Data-Labor-Technology

After spending years treating over-the-top video streaming as something to address in the far-off future, TV networks are actively shopping their streaming apps to marketers and technology companies at CES.

CBS, for one, gave a 20-minute presentation to marketers touting its OTT products, which include the ad-supported subscription service CBS All Access, ad-supported news network CBSN and forthcoming services for CBS Sports and “Entertainment Tonight.” Turner, which has two ad-free subscription services and plans to launch a still-unnamed sports streaming service in the spring, has been meeting with distribution partners to discuss its growing OTT ambitions. Hulu, meanwhile, used CES to announce that it has 17 million subscribers across its subscription and live TV products, up 40 percent since May 2016.

“Years ago, there was Netflix envy; [these products] are our answer to that,” said Jennifer Mirgorod, evp of content distribution and strategic partnerships at Turner. “We’re able to say that we’re now playing in that space.”

Turner has two existing ad-free subscription services: FilmStruck, for classic movie buffs; and Boomerang, which offers episodes of “Looney Tunes” and other classic cartoons. These services complement Turner’s existing linear TV businesses such as Turner Classic Movies and Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, said Mirgorod, who declined to reveal how many subscribers each service has.

“We’ve always had strong brands, but they have always run through distributors — we’ve never had that one-to-one relationship with the customer,” said Mirgorod. “The idea was to launch products that could be complementary to the regular linear business but also allow us to go direct to consumers.”

For FilmStruck and Boomerang — as well as the forthcoming sports streaming service, which will offer both live sports and other original sports programming and likely include advertising — Turner is meeting with OTT distributors such as Roku, Amazon and Apple. The conversations are centered on using data to grow subscribers across the different platforms, Mirgorod said.

Turner has also been meeting with streaming skinny-bundle providers such as DirecTV Now, Hulu live TV and YouTube TV, Mirgorod said.

“They’re all significant players now because they have real [subscribers],” said Mirgorod. “At one point, we were afraid that the providers would take away market share [from linear], but it ended up expanding the market.”

CBS, meanwhile, has been pitching marketers on the national-level scale that its existing OTT products already have. CBS All Access has more than 2 million subscribers, the company said. CBSN streams, meanwhile, were up 17 percent in 2017 over the previous year. (CBS wouldn’t say to what, though.)

“In years past, we’ve spent time talking about the specific consumers that were diving in early to the OTT market. This year is really has grown; we’re no longer just talking about the OTT consumer. There is so much internet video being delivered on devices to so many people of all age groups, we’re really now talking about ‘consumers’ in general,” said Marc DeBevoise, president and COO of CBS Interactive. “We were fortunate to have been early in OTT through our CBS All Access and CBSN services, both of which have experienced tremendous growth since launch, and we are continuing to invest in this space, in these services, their content and new services we will bring to market.”

Overall, CBS did “hundreds of millions” in OTT-related revenue last year, according to a source. Hulu’s ad revenue, meanwhile, surpassed $1 billion for the first time last year, the company said.

CBS’s growth was driven in part by its pitch that it’s one of only a handful of places where advertisers can run national campaigns in streaming environments. And with streaming becoming commonplace in U.S. households, it’s a pitch that marketers are becoming receptive to.

“OTT is now just another mainstream viewing option, together with cable and satellite, and it is increasingly the first option,” said Peter Csathy, founder of media advisory firm Creatv Media. “It’s the new normal.”

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Chase is piloting a new branch format designed to help customers with routine banking transactions, like withdrawals and deposits.

Next month, the largest U.S. bank by assets will roll out six “Everyday Express” branches each in New York City and Culver City, California with a Digital Advice Bar to help customers learn how to engage with Chase digital products and video conferencing to connect customers with companion branch bankers for more complex matters. The idea is the branches will be smaller and offer simpler services like account openings. For more complex things like a home loan, customers would have to videoconference with a banker, or just go to a regular branch.

Branches have been consolidating locations with lower servicing volume, opening in higher growth areas and renovating existing branches and ATMs. More importantly, they’re evolving into more compact, digitally oriented spaces that incorporate new technology and help branch employees focus on improving the customer experience.

“Chase more than any of the large banks has made significant investment in expansion of physical capacity in key markets around the country,” Steven Reider, founder and president of the marketing and branch-planning adviser Bancography. “Chase is distinct from any of its top 10 peers in terms of its willingness to enter a new market and expand branch networks aggressively.

Read the full story on tearsheet.co

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GQ is adding more commerce to its site with a new section of suggestions for clothing, accessories and shoes.

GQ Recommends, which GQ site editor Jon Wilde will formally announce Jan. 12, is the latest step in a larger effort to deepen its relationship with its readers, grow e-commerce revenue and position itself as a resource for its readers.

“It’s a thing our guys have been asking for, implicitly, for a long time,” Wilde said. “We weren’t making it easier to connect the dots [to a purchase].”

Last year, GQ surveyed its audience and found 40 percent of respondents visited their site for its product recommendations; another 30 percent wished GQ would offer more product recommendations.

Separate research that GQ conducted with affiliate commerce vendor Skimlinks found that readers who looked at stories that were shoppable spent nearly twice as long on GQ’s site — 14 minutes — as readers who only consumed GQ’s editorial content.

To create Recommends, GQ’s developers worked to amend Condé Nast’s content management system so products could be added to the Recommends section with a single click inside the CMS. But even though it will be easy to add products to the section, the site’s editors plan to be choosy. Wilde said between 5 and 10 percent of the products that get written up elsewhere on the site will end up on Recommends. The site’s staff monitors both SEO data and on-site search trends to decide what kinds of product categories to include in Recommends.

A separate team, headed by GQ commerce editor Martin Mulkeen, figures out which retailers to link to each product entry. Unlike some commerce publishers that heavily depend on Amazon, most of the products that GQ recommends aren’t sold by the world’s largest e-commerce company, leaving Mulkeen to figure out those deals.

In some cases, Condé Nast’s corporate relationships such as its commerce deal with Farfetch influence those decisions. But as Recommends grows, along with the database behind it, GQ will use a mix of technology and human labor to make sure all its items are in stock and priced appropriately.

Recommends is the second product GQ has added to earn more affiliate commerce revenue. A Best Stuff newsletter launched in August. GQ said commerce revenue grew 500 percent, year over year, in 2017, though it declined to share hard revenue figures. It expects to grow that total 30 percent in 2018.

“This could be the first step toward where we start recommending to people on a one-to-one basis,” said Rob DeChiaro, GQ’s digital gm. “It could be a logged-in, send-you-alerts-when-something-you-like-becomes-available kind of thing.”

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