In the fight for exclusive content contracts, Hulu just landed the wrestling equivalent of an atomic backbreaker. Now, if fans want full online access to World Wrestling Entertainment programming, they have to go through Hulu Plus. For Hulu, the deal equates to a massive amount of new content and closer ties to a young male audience and the advertisers that love them. A Hulu representative told Online Media Daily on Monday that the company wasn't ready to address the ad implications of the deal -- “but we're eager to reach the passionate, predominantly male audience that WWE has built.” Effective immediately, Hulu Plus subscribers now have access to WWE programming, including "Monday Night Raw," "Friday Night SmackDown," "WWE NXT," "WWE Superstars," "WWE Main Event" and "WWE en Espanol." With the exit of co-owner Providence Equity Partners, there has been wide speculation over the future of Hulu, its existing licensing agreements and its ability to maintain exclusivity over some of its content. Wrangling WWE into an exclusive multiyear agreement is obviously a step in the right direction, but questions remain over Hulu’s long-term prospects. Disney, News Corp. and Comcast are expected to retain full ownership of Hulu in the absence of Providence Equity, which had 10% of the video venture. Earlier this year, Hulu Plus said it had more than 2 million paying subscribers, each of whom pays $7.99 a month for the service. Trailing Google Sites, BrightRoll and Adapt.tv, Hulu was responsible for serving 1.1 billion in August, according to comScore. Hulu, however, delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 51, while Google Sites delivered an average of 19 ads per viewer. Going forward, Hulu Plus subscribers can access WWE content via mobile phone, tablet, PC, Web-connected TV, set-top box and gaming console.
Havas this morning said it is consolidating its global brand identity under two primary entities -- Havas Media and Havas Creative -- and is adding a new one: Havas Digital Group. As part of the effort, flagship creative shop Euro RSCG, and similarly branded divisions, will become known simply as Havas Worldwide. The French agency holding company said the reason for the brand consolidation is that digital media and marketing is eroding the “borders between creative and media” and “technology is in the process of transforming business models in many sectors including the advertising industry.” “With this name change and with the moving together of our creative and media companies in Paris and New York, we're aiming to reinforce a key competitive advantage of Havas,” stated CEO David Jones, adding “that we're the most integrated of all of the communications groups with the simplest structure that can offer our clients a powerful combination of creative excellence, digital expertise, scale, agility and innovation." The agency said the new Havas Digital Group is not a new advertising services network, but will serve as an “umbrella brand” that will traverse both media and creative. Havas said its disparate media services brands -- MPG, Arena Media Communications, Havas Digital and Havas Sports & Entertainment -- will remain unchanged and will continue to operate as part of Havas Media until 2013, when a “new visual identity” will be revealed for the media division. Boston-based Arnold Worldwide will retain its name and identity within Havas Creative.
Social media TV consumers hyped ABC's "64th Prime Time Emmy Awards" on Sunday night -- much more than a year ago. But the big TV awards event was well behind other entertainment awards TV programs.Trendrr, a social media researcher, says social media interactions grew 42% to 1.57 million -- up from 1.1 million a year ago. Total on-air activity was at 1.26 million. Trendrr says total activity accounts for all social interactions of public profiles on Twitter, Facebook, Get Glue and Viggle.Positive sentiment of those messages was at 54%. Twenty-three percent of those messages were negative, and another 23% were neutral.As with most TV programming in prime time, women made up the majority of those who sent out social messages at 61%, giving men a 39% number.Social media platforms put Web-based tweets ahead of mobile-based devices: 52% to 48% The top five social media markets for the Emmys nearly followed that of the top TV markets: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Washington, DC.All this gave "The Emmy Awards" sixth place for the year among award shows. The still overwhelming leader was MTV's "2012 MTV Video Music Awards" with 19,175,032 interactions. It was also the overall leader in social media for any TV show.Other big award shows this year include CBS' "The 54th Annual Grammy Awards," in second place with 17,122,100; then BET's "The BET Awards '12", 10,128,701; ABC's "The 84th Annual Academy Awards" at 4,477,654; and Fox's "Teen Choice 2012" with 2,398,483.
