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Featured Post | Innovation | Revenue

Insight killed the video star: The role of video in premium subscriptions

It doesn’t seem so long ago that premium video was the great hope for publishers. Newspapers including The Daily Telegraph were investing heavily in building up their video teams, only to have the ground fall away from underneath them when platforms changed the terms of agreements. The result? Newspapers cut their losses and jettisoned the teams around which they had so recently built their strategies.

Premium video now finds itself in a bit of a limbo. It is no longer the star of most publishers’ offerings (save for a few examples). And it has taken a back seat when it comes to the marketing of news paywalls. Instead, insight and access are the new tentpoles of subscriptions. That’s never been more clear than when the Telegraph, fresh from abandoning its video unit, launched an out of home ad campaign heralding its unfettered access to Westminster.

The Athletic has taken a similar approach. The sports analysis site, which has outperformed during Covid, has emphasized the access its journalists have with athletes (and the access its subscribers get with the journalists). Crucially, The Athletic has eschewed video for the most part. The company does create or licensing video. However, it does not view it as central to its value proposition, as this interview with its president and cofounder Adam Hansmann demonstrates:

“According to Hansmann, the industry’s sense of news, often based on daily newspaper deadlines rather than what readers will pay for, is outdated. ‘The modern fan already knows what happened in a game, whether it be from Twitter or Instagram or Facebook. They’ve seen the highlights a million times on the internet’”.

Short and social

Hansmann’s nod to the popularity social video is telling. Mobile video is still far and away the largest growth market for the medium. That’s especially true in markets like China, where short-form video dominates any growth charts. Users spent a total of nearly 600 million hours per day watching short-form videos on mobile in April 2019. That’s more than in any other category.

Additionally, premium video is expensive to produce and the ROI is less clear-cut than for the mass-produced videos on YouTube. As Vanita Kohli-Khandekar explains: “Because [ad-supported] video is free, platforms will do anything to get eyeballs. But subscription-supported programming (usually) is well-researched, written and produced – whether in entertainment or news.”

So, the bottom has dropped out of the video advertising market on platforms. Short-form video is the new normal. And even sports-based digital publications don’t feel the need to make premium video part-and-parcel of their offering. Is it now time to call “cut” on the concept of premium news video at newspapers?

Not news

News publishers do license footage and social video to accompany breaking news. However, the reality is that, unless premium video is a newspaper’s key focus, it just doesn’t make sense for them to invest in strictly news-centric video. For one thing, news video has a shorter tail than other types of video. For another, given that individual papers have a far smaller footprint than other platforms, it’s unlikely that they can attract enough eyeballs to compete with viewers on, say, YouTube.

That is, in part, why publishers like Joe (and its current affairs-based YouTube spinoff PoliticsJOE) choose to produce vox-pops and simple interviews. Frankly, they suit the ad-based platforms better. Even The Financial Times, which does produce longer form videos, typically hews close to the interview-led format on its in-house videos. This format entails a relatively low investment in terms of time and editing, despite looking extremely professional. However, they don’t match the level of production quality of traditional broadcasters or OTT entertainment services.

Head of audio and video for The Evening Standard Chris Stone said: “When a breaking news event happens there is obviously massive spikes in traffic, and everybody’s very interested in this one thing that’s happening. And so, it’s actually quite easy to serve video to that audience, because there’s people out there that are looking for that right then. But it tends to be a shorter tail. And that spike will disappear very quickly. And then you’ll be on to the next thing.”

The lifestyle lifecycle

Instead, he argues that lifestyle video content is the way forward for newspapers. It has a longer lifespan and greater opportunity for commercial partnerships.

Paul Newman is brand director for Future Plc’s home interest titles. Speaking about its own “pivot to video” with the Real Homes Show, he notes that: “Real Homes Show… has been a huge success since we launched it last April. We generated hundreds of thousands of views of the show. It’s proved incredibly popular with commercial partners.”

“I think the important thing is just to start with a good solid business plan, and to understand why you’re creating video, rather than just creating video because you think you should, or because somebody in senior management thinks, ‘Oh we haven’t gotten the video content, maybe we should get on with creating some.’”

The success of lifestyle content in attracting users to sign up for a subscription has already been clearly demonstrated by The New York Times, whose Cooking app is frequently cited as a reason for paying. It is, unsurprisingly, heavily based around video.

Similarly, major lifestyle publications have made their archive of health and fitness videos available as part and parcel of their memberships. The reality, then, is that while video is still a good investment for newspapers for driving subscriptions, oftentimes news video is not.

Marketing medium

So, does that mean that there is no opportunity for newspapers around news video? Not at all. Just look at the success of Vox’s Explained series on Netflix. It delivers an awful lot of value to the parent brand in other ways that aren’t primarily monetary. At the time of Explained’s launch, Vox’s editor-at-large Ezra Klein stated that “… the Vox team did think about the overall Netflix audience, which is much bigger than Vox’s. But not as much about whether those people were watching on phones or tablets or other devices.”

Newspapers also recognize that video consumption habits are different among their key demographics. Consumption is growing across the board. However, it is effectively the primary means of media consumption among younger audiences. The Guardian, which hit one million subscribers on its YouTube channel last year, is keenly aware that those younger audiences are the key to its future.

One million subscribers may not sound like a lot on YouTube. It is considerably smaller than many individual’s channels, and any ad revenue it generates is likely to barely cover production costs, if at all. That, after all, is why many larger (non-media) YouTube channels operate Patreon or donation models as well.

The longer-form explainer news videos that The Guardian produces and makes available for free is effectively the best form of brand marketing possible. It hits audiences where they typically spend their time and can be used as a lure to drive interest back to the paper’s own membership scheme. More than that, as audiences shift to seeing YouTube as a primary source of news, it helps demonstrate that the brand can be trusted above all the conspiracy and polarized videos that typify the platform.

News publishers are serious about the quality of their journalism, no matter the medium. As younger people’s consumption habits lean further towards video, then investment in news video is a way to communicate that quality. It just requires publishers to recognize that the return on that investment is unlikely to come quickly or easily. Rather, it will come from a deeper overall relationship with the audience segment on which they will soon depend.

