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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 Barry Lowenthal, president at The Media Kitchen. Media agencies are used to talking to clients about the strength of their publisher relationships. In fact, I think agencies used to brag about… Continue reading »

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Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Protect And Serve Facebook quietly embedded an app-install link from its iOS app menu to Onavo, a VPN app for malware security Facebook acquired in 2013. Users who click “Protect” in the Facebook navigation bar are sent to the app page. But data security… Continue reading »

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In this week’s Rundown: CMOs turn into politicians in a desperate attempt to claw back leverage, Facebook expands its subscription support for publishers, and Verizon’s Go90 goes south.

Politicians or CMOs?
It’s been three days since Unilever CMO Keith Weed proclaimed in an Interactive Advertising Bureau keynote in California that his company, the world’s second-largest advertiser, would no longer advertise on any tech platforms that create “societal division” or fail to “protect children.” (I took it to mean YouTube and Facebook.) It’s another example of a CMO being much more vocal about how platforms have changed our lives, following Procter & Gamble CMO Marc Pritchard, who took the same stage at last year’s IAB confab — and then multiple times after — to bash the platforms. But Weed and Pritchard, and many of their ilk, are struggling with what seems to be a bigger and harsher reality: They no longer have the upper hand. Platforms have developed far-flung business models that are somewhat impervious to pressure from even the largest advertiser. Witness the “YouTube boycott” over advertisers appearing next to extremist content. The browbeating and posturing did nothing to slow the growth of YouTube’s ad business, judging by the gargantuan earnings Google continued to report.

For years, brands had power because they held the purse strings. But the rise of Facebook and Google has suddenly tipped the balance. Brands have no choice but to spend with the big platforms if they hope to reach customers, which has given rise to the CMO as an increasingly political figure — someone who has to make stump speeches over and over again, decrying the status quo, and hope that enough constituents, from brand managers to agency partners, buy into the message to actually make change happen.

Brands can seek to take some power back, but they’re never going to enjoy the leverage they once had. It’s worth noting that Unilever, for its part, is taking a soft tone when it comes to the platforms. Weed, speaking to Digiday after his speech, said his approach is to work collaboratively with Facebook and Google. Both brand holding companies have mostly kept ad spend the same, and it’s still unclear if anything actually changes after the rallies are over. There’s a wide gap between the big CMO speech and reality. — Shareen Pathak

The post The Rundown: CMOs grapple for leverage vs. platforms appeared first on Digiday.

Every year since 2012, OMD Worldwide has taken over a popular barbecue joint in Austin, Texas, to host its annual Bootstrap Barbecue at SXSW. It would welcome about 100 clients and introduce them to up-and-coming startups they would not meet otherwise. It was an event that the agency, and its clients, looked forward to all year for potential business opportunities, but also as a time to have fun.

No more. At this year’s SXSW, OMD will not throw any events, including its Bootstrap Barbecue, activations or panels. The reason: SXSW is no longer critical to the agency’s efforts to connect with clients and startups — or to educate staffers. SXSW also became less cool.

“It began to get more corporate,” said Doug Rozen, chief digital and innovation officer at OMD. “The intention of SXSW was always for the people versus these corporate presences.”

SXSW has long been a reliable stop in the agency year, offering a heady mix of tech, creativity, booze and barbecue. But with more scrutiny than ever on boondoggles — witness Publicis Groupe’s announcement this past summer that it would ditch awards shows and high-profile events to focus its time and money on developing its AI platform Marcel — several agencies like OMD say they’re pulling back on SXSW contingents when the event kicks off next month. Other agencies, such as MediaCom, EP+Co, SapientRazorfish and Kettle, are not attending like they have in past years, or they’re sending fewer people.

“In my head, [SXSW] started to jump the shark about four to five years ago,” said Jason Goldberg, svp of commerce and content at SapientRazorfish.

One big reason for agencies’ tempered enthusiasm: Clients are themselves less obsessed with SXSW. OMD said only a third of its usual 100 client attendees will attend. Spotify has pulled its large parties, and Vans is pulling its this year as well.

A large reason for not attending is because clients have a slew of other new conferences and events to attend, multiple agencies said. In short, March has become a busy time for travel, and clients are spread thin. Goldberg points to SXSW being so close to the Adobe Summit and the IBM Think and SAP Sapphire Now conferences.