Agency sponsorship units are flocking to Russia in anticipation of major sporting events that will take place in the country over the next six years. MediaCom Sport, a unit of WPP, has opened a new office in Moscow in preparation for the 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2018 FIFA World Cup Soccer Tournament. The southwestern city of Sochi will host the Winter Games, while World Cup matches will by hosted by various Russian cities. MediaCom Sport is the second Western agency sports marketing unit to set up shop in Moscow in as many weeks. Last week, Havas Sports & Entertainment confirmed it had opened a new office there to help clients gear up for upcoming events. The new MediaCom Sport office in Moscow will be headed by Ken Crease, the former managing director of Sport Media Group. Crease has close to 15 years of experience in the Russian market, working with clients such as Volkswagen, Megafon and Hankook. A number of MediaCom clients have already signed as partners for the Olympic and World Cup events, the agency said, adding that total sponsorship deals around the Sochi games are estimated to be worth around $1.2 billion. It did not offer a spending estimate for the World Cup sponsorships. “Russia is going to be at the center of global sport for the next six years,“ stated Crease. “Participating in sport presents great opportunities for brands to forge strong bonds with consumers.“ MediaCom Sport is also preparing to open three additional new offices in North America, Latin America and Europe, the agency said. Those offices are scheduled for opening by the end of the year. In August, MediaCom Sport struck a new agreement to globally market and promote brand extensions for soccer legend Pele, one of the world’s best-known sports figures. The company has named Misha Sher to oversee that effort. Sher previously managed global partnerships for the Glasgow Rangers soccer team. Earlier, he also worked for the Fox Soccer Channel, Soccerex and Brown Brothers Harriman & Co in Boston.
"I need to do extensive reading on this complex subject before I give an educated opinion." -- Web comment that has never been made (courtesy of comedian Andy Borowitz) This year, I’ve tried to determine whether there’s any fundamental, material difference between ad networks targeting video game content vs. video content. Usually, debate among media “thought leaders” boils down to a) “if I stand to make money from something, I am all for it,” and b) “if I stand to lose money from it, I am against it” -- which, while a natural reaction for most, is why some gurus and experts are as beloved as Pol Pot. What is content? I’d like to state the obvious. I think everyone agrees that the content in video games is different from the content in a traditional video, so this isn’t some existential “what is content” debate. Ultimately, the discussion and debate has to boil down the whether it’s better for advertisers when an ad network takes a video advertisement (a pre-roll, basically) and runs it in between video game stages, as opposed to serving that same ad to the same audience before a video loads. The truth is that pre-rolls are generally ineffective and unwelcome. I stand to get very wealthy or live in a fridge box based on whether or not consumers embrace pre-rolls -- and let me tell you, I won’t shed a tear if pre-rolls disappear, but I also realize that the pre-roll is and will remain where the action is. What’s the problem, again? The problem is simply that most consumers are watching less-than-desirable videos, so the amount of pre-roll inventory available before super- and premium content that marketers want to associate with is, well, less than desirable. This cascade effect has led some ad networks (and advertisers, too) to target in-video game content as an alternative place to run ads. I don’t think anyone will challenge anyone to a duel when advertisers does this, since it’s their money and prerogative. The question is whether an ad network can do this and claim that in-game video content is the same thing as video content. Performance matters It’s certainly true that as long as advertisers yield the same results, they may not care. Others would argue that a marketer may get a really high conversion on a neo-Nazi porn website that sells guns, alcohol and tobacco to underage orphans, but few marketers would be crazy enough to want to associate themselves with that website. Granted, I’m kind of exaggerating to make a point -- but I ask you, what volume of in-video game content comes from violent games, and what percentage comes from games where unicorns jump through rainbows in pristine fields? All about audience? While previously I sat on the sidelines on this topic, for reasons that I’m quite unclear about now, recently it hit me: Ad networks can’t have their cake and eat it, too. If they preach that audience trumps content, then they need to concede that the average audience watching in-game content is fundamentally different from the average audience watching videos in general. While video games are increasingly mainstream , they will simply never be as mass market as the general audience that videos are now reaching. What I am NOT saying You can dig up any report or survey that you want to convey just how mainstream video games are. Please don’t, as I am not arguing that video games aren’t mainstream – they are. I also know that the video game industry is larger than Hollywood. All I am saying is that general video content is far more mainstream than video game content, period, and that is what most big marketers want. As a wise man once told me: “The myth of niche is just that, a myth. Everyone buys cars, soap, and toilet paper. That’s what drives advertising.” Maybe, maybe not. That’s a different article. Ultimately you can target anything you want and get away with it, but passing off one thing as another is not helpful to anyone in the industry.
