Posts for 'Online Publishers'

After the Democratic Party primary results last night, lots of heads are spinning this morning, including mine.

But my head was already spinning yesterday afternoon. Here’s why: In the morning I received the note “U.S. Media: Watching the Slow Death of Linear TV…Live (2019 Edition),” from Michael Nathanson at MoffettNathanson. Michael’s an old friend as is his partner Craig Moffett, and together they provide must-read data and insights. I began skimming the note and, as expected, it was jam-packed with all the current evidence supporting the “linear TV is dead (except sports and news)” narrative - especially for younger audiences who have moved to OTT.

The head-spinning part of the day for me came later in the afternoon when I had a briefing call with Jill Goldfarb, VP of Linear Programming at Jukin Media. If you’re not familiar with Jukin, it’s a user-generated content / viral video powerhouse with over 200 million social media followers globally.

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Here’s a somewhat counter-intuitive move: Newsy, a millennial-focused OTT news property, is buying the pay-TV carriage agreements of Retirement Living Television covering around 26 million multichannel TV subscribers in order to get a position on the cable dial. The deal will cost Newsy’s owner E.W. Scripps approximately $23 million, or 93 cents per RLTV subscriber. Newsy also expects to get to 40 million pay-TV subscribers by the end of 2018.

The deal is predicated on developing Newsy into a “prominent multi-platform news network with dual revenue streams,” according to Scripps president and CEO Adam Symson. Newsy already has carriage deals with skinny bundles YouTube TV and Sling TV and clearly believes it can extend its audience reach and advertising potential by being available in multichannel bundles. Scripps also sees Newsy’s programming as helping pay-TV operators appeal to younger audiences.

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Online video is opening up significant opportunities for large media companies, but it’s also creating totally new ways for earlier stage content providers to differentiate themselves and grow their audiences. A great example of the latter is Mic, a millennial-focused news and culture property, which recently raised $21 million and brought on board Jonathan Carson (formerly an executive at Nielsen at Vevo) as its president.

At our recent Online Video Ad Summit, I interviewed Jonathan about Mic’s strategy, how it’s capitalizing on video and using advertising to anchor its revenue streams. In the interview Jonathan talks about how the company’s journalists bring their own perspectives to the stories they cover and why their voices resonate with target audiences. Among other things, Jonathan details how the company has leveraged this to integrate brands into their journalism and other ways the company is monetizing its content.

Watch the interview (31 minutes, 51 seconds)

 

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It’s no secret that Google, Facebook and other social platforms can help video publishers expand their audience reach and monetization. But the downside is they create risks around losing control of the business, exposing valuable viewer insights and reducing margins. All publishers are grappling with how to balance opportunity and risk with respect to their platform strategies.

At our Online Video Ad Summit, we had a really thoughtful panel called “The Playbook for Surviving and Thriving in the Platform Era” which dug into many of these issues and how publishers/agencies are managing the inherent tradeoffs.

The session included Jarrod Dicker (Head of Commercial Product and Technology, Washington Post), Paul Marcum (President, Truffle Pig), Michael Shane (Global Head of Digital Innovation, Bloomberg Media), with Lorne Brown (President, SintecMedia) moderating. All participants offered highly specific examples of their decision-making and what’s working for them.

Watch the video (37 minutes, 27 seconds).

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These are complicated times for video content providers, with more opportunities to monetize their video inventory and partner with advertisers, yet more complexity as well. How to succeed in this rapidly evolving environment was the topic of our Video Ad Summit panel, “Modernizing the Monetization of Video: The Content Provider’s Perspective.”

The session included Lorne Brown (Founder & CEO, Operative), Sean Holzman (Chief Digital Revenue Officer, Bonnier), Stephano Kim (SVP, Ad Operations & Chief Digital Strategist, Turner Broadcasting), David Morris (Chief Revenue Officer, CBS Interactive) and Lisa Valentino (Chief Revenue Officer, Conde Nast Entertainment), with Tom Herman (CEO, DashBid) moderating.

The wide-ranging discussion touched on various topics including how campaign success metrics are changing, why performance and engagement are paramount, how content providers are creating their own data management platforms and selectively exposing their first-party data, why the consumer is really in the driver’s seat, the role of branded entertainment, the challenges of moving to a direct-to-consumer approach at scale, ad-blocking and much, much more.

Watch the session video now (32 minutes, 36 seconds)

Last week I attended AdExchanger's Industry Preview 2015 conference in NYC, a gathering of 500+ digital marketers. I attended mainly to gain insights about the larger digital marketing landscape, of which online video advertising is an increasingly important part for advertisers, content providers and technologists.

While there was only one video-specific session, video weaved its way into a lot of what happened on-stage. One session in particular that generated numerous valuable video-related insights was titled, "This is Digital Publishing in 2015" and included Zazie Lucke (Head of Global Media Marketing, Bloomberg), Dao Nguyen (Publisher, BuzzFeed), Troy Young (President, Hearst Digital), Jon Steinberg (CEO, Daily Mail, North America) and was moderated by Wenda Harris Millard (President and COO, Medialink).

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