But how do advertisers take advantage of that mega media platform, and what exactly is Verizon Media’s offering?
In this video interview with Beet.TV, Jeff Lucas, Verizon Media Head of North American Sales & Global Client Solutions, explains: “We’re second to Google in terms of total size, and we are stocked with premium, professionally produced content.
“What we do is, when we look at the first-party data of our users consuming content, we can see where they’re consuming content along the path to purchase. I think that that’s very unique that others don’t have.”
Lucas was speaking around Verizon Media’s NewFronts presentation, where the outfit was pitching its upcoming content slate to advertisers in a bid to secure upfront ad sales agreements.
That roster includes:
At the NewFronts, strategic advisory firm MediaLink teamed with YouTube for a kickoff breakfast and discussion that included Tara Walpert Levy, VP of agency and brand solutions at Google and YouTube.
Referring to the ever-rising competition among streaming TV providers, Kassan observes, “there are peoples’ careers who depend on it and there are companies that are looking at it as their future, and there’s a lot of barbarians at the gates right now.”
He notes that after Disney announced Disney+, Wall Street’s reaction was to push the stock of the Walt Disney Co. “to an all-time high.” Similarly, WarnerMedia has “an amazing existing franchise with HBO and extending that and bringing Bob Greenblatt to the party I think is going to make a big statement,” Kassan adds in a reference to the recently appointed Chairman of WarnerMedia Entertainment.
He says Comcast and its NBCUniversal juggernaut “are certainly not to be counted out but very much in the middle of it. Not to underestimate YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix “and you just go on and on. You’ve got billions and billions of dollars being spent against the backdrop of creating content, and the consumer seems to have an insatiable appetite for that content.”
As for the prospects for advertising spending on television amid all the groundbreaking change, some question whether marketers that can’t spend money the way they traditionally have done “are just going to put that to their bottom line. We know that’s not the case because you still need to market your goods and services. I think it has to be reimagined. It’s not going to be the way it was, that’s for sure, but it will still exist and it will still thrive.”
]]>In this video interview with Beet.TV, Tara Walpert Levy, YouTube VP, Agency and Brand Solutions, says YouTube TV, the cable-free $49.99-a-month TV service, is now being offered to advertisers outside of Google Preferred, the special slice of inventory on big YouTube stars who are nevertheless not TV channels.
YouTube is now watched for around 250 million hours a day on TV screens via a variety of OTT devices, Walpert Levy says. But, after a muted start for its premium offerings, YouTube is making some changes.
Bringing YouTube TV channels – which include Fox, ABC, AMC and Discovery – to advertisers in this way gives brands the opportunity to advertise in classical linear TV, not just YouTube’s traditional “endemic” content.
“We have a portion of the ad avails on traditional television networks (available) on YouTube TV, and advertisers can participate in those alongside what they would naturally do in participating in endemic content,” Walpert Levy says.
That may come as a welcome boost for YouTube. Whilst Netflix, Amazon and now Apple have wave big checkbooks around to finance original productions, YouTube is reportedly scaling back its YouTube Originals scripted shows and will make its ad-free YouTube Premium shows (formerly YouTube Red) available outside of Premium’s $12.99-a-month subscription.
“Cobra Kai has had 11 Emmy nominations, but all of that was behind the paywall,” Walpert Levy says says. “We’ve actually brought that forward this year, and so all of our YouTube Originals are also going to have advertising opportunities and integration opportunities.
“The feedback from the market around the range of content across Google Preferred, which is our very best YouTube content, what’s available through YouTube TV and what’s available through YouTube Originals has been very strong.”
Reading between the lines, the advertising opportunity for YouTube may be bigger than that suggested by its initial attempts at creating subscription tiers.
What kind of ads will work best? Walpert Levy says “personalized” ones work best – three times more effective than ones which are not.
By “personalized”, she means ones which agencies or production shops craft to target different user groups, or which are customized using Director Mix, a YouTube tool enabling creative ad versioning from a range of brand assets.
]]>With almost 25% of its content viewed “in some sort of binge mode,” meaning three or more episodes at a given time, “There’s a tremendous opportunity to help brands align their messaging with the experience that the viewer’s having,” Helfand says. The new binge advertising experience “rewards the viewer for this natural experience, this natural behavior that’s how happening in streaming television.”
The binge advertising experience format will be beta tested in the third quarter and be fully available by the end of 2019, according to Helfand.
Among other new offerings, Hulu, which claims to have the lightest ad load in TV, will be instituting a daily frequency cap of four ads per day. It’s in addition to Hulu’s hourly frequency cap of two ads per 60 minutes of content.
“We know a number of our viewers are watching several hours of TV in a given day, and so adding this frequency management capability allows us to deliver a better overall experience for the viewer and a better ROI for the brand,” says Helfand.
At its presentation at The Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, Hulu said it has increased its total customer base to more than 28 million, with 26.8 million monthly paid subscribers and 1.3 million promotional accounts.
Hulu continues to fine-tune its various ad format offerings, which Helfand groups into four areas:
Transactional: Wherein viewers can interact with ads “while minimizing the intrusion to the storytelling journey.” With single click of remote, viewers can opt to have a second-screen experience with an advertiser.
Choice-Based: This gives viewers an opportunity to choose the type of advertising “or the journey they’re taking with an advertiser.”
Integrated Storytelling: To better co-mingle brands with content, one option is product placement “or it could be something like allowing the brand to be part of the overall content journey that’s happening while the viewer is watching.”
Situational: “It’s the idea that there are natural behaviors that are happening in streaming television today that represent a tremendous opportunity for the brand to really align their message with the behavior that’s happening. Binge is a great example of that.” Another example is Hulu’s “pause ad” that debuted in early 2019.
On the content side, Hulu announced that Marvel Television will bring two new live-action series to Hulu. Marvel’s Ghost Rider and Marvel’s Helstrom will debut on Hulu in 2020. Along with other partnerships and programs, Hulu will partner with Vox Media Studios, David Chang’s Majordomo Media and Chrissy Teigen’s Suit & Thai Productions to develop and produce a slate of premium food-centric programming.
]]>“Payouts to our publishing partners grew 60% over 2018 and they did the same in 2017,” says Laura Froelich, Twitter head of US content partnerships, in this video interview with Beet.TV.
Twitter has content supply deals with more than 950 publishers. Its payouts come from the gamut of relationships and ad products – including for exclusive content productions and simply returning money for ads placed against publishers’ material. Twitter also discussed that hike with Digiday.
Froelich tells Beet.TV publishers can work the ad sales relationship however they like: “Either they can do what we call ‘lead-the-sale’ or oftentimes Twitter will lead the sale.”
At the NewFronts, Twitter is touting a slate of publisher offerings to advertisers:
NewFronts is a season when digital media properties tout their upcoming content roster to tie down upfront ad sales,
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