viacom on more…

Last year’s Super Bowl saw advertisers get political, with brands tackling issues such as immigration, pay inequality and climate change. That’s one trend viewers can expect to see continue in 2018, according to video ad tech company Unruly, which measured last year’s most “effective” ads. “Last year was an interesting year, as we came out…

Ad tech company Samba TV says its Audience Platform improves the ability to granularly target TV advertising and helps marketers execute cross-screen campaigns built on a “understanding of linear TV
audiences.”

A decade after it began life as an early-stage digital start-up, MediaMath has launched a venture capital fund to back a new generation of early-stage ventures transforming advertising, marketing and
media. The fund, named MathCapital, will be overseen by its partners: MediaMath CEO and founder Joe Zawadzki; and Eric Franchi, formerly of Undertone.

The percentage of U.S. adults who “often get their news from local TV” dropped from 46% in 2016 to 37% in 2017, according to research done in August by the Pew Research Center.