Posts for 'Social Media'

Facebook is pouring lots of resources into video and according to a new report published by ad tech provider Mixpo this morning, the strategy appears to be bearing fruit. In its “State of Digital Advertising for Publishers” report, based on a survey and interviews with 263 digital publishing and advertising executives, Mixpo found that 50.2% of respondents had run video campaigns on Facebook, compared to 31.1% on YouTube. Twitter followed with 17%, then Instagram with 13.2% and all other social platforms were in single digits.

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There are more scripted TV shows being made than ever, by one recent count over 400 in 2015, up 10x in the past 10 years. In this sea of choices, how can networks attract viewers and keep them watching? Well, a new study by Canvs suggests that eliciting feelings of hate toward certain characters is the most likely predictor of increased viewership for the show’s subsequent episode.

Canvs said the study is the largest one ever analyzing the correlation between viewership and Twitter data. Canvs is a startup that uses language analytics to detect a range emotions contained in social media, which it then sorts into 56 different categories, such as “hate,” “excited,” “love,” “happy,” etc.). In the study, Canvs looked at tweets related to 5,709 episodes of 432 comedy, reality and drama shows that aired between January, 2014 and June, 2015 across broadcast, ad-supported cable and premium cable networks.

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The WSJ is reporting that Facebook has signed deals with almost 140 media companies and celebrities, committing $50 million for guaranteed live-streaming content for Facebook Live. A straight average would value each partner’s deal at over $350K, but as expected, certain partners are getting a disproportionate share.

According the paper, the top 15 providers account for $21.4 million, or almost 43% of the total $50 million. At the top of the list are BuzzFeed ($3.1 million), NY Times ($3 million) and CNN ($2.5 million). I’d guess there are others at the bottom of the list whose deals are in the low 5 figures.

I’ve been enthusiastic about Facebook Live and see at least 5 reasons why the company investing $50 million (which is chump change given 2015 revenue of nearly $18 billion) is so smart:

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As video viewing on Facebook has soared, the company has been dogged by “freebooting,” whereby certain users rip copyrighted videos from YouTube and re-post them natively on Facebook. The problem has been widely reported and was perhaps most famously documented in a blistering critique last August by Hank Green (in that piece, Green highlighted data that in Q1 ’15, 725 of the top 1,000 videos on Facebook were freebooted, accounting for 17 billion views).

Being perceived as a place where copyright piracy is rampant is obviously detrimental to Facebook’s efforts to court brands, celebrities and publishers, an initiative which has dramatically ramped up as the company has prioritized video. All this is why Facebook’s announcement yesterday of its new “Rights Manager” tool is an extremely important first step in helping legitimize Facebook as a publisher-friendly video platform.

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I'm pleased to present the 317th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Live-streaming was in the headlines this week as the NFL announced Twitter as its partner for Thursday Night Football games and Facebook unveiled a slew of new features for Facebook Live.

On this week’s podcast, Colin and I discuss details of both of these initiatives, comparing and contrasting the upside. Colin is more enthusiastic about the Twitter-NFL deal, which is still a bit of a head-scratcher for me. Conversely, I’m very bullish on Facebook Live and believe it’s a natural extension of how Facebook is already used. The live-streaming battle will heat up further when YouTube launches its own live feature soon.

All of this means that live-streaming is poised to become a much more mainstream activity going forward.

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A year ago, in “Mobile Live Streaming Looks Like An Important New Video Category,” I asserted that, after playing around a bit with Meerkat and Periscope, I was convinced that live-streaming had huge potential. I envisioned lots of interest in both personal and professional uses across breaking news, promoted broadcasts and companion streams to larger events.

Fast forward to yesterday, with Facebook launching a slew of new live-streaming features to Facebook Live, building on its initial launch of live video as part of Mentions last August. With Facebook doubling down on live video, I think it’s pretty clear this is a category that is poised to soar, as infinite applications crop up.

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Underscoring once again how unpredictable the online video space is, Twitter has emerged as the unlikely winner of the rights to stream NFL Thursday Night Football (TNF) games for the 2016-2017 season. Just yesterday I wrote that with Facebook and Apple bowing out, the bidding likely came down to Amazon, Verizon and Google, with Verizon the most likely winner for a variety of reasons.

On the one hand, Twitter’s interest in streaming the TNF games makes sense, as recently returned CEO Jack Dorsey has publicly stated that a top 2016 priority is live streaming, including leveraging its Periscope product. The 10 TNF games give Twitter a marquee property to highlight live streaming, which complements Twitter activity around all games. And Twitter already had a deal in place with the NFL for highlight clips.

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Twitter has released research finding that ads in TV shows that generate strong emotional reactions on Twitter are more likely to be recalled. Twitter conducted the research with Starcom and social TV analytics provider Canvs, which measured the emotional response to the TV shows based on an analysis of viewers’ tweets.

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Video ad tech provider Pixability has unveiled v4 of its platform, enabling unified video ad buying across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. With v4, agencies and advertisers can plan, execute, measure and optimize video ad campaigns through one dashboard, greatly streamlining the workflow. With v4, Pixability is expanding beyond its traditional focus on YouTube ad buying.

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I'm pleased to present the 308th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

In today’s podcast we discuss a number of different items that hit our radar this week. We start with Facebook’s growing impact in video, which was detailed on the company’s earning call earlier this week.

