In this interview with Beet.TV at the Digital Content NewFronts 2018, Badigian, who is Account Lead at the GroupM media agency, talks about why consumers are more sensitive than ever to brand alignment with content and the utility of downloadable video content from Hulu. And she predicts a heyday for audio.

“I think Studio71 actually had a really interesting approach” consisting of computer-driven text and image screening plus a third variable that’s not always found, says Badigian. “They actually have a human element, which I thought was really interesting because not all publishers or content creators are doing that. And it allows them to really understand what’s the difference between maybe a child holding a water gun versus an actual weapon.”

While she doesn’t think there’s a “solve” yet for the overarching issue of brand safety in digital environments, “It’s a very sensitive area and I think it’s one that we’re going to have to be more careful about as advertisers and people as consumers are going to be looking for.”

Asked about tactics for brand alignment, Badigian says a client might be getting “great reach” out of YouTube but not all of the content the client is aligning with on the platform might not be relevant enough to the actual brand or product. “I think that’s where a lot of these smaller publishers or content creators are really important for us because their content might be more customizable to our brand,” she says.

“Studio71 has a lot of different content integration opportunities where you can more tightly weave your brand into that platform. They really do have a ton of very loyal followers.”

In this interview, Studio71 Media Sales EVP Matt Crowley explains the company’s vetting process.

Badigian says Hulu’s NewFronts announcement about viewers being able to download content, including programming containing ads, is a nod to the reality that people don’t always consume video in the same way.

“Sometimes we’re in our homes, sometimes we’re in a train, sometimes we’re in a plane. So downloadable content’s important because we’re not always online even though we probably always want to be online.”

More details can be found in this interview with Hulu’s Peter Naylor.

Badigian was surprised she didn’t hear much about audio content at the NewFronts, given the ascendance of podcasts and similar formats. “I think video had its heyday. I think audio is about to have one.”

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.

After the scandal in which one of the world’s biggest video stars unwisely broadcast Nazi content, YouTube is hiring 10,000 moderators, as the brand safety concern rumbles on.

But human moderation at this scale is a losing battle. YouTube and everyone will need to combine pairs of eyes with AIs.

That’s the approach taken by Studio71, a company which helps produce and place branded content with popular celebrities and YouTube channels and which has just launched a software product to tackle the problem.

Called Context, the system uses humans on top of algorithms to measure videos for brand safety, labelling each piece of content as either safe or unsafe…

Text screening – Algorithms examine the text data around videos (including closed captions, title tags, and descriptions) for flagged keywords including profanity, slang, intolerance, racial slurs, hate speech, violence, sexual activities or controversial topics like extreme religious and political views.

Image processing – Using Google’s Vision API for image content analysis to look for artefacts not present in text, like nudity, drug use, weapons or illegal activities.

Human review – All videos deemed suitable are passed up for further examination, with moderator actions filtering back in to a machine learning algorithm for training the underlying AI more finely in future.

Studio71 claims that process takes three hours, and it will be able to handle 10,000 videos a week.

In this video interview with Beet.TV, Studio71 media sales EVP Matt Crowley explains the idea.

“The top categories for us right now are the CPGs, retail and entertainment companies that are generally very family-friendly, very brand-safe, cautious,” he says. “We’d like to grow also some of our entertainment business along with some of that financial business because I think that’s where the brands are becoming more concerned about potentially running against non-brand-safe content.”

The “brand safety” issue has risen up the agenda in the last two years, as some advertisers have found their creative running against unsavoury kinds of content. That has fuelled a search for solutions to give them more control.

At this month’s NewFronts, where US premium digital publishers touted their upcoming roster to ad buyers, the concern seemed greater than ever, with many involving resorting instead to engaging in sponsored content partnerships in which they can be absolutely certain about the script beforehand.

This week, Beet.TV wrote about Grapeshot, another technology company which crawls the web, indexing and interrogating pages to identify their inner content, so that it can make that intelligence available to advertisers concerned to buy in brand-safe environments. The company has linked up with Tremor Video DSP, bringing the capability in to the media-buying layer.

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.

In this interview with Beet.TV at the Digital Content NewFronts 2018, Weinstein traces the rise of Studio71 and talks about the growing impact of skinny bundles on mobile device consumption.

Studio71 recently signed on to help manage Hart’s digital strategy across the author and comedian’s digital footprint of some 5.3 million followers. In addition, Studio71 picked up such multichannel-network brands and personalities as Family Gaming Team, teen Loren Gray, one of the most popular creators on Musical.ly, and Matt Steffanina, the dancer and celebrity choreographer, as Variety reports.

Weinstein’s previous endeavor, The Collective, was formed circa 2005 as a talent management company. It ventured into the “new breed of talent” space by signing Lucas Cruikshank, who created the character Fred and an associated video series on YouTube, then financing what would become the highest-rated cable movie of 2010 after the movie was licensed to Nickelodeon.

“That was sort of aha moment for the company,” says Weinstein. “And that was the point where we tipped the scales into becoming more of a media enterprise than a management company.”

A few years ago, German broadcaster ProSieben made an investment in The Collective and ultimately took control of the enterprise before merging it with Studio71. Now the company is feeding the growing appetite of Millennials for content consumption as the widening desire for mobile viewing.

Studio71 creates content for audiences “that are wanting to watch a different kind of programming and in a different manner than sitting back in their living room and watching linear television. And that’s absolutely growing,” Weinstein says.

The rise of streaming packages is a welcome development in an age of cord cutters and cord nevers. “Those are also consumable via mobile,” he says of skinny bundles. “I think mobile still is the primary means for a certain demographic, the under-35 crowd, to watch the majority of their content.”

This video is part of Beet.TV’s coverage of the Digital Content NewFronts 2018. The series a co-presentation of Beet.TV and the IAB. Please see additional videos from the series on this page.