Goldberg said that back in 2013, he sent about 10 people out of his 60-person commerce team to the event. That number then dwindled to one person in the years after. But this year, for the first time, Goldberg isn’t sending anyone.

“March is just a really busy event month for commerce practitioners,” said Goldberg, “and SXSW is such a broad event that tries to appeal to so many different segments of the market, that it just hasn’t made it worth it to keep it on the schedule.”

Besides time, a major reason why agencies don’t have brand clients attending this year is money. SXSW has gotten expensive, as hotels and local residents raise rates to make hay while the sun shines as an estimated 422,000 people flock to Austin.

“The most challenging thing from a cost management standpoint is actually accommodations,” Rozen said. In years past, the agency has set up male houses and female houses, but this year, there will be one house with far fewer rooms, although the agency doesn’t have an exact number finalized yet. Rozen said you can get hotel rooms away from the city between $300 to $400, but a hotel room in the city is over $1,000 a night. “And these aren’t lovely New York hotel rooms,” he added.

SXSW grew as an agency hotspot almost by accident. Originally a music festival, SXSW’s “interactive” offshoot became known as the go-to place for startups. Twitter famously launched there in 2007, and Foursquare followed in 2009. Soon, big-name brands like Ford, American Express and Oreo were making the pilgrimage to Austin, hoping some startup sheen would rub off on them. And where clients go, agencies follow. But like many events, SXSW soon became sprawling.

“The problem with SXSW is that it has gotten so big that it’s really, really hard to get noticed,” said John Baker, CMO at Mirum, a WPP-owned agency. “So if an agency is doing an activation, it needs to hit a real nerve.”

MediaCom isn’t sending anyone this year because clients get lost in the crowds and end up missing entire sessions. “It’s too crowded,” said Jeffrey Hinz, managing director at MediaCom. “You are often missing the fantastic sessions due to waiting in line and overbooking.”

Instead of hosting huge events or activations, agencies are now turning to smaller, one-on-one meetings with their clients, sometimes outside of the bustling convention center.

“When events get this big, brands either go all-in building out full installations like Google, or pull back to doing dinners, one-on-one meetings and simple entertainment,” said Baker. “This requires a smaller team on the ground.”

For instance, instead of the Bootstrap Barbecue, Rozen will schedule small, one-on-one meetings, including a brunch with a few clients on Rainey Street. And PMG is hosting brand clients at what it calls its PMG House, a place for its clients to get together with executives from platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google, 10 minutes away from the craziness of downtown Austin.

Other agencies are balancing spending for people to be on the ground in Austin and taking more of a social presence. Noah King, global product lead at Havas Media-owned agency Socialyse, which is sending one person to the event this year, said it could be a better return on investment to place someone in a social-listening war room.

“For attendees, it can be difficult to experience it all,” he said. “We see an opportunity to act as leaders and curators of SXSW, sharing content that summarizes key moments to ensure our clients and social followers can focus on the most relevant details and not get buried with information overload.”

Hinz doesn’t believe anyone should be on the ground anymore.

“It’s lost its community of innovation. The next Twitter won’t launch at SXSW to reach opinion leaders and innovators because they no longer attend; marketing content has stifled creativity and is being programmed similarly to conferences in NYC or San Francisco. There is no uniqueness. It’s like the same bland shopping mall on every corner.”

“And finally,” he added, “breakfast tacos are so 2009.”

The post ‘It lost its community of innovation’: Why agencies are skipping SXSW this year appeared first on Digiday.

Like many publishers, the Guardian is using Instagram to cultivate a loyal, young audience that doesn’t visit its main digital products.

The publisher has steadily grown its following and has nearly 860,000 Instagram followers to date, up 57 percent from a year ago. More interesting yet, 60 percent of those who follow links to the Guardian’s site are new to the Guardian, according to the publisher. The plan is to encourage those followers to become regular readers of the Guardian’s site and apps and, in time, possibly even paying members.