Featured Post | Innovation

How three media outlets are taking their own approach to TikTok

The TikTok app has now been downloaded nearly two billion times. And a recent surge in new users is being attributed, at least in part, to people escaping the boredom and worry of coronavirus self-isolation and lockdowns. At some point, the pandemic’s tempest will subside, so what long-term strategies can publishers and journalists put in place to get the most from the platform into the future?

In January I wrote a lengthy Medium Post linking to best practice examples and tutorials. In this piece, three very different media outlets share what’s worked, what hasn’t, and their advice to publishers joining TikTok for the first time.

The national paper

Dave Earley, Audience Editor, Guardian Australia
TikTok Account: https://tiktok.com/@guardianaustralia 

The extraordinary success of The Washington Post’s account piqued Early’s interest in TikTok early on. But he hung back for a while before signing Guardian Australia up. “I couldn’t make a commitment to a personality-driven approach like the Post,” he says. “After noticing a few other media outlets posting straight news videos, I decided to get started that way in August last year.”

Guardian Australia’s account has two aims. The first is to build brand awareness with young audiences. The second, says Earley, is to “reach young people who share a deep interest with some of our key coverage areas, like the environment.”

Successful early posts paired news clips with popular sounds. More recently, hits have focused on national challenges like the recent floods and bushfires. “Our bushfires explainer did quite well, taking inspiration from a NowThis Politics impeachment explainer on TikTok that went viral,” Earley says.

However, their strongest performing video has been a surprise. Nancy Pelosi’s reaction to an apparent handshake snub by Donald Trump has had 2.2 million views since it was uploaded in February. Earley attributes these numbers to the fact that TikTok showed the video to Indian users as well as Australians.

Guardian Australia’s news differs from the approach many publishers are taking to focus on timeless content, given that TikTok doesn’t display the date a piece of content was posted.

TikTok’s metrics are also quite limited. However, Earley says that’s fine while Guardian Australia continues to find its best voice on the platform. “Our use of the platform is still experimental and not a top priority for maintaining a regular posting schedule,” he says.

“I’m looking at topline followers and likes, not so much as a measure of success, but more to keep an eye on overall growth. I also look at the individual video play counts and number of comments to see what gained traction.”

The online regional

Chiara Rinaldi, Head of Audience, Wales Online
TikTok Account: https://www.tiktok.com/@walesonline

Wales Online’s account also launched in August last year, targeting people under 24 living in Wales.

“For us, the aim isn’t just to grow a large TikTok following. It’s also to learn more about how we serve Generation Z and get a better understanding of the way they express themselves and consume news and media,” Rinaldi says.

“When we started, we were the only UK regional publisher [on TikTok] so we didn’t have anyone to compare to or look up to for good practice.”

Every publisher I spoke to, including Rinaldi, has mentioned The Washington Post as an example of best practice. However, it’s not one they necessarily want or need to duplicate. “I didn’t think emulating [the Post] would achieve what we set out to do, so we’ve just experimented a lot to see what worked for us,” she says.

That has meant actively seeking the right tone and approach for content, and developing new production skills. “Our newsroom is quite confident in producing social videos but we quickly realized that we needed a completely new approach on TikTok, from our ideas process to how we shoot and edit,” Rinaldi says.

For Wales Online, top performing videos have combined “person-led Welsh identity content” with TikTok trends and popular sounds. These include an American pronounces Welsh places and reasons to marry a Welsh person. Videos of beautiful locations have done best of all, like this mid-winter sunrise at Snowdon.

Repurposing user-generated content has been “a mixed bag” in terms of response, Rinaldi says. “We’ve found food, comedy, and climate change content has performed well,” she says. “But we’ve also had videos that bombed, like people singing and a dog that can say hello. It’s [also] a lot harder to get traction for videos that don’t fit with a challenge, like our videos of the South Wales floods.”

Following seven months of trying different things, Wales Online has begun formulating a clear strategy to engage its TikTok followers with more serious news content. And this is a goal Rinaldi says will be challenging given that on-platform metrics consist primarily of video views, follower numbers, and likes on individual posts.

“So far, we’ve found TikTok to be a really receptive and encouraging platform to work with,” she says. “Our audience is very open, provides us with regular updates and they’re happy to answer our questions, which is refreshing!”

The specialist publication

Jake Banas, Social Media Manager, Futurism
TikTok Account: https://www.tiktok.com/@futurismmedia

New York-based publisher Futurism is using TikTok to connect with young science and tech enthusiasts all over the world. “We began by implementing a video strategy we’ve run with on most other platforms – posting our most popular short clips and well-known viral memes to attract attention,” Banas says.

Futurism’s best performing videos have combined educational clips with popular sounds, like this explainer on how astronauts take a bath in space.

Later on, The Washington Post’s runaway success inspired Futurism to expand its uploads to include videos featuring its staff and newsroom more candidly. However, doing this well has turned out to be harder than it looks. “While everyone wants to be Dave Jorgenson, it’s incredibly difficult to do,” he says.

“Most newsrooms don’t have a dedicated TikTok team. The biggest challenge is simply the amount of time it can take to produce quality content, but the good thing is that – unlike traditional video – TikTok has made it easy for many people to utilize powerful video editing tools to create posts for a mobile-first audience.”

Banas says Futurism is learning what it can from TikTok’s limited metrics and whimsical algorithm to achieve specific goals, such as engaging with young women interested in science and technology.

For now, Futurism has “pulled back” from regular posts to focus on other priorities. But Banas says timeless clips posted weeks or months ago still attract fresh audiences – another example of the evident irrelevance of time to the TikTok algorithm.

Thinking of joining TikTok in 2020? Here are some pro tips:

Earley, Rinaldi, and Banas have these tips for newcomers to the platform:

  • Spend time as a user and watch plenty of content before diving in head-first.
  • Think about what you want to achieve on the platform
  • Ask yourself how you’d explain a big story, or what it’s like to be a journalist, to a teenager.
  • Try some or all of these genres: explainers, vlogs, text on screen to music, lip syncing.
  • Decide whether you can commit to putting staff on camera and let them do “fun stuff.”
  • Use the ‘drafts’ function to learn the basics like adding and timing captions.
  • Read the comments to better understand who you are reaching on the platform.
  • Don’t feel under pressure to post often.
  • The ethos of TikTok is authenticity, so embrace it and get the whole newsroom involved.
  • Be prepared to relax your brand guidelines for an entirely different platform.
  • Interact with your audience. Creator comments and replies mean a lot to viewers.
  • Be original and have fun!
Industry-Research

Analyzing consumers’ appetite for video services

Americans are spending more time than ever viewing content, be it paid or free, from linear TV to streaming video devices. According to the new TIVO Video Report, based on Q4 2018, the average household now uses 2.75 services, a 26% increase in service usage compared to the same time last year. The TIVO Video Report interviewed close to 4,500 adults 18+ in the U.S. and Canada.

