AOL’s Huffington Post Media Group on Monday launched HuffPost Live, a new live streaming news network that aims to heavily involve its users in the creation and dissemination of news. HuffPost Live allows anyone with a smartphone, tablet or Web camera to join the conversations happening around its news items. According to the release, HuffPost Live puts users “on equal footing” with its network of guests, which include celebrities, news pundits, academics and others. To record a video comment, users are asked to explain what makes them “a good guest on this topic” in 140 characters or less, and then supply contact info. But the news hub is much more than just a repository for video comments. HuffPost Live has a news team that includes ten hosts from a variety of backgrounds including ABC News, Reuters, Al-Jazeera and The Onion, who will be hosting eight hours of live programming coming out of New York and four hours coming out of Los Angeles each weekday from 10 a.m to 10 p.m. EST, with highlights being shown overnight and on weekends. The Huffington Post’s roster of reporters, bloggers and editors will all be an integral part of the programming, too. Forbes’ Jeff Bercovici calls HuffPost Live “the single biggest initiative the Huffington Post has undertaken since it became part of AOL last year in a $315 million acquisition.” He points out that getting the news network off the ground required the hiring of some 100 producers, camera operators and on-air personnel. Getting everything to work seamlessly will be difficult, Bercovici, says -- but if it works, HuffPost Live will be like “wandering around MSNBC headquarters in the middle of a busy news day. You can stand and watch a monitor if you like, but you can also wander in and out of production meetings, talk to producers about stories that are coming up, volunteer as a guest for round-table segments and start arguments with your fellow viewers, who are also wandering the sets and green rooms.” Roy Sekoff, president and co-creator of HuffPost Live and founding editor of the Huffington Post, notes that The Huffington Post’s vibrant commenting community, which generates 2 million comments per day, gave them the idea for HuffPost Live. "On HuffPost, 70% of all comments are responses to other comments,” he said. “Our users are not just commenting on HuffPost. They are having conversations and forming communities around their passions and interests. We decided to double down on engagement and make those conversations the focus of HuffPost Live.” As Arianna Huffington, president and editor in chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, says: “The news is no longer about a few people telling everyone else what happened -- it’s about everyone telling everyone what's happening right now.”
If there is one consistent trend in the auto business, it's moms and minivans. Yes, there has been a defection to crossovers in recent years, but there will probably always be a core market for children’s chariots. Chrysler is heading right for that core minivan family with a media partnership with BabyCenter, LLC, Johnson & Johnson’s mommy channel that customizes content and social platforms based on where parents are in their pregnancy and parenting journey. The Auburn Hills, Mich.-based automaker is using the deal to tout the 2012 Town & Country minivan -- which, when combined with sibling Dodge Grand Caravan, tops the sales hill for the segment. The program, which involves both digital and dealership elements with content, social media elements, outreach, dealership and test-drive offers, is also about getting insights from parents about what they need when they need it. The platform puts Chrysler links to the Town & Country Web site on a range of tools and content, such as a "Chrysler Car Seat Tool," intended to help parents determine the best car seat for their child based on age, height, and weight. The tool will also provide links to additional resources and video demonstrations on how to properly install a car seat. There is also a "Chrysler Drive and Blog," where bloggers discuss their experience with the minivan after having had the minivan on loan for a week. The campaign will be featured on BabyCenter’s leading mom blog and on the company’s Facebook page and Twitter feed. Town & Country Marketing Manager Ben Guthrie says the deal made sense because of BabyCenter's huge reach and the social nature of minivan shoppers and how they look for information on family decisions and products. "When you look at how people shop for minivans, there is an especially strong digital component. So we looked for a strong partner in that space, and they really fit the bill." He tells Marketing Daily that the Chrysler content is being served to three major groups: moms-to-be, newer moms and moms who already have several kids. Each group gets different content. Guthrie says minivans, which have lost significant share to hipper vehicles like crossovers, may be regaining a degree of popularity as the economy is compelling auto shoppers to put practicality before image. "I think when things get tougher economically, people look for sure things they can rely on, and it's less about what people think. People buy minivans because they have very specific needs to address rooted in family," he says. Chrysler is calling out value features like standard DVD and leather seats on all trim levels of the vehicle, USB ports in second-row seats for device charging, and the Sto-n-Go system that makes second- and third-row seats disappear into the floor for larger cargo space. Guthrie says he is gauging the effectiveness of this effort, the first step in a larger Town & Country campaign, partly by watching traffic from BabyCenter to Chrysler’s Town & Country site and the degree to which those folks engage with the minivan at the Chrysler.com site. Mike Fogarty, group publisher of BabyCenter, says the partnership is all about leveraging the platform’s ability to reach the right woman at the right time in her pregnancy. Thus, Chrysler ads are not takeover-style placements on the channel's splash page. "To a casual observer, [BabyCenter.com] looks like an information site for moms. You would not experience Chrysler ads unless you were a mom, going through the journey after registering on BabyCenter with a due date." He explains that members are part of digital Birth Clubs of moms with about the same due date, with social-media bridges on Facebook and elsewhere. "Every week, [the members] are going through different issues based on where they are in their pregnancy," says Fogarty -- explaining that, for example, members who opt in for emails get weekly content based on their calendar. Thus, expectant women in the second or third trimester with a toddler at home will see the Town & Country content because they are most likely to be considering such a vehicle. "We reached something like 80% of expectant moms and new moms, so we can build a media program and time it to leverage the insights we already have, and we are going to test this and learn with Chrysler as well. The fact is, pregnancy triggers purchases far beyond the baby space." The company says it reaches 10 million moms in the U.S. and over 25 million moms monthly in 22 global markets including Australia, India and China. It also says that 70% of new moms last year were on BabyCenter, and that 8 in 10 expectant moms in the U.S. with an iPhone have downloaded the “My Pregnancy Today” app, with 44% returning at least once a day. Guthrie says it comes back to targeting. "If we identify a mom-to-be, we are going to talk about safety and convenience and flexibility, and that's what they are buying the vehicle for."