The Guardian has introduced more recurring Instagram Stories over the last year to keep people interested. One is a weekly Story called “Fake or For Real,” which features a Guardian journalist highlighting some of the biggest fake news that has surfaced that week and asking readers to tap if they think the news is true or false, before debunking it herself. The one-minute story gets approximately 50,000 views each week and has proven popular with people overseas, according to the Guardian’s social producer Eleni Stefanou. Another regular Story is “Brexit Bites,” which condenses complex developments around Brexit as they come up in the news. “Ramadan Diaries” is a recurring Story featuring Guardian journalist Iman Amrani, who explains the Muslim holy month and other related topics.

The Guardian has three people dedicated to posting on Instagram and the Guardian’s Facebook groups like Guardian culture. This team is separate from the publisher’s “reach team” that focuses on widespread distribution, a large part of which is Facebook publishing and search engine optimization, but both teams work closely together. Designers, journalists and video producers from the Guardian’s main multimedia team all contribute to Instagram content, with an average of three posts published daily to the platform. The content is a mix of original content made specifically for Instagram and existing assets — many of which are images pulled from major news stories and compiled into galleries to help tell the story in images.

People focused on video within the multimedia team are tasked with finding stories beyond traditional news, and they’ll contact independent filmmakers to ask if the Guardian can use footage for videos, which are often turned into Instagram Stories. An example of a Story that used assets from outside the Guardian is one created for Valentine’s Day, which depicts love letters sent between Barack and Michelle Obama; writers Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas​; and artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

Naturally, having wider resources to tap is useful, but that can come with its own challenges. Maintaining a consistent style and editorial tone for Instagram posts can be difficult when so many different people contribute to it. The Guardian’s core guidelines are to create posts around topics relevant to the younger demographics that use Instagram: the environment, human rights issues and animal welfare. The message must also convey hope and emphasize the solutions being implemented as opposed to just a gloomy message.

“We want to use Instagram to reach a younger audience and one that we can convert into longtime readers,” said Stefanou. “We also want to build communities around shared subjects, all in the main account, not sub-accounts. That way, when we have a big [editorial] project come up around, for example, the use of plastic, we know we have already cultivated that audience on Instagram.”

The post How the Guardian’s Instagram strategy is winning new readers appeared first on Digiday.

Google and Facebook can exert their power on publishers in varied ways. Take Google’s effort to get publishers to adopt its fast-loading article page code, Accelerated Mobile Pages.

In theory, adoption of AMP is voluntary. In reality, publishers that don’t want to see their search traffic evaporate have little choice. New data from publisher analytics firm Chartbeat shows just how much leverage Google has over publishers thanks to its dominant search engine. Total Google traffic to Chartbeat’s client base is up 25 percent since January 2017, but AMP publishers had a 100 percent increase in mobile search traffic from Google. In contrast, non-AMP publishers’ mobile traffic from Google was flat in the same time period. For all publishers, using AMP or not, overall desktop traffic from Google was flat. (Google makes up about 40 percent of Chartbeat publishers’ referral traffic to Facebook’s 30 percent.)

“Google is increasingly becoming a mobile-first platform,” said Chris Breaux, data science director at Chartbeat.

The findings have implications for sites that aren’t using AMP, and there are plenty. Twenty-five percent of Chartbeat’s 50,000-publisher client base uses AMP. AMP publishers tend to be larger publishers, but not always, Chartbeat said. On a traffic basis, AMP users now get 18 percent of their mobile traffic from AMP, up from 16 percent last summer. For comparison’s sake, only 10 percent of the client base uses Facebook’s fast-loading Instant Articles template and those using Instant Articles see 11 percent of mobile traffic from Instant, down from about 15 percent last summer.

The growth of AMP traffic is another sign of the power Google wields over the web. Publishers are warming up to Google these days for sending them more traffic and being easier to work with, especially as their relations with Facebook deteriorate. Google said AMP pages load 85 percent faster (too fast for some publishers, who said their ads weren’t keeping up). Still, some are wary of the tech giant’s growing influence.

Along with AMP, Google is turning on a new ad filter in Chrome on Feb. 15, which will block ads based on its own research and that of the Coalition for Better Ads, an industry group that Google helped found. And publishers have gotten in line: 37 percent of those that Google identified as having violations, including Forbes and the Los Angeles Times, have fixed them, according to Google. All these initiatives are presented as voluntary, but publishers that don’t go along with them risk losing out on search traffic, ad revenue or both.