TV viewers subscribe to multiple services in order to watch the content they want, when they want it. Top consumer bundles include subscriptions to Netflix, Prime Video and Pay-TV (10%), Facebook, YouTube and Pay-TV and YouTube, Netflix and Pay-TV (both 8% each). With marketplace fragmentation continuing, the question remains, how long will consumers maintain subscriptions to multiple services?

Essential viewing

More than half of the respondents (53%) report Netflix as an essential entertainment source, followed by free YouTube (46%), and cable-TV (40%). Interestingly, just over 40% of consumers also report cable-TV as supplemental to their entertainment sources, suggesting consumers are equally as committed to cable TV as they are non-committed. The distinction consumers make between essential entertainment services and supplemental is an important one. It will eventually determine the services consumers keep and which they cancel.

While Netflix may hold the largest audience share as an
essential entertainment source, Live TV dominates total viewing time (self-reported).
Close to two-thirds of respondents’ report (65%) watching one hour or more of
Live-TV per day, 52% watch one hour or more of OTT/Subscriptions services per
day, 51% watch recorded content (e.g. DVR) and 46% watch one hour or more of
live sporting events (which may factor into the 65% Live-TV viewing).
Live TV remains popular
Free video content is also popular with nearly one-third of
respondents (31%) reporting use of a free video service. Top free video
services include YouTube (58%), Facebook (44%), Twitch and Pluto TV, each
rounding to 18%. Interestingly, network TV mobile apps show limited appeal. Nearly
60% of respondents do not use any TV network apps. Of those using a TV network
app on mobile, the top downloaded include: ABC (10%), A&E (9%), CNN (8%), Cartoon
Network (8%), and CBC (7%).
In addition, more than one-fifth of respondents (22%) access
Pay-TV via a streaming device. In fact, 26% report replacing their set-top-box
(STB) with a streaming device. The top five streaming devices include a smart
TV (27%), gaming console (19%), Roku (18%), Amazon Fire Stick (16%), and Apple
TV (13%).
Consumer fatigue
Breaking up cable TV packages and going a la carte is an
option for consumers. However, with so many programming and device choices
today, the a la carte option is losing favor with only 71% of respondents
stating interest compared to 81% in 2017. Further a full 29% of respondents are
no longer interested in the a la carte option at all.
The TIVO Report clearly shows that consumers have numerous
choices when it comes to content, services and devices. Too many options can
leave consumers overwhelmed, while too few options can lead to low levels of
satisfaction. Industry players need to help consumers discover valued-content and
a positive user experience to continue building consumer satisfaction and
engagement.











Innovation
Do you need a head of apps?

 


Mobile journalism sounds like a great idea for cash-strapped media outlets. Get your journalists to use smartphones to shoot and edit video and photos, and save a bundle versus the cost of DSLRs and pro camcorders.
It sounds simple enough. But newsrooms that are getting on the “mojo” bandwagon have learned the hard way that asking journalists to find and use tools to create mobile content on their own can be a quality control nightmare.
Most consumer video editing apps reduce the size of a video file on export. Some give it a squeeze on import as well, meaning the finished video is fine for social platforms but useless for television. Some audio editing apps will export MP3s, but charge extra for broadcast-standard .WAV files.
A Very British Approach
The BBC recommends third-party apps to its journalists, and even creates apps to help its reporters file directly into the broadcaster’s servers.
So, what’s an editor to do? Well, one way is to appoint someone to curate your apps. At the BBC, where smartphones are increasingly used to create content for linear, on-demand and social platforms, there is a “Mobile Apps” team, which includes a group of IOS developers.
They’ve developed an in-house video recording app that shoots at 25fps (a requirement in PAL-system countries like the UK) rather than the standard 30fps, and which can file video recordings direct to the BBC’s news ingest system. The team also curates an internal-facing BBC Apps Store, where journalists can download bespoke BBC and recommended third-party apps.
The BBC’s internal training department also employs mobile journalism trainers like Marc Blank-Settle and Deirdre Mulcahy who teach reporters how to use a smartphone for radio, photography and video storytelling, and how to use the apps best suited to their jobs. In mid-2017, the BBC published some of that learning during a ‘Mojo Week’ at the BBC Academy.
That being said, the BBC is a huge news outlet with 8,000 journalists, who are also free to try out new apps to find ones that work for them.
Going Dutch
The Dutch broadcaster Omrop Fryslân is a much smaller operation than the BBC, and its in-house mobile trainer Wytse Vellinga has a high level of control over the apps and phones the reporters use to make TV, radio, online and social content.
Every journalist is required to learn to use their phone to create content for all three platforms, and to use a curated list of apps that give the best results. They receive two days’ training and follow-up support.
“If you do not standardize, people tend to get lost in what they can do with their phones,” Mr Vellinga says. “There are just too many different apps out there that claim to deliver quality results – but those results will vary too much for use in a newsroom.”
The Irish Way
A combination of the above two approaches is in place at Irish broadcaster RTÉ, where smartphones are also used across all platforms – radio, TV, online and social. Many journalists at RTÉ use smartphones some of the time, but the broadcaster also has a small team of mobile journalists who shoot and edit on mobile and publish to online and social first, and then, if appropriate, repurposed for television.
The team is led by video journalist Philip Bromwell, who says reporters across the organization are encouraged to use apps designed with reporters in mind – Filmic Pro for shooting, and Luma Fusion for editing – and to adopt consistent styles in their choice of fonts and supers.
“This content could include anything from a reporter taking a still photograph for an online article, to a journalist shooting and editing an entire story on their phone,” he says.
Having an in-house ‘mojo’ team means any RTÉ reporter can get immediate, job-specific guidance from a colleague on which app to use – Bromwell says his team has experimented with more than 50 and narrowed day-to-day use down to “a handful” – and the wider newsroom has a small group of experts to advise on file formats and workflows.
“That said, I also encourage colleagues or trainees to explore and ‘play’ with apps themselves,” Bromwell says. “Mobile journalism is still evolving – none of us has all the answers yet!”
So, while the proliferation of accessible and affordable mobile content creation tools abound, it is important that you set standards for the content. Experimentation is essential, but so are leadership and quality results.
Corinne Podger is a digital journalism educator and consultant for media outlets, NGOs and businesses. She is a specialist trainer in smartphone storytelling for television, radio, online and social media, and has taught more than 2500 journalists and communicators to use smartphones for TV and social video, radio, podcasts and photography.
She has worked as a trainer with BBC Media Action, Thomson Reuters Foundation, the Financial Times, Fairfax Media, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Konrad Adenaeur Stiftung and supported learning for journalists from over 30 countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Australasia.
Corinne has also lectured on mobile journalism at universities and colleges in Australia, Europe and the United States, and speaks regularly at journalism conferences.
She runs bespoke consultancies and individual workshops on request. To contact Corinne, click here.