Underscoring the growth of mobile devices in the last two years, NBC's coverage of the London Summer Olympics has generated three times the number of live streams as the Beijing Games four years ago. In a video the network posted Friday, Alan Wurtzel, president of research and media development for NBC Universal, said live streams had tripled to 45 million from 14 million in 2008, when tablets weren't even part of the media landscape and smartphones were not widespread. The network did not provide figures for on-demand streaming. NBC's 5,535 total hours of Olympics programming now runs across TV, the PC, mobile phones and tablets. “Our digital use has broken all records,” said Wurtzel. That shift toward digital and mobile viewing has also helped bring in a younger audience for the London Games. Among all demographic groups, that comprising kids and teens has seen the highest growth, with double-digit gains from the Beijing Games. Despite the surge in live streams, and the criticism NBC has come under for sticking with time-delayed airing of key events, the network's prime-time Olympics coverage this summer has beaten Beijing 12 out of 13 nights so far, with an average TV audience of 32.6 million viewers. Given those results, it's hard to imagine NBC changing its programming strategy significantly for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
Nearing the end of its 16-day-long London Olympic coverage, NBC prime-time numbers dropped again -- which was somewhat expected.NBC's three-hour prime-time coverage for "XXX Olympics Games" sank 40% to a Nielsen preliminary 6.8 rating/20 share among adult 18-49 viewers from a week ago when the rating was a 11.2. For the first 12 nights, NBC had been averaging a 7.2 rating among 18-49 viewers.For the night, NBC posted some 22.9 million viewers -- down from 31.9 million average viewership for the first 14 nights of prime-time Olympic coverage. Still, it was higher than on a comparable Thursday night at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.NBC said yesterday that the gold medal-winning victory of the USA over Japan in soccer, which aired during the daytime hours, gave its NBC Sports Network the highest viewership in its history for a specific TV event -- 4.35 million viewers. NBC also said it took in 1.467 million live video streams for the soccer game, the most in Olympic history.Looking at broadcast prime time, competing networks CBS and ABC in particular offered up more competition on Thursday with some reality shows than they have in past days with regard to the strong Olympics programming. For example, CBS' "Big Brother" at 9 p.m. earned a 2.1/7 among adult 18-49 viewers, up 5% from last week's 1.9 rating. Also at 9 p.m., ABC's "Wipeout" took in a 1.7/5, 21% higher from last week's series-low of 1.3. Later that night, at 10 p.m., ABC's "Rookie Blue" matched its last new episode ratings performance with a 1.5/4.After NBC's big Thursday average numbers for the night, CBS averaged a 1.7/5; ABC, 1.6/5; Univision, 1.5/4; Fox, 1.0/3; and CW, a 0.3/1.