We then transition recent research from Nielsen which Colin analyzed, showing the level of viewership by device.

Next up, Colin and I were watching reports from the Sundance Film Festival noting the aggressive bidding by Amazon and Netflix, underscoring another industry segment being disrupted by SVOD. Last, we touch on the problems Netflix is already running into with its international expansion. Indonesia was the latest country to raise red flags on Netflix’s content this week.
 
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Facebook reported record results for 2015 late yesterday and on the earnings call, video was the first thing Mark Zuckerberg highlighted when discussing the company’s product strategy for delivering more engaging experiences. He added that 100 million hours of video are now watched daily on Facebook by 500 million people (though “watch” can be an ambiguous term for Facebook given its autoplay, audio-off format).

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Facebook is poised to dominate “social TV” according to a new report from The Diffusion Group, authored by veteran industry analyst Alan Wolk. Social TV is defined as using social media platforms to discuss, comment on, or enhance the television experience.

While Facebook’s importance grows, TDG sees Twitter’s role in social TV declining, though it is still significant today. Two main forces are at work: (1) a continued decline in live viewing, thereby making real-time platforms like Twitter less relevant and (2) a shift from fan-driven social TV activity to paid promotional placements by TV networks.

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Positioning itself as friend, not foe to the TV industry, Facebook is tapping the Target Rating Points metric to measure reach, efficiency and effectiveness of combined TV-Facebook video ad campaigns.

Facebook said advertisers can use TRPs to plan a combined TV-Facebook campaign and buy a share of TRPs with Facebook. Nielsen’s Digital AdRatings will verify Facebook’s in-target TRPs and Nielsen’s Total Ad Ratings will verify the total TRPs.

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I'm pleased to present the 279th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Change is everywhere in the video and TV industries and this week 6 different news items hit our radar, which Colin and I think illustrate how quickly things are moving. In today's podcast we discuss each of them and why we think they're significant.

The items include continued falling linear TV ratings as measured by Nielsen, Hulu distributing Showtime, new research showing that Netflix's audience is size larger than those of broadcast TV networks, Tennis Channel's converged TV Everywhere-OTT model, HBO premiering 2 new shows on Facebook and Ooyala's new data showing that 42% of video views are now on mobile.

(note: Colin wanted to clarify one point - when citing Netflix viewership, he said it was 10 million hours streamed per quarter when it's actually 10 billion hours)

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I'm pleased to present the 266th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia.

Colin starts this week's podcast by sharing his positive reactions to Vessel, the startup from former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, which went live this week. Colin likes the mobile app a lot and thinks Vessel's promotion of a free year of service is a smart approach. In particular, Colin is bullish on Vessel's non-intrusive ad model.

However, Colin is less certain about Vessel's odds of success, noting that YouTube's response is a major wildcard. I agree and observe that while Vessel is very impressive, it's also a big test case for users' willingness-to-pay for first window access to content. There's a lot to like about Vessel, and ample reason to believe millennials will like the model, but only time will tell.

Speaking of YouTube, it's becoming increasingly apparent that Facebook is poised to become YouTube's main competitor in the long-run. As I wrote yesterday, this week at Facebook's F8 developer conference, the company unveiled key updates, geared especially for premium publishers, that will bring a lot more high-quality content onto the platform. Colin and I dig into each of these and also discuss a big remaining missing piece - pre-roll ads against videos posted on Facebook.

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At Facebook's F8 developer conference yesterday, the company announced a series of initiatives that, taken together, demonstrate it is positioned to be a very big player in video and YouTube's biggest competitor long-term. Following are the most important announcements and my take on their implications. I also note the key missing pieces that are almost certainly on Facebook's video roadmap.

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Over the past week, I've been spending a little time each day with Snapchat's recently launched "Discover" feature. In case you missed it, or are not a Snapchat user (as I wasn't), Discover is an area of in Snapchat's mobile app featuring icons from 11 different media companies. Behind each icon are innovative, slickly packaged sets of short videos and text stories, perfectly suited for attention-challenged mobile users (see short video below).

It's not immediately clear why a social network like Snapchat, known mostly for enabling ephemeral selfie photos and videos by its addicted young female audience (my 14 1/2 year-old daughter among them), believes it's strategic to partner with mostly mainstream media companies (note, not a single YouTuber) to offer this type of service. Perhaps advertising potential? Or driving deeper user engagement? Or broadening its mission? Or all of the above?

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(Note, I'll share details of online viewing of Super Bowl ads and the game later today…I'm still pulling all of the relevant data together.)

We're just a month into 2015, and there are already abundant signs of online and mobile video's momentum, with lots more growth to come as the year unfolds. Here's what's hit my radar so far:

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Twitter has announced that users will have the ability to record, edit and share 30-second videos within the Twitter app on iPhone and Android mobile devices.  The videos will post within users' timelines just as other tweets do. The feature has been teased for a while and will roll out over the next few days.

I haven't gained access to the video feature yet, but if it works as easily as Twitter describes it, I think it will be a very valuable addition. Of course Twitter has already offered video via its Vine app, but I see Twitter's native video feature as having 2 distinct advantages: first, eliminating the step of having to switch back and forth between the Vine and Twitter apps and second, Twitter's more flexible 30-second length.

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