With Aereo, there’s an entertaining contrast between funder and fundee. Barry Diller, the chairman of financial backer IAC, has been a big-talking and provocative champion of the service, which streams live broadcast channels to mobile devices. Company CEO Chet Kanojia is low-keyed and reticent. The juxtaposition was on full display Friday as Kanojia mentioned Aereo's plans to launch in 12 to 15 additional markets (it’s only in New York now) within 12 months or probably less. He seemed to view it as sort of ho-hum, speaking about how New York has been “a great learning experience” – a chance to ensure the system is technologically sound. Diller would have been trumpeting how broadcast networks need to run scared. Kanojia, who appeared by himself at an investor event, was asked whether Aereo would begin offering content beyond local stations. He mentioned there have been some deals with announcements on added programming coming. Diller would have been trumpeting how broadcast networks need to run scared. Would Aereo work with cable operators to try and help them circumvent payments to CBS, Fox and others? Nope. Kanojia said “the focus is exclusively the consumer” and Aereo is “not in the business of helping somebody resolve their business disputes with someone else.” Diller would have been trumpeting how broadcast networks need to run scared. So far, Aereo is only accessible on Apple devices such as the iPad and iPhone, but that will soon expand to PCs and then Android smartphones. As Kanojia implied, that could open up opportunities to view live TV at work -- even in meetings. Diller would have been trumpeting how broadcast networks need to run scared. Broadcast networks view Aereo, which offers DVR functionality, as a threat to their carriage fees and ad dollars. So, they’ve taken the start-up to court. A judge denied their request for a preliminary injunction and now they’re appealing, while continuing to move towards a trial to shutter it. The confident Diller relishes the opportunity to needle the establishment. During court testimony, Konojia looked pretty agonized. (By the way, if there is a perception – and why wouldn’t there be? -- that Diller and IAC are the only gravy train for Aereo, the company has multiple other venture capitalists behind it.) Aereo officially launched in August by invitation only, keeping with its strategically mellow marketing, where it is looking to appeal to the tech-savvy underbelly and recruit members to be evangelists. That approach continued Friday as Aereo handed out coffee to diehards who lined up early to get the iPhone 5 at a New York Apple store. Kanojia joked about Aereo’s “non-existent marketing.” Diller had previously indicated a big-time push would be coming. Aereo offers an $80 annual subscriber fee, along with plans that run between $8-$12 a month, and there’s a $1 day pass with three hours of DVR storage space. “The goal is as many pricing options as we can that will fit the consumer without confusing them,” Kanojia said. Aereo doesn’t release numbers on subscriber rolls. But the company says half of its early users have indicated they continue to pay for TV service. Whether the other half are cord-cutters or have never paid for TV isn’t known. About 75% of early users have indicated they use Aereo indoors. That would suggest a lot of cord-cutters or cord-nevers are gravitating to the product, using it in lieu of a TV. Kanojia doesn’t appear to want to suggest Aereo could grease cord-cutting. Maybe that’s influenced by the current litigation or a desire to partner with cable operators in some fashion. Clearly, though, when Aereo does start marketing – and it will need to do something to make a splash in new markets – positioning the service as a complement to Netflix and Hulu for cord-cutters would seem to be intuitive. But there are two other benefits with potentially wide appeal worthy of emphasis: the $1 day pass and chance to dial up live TV on a whim anywhere. And they’re related. Want to watch the Super Bowl, but no TV? Spend a buck. Cut the candy bar and watch animation domination on Fox for the same price. At the beach, missing the game? Go Aereo. Of course, Aereo may be five years late. Local stations are starting to offer the same live feeds on mobile devices. And, TV Everywhere is growing for those who still have the cord. Maybe broadcasters are too worried. Diller would say they need to be more so.