Boot Stepping on Figures




Perspectives
Will Facebook crush Snapchat in video?

 


Video has become an obsession for many publishers as a method to garner deeper engagement with their audiences. So why not post them on Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat and see if you can wring a few more ad dollars from those platforms? It always gets down to time and money: Which platform is really worth it?
Lately Facebook has been front and center with video, pushing live-streaming last year by subsidizing publishers who created recurring original content. And now comes Watch, a new tab for video with mini-shows from publishers that look more like YouTube than Netflix, funded by Facebook. And that’s after many publishers such as Hearst, Bustle and TechCrunch have prioritized Facebook’s Instagram over Snapchat.
In the end, Facebook has its eye on the bigger prize: getting a piece of the TV advertising action.
So where will that leave Snapchat? It’s reputation as a millennial digital darling has now matured into that of a sluggish teenager seemingly in need of a parental (read: profitable) business model after another poor earnings report with big losses and slowing user growth. Perhaps Snap will try harder to play nice with publishers since it remains a relatively “safe space” within Discover.
Watching ‘Watch’
Facebook has long said their future is in video, and a dedicated section to keep you sucked into the app is part of that strategy. The Watch tab also features a “Watchlist” of episodes created around your personalized algorithms, and is meant to capitalize on community viewership for the maximum Facebook experience. Seeing what your friends are reacting to and being able to watch videos within groups is how Facebook’s video platform differentiates from the likes of YouTube, Netflix and Hulu.
While Facebook eventually hopes for “thousands of shows,” so far only a few are available. And like its effort with Facebook Live, Facebook is paying a select group of publishers, including BuzzFeed, A&E, Major League Baseball and National Geographic, to create and offer content specifically for Watch. Publishers can make money either by splitting advertising revenues with Facebook (the social giant gets a 45% cut), or by creating branded content with advertisers from the start.
Facebook is anticipated to take in about 20 percent of the $83 billion in online advertising dollars this year, according to eMarketer, but it’s still unclear how much will eventually stem from Watch, even if it does have potential (and the backing of the all-powerful News Feed algorithm).
Watch vs. Discover
Even though Facebook has put a lot of energy into cloning Snapchat’s best features, it didn’t copy Snapchat’s strategy of only allowing a select group of publishers onto Discover. The result of Snapchat’s control is that it only has about one short original video show per day. When Facebook eventually opens Watch to whoever wants to create video for it — which is part of the plan — the YouTube-like experience, without YouTube’s powerful search function, might make discoverability hard for most people. In fact, as others have reported, Facebook’s Watch stands to increase the effect of the filter bubble.
When it comes to business, given the less than stellar performance of resource-heavy Facebook Live — not to mention the difficulty of making money with Instant Articles — it’s safe to say publishers should proceed with caution about putting all their eggs in Facebook’s video basket. Facebook is already on top of growth as one part of the two-part online ad duopoly, but it has yet to make itself a safe space for publishers to profit as well.
And Facebook will have to also deal with extremist content that has put YouTube in hot water. Facebook has already come under fire for violent content in some of its livestreams, and brand safety and offensive issues have been huge sources of contention for YouTube. It seems it’s only a matter of time for conflict to arise in that department as well for Facebook. Facebook hasn’t done a great job with humans or algorithms on handling fake news or extremist content, so it still has a lot to learn in editorial oversight.
Can Snapchat Snap Out of It?
Meanwhile, with slow user growth and poor earnings performance, Snapchat has a lot to catch up on if it wants to keep pace with competition. Its growth rate this quarter was about half of what it was in the first quarter. When it comes to daily users, Snapchat also only added 15 million new daily users in the first half of this year — whereas Instagram Stories added 100 million, more than six times as much.
Snapchat could try to subsidize more content, but the question is how. And the truth is that Facebook’s better ad targeting and measurement makes it that much more difficult for Snap to grab advertisers onto its platform over Instagram. Snapchat may have an automated ad-selling platform, but some publishers are grumbling that they have no way of knowing their performance on the “dying” platform.
To top it off, Google is planning to launch its own answer to Snapchat’s Discover, “Stamp.” Built around its AMP mobile web pages that load faster, it’ll allow publishers to create visual-oriented content that — unlike both Facebook and Snapchat — they can also host on their own sites. Another boon for publishers is that Google-backed publisher stories would be available in Google search results.
With all this in mind, publishers would do their best to diversify their video efforts and distribution. They’ve tried complaining and teaming up against the tech giants, but maybe this is a better idea: pitting the platforms against each other. If they all want to dominate in video, why not hold out for better terms, subsidies and promotion in the feed? Snap is in a real bind, and this would be a good time to ask them for a better deal. Facebook wants Watch to catch on? Maybe they can offer producers a better deal for good content.
If platforms want to divide and conquer, then publishers should do the same back at them.
 