“The increase in traffic, entirely driven by AMP, far outweighs the decline in Facebook referrals that drives all the news,” Chartbeat CEO John Saroff said. “For those that haven’t done AMP, we want to make sure they’re running that ROI calculation to make sure it makes sense because it’s a more meaningful source of traffic.”

The issue for some publishers is how well Google monetizes AMP. To speed up the web, Google had to strip down pages, which in turn limited the kinds of ad units publishers could run. According to the Distributed Content Revenue Benchmark Report from trade group Digital Content Next, revenue from AMP has been slow to build. In the first half of 2017, search represented just a sliver of the revenue from distributed content for publishers, behind OTT, syndication and social media, according to the report, based on data from 20 member publishers.

John Potter, CTO of Purch, said the publisher has been able to monetize AMP pages at a competitive rate with the mobile web since its header bidding solution was accepted as an AMP tag last year. His bigger concern, he said, is that “you don’t know where your AMP page will be shown on the Google results page, that the branding has been missing due to it being a Google URL and that the sessions that start on an AMP page versus a mobile page are shorter.”

Google said in a Feb. 14 blog post that publishers have tripled the amount of money they’re making from AMP pages in the past year and sped up the load time of ads, but also acknowledged there’s still progress to be made.

The post How Google is using its search clout to steer publishers to use AMP appeared first on Digiday.

With more media companies creating TV-like video content for platforms with big content budgets, the over-the-top video market is exploding with new places to watch video. Subscription and ad-funded video-on-demand services have healthy revenue prospects, but media companies struggle to get their video seen in a cluttered landscape. Here are four charts on the state of the OTT market.

Netflix dwarfs a crowded market
In the last year, social media companies have joined mass-market platforms like Netflix and legacy cable players like Sky and HBO in the OTT ecosystem. But platforms that invest in quality content have the edge in acquiring viewers, and here Netflix is still king when it comes to annual budgets. For publishers with video ambitions, Netflix’s $8 billion (£5.7 billion) content budget for 2018 is enticing.

Netflix and Amazon both far outstrip free-to-air broadcasters such as the BBC and ITV in the U.K. and CBS in the U.S., as well as pay-TV players like Sky and HBO, according to a recent report from Juniper Research. Additionally, Facebook has indicated it will pay providers up to $3 million (£2.1 million) per 30-minute episode for premium content for Watch, while Apple will add at least 10 new original series in the coming year.

Outside of original programming budgets, rumors have circulated for months about Amazon and Facebook bidding on Premier League rights packages, but Amazon is a more likely contender than the social platform for now. Sky and BT have already paid a combined $6.3 billion (£4.5 billion) for rights to show five of the seven international rights packages. “Facebook has never shied away from spending money when it sees the strategic importance,” said Joe Weston, director at We Are Social Sport. “Ultimately, it comes down to timing, and I don’t think the social platforms are ready.”

Netflix has a France problem
Netflix isn’t taking hold in all countries. France has the lowest uptake of subscription video-on-demand services out of 14 countries surveyed by media analyst firm Ampere Analysis, despite the country’s record of having one of the highest uptakes of paid TV.

French internet users are more than twice as likely to prefer pay TV over subscription video on demand. For comparison, in the U.S., 72 percent have subscription video-on-demand services and 71 percent have pay TV, while in the U.K., 67 percent have pay TV and 58 percent subscribe to a video-on-demand service. Netflix is still the most popular subscription video-on-demand service in France, ahead of Amazon, CanalPlay and SFR Play. Subscription video-on-demand services are more popular with younger viewers, though, with 61 percent of French 18- to 24-year-olds subscribing to one.

Reasons for pay TV’s hold in France are stricter local regulations demanding higher quotas of French content, aggressive rollout of advanced connected set-top boxes by French TV operators and demand for local-language content rather than English-language content, according to Richard Broughton, director at Ampere Analysis.

OTT revenues will reach half of pay-TV revenue by 2022
OTT revenues, which include ad-led video on demand, pay-per-view and subscription video on demand, will grow from $37 billion (£26.4 billion) in 2016 to reach $83.4 billion (£59.6 billion) in five years’ time, bringing the total TV and video market to $283 billion (£202.2 billion) by 2022, according to a Digital TV Research report.

Pay-TV revenues will fall over the same period, though the decline will be small. While subscriptions are the most stable future for monetizing OTT, they still have a way to go before beating OTT ad revenues.