How many times have you heard marketers talk about “channels?” My guess is, too many to count. Marketers lose sleep worrying about how to reach their customer across specific channels. They dedicate teams of employees and precious budget dollars to managing these separate entities—social media, email, text, mobile apps … the list is endless these days.But there’s a problem. Customers don’t think in terms of channels. Customers think about how brands are able to deliver value to them at every interaction. So marketers need to think about customers as the single all-important channel of ONE.I’m not suggesting it’s useless to look at the efficacy of different marketing channels. On the contrary, I believe such analysis is crucial to devising successful, customer-centric marketing campaigns. The trick, however, is to look at the data gathered from multiple channels to gain a clearer perspective on customer behavior – and use that insight to engage with them at theright time, at the right place, with the right message. For instance, it’s not about whether social media is an effective marketing “strategy”; it’s about understanding how customers use social media to interact with brands so we can deliver meaningful engagement that strengthens our messages and drive higher revenues.To make informed decisions about marketing tactics aimed at influencing customer behavior, we must use data. The type of analysis described above can and should be based on hard numbers that detail when, where and how customers choose to interact with their favorite brands. Unfortunately, the vast majority of marketers still rely too much on intuition, incorporating data into only 11 percent of their customer-related decisions, according to a recent CEB study of nearly 800 marketers at Fortune 1000 companies. Using pure intuition can result in untargeted, irrelevant and disconnected messages that have a negative impact on brands and ultimately destroy customer relationships. Imagine how I felt the other day when I received an email about an unbeatable membership rate at my neighborhood gym … the same gym I paid a higher rate to join one month prior. This promotion should not have landed in my inbox. Why would I tell my friends about a great offer from a place I now feel has ripped me off?My gym could have avoided upsetting me by generating data on paying and prospective customers and using the information to segment their customer base and communications. In more complex situations marketers can apply predictive algorithms to reduce the number of errors that come from broadly implemented channel-based tactics.Perhaps the shift to data sounds intimidating. Let me assure you that it need not be. The necessary technology exists, as do the algorithms for putting the data to use. Right now, data is disconnected from marketing, but I predict the near future holds the marriage of the two: A real-time data and messaging automation platform that will gather customer intelligence and automatically translates it into profitable marketing activities. I foresee a marketing culture that doesn’t fear data, but rather embraces it and uses it to develop new revenue opportunities.To prepare for this transformation, marketers must take but one crucial step. They must tear down the existing multi-channel infrastructure and start to view digital marketing in terms of one unified channel—the customer channel of ONE. Alex Lustberg, VP of marketing for Lyris (www.lyris.com)
Bill Feininger, SVP of media measurement for FourthWall Media, began his career as an engineer at Honeywell, and after several other positions moved to Nielsen Media Research where he worked in interactive televisions and advanced advertising. His current job at FourthWall involves the launch of a new and exciting set-top-box data analytics service, Massive Data. In my interview with him, Bill talks about his work at FourthWall, his responsibilities in building an analytics business collecting set-top-box data from 1.3 million homes and growing, the profile of the Massive Data footprint, the impact of connected TV on the measurement business, and more. Here’s an excerpt from the interview, whose five videos can be viewed here. CW: Bill, tell us about FourthWall. What type of company is it, and where is it going? BF: FourthWall has been in business for about 12 years and started as a data services business to understand audiences for various media. At the time it was really an Internet services company, but it has since evolved into a television services company. Today we produce EBIF platforms for