Narrative: Disrupting TV
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Facebook Announces Partnership with Nielsen to Measure Brand Lift Including TV (Sep 22, 2017)
Facebook has announced that it’s partnering with Nielsen to provide advertisers with a combined measurement of brand lift for campaigns that run across both Facebook and TV. That provides a consistent set of metrics for advertisers that use both platforms, but more importantly it puts a big dent in the idea that Facebook and TV are at war, a narrative the media seems keen to perpetuate but which Facebook itself has repeatedly downplayed. While it’s certainly the case that Facebook is chasing some of the same ad dollars as TV, and Facebook has even made the case that TV ads are less effective than Facebook ads, it’s also pushed back against the idea that it’s trying to kill TV advertising. This partnership suggests that Facebook is realistic about the fact that most advertisers are going to continue to run ads both online (including on its platform) and on TV, and that it can best support those advertisers by making it easier to measure the performance of campaigns in both media. It’s also making the argument that campaigns that run in this way actually see better results than those which only run in one place.
via Facebook
Fox and Twitter Partner Around New and Returning Shows (Sep 20, 2017)
Fox Television and Twitter have announced a partnership around new and returning shows, which will see some episodes as well as new content broadcast through Twitter’s live video platform. Empire, one of the most popular shows on broadcast TV, will have a live pre-show featuring interviews and other material broadcast live on Twitter, while another returning show, The Mick, will have a mini-marathon broadcast on Twitter, and new show Ghosted will have its premiere episode broadcast live on Twitter four nights running this week. It’s an interesting attempt to create buzz and additional audiences on Twitter around shows which are currently watched almost entirely through traditional channels and more established streaming services, and will serve as a good experiment for both companies. In a world where much of viewing is moving on-demand, forcing live streaming feels a little contrived, and I’m curious to see how viewers respond to that. The Mick marathon will be shown fairly late in the evening, while Ghosted will debut in an early evening slot on Twitter, presumably to avoid conflicting with Fox’s own primetime lineup, though the Ghosted premiere it precedes the network premiere by a week and a half. We’re going to see lots more of this kind of experimentation over the next little while, and I’m guessing much of it will fall flat, but no doubt some useful concepts will come out of it, and the fan-type shows like the one Fox and Twitter are building around Empire seem the likeliest to take off, both because they’re exclusive to the platform and because other networks have already run these successfully – notably AMC’s Talking Dead.
via Fox
HBO Tops Emmy Award List, Hulu Makes Big Strides, Netflix Biggest Streaming Winner (Sep 18, 2017)
Last night’s Emmy awards once again provided an interesting set of insights into the winners and losers among both traditional and online streaming TV properties. HBO won the most overall awards with 29, while Netflix beat out the other streaming services with 20. Hulu did much better than in the past, almost entirely because of one show – The Handmaid’s Tale – which has been extremely well reviewed but may also have garnered additional favor by being deemed particularly relevant in today’s rather dystopian real-world political scene. That’s a huge coup for Hulu as Netflix has never won best drama, but it would be dangerous to read too much into it, given Hulu’s lack of past or broader success. Netflix won twice as many awards overall, including wins for multiple shows in different categories. Amazon, meanwhile, took away just two wins. In addition to HBO, NBC did well among the traditional TV companies, coming in third behind Netflix, while ABC, Fox, and CBS all took home single digit trophies. It still feels like HBO and Netflix are the real powerhouses when it comes to high-budget, high-quality TV, but the Hulu wins show that others in the streaming world aren’t being shut out entirely, which should be heartening to Apple and others coming into the game late but with big budgets and ambitions.
via Bloomberg and Business Insider (award tally)
★ Amazon is Reportedly Looking to Buy Lower-Profile Channels from TV Companies (Sep 15, 2017)
NBC News reports that Amazon has been talking to traditional TV companies about taking some of their lower-profile networks off their hands. Four specific examples cited in the article linked below are VH1 and CMT at Viacom and Adult Swim and Boomerang at Turner. Big TV companies have been shutting down cable networks over the last few years and focusing their efforts on a smaller number of successful channels with big audiences as cord cutting begins to really bite, so there are potentially quite a few channels with smaller audiences out there for the taking, and NBC says Amazon might buy “scores” of them, though that number might be a bit of a stretch. At any rate, the question becomes what Amazon would do with them, and the obvious answer is either bundling them into Prime or selling them as add-ons to Prime. But another really interesting angle to think about is advertising, where Amazon has been quietly building a big online business but with very little action so far on the video side. Owning lots of linear channels would allow it to build a much bigger video ad business as a complement to its online ad business, and potentially do cross-platform targeting across them. It’s also a fascinating alternative to spending ever more to commission and/or acquire original content for its streaming service – it could probably snap up some of these channels pretty cheaply and run them for less than it would cost to build up equivalent amounts of original content from scratch. Importantly, some of these networks have small audiences but lots of distribution – VH1 is in well over 80 million homes, for example. That would be pretty good relative to Amazon’s own domestic distribution through Prime.
via NBC News
Hulu Will Spend $2.5 Billion on Content in 2017 (Sep 14, 2017)
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eMarketer Says Cord Cutting to Accelerate, TV Ad Spend Growth to Slow (Sep 13, 2017)
Analyst firm eMarketer has some new numbers out on cord cutting and the impact it will have on traditional TV ad spending. Specifically, it says that later this year there will be over 22 million cord cutting households in the US, up about 5.5 million from 2016, while TV ad spending growth will slow down meaningfully, though it’s still projecting growth over the next few years. I’m in agreement with the broad trend described by eMarketer around cord-cutting: my own analysis has consistently shown accelerating cord cutting behavior, though at a rather slower rate than eMarketer is projecting – far closer to 2 million in the past year than the over 5 million eMarketer is suggesting by the end of this year. On ad spending, I’m also in agreement that growth will slow, but I think it will turn negative soon (it was already negative for the major TV companies over the past year, according to my own data gathering, thanks in part to last year’s strong election-related spending). I think a decline in the traditional TV ad business is inevitable at this point in the coming years, and the results will begin to be felt as traditional TV companies start to reduce spending to bring costs in line, which in turn will have significant effects on the overall industry.
via eMarketer
YouTube By Far Most-Used Video App on Android, Grosses More Than Hulu (Sep 13, 2017)
Variety has a quick run-down of some new data from App Annie about the usage of various mobile video apps in the twelve months to July 2017, and it shows YouTube to be dominant in that category, with 80% of total time spent for the top 10 apps. Also notable is that YouTube grossed more than Hulu on the strength of its YouTube Red subscription service, suggesting that it may be doing better than widely perceived, though that may also reflect YouTube’s role as a more mobile-centric platform while many users may pay for their Hulu subscriptions through a computer or TV box. Also worth noting is that over half the top ten video apps come from non-traditional TV brands – only HBO, Starz, CBS, and Showtime hit the top ten, while the rest are all digital-native brands. Also notable is the fact that all of those traditional TV apps have pursued the same successful strategy of opening up their entire libraries for digital rather than trying to create a digital service that’s complementary to traditional TV – that’s the winning strategy in this space, and Disney should take note as it readies an ESPN direct to consumer service for early next year.
via Variety
★ Apple Announces Upgraded Watch and TV Devices (Sep 12, 2017)
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AT&T Extends Free HBO Offer to All New Unlimited Wireless Plans (Sep 12, 2017)
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Facebook is Testing Downloadable Instant Videos (Sep 12, 2017)
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