The oil industry is profitable for producers when the costs of exploitation are low and/or the prices at the gas tank are high. That is pretty much the case for any producer, but oil and online video are different in one key way, which serves as a good indicator of what will drive 2013. Last week we took a trip down memory lane and looked at some of the trends (and fads) that shaped online video. Today we ask, “What does next year have in store?” A Victim of Its Own Success Online video has always been a victim of misaligned cost and revenue equations, which explain why so many online video firms have lost their lives because of the inherent dangers of the business. For example, before 2000, Steven Spielberg’s Pop.com, Pseudo and others perished after the dot-com bubble because (among other reasons) few consumers had bandwidth to watch video content, and few marketers were spending money on online video. Mind you, those that did were spending very high CPMs (more on that later). Then after the 2003-04 Internet renaissance, a whole slew of startups burned through tens of millions of dollars, eventually hitting a wall or downright failing because of misaligned cost and revenue – and, in particular, huge marketing expenses. YouTube burst onto the scene and overnight provided an audience only interested in video, thereby reducing marketing costs and simultaneously absorbing the otherwise high costs of bandwidth and hosting. As such, it didn’t matter early on that revenues remained a mirage. Without a doubt, online video advertising is growing rapidly, but as bullish as we all are about digital video (online, mobile, tablets), the reality remains that online video remains much smaller than anticipated, weighing in last year at $2 billion in the U.S. (forecasts back in 2007 pegged 2012 online video ad figures at $7.1 billion). Meanwhile, television remains a juggernaut at $60 billion in annual U.S. advertising spend. We’re not seeing much television content online, and realistically, we will continue to see small amounts of it in the future. When we do, it shall be on the rightsholders’ terms (hmm… Olympics, anyone?). Where the oil and online video industries are very different That’s at the high end of the market. At the low end, we’re seeing a combination of soaring inventory of user-generated content and a proliferation of “good enough” content, which is keeping CPM rates down. Ultimately, there’s little incentive for the average producer to create original content. This is where online video is fundamentally different from oil: Oil prices are being driven by so much demand that prices at the tank have remained high for the past decade. Supply can’t move fast enough. That’s not the case in online video, where supply is outgrowing demand. Whereas some select publishers can maintain abnormally high CPMs, they are doing it artificially due to low supply. The true eCPM of online video is alarmingly low. This is also why YouTube was compelled to subsidize video content; YouTube, son of Google, who lived and died on revenue share via its AdSense and AdWords platforms. 2013 Story #1a: Impact of Mobile You have to be in a coma (the “living in a cave” analogy doesn’t apply, since you’d rely more on mobile in that case) not to realize that mobile (wireless phones and tablets) will be a key driver for years to come. But whereas mobile once bragged of high CPMs, I believe that you will see a convergence between ad rates regardless of whether you watch content on a computer, phone or tablet (television will retain a premium for years to come). Exacerbating this trend, total ad spend on mobile will remain small. 2013 Story #1b: The Importance of Keeping Costs Down As a result, content production costs need to be contained (while increasing quality, somehow), which was the rationale provided by Discovery Communications when it acquired Revision3. Indeed, as a recent article on NBC’s decision to delay the Olympics stressed, “Content is king, and creating and buying video content is really expensive.” While I don’t see TV dollars shifting massively to online video for another few years (though it will eventually happen, if you look at what is now occurring in the print industry), advertising will continue to trickle away from display to video. Online video will continue to grow by 25%-50% per year for the foreseeable future. Where it gets tricky is that dollars will continue to gravitate toward: - broadcast companies’ online offerings (including Hulu) - YouTube - Ad networks and exchanges As a result, publishers will have to fight for a very small piece of the pie, which, while growing, won’t be large enough to allow for high production costs.
By any measure, this Olympics is a milestone of multi-screen behaviors and a clear demonstration of the power of mobile video as a second screen for on-demand and live streams. But the Brits are fairly mad about staying locked on their own hosted games wherever they are. International consumer researcher Intersperience reports that 52% of UK viewers of the London 2012 Olympics experienced coverage on multiple media simultaneously, including TV, radio, laptops, smartphones and tablets. In fact that majority of users were following the action on two or more devices at the same time. While the sample size was a relatively small 250, the levels of multi-screen and multi-mode activity were striking among most of those involved in the research, which involved self-reported usage. Only 10% of viewers were using three or more devices at the same time. But the amount of multitasking was huge. The viewers were using the devices to create their own blend of live action, replayed coverage and post-event interviews. Clearly the big winner in the second-screen games was social networking. According to the project, many people were accessing the social nets and among them, 45% were directly communicating about the Olympics. In fact, a number of viewers reported being on their phones chatting about the Games while also watching TV and consulting another screen. iPad owners reported using the Facetime feature to communicate with friends and family via video chat while all were watching the events. Facebook ran away with the social networking gold. Almost all (95%) of participants used the social net to share information about the Games. In all, laptops still edged out other devices as the second screen of choice for UK viewers. While 46% of participants were using their portable PCs, 31% used smartphones and 14% used tablets. Perhaps most striking about the research were the novel ways in which people combined technologies. Some people reported holding their Facetime camera to the TV screen to show a friend what they were watching on TV at the time. Others were using multiple screens to stay in touch with a range of different family and friends by phone, tablet or laptop simultaneously. Intersperience CEO Paul Hudson said of the findings: “This research shows that ordinary people are becoming very sophisticated in the way they consume and share information across digital platforms. Digital is now mainstream in the UK --this is a wake-up call for organizations who have not mastered multichannel digital contact.” It seems to me this is the next great area for research. The act of multitasking is a kind of user-generated media. When people assemble screens in particular ways, they are actively crafting media experiences for themselves that are quite apart from what any of the programmers of any of the independent screens had in mind. For instance, some in this research reported turning the audio on the TV off while streaming other things with audio on for the other screens. People are re-combining social, streaming and even voice and video chat into wholly customized modes of media interactivity. We need to look carefully at these personalized media environments that people are creating to see if there are new patterns of use both programmers and advertisers can enable. Actually, we at Mediapost are about to find out for ourselves how the UK multiscreen as we bring our five-year-old OMMA Mobile series to London on Sept. 18. “The Next Screen Agenda: Mobile Disrupts The Mix” will convene at 8 Northumberland Center.