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The pandemic has accelerated adoption of a number of technologies, from online grocery to multiplatform gaming to streaming services and more. But one industry that has not benefited is traditional pay TV. According to new research from eMarketer, the cable, satellite and telecom TV industry is on … Also see https://cordcuttinglab.com/cord-cutting-statistics/

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With third-party cookies on the way out, publishers are becoming the gatekeepers of some of the largest authenticated audiences online.

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If you haven’t yet explored the possibility of digital media ad buys, why not make it a point to do so today?

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End the year on a postivite note with Asia Partners report 2019 that elicits the success metrics and needs of the the tech business ecosystem in Southeast Asia.

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The online population of Myanmar is growing at a rapid pace, with Telenor claiming 13.7m subscribers in a recent release. 52% of customers are active data users. This matches MPT’s 14 million subscribers, and dwarfs Ooredoo’s reported 5 million subscribers. Myanmar now has at least 33 million active mobile subscriptions in a country with an official population of 53 million. Smartphone usage rate is reported at 80%.

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Vice, BuzzFeed, Vox and others forced to adjust models as rules of business change Winter has arrived for a new generation of digital media companies with missed revenue targets, an uncertain advertising environment and Facebook’s recent change of heart on news chilling a once hot sector. Vice Media, one of the most closely watched companies to have built a large, young audience, missed its 2017 revenue targets by $100m because of weaknesses at its Viceland cable channel and digital video operation. BuzzFeed, which specialises in news and entertainment — and has pushed heavily into video — also missed its targets for the year. Mashable, once among the most talked about online news operations, was recently sold for a knockdown price. The challenge facing these companies and other digital players like Vox Media, which owns digital brands such as Curbed and Recode, is how to diversify and prosper at a time when traditional media — namely television — is under extreme stress thanks to the explosion of streaming services including Netflix and Amazon Prime. An uncertain ad market has contributed to the fears, with Google and Facebook becoming an effective duopoly: the two companies accounted for 63 per cent of all US digital advertising in 2017, according to eMarketer, the research firm. Concerns have been amplified by recent changes to Facebook’s news feed algorithm: it will no longer prioritise news sources and will survey its users to rank publications by their “trustworthiness”. The full impact of these changes has not yet been absorbed by the likes of BuzzFeed and Vox, which have used the social network to distribute their content. But analysts are not optimistic that the shift will be good news for many news providers. The site specialising in news and entertainment has built a big audience and won major financial backing from groups including Comcast’s NBCUniversal, valuing the company at $1.7bn. But after missing financial targets, the publisher announced late last year it would cut jobs and reorganise its business. Vox The company, whose brands include Curbed and Recode, is having to scale back the amount of content it publishes on Facebook, after the social network changed its algorithm to favour social interactions over information produced by publishers. CEO Jim Bankoff is optimistic that it can continue to drive traffic on the platform. “The news feed changes will have the most negative impact on publishers that rely primarily on Facebook for referral traffic and those companies that specialise in producing and distributing sponsored videos for Facebook,” says Christopher Vollmer, global entertainment and media advisory leader at PwC, the professional services firm. Larger publishers and “fan-driven brands”, whose active audiences drive more of their own engagement and support a greater diversity of revenue sources, “will be much less impacted by the change”, he adds. All of the new digital players are trying to find new ways to generate income. Vice reduced its reliance on digital advertising several years ago when it began its push into TV — a strategy that attracted investment from Walt Disney and TPG, the private equity group, at a valuation of $5.7bn in 2017. It now produces a nightly show for HBO, the Time