Innovation
ESPN takes a wide view of digital video, including its new SportsCenter shorts

 


ESPN is a network with a rich history of delivering sports news in a variety of entertaining and fun ways, but the network is not content to rest on that reputation. Recognizing the need to continuously evolve, ESPN recently made substantive changes to the way it delivers video and other content across its various properties.
They recently broke new ground by creating a dedicated team that produces digital video shorts, which can appear anywhere in the ESPN content ecosystem. Users of the popular ESPN app will notice this video content at the top of their Favorites page, and elsewhere throughout the app, but this same content could be used on TV on the SportsCenter at 6 p.m. slot with Jemele Hill and Michael Smith.
Ryan Spoon, SVP of digital product and design at ESPN, says whatever the network’s approach, it’s about delivering the right content to the right screen at the right time. Regardless of the delivery platform, Spoon says, they are focusing on accessibility and portability as you move from a 50-inch screen in your living room to the 5-inch screen in your pocket.
Unique Content, Uniquely Suited
The goal of the new video strategy is two-fold. First of all, they want to deliver content that is unique and place it front and center on all relevant platforms. Secondly, they want to present content that is highly customized to each individual’s preferences. That means placing headlines and video at the top of your Favorites page that are relevant to both the breaking news of the moment and what’s most relevant to you, based on what they know about your favorite sports/teams/athletes.
In practice, that means that if you’re watching on the ESPN app, you’ll notice that by design a new (and frequently changing) video at the top of the page. The volume is off by default, but it uses text to let you know the gist of the story, even before you turn up the volume.
Perfecting Presentation
That video might appear in other properties or it might not, but each bit of content can be repurposed based on the platform, and that includes not only customizing it for the various ESPN venues, but also for the particular social platforms. Each platform has its own personality whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or SnapChat, Spoon explained, and they will present the content in a way that’s appropriate for each one.
“It’s a challenge across content creation, against programming content, against the presentation layer and the system on technology side that drives it all. All of that has to be balanced with a mixture of what do you need to know and what do you want to know as a fan [of a particular team] and the sports news of the day,” Spoon explained.
As for monetization, they mix in ads with the video content they show across their various properties and across the various presentation platforms, whether TV or digital.
Overall, the strategy is about keeping the network fresh. A key component is understanding that what works at this moment may not always work, Spoon says. They are constantly experimenting with new ways of working and how to best serve their core audience of sports fans, including producing these short video pieces.
“I don’t claim to have the answers or suggest everything we are doing is perfect, but I will say we all believe the right way is to constantly iterate, watch, learn and test.” ESPN’s latest video initiative is less than two weeks old and, according to Spoon, it has already resulted in “great content and continues to improve and find structure and liveliness.”











Industry-Research
Do the UK’s public service broadcasters effectively serve the people?

 


The convenience and flexibility of watching television continues to grow with the ability to time shift and stream programming. These patterns hold true for viewers of public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom; Channel 3 services, Channel 4, Channel 5, S4C and BBC. According to their mandate, public service broadcasters must offer quality programming which informs an understanding of the world, stimulates knowledge and learning, reflects the strength of the UK’s culture and represents diversified viewpoints.
PSB channels are committed to the practice of fulfilling the programming criteria. The Office of Communications (Ofcom), the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting and telecommunications, assesses public services channels’ yearly performance in its report, PSB Annual Research Report. The report evaluates three key areas to gauge effectiveness of the of public service channels: 1) audience opinion 2) viewership and 3) programming and spending.
According to its most recent report, a full 73% of those who have ever watched a PSB channel reported being satisfied with the programming. Viewers reported strong levels of importance and delivery correlating to the objectives of PSB channels. The highest rated in terms of importance were “it provides a wide range of quality and UK made programming for children (88%)” and “its news programs are trustworthy (86%).” Viewers highest scores for delivery were “it provides a wide range of quality and UK made programming for children (85%)” and “its programs help me understand what’s going on in the world today (74%).”
statements of purpose - chart 1
The report also looks at time spent watching broadcast television, with demographic breakdowns, as well as the quantity and quality of public broadcast content. In all, viewers watched 3 hours 36 minutes of measured broadcast TV in an average day in 2015, almost a half hour less per day than in 2010. As we have also seen in the U.S., viewership declined notably for adults 25-34 (19%) and adults 35-44 (17%) during this same time period. These declines were attributed to adult usage of on-demand services such as BBC iPlayer, All 4, Netflix or Amazon, especially among those aged 15-24s and 25-34.
Further, according to the BARB data, viewing of national and international news on broadcast TV increased year-to-year to 96 hours per person 4+ after a three-year decline. Total viewing hours to broadcast TV news also increased (approximately 3 hours) among adults 35+ to 142.5 hours per person in 2015 in contrast to the declines among Persons 16-34 (32.4 hours in 2015 from 33.5 hours in 2014). Where are the younger viewers going for their news? Six in ten Persons 16-24 reported using the internet or apps for news compared to 51% who cited using television.
In 2015, the PSB channels broadcast 31,974 hours of first-run UK originated network programming, an 8% decrease from 34,689 hours ten years ago. A shift in genre production from big-budget dramas to relatively low-cost original programs allowed for a decreased spending with sacrificing too many programming hours.
Importantly, public service channels must support six core characteristics:
  1. high quality
  2. original
  3. innovative
  4. challenging
  5. widely available
  6. distinctive
These values act as important guidelines in delivering effective programming. Adhering to these characteristics, as well as, noting the changes and differences between younger and older adult viewership, will allow PSB channels to meet the expectations of its viewers.











Innovation | Revenue
Salon’s fearless approach to innovating on editorial, video and ad content

 