Audience reach and discoverability are the toughest challenges
For publishers looking to create OTT content, the three biggest challenges are building new and loyal audiences, discoverability of content and monetization, according to Digiday research. Despite healthy funding from the main players, the competition for eyeballs is fierce: The U.S. alone has over 200 OTT providers, and audiences, which might be fickle, are also only happy to pay for a limited number of services.

The post The evolution of streaming video services, in 4 charts appeared first on Digiday.

Welcome to the new Digiday Video Briefing, a new weekly newsletter from Digiday senior reporter Sahil Patel that will take you behind the scenes of an industry in upheaval. To get this in your inbox, sign up here.

It’s safe to say “Ball in the Family,” a show starring famous basketball dad LaVar Ball, is the first hit show on Facebook Watch — it’s certainly the first Watch show that people outside of the media business recognize. And Facebook is spending good money for the exclusive rights to the show, which is produced by Bunim/Murray Productions. Multiple sources have told me Facebook is paying somewhere between $550,000 and $750,000 per episode. That’s cable TV money.

But that doesn’t mean Watch is a TV network of the future — mostly because that ignores the fact that Facebook doesn’t want to be a TV network. Don’t forget, Watch is a product test to get people to spend more time on Facebook — this time, with professionally produced video shows.

It’s been thrown around that Facebook wants its own “House of Cards” or “Scandal.” And Facebook’s pursuit of entertainment content has certainly piqued the interest of Hollywood:

“Facebook just bought a series that’s roughly in the $30,000 to $40,000 per minute range, with an exceptional piece of talent.” — Longtime film and TV studio executive

But as multiple talent agents and studio execs have recently told me, most sellers aren’t taking their best ideas to Facebook. Watch needs to make a serious dent with viewers because ultimately, the big stars that Facebook clearly wants for its shows care about whether their shows are actually seen.

What’s forgotten in all of this is that Facebook has given no indication that it wants to be a TV programmer in the style of Netflix or HBO. Yes, it has the money to buy its own “Scandal” — and it might. I just keep coming back to what Facebook CFO David Wehner said during an earnings call a year ago: Eventually, Facebook wants to fund Watch by sharing ad revenue, instead of subsidizing productions upfront. That doesn’t sound like a TV network to me.

Confessional

“NewFronts are simply not a viable marketplace for buying video-based programming. We did not see the return on creating incremental, built-if-sold programming for one week where no transactions take place. The event has really turned into a branding moment, and we have a bunch of those throughout the year.” — Former NewFronts presenter on why his company is sitting out this year

Numbers don’t lie
$100 million: How much Snap paid out to its Discover content partners in 2017. (Keep in mind that Snapchat has over 90 partners globally.)

5 million: Number of subscribers for HBO Now, up from 2 million just a year ago. Sometimes it pays to be early.

What we’ve covered

Publishers with TV ambitions are pursuing Netflix:

• Netflix has an $8 billion content budget for 2018.
• Publishers are fine with becoming “producers for hire” to make shows.

Read more about publishers and Netflix here.

YouTube Red is having an identity crisis:

• YouTube’s CEO and creators can’t agree on what YouTube Red is.
• YouTube Red is spending on TV shows with cable-level budgets.

Read more about the state of YouTube Red here.

What we’re reading
Facebook is killing comedy: This Splitsider interview with comedian and former Onion writer Matt Klinman is going to hit close to home for many of you. It’s about how Facebook has made it nearly impossible to make money off of making internet content. Sound familiar?

Hulu lost $920 million in 2017: Hulu has 17 million paying subscribers and maybe the most sought-after ad inventory on the internet, yet it’s not turning a profit. Why? Netflix. Hulu previously said it would spend $2.5 billion last year on content. (Netflix, which has 55 million subscribers in the U.S. alone, spent $6 billion in 2017.) This is the world major video companies and platforms live in now. At least Hulu’s beating Netflix at the Emmys.

The lights are dimming on Go90: Verizon’s mobile video app Go90 is being folded into Oath, according to Oath CEO Tim Armstrong’s comments during a Recode conference. When asked whether the Go90 brand will stick around, Armstrong said, “The brand will remain — I don’t know how long for.” Pour one out.

The post Video Briefing: Facebook Watch is not a TV network of the future appeared first on Digiday.