Warner-owned premium cable channel, as well as a magazine series, and also has programming deals with several international broadcasters. But linear television is no panacea, as the company found to its cost last year when its Viceland channel struggled to attract big audiences. A spokesman said the company generated record revenue growth in 2017 and “produced hundreds of hours of programming for audiences around the world”. BuzzFeed was later to video but has established a studio operation in Los Angeles to develop formats for sale and production, while Vox recently struck a deal to produce a show for Netflix. Jim Bankoff, chief executive of Vox, acknowledged in a recent memo to employees that the Facebook algorithm changes were “unpredictable” but said they could ultimately be good for the company. They “will favour both trusted and local journalism”, he wrote, saying “even more people will be exposed to our work”. Vox will change how it works with Facebook, he added, saying, “we will cut back our native video programming” on the platform. Mashable Once one of the hottest and most talked about new media site, the publisher founded by Pete Cashmore was valued at $250m in late 2016. But after the company failed to achieve growth levels to match the lofty valuations, it was sold in December for a reported $50m to tech publisher Ziff Davis. Vice A company that started as a cool magazine in Montreal has become a behemoth valued at $5.7bn, after attracting investment from Walt Disney, WPP and others. But after expanding aggressively, Vice missed revenue targets by $100m in 2017 after ventures such as its Viceland channel struggled to attract big audiences. BuzzFeed, which has cut about 100 jobs as part of a restructuring, says it is “evolving to a multi-revenue model” that is less dependent on native digital advertising that has been the bedrock of its business for several years. There have also been informal conversations between Ben Smith, editor of BuzzFeed News, and Peter Lattman, managing director of the Emerson Collective, a non-profit group founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, widow of Steve Jobs, about a possible investment or spin-off of BuzzFeed News. Jonah Peretti, chief executive of BuzzFeed, tells the Financial Times there are no plans to sell the company’s news division but does not rule out taking in investment. “News adds a lot of value in a bunch of different ways,” he says. He also points to the struggles that Facebook has had with fake news. “When these $500bn platforms are struggling to figure out news and we have the ability to be one of the few providers of real news that isn’t subscription-based and reaches a broad audience — and is digitally native — that is strategically attractive,” he says. “Long term, there is a lot of value there.” BuzzFeed and its peers have built big audiences largely on the back of traffic sent by Google and Facebook. But publishers seeking to build businesses by distributing their content on third-party platforms have not made much headway, according to a new report from Digital Content Next, a group that represents more than 70 major media groups including Vox Media, NBC and the FT. A survey of 20 DCN members found that revenue from Facebook, Google, Apple, Snapchat and other platforms increased 37 per cent to $10.1m in the first half of last year from the same period in 2016. But as a proportion of the publishers’ total digital revenue, there was little growth: it was 16 per cent in 2017 compared with 14 per cent the year before. “The revenue earned from distributed platforms does not yet match the investment,” says Jason Kint, the group’s chief executive. Google and Facebook together account for just 5 per cent of total publisher digital revenues, even as the two platforms are tightening their grip on the online advertising market. While digital media darlings are trying new business models, some stalwarts of traditional media have taken a different path. The New York Times recently said it was more than halfway to its goal of doubling digital sales to $800m by 2020, thanks to surging online subscriptions. The newspaper has more than 2.6m digital subscribers and overall subscription revenue passed $1bn for the first time last year — accounting for more than 60 per cent of total sales. Investors sent its stock up to levels it has not reached in more than a decade. The Times, like the FT, the Wall Street Journal and others, have shifted their commercial strategies from relying on advertisers to subscriptions, as they face the reality of declining print sales and the steep challenge of competing with Google and Facebook in the digital ad market. For old and new players alike, the evolving media landscape has not stopped posing problems.