Founded in 1995, Salon is one of the oldest online publications. But it’s far from “old school” thanks to an aggressive and innovative approach to content creation, “co-creation, and sponsored advertising spearheaded by Cindy Jeffers, who took the helm as Salon Media Group, Inc.’s CEO and CTO in 2012. Jeffers, who was inducted into min Online’s Digital Hall of Fame last May, is often credited leading a turnaround for the business — one that has allowed Salon to experience unprecedented growth in traffic and ‘buzz’. 
But the real news is the increase in audience engagement thanks to edgy and exciting content (and the launch of new content sections such as Tech and Sustainability), proactive social media campaigns and sponsored-content advertising programs that harness tech and video for effective and emotive storytelling. Peggy Anne Salz, chief analyst and content strategist at MobileGroove, caught up with Jeffers to discuss how a strategy sharply focused on social and mobile has allowed Salon to cultivate new audiences and ensure the continued growth of its native advertising initiatives.
You are CEO and CTO. How does having these responsibilities shape your mission for your company?
For us at Salon it’s all about driving the national conversation with fearless, strong, independent voices. It’s also about being platform-agnostic so that we can share those voices and the conversation from platform to platform. The fearlessness, the analysis, and the points of view that we express has to happen on any platform that we’re on. So, technologies matter a lot, but the focus is to get the voices out there on the platforms that matter most to our audience. It’s about the fearlessness of what we do and bringing that to every platform.
The technology backbone is the most critical piece of that. Our API allows us to be platform agnostic and spread the content that we build — whether it’s video, articles or social — onto any number of platforms.
You have been credited with the turnaround at Salon.com — but what measures really get the credit for this transformation?
I was brought on a little over four years ago and since then we’ve really been focused on a couple of key areas: First, we’ve broadened our editorial coverage, and we’ve really pushed into social and mobile in order to expand our reach and reach new audiences. Each of these platforms have very different demographics. We also launched video just last summer as a way to broaden out into more visual story telling. On the advertising side, we pivoted in 2012 to really focus on custom integrations and, more recently, storytelling through video.
salonwatchOn the product side, our big focus has been mobile. Right now 60% of our audience is accessing our content using mobile. At first had some catching up to do since we didn’t have a mobile browser experience or offer a mobile app in 2012, but that has changed with the launch if an iPhone app, an Android app and then apps for tablet devices. In April, we launched an app for the Apple Watch, one that was timed to day one of the Apple Watch. The focus has been to mobilize and optimize the main site for a mobile-focused experience.
With one in three consumers watch video on their mobile devices, it’s clear that mobile video is eating the world . You are not only using it to enhance your editorial content; you have inserted video into sponsored-content, working with advertisers using video in their storytelling. What is the attraction of video?
We’ve been really excited about video. We launched video on the site in 2012 with third-party video providers such as AOL On. At first, we wanted to get our feet wet and see how the audience would respond. Since then we’ve seen more uptake and more interest in the third-party videos on the site. Based on this positive outcome we decided last year to make it a priority, so we hired video editors and also established a video platform on the site. It’s been amazing to watch the editorial team explore video and see what Salon can build and become on this new platform.
A big part of this is storytelling, and at Salon the process is very collaborative. In fact, Matthew Sussberg, VP of sales at Salon Media Group, is quoted as saying that “when it is done well, native advertising is in the site’s overall editorial voice so that it sounds authentic.” How is that approach progressing and what’s next?
Visual storytelling in general is very popular with our audience and we want to be telling stories that are accessible to them and meet them where they are. For over 20 years, Salon has been home to a lot of amazing writers, but that doesn’t limit us to one style of content or one platform. It’s why we’ve been pushing out into video and mobile — and why we’re also seeing the majority of our audience is there. Looking at interactive and VR [Virtual Reality] I think that there’s a lot more room to grow our brand. For now, video is one of a set of tools we’re exploring to deepen visual storytelling.
One of reasons for the super-sharp focus on video and mobile is because the vast majority of your audience is already consuming and enjoying content on these platforms. What else can you tell me about your audience?
As I said, we’ve focused the last few years on broadening out the demographic — and this is definitely part of our push into new storytelling techniques, new social platforms and new content verticals. And we have been broadening out the mix on the home page as well. Today we have long-form opinion and analysis, but we also are filing timely content that is capturing what is moving through the news at that moment.
It’s the content that appeals to our broad and growing demographic. Certainly, one consistent characteristic across all of the age groups that we serve is that they’re a highly educated group. Having a very smart audience which presents us with a lot of good challenges. It means the content has to engage and empower our audience — and everything we do has to make that conversation smarter. It also means our advertising has to be a lot smarter than what you might find elsewhere. The advertising needs to meet them [the audience] where they are, and it also needs to have a level of sophistication that will actually pull them in. Finally, our audience also consists of influencers across culture, technology and politics.
And this is also why sponsored-content creation is more like ‘co-creation’. Please elaborate on the process since there have been some notable outcomes — I’m thinking here about the campaign when Salon partnered with fashion brand Cole Haan a few years back for its 85th anniversary and the launch of its “Born in 1928” campaign. It was a multimedia campaign with a very effective and engaging social element…
There are certain campaigns that we build in-house. For this we have a creative team that can build custom videos for advertisers and this is a separate creative team from our editorial staff. We also build interactive content. In the fall we did two interactive pieces with Hulu: one was an interactive advent calendar and the other was a crossword puzzle for Seinfeld. Both of those were interactive pieces that lived on the site we created in-house. We also with Cadillac last year on a series to spotlight  creative visionaries across the various creative fields. Another was storytelling and video with MOMA [the Museum of Modern Art] looking at the impact of the Internet of Things on the cultural sector.
So those are some examples where it’s not our editorial team that is creating the content. Instead, it’s a collaboration with a team that really understands our editorial team’s sensibilities and how they relate to the audience. The outcome is content that can live on the site and really match the voice of the site.
You have a highly educated audience and that is what drives your content — not to mention a fearless approach to journalism. But it is also the driver on the ad side of your business, meaning sponsored advertising has to be quite sophisticated. How do you keep the balance between content and content marketing?
Given our demographic and just how smart they are, we are not trying to put anything past them. We are absolutely maintaining a church-state divide here. We make sure to the advertisement label accompanies all of the sponsored content and native advertising content that appears on the site.
That said, we also work closely with advertisers to bring the highest quality content that we can to the site — content that allows us to meet our users’ interest while also meeting the advertiser interest. From our perspective, unless the content is quality content, it’s not going to well anyway, so it’s important to produce content our users appreciate and marketing pieces that can, therefore, also go viral because of that appeal.
And since you’ve been at Salon social is baked into your strategy…
Overall, social is very much a part of what we think of as our ‘other homepage’. We don’t think of Salon as just Salon.com. We think of Salon as existing as a brand on many platforms including social. So, posting to our social media pages is just as important to us as getting our content out onto our homepage. Our editorial team is on their social accounts and very active 24/7 on those social accounts promoting the editorial content. Occasionally we work with advertisers that wants to see some of their content to go through that social feed. As long as the content is something that editorial signs off on, then they do promote it. But, otherwise, we determine other channels that it can go out on.
And then there is video to amplify this impact. How does one set the stage for the other and what results can you share?
We’ve been experimenting with video and with uploading videos directly to Facebook, and our Facebook videos have done really well. Two that stand out because they each counted over 10 million views is a rap video that our editorial team made as a mash-up of Palin’s speech with Trump in January and another was a mash-up style video that they did with Trump and teens based on part of The Big Lebowski. These were the first really big viral videos that we had on Facebook. We definitely see a lot more reach through our videos than we had with our written content, so we’re excited about the potential to bring people back to our platform through viral video.
So, in a way, video is big part of what will allow you — and your content — to rise above the noise?
 Yes, absolutely. We see video as a big opportunity and an area for growth. Mark Zuckerberg recently said he’s obsessed with live-streaming. I think that we’re starting to see even the social media platforms that haven’t historically had a big focus on video are shifting and starting to explore it. After all, so much video is consumed on their platforms that they really can’t look away from it. It’s the way that people are consuming content.
Peggy Anne Salz is the Content Marketing Strategist and Chief Analyst of Mobile Groove, a top 50 influential technology site providing custom research to the global mobile industry and consulting to tech startups. She is a frequent contributor to Forbes on the topic of mobile marketing, engagement and apps. Her work also regularly appears in a range of publications from Venture Beat to Harvard Business Review. Peggy is a top 30 Mobile Marketing influencer and a nine-time author based in Europe. Follow her @peggyanne.