a number of different clients. We are on both the Motorola and Cisco platforms. We also have applications that run on top of those EBIF platforms – both our own and other compliant platforms that are in the field today. And then from there we have gone into our data services business. We also have an ad widget business. It can take a linear spot, the mpeg file itself, and we can enhance it so that can provide different overlays. And then there are targeting capabilities so those overlays can then be different for the different segments of your audience. We don’t have a cross-platform play today, although we do have a product called Air Command that allows you to connect a secondary device such as an iPad or a cell phone and pair it with your EBIF-enabled set-top box so that you can use the cloud-based services that we have at our disposal or that we provide to our MSO partners (so they can provide that infrastructure) and allow those two devices to work together. The secondary screen generally has Internet capabilities, and we can measure pieces of that as well and fold that in. CW: Tell me about your new analytics business service, Massive Data. BF: Massive Data is a new division within the company. It is the embodiment of what we set out to do in the first place -- which is to take our data and reporting services and really expand upon them greatly. Our first area of concentration focuses on understanding what audience segments look like across all the viewing that we are collecting data from today. We are collecting data from about 1.3 million households today – it’s a little over 2 million set-top boxes. We take that data and then we can now really start to understand what the audiences are, based upon their viewing behaviors and their viewing patterns, and then we also supplement that with a little bit of demographic and psychographic data for various cluster across the United States. Our footprint now is about 82 DMAs and it is continuing to expand. We project it to double in the next few months. We also collect data from over 4M set-top boxes for Charter Communications.
"Watch Shows. Not commercials." For Dish Network, this is now a constant marketing tagline displayed on TV-related business sites and on other media. This of course refers to Dish's new Hopper set-top box, and its AutoHop function that can automatically erase the prime-time commercials of the four major networks while recording TV shows. At the same time that Dish is increasing its marketing efforts, we are also hearing news about special addressable deals Dish has made -- one with Allstate (DirecTV also participated), and more recently with Warby Parker, an prescription eyeglass manufacturer (also with DirecTV). Some would say the consumer marketing campaign and addressable advertising deals are competing efforts. Far from it. The message it sends to marketers is that they need to do better with media/campaign plans. In part, addressable advertising -- targeting homes, individuals that are more likely to buy products and services -- is a key media alternative. In theory, those who have, say Allstate as an insurance provider, won't be seeing these commercial messages. What makes Dish's online AutoHop campaign more revealing is that is comes right before the start of the big TV season, just before the fourth quarter when important marketing efforts start up. Dish sees an opportunity for viewers who have been on summer hiatus. What better way to get viewers than by telling them: "Hey, we can make things easier for your viewing. And you know what that means." The real business-marketing message? "Hey, marketers you can be like Allstate -- or you can be in the delete file. Your choice.” It's a two-pronged attack with some overlap: Many of those marketing executives are also consumers who fast-forward through commercials. Now, many senior media agency executives have been pushing addressable advertising efforts for some time, believing that this is the holy TV/media grail. So they are not going to turn away for the likes of Dish, or others addressable advertising efforts. As it gets further along, with seemingly less outcry by marketers, we are left to wonder, who will join this process. Maybe TV networks will do the same. Why not? As the growth of digital viewing occurs, networks own up to their alternative TV plans, and tell viewers they can watch programs on the linear networks with commercials or on iTunes, Netflix, or other subscription video on-demand places without commercials. Crazy? Five or ten years from now, it might just be reality.