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Last year Dailymotion relaunched its platform with a revamped mobile app and a new focus on content made by premium publishers. The move represented a pivot away from user generated content (UGC), and came at a time when YouTube was beleaguered by brand safety issues stemming from struggles to moderate content on its own platform. But while Dailymotion is placing its focus on premium content, it hasn’t lost faith in UGC entirely says Claudia Page, Dailymotion’s VP of Partner Products, who believes that user content can still form the foundation of a viable video platform. The relaunch of Dailymotion is in part is a strategic move by Vivendi, which bought an 80 percent stake in the company in 2015 with a view to moulding the platform into becoming part of its distribution network. Page explained that Vivendi wants to create an ecosystem out of its various properties to more efficiently distribute and monetise across the network. Page used the Paddington movie franchise as an example: “As distribution channels go, you have Universal Music Group and their partnerships to distribute the soundtrack, you have our SVOD (subscription video on demand) services like myCANAL where you could watch a potential series that’s developed in the future, and you have Dailymotion to get exclusive access to the trailer before the movie comes out,” she explained. But Vivendi also sees demand in the market from other publishers for a platform specifically geared towards distribution and surfacing of their own premium content. The company sees an opportunity to pitch itself as the new home of premium publisher content. Page says there’s been a cyclical trend of publishers becoming too reliant on third party platforms. “We see that there’s been the rise of properties that send publishers tonnes and tonnes of traffic, which publishers have then become reliant on. Then we’re also seeing publishers trying to create their own walled gardens, and trying to own and monetise their own audiences indepedently.” Dailymotion wants to be a trusted partner for premium publishers and Page says that Dailymotion’s design fits with what publishers are asking for. While Dailymotion.com is aimed at connecting publishers with audiences, she says the player itself is designed to work agnostically of the Dailymotion platform, and claims that it gives publishers more insights and ownership of their audiences thanks to its ad tech stack. As well as demand from publishers, the redesign is of course partly a response to advertiser demands too, as brand safety scares have shifted some away from UGC and towards more reliable, premium content from established publishers. The End of UGC? Dailymotion isn’t abandoning UGC completely, but for the most part it won’t be monetised. Page noted that many creators who start off small go on to effectively become media properties in their own right, and Dailymotion will want to continue to create opportunities for creators to monetise their content on Dailymotion once their content starts to have a more premium feel. “We’ve realised we shouldn’t be monetising UGC, but we encourage our creator community and UGC contributors to leverage Dailymotion as a place to distribute their content and find an audience. We are very much committed to the rise of premium content that benefits the community and platform,” said Page. For creators whose content does find a wide audience, and who do effectively become media properties in their own right in the way Page describes, Dailymotion will provide monetisation opportunities. But while Dailymotion is choosing to pivot away from UGC, Page still believes UGC focussed platforms are viable, despite demands from advertisers for more premium environments. One strategy is to clearly separate out premium content from the rest, creating a clear distinction between UGC and premium content. Page pointed to Snapchat as an example, as it clearly separates content made by brands and publishers in users’ feeds. While platforms like YouTube offer premium bundles for brands to buy from, these channels are still themselves part of the same environment as less brand safe content, but Snapchat maintains a clear delineation. This downside of this strategy is that it means creators have to be willing to create their content for free. But Page believes that any content can still be monetised, so long as platforms are clear about the sorts of content they host. “It’s up to platforms to create the confines and boundaries of the communities they’re trying to build, and to create guidelines that allow everyday people to create content in an environment where we’ve all agreed the confines we’ll work within. I think that’s where we’re headed.” One example of this might be seen in Twitch. Live streaming by its very nature creates a riskier environment for advertisers than pre-recorded videos, especially on a platform like Twitch where the majority of creators are young, but brands at least know what they’re signing up for. Any brands who see the content as unsuitable will just steer clear of the platform. Time for Advertisers to Take a Stand Brand safety concerns aren’t the only complaints advertisers aim at the UGC platforms. Unilever’s CMO Keith Weed last week delivered a speech at an IAB conference calling on the internet giants, including UGC platforms, to ensure they aren’t harming society. These harms range from mental health problems caused by social media to political hostility fuelled by fake news. Page agrees with Weed’s comments, but while many have construed them as an attack primarily on Facebook and Google, she believes responsibility to tackle these problems fall of all parts of the digital media landscape. “Advertisers and publishers also have become powerful again and have responsibility to consumers, even their own consumers, to really push for environments that are not only brand safe, but safe for consumers in general.” She says that Weed’s comments are significant not only in Unilever’s own pledge to cut investment in harmful platforms, but also in how “it signals a narrative that advertisers and publishers can take a stand and demand that platforms take more responsibility and how communities are generated, and what guidelines they operate within.”

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Attention has become the most valuable currency in the media world, and new platforms are taking the place of the old media giants.

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Every business today is in constant competition for today’s most valuable resource — attention. And you are competing against 24–7 global…

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BI PRIME: The media industry is officially out of love with Facebook. In a memo, Vox Media says it will focus on partners that help make the publisher money

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Advertising as we knew it is dead. The new age of big data advertising is rooted in hard science, complicated math, and high technology. What was once best g...

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SINGAPORE will once again play host to the annual All That Matters conference, with the latest 2017 edition continuing conversations about how technology is disrupting the entertainment, content and marketing industries, and how players are responding. 

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Marketing AI will transform content marketing forever. Learn how self learning algorithms are automating mundane tasks and providing unprecedented insights.

Digital Media