Perspectives
How far can the video push go?

 


Seems like everyone wants video these days. Facebook is paying publishers and celebrities to be part of Facebook Live, BuzzFeed is handing out two-year contracts to top video creators, and Twitter has had to pay its Vine creators to keep them happy. Not to mention Mashable recently laying off staff while pivoting more strongly into video.
But while the video gold rush continues, will there be enough gold to go around? Will all these bets pay off? While video advertising continues to grow—and pay more than ads around text—not all video content is created equally. And not all of it will pay the bills for quality video productions.
Live-streaming craze

Live-streaming video has gone through a number of boomlets, from the Ustream days to Periscope and on to the recent push for Facebook Live. The promise is that anyone can point and shoot live video from their bedroom, or out at a protest, or out in the field from a reporter. Following in the footsteps of Meerkat and Periscope, Facebooks Live is bringing live-streaming to its 1.2 billion users.
“Live is like having a TV camera in your pocket. Anyone with a phone now has the power to broadcast to anyone in the world,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on his Facebook page. “This is a big shift in how we communicate, and it’s going to create new opportunities for people to come together.”
To give the service a boost, Facebook has been paying influential celebrities and media properties like the New York Times, BuzzFeed, Huffington Post, Vox, and food and travel publisher Tastemade to use Facebook Live. BuzzFeed’s Alex Kantrowitz reports the social media giant has offered publishers “around $250,000 for 20 posts per month over a three-month period” and “six-figure checks to celebrities who agree to use its live-streaming product.” Twitter also recently announced that it will spend millions to stream 10 NFL games during the 2016 season, and Snapchat has also scored a deal with NBC to showcase highlights from the 2016 Olympics on its platform. And AOL just announced that it will join the fray with live “TV-grade” video.
But all the talent going toward video also presents some of conundrums that publishers and platforms will have to sort through. The first has to do with content. As the Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern put it, most of the mainstream media efforts seem to be as lo-fi as the do-it-yourself content, with poor production value. “Much of the content feels pointless,” she wrote. “BuzzFeed’s infamous watermelon-bursting video hit nearly a million live viewers. Fortune had reporters try protein bars made from dead insects.”
Beyond live-streaming

Live streaming isn’t the only kind of video filling up News Feeds. Mic’s daily video series “Mic Check” attracts the bulk of its mostly millennial audience through Facebook, where it has 1.7 million likes. And BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, based in Los Angeles, produces “videos that routinely rack up millions of views in the span of hours,” as Gawker’s Jordan Sargent wrote.
But some missteps have occurred along the way. BuzzFeed Motion Pictures, for example, released a video titled “27 Questions Black People Have For Black People,” that was widely criticized for perpetuating stereotypes, leading BuzzFeed to release an apology on Twitter. Not only that, but as more and more people start using video, the competition for what’s considered “good content” becomes much more fierce — which means that creating a sustainable financial operation becomes much more difficult.
BuzzFeed has been offering two-year contracts that “bind the creators to the company while also allowing their work to flow out and away from BuzzFeed,” Sargent wrote. Vine stars have also demanded they be paid for their work, according to BuzzFeed’s Kantrowitz. “Three and a half years is a long time to have us posting on your platform for free,” one Vine star said, while noting he could move elsewhere, such as Facebook or YouTube.
Whether these video endeavors are financially sustainable in the long run is still a question mark for digital-only outlets that have recently undergone corrections (although BuzzFeed certainly has assets behind it). But for now, the video push has scrambled the equation, with platforms paying publishers, publishers paying creators, and anyone with video skills sitting in the cat bird’s seat.






is industry cratering?




Perspectives
A correction for digital natives? Yes, and that’s fine

 


Days after nearly a million people watched a watermelon explode on Facebook Live, the Financial Times reported a gloomy outlook for the digital company behind the endeavor: BuzzFeed missed its 2015 revenue target by 32 percent and was cutting its revenue projections for 2016 in half.
Coupled with ongoing layoffs and reorganizations at top digital media companies, these shaky performances have left some people wondering whether these once-touted darlings — like the watermelon before it —are ready to burst.
BuzzFeed Falling Short?
BuzzFeed anticipated about $250 million in revenue for 2015 yet brought in less than $170 million, according to the FT’s Matthew Garrahan and Henry Mance, and slashed its 2016 revenue goals from $500 million to $250 million. BuzzFeed chairman Ken Lerer quickly dismissed the 2016 projections (though he wouldn’t discuss last year’s performace), and said the company was on track to exceed its revenue targets in Q2 and for the rest of the year.
“There’s nothing cratering in the industry. It’s better than ever,” he told Recode’s Peter Kafka. “It’s just different.
What may be different for BuzzFeed, according to Kafka, is the theory that BuzzFeed’s core ad product, native advertising written on behalf of marketers, might not scale as well as video advertising, which is generating big bucks. Another theory for the unexpected revenue shortage is that while BuzzFeed is a leader in distributing content directly onto social platforms — for example, video uploaded directly to Facebook — it hasn’t yet been able to earn money from that content because the platforms are still developing their ad strategies.
One advertising model that is certain, though, is video. “Video ad rates continue to hold up far better than for ads placed alongside all those tiresome words,” Ken Doctor wrote in Nieman Lab.
Video was also the secret word behind recent layoffs and restructuring at Mashable, which, along with Gawker, Al Jazeera America, Salon, International Business Times and Huffington Post, suffered from cutbacks in staffing. In an especially shocking blow, Mashable announced that Jim Roberts, who came to Mashable from Reuters, and before that, the New York Times, would be leaving. He is widely credited with helping Mashable grow up and hired editors to oversee political and world news alongside tech information and reporting. About 30 Mashable staff were laid off to refocus more on video and core Mashable content — namely, tech and entertainment — and away from news and politics.
Sky-High Valuations
The valuations that Mashable and other digital companies had, though, led to a lot more pressure to perform. Mashable’s announcement came not too long after it raised $15 million from Turner Broadcasting and others — a move some dubbed as “new media chasing old media” — bringing its total funding to $46 million. Comcast’s NBCUniversal, meanwhile, invested $200 million in BuzzFeed last summer at a $1.5 billion valuation, and invested $200 million in Vox Media. Adding to the repertoire of huge digital media investments is German media giant Axel Springer, which has invested  in 15 digital media companies (including Mic) in addition to buying Business Insider last year for about $450 million.
Do these investors have reason to worry about owning potential “unicorpses”? Probably not. But in any new field of media experimentation, there will be highs and lows. With the proliferation of so many native-digital players, it was predictable that there would be a correction, and eventually consolidation. For Mashable, BuzzFeed and the like, their content strategies are moving faster than the monetization strategies — which, while disappointing on the financial end, is certainly not a bad thing when building an engaged audience. While it doesn’t bode well for the value of text, it makes sense that these companies are turning to video if that’s where the money is. Other legacy media outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post are doing the same.
If anything, these recent shake-ups in the digital media business serve as a reminder that anticipating the future of the business is no easy task. “If people expect these companies to have figured out how to replace the legacy news companies and navigate this new world, they’ve got to think again,” Doctor wrote. “There is no secret sauce in news publishing.”











Industry-Research
Video effective for content marketing despite challenges

 


Video is proving to be one of the most effective types of content marketers are using to achieve their objectives. However, according to research released by Ascend2, challenging obstacles continue to hinder video marketing performance. To examine these challenges, Ascend2 fielded the Video Marketing Strategy Survey and completed interviews with 280 marketing, sales and business professionals from around the world.
Increased brand awareness (47%) and online engagement (45%) top the list of objectives for a video marketing strategy followed closely by improving consumer education (43%) and increased lead generation (41%).
Video marketing is rated very successful at achieving important objectives by 25% of companies and another 60% rate it somewhat successful. A total of only 15% say that they are struggling to achieve success with video marketing.
Lack of an effective strategy is the most challenging obstacle to video marketing success according to nearly half (48%) of companies surveyed. A strategy with sufficient resources and budget to produce compelling content are critical to successful outcomes.
Lack of compelling content is a top challenge for video marketers due in many cases to the degree of difficulty required to create some types of content. The most difficult types of video content to create are customer testimonials, project reviews or case studies.
The report found that more than half of respondents say their video content marketing budgets are increasing marginally (51%) while only 18% predict a significant increase.
asend











Perspectives | Revenue
Viewability problems spread to video ads on social

 


A funny thing happened on the way to social distribution domination. While publishers have started to test more and more original content on social platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat, those platforms are still suffering from problems of viewability for ads—especially with video.
Let’s look at the statistics: The Media Rating Council and the Interactive Advertising Bureau suggests a video ad is viewable when at least half of the ad’s pixels are visible on a screen for at least two consecutive seconds. An April study by Google found the average viewability of video ads across the web (not taking YouTube into account) was 54%. When considering video ads on YouTube, that figure jumped to 91% across different devices and apps — and video ads were significantly more viewable on mobile and tablet as opposed to desktop. Non-viewable ads, meanwhile, were either scrolled off the screen or abandoned in less than two seconds.
Short Attention Span on Snapchat

Yet just because ads might be more viewable on mobile than on desktop doesn’t discount the anxiety surrounding their worth. A recent article on Digiday found a full 70% of Snapchat’s mostly millennial audience had moved on from an ad after only three seconds. Given Snapchat currently charges brands for video ads that are viewed for even less than a second, it’s not only raised discussion on the definition on viewability, but also the relative value of these ads for brands.
“Snapchat is using this measurement that just seems off from what brands and clients want and where the rest of the industry is going,” a digital marketing insider with knowledge of Snapchat’s ad model told Garrett Sloane of Digiday. “If an ad is on the screen for less than a second, it’s hard to imagine it made an impression.”
Despite the ongoing debate on the impact of technology giants becoming the gatekeepers for brands and publishers, the platforms will have to work more closely with these parties if they are all going to have long-term, stable ad revenues. Twitter, for example, offers six-second pre-roll ads. Facebook also “teaches brands how to capture attention within three seconds, using muted auto-play videos, which people can scroll right past,” Sloane wrote in Digiday.
Third-Party Verification?

Some companies are demanding third-party tools be used to evaluate which advertisements are actually being seen, to help ensure the accuracy of the information and maintain higher viewability. Complaints from Uniliver and Kelloggs are suspected to be behind YouTube’s announcement to use third-party tools instead of its own in-house measuring tool, Active View.
But this also has its negative consequences. Facebook, for instance, has argued that “third-party verification view tags often slow down consumer experience and don’t always report views consistently,” and has hinted that these third-party verification tools could compromise valuable user data. And Facebook — whose log-in can track which desktop or mobile devices people use — has access to the consumer data that is so crucial to advertisers. That data is difficult for most publishers to obtain otherwise, and generally harder to determine on mobile, because the varying size of different gadgets require different kinds of advertising.
Maintaining a quality user experience versus earning revenue from advertising seems to be the trade-off that’s happening on social platforms. Snapchat, for instance, maintains brands won’t be charged if viewers skip an ad entirely. But it  also offers its users the chance to skip any advertisement they wish.
These are early days for video ads on social platforms, so there could be more standards among the major players in the near future. That could go a long way toward addressing viewability issues. Snapchat videos, for instance, take up the entire screen (so eyes can’t wander), and also use the vertical video format which leads to higher view rates.
Or publishers and brands could also try another route to better viewability: better ads, and even native ads that are creative enough for people to play through and share without skipping in disgust.








    
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