With Facebook and other rivals offering better video communication tools, Skype was in serious need of a reboot. The Microsoft-owned service relaunched on Thursday with several new features, including one that closely resembles Snapchat Stories. Dubbed Highlights, the Stories clone encourages users to create a “highlight reel” of their day with photos and videos -- with the intention of sharing them with friends and family. After people post a highlight, their connections can react to it with emoticons or text. Revolving around a new “Find” panel -- for easier searching -- the entire Skye interface can now be customized to reflect users’ favorite colors. Going big on bots, Skype will also be more closely linked to services like Stubhub, BigOven and Expedia. Users will be able pull ticket pricing and seating options directly into theirs chat; find a good cookie recipe; and check flight times and pricing for an upcoming trip. At launch, the new Skype is only available to users of the Android mobile operating system. Support for Apple’s iOS is expected in a matter of weeks, while desktop support is slated for later this year. Of course, Microsoft is not new to the bot game. By late last year, more than 45,000 developers were already using its Bot Framework, according< /a> to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. This is not the first instance of Microsoft stealing from Snap’s playbook. The software giant recently unveiled Sprinkles -- a camera app, which uses artificial intelligence software to suggest smart captions. Much like Snap’s flagship Snapchat app, Sprinkles can also frame users’ faces, then custom fit the images with fun graphics. The app also features hundreds of emojis and stickers. Also of note, Microsoft is no stranger to social. The company officially completed its $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn last year.
NBC News has unveiled the first taste of a site-wide redesign to come, with its new digital verticals Mach and Better. The new design will also live on Think, a new vertical to launch this summer that will cover commentary, opinion and analysis from experts across a range of fields. Mach, which covers technology, innovation and the future, and Better, focusing on health, wellness, finances, relationships and life hacks, were originally launched as pop-up verticals in November 2016 and February 2017, respectively, to test audience and advertisers demand. In a blog post, Moritz Gimbel, VP of product and design at NBC News Digital, said his team found the sites “needed more video and visuals, more flexible content creation and dynamic curation capabilities,” as well as “better re-circulation of content and consumption through the full network of sites, and more premium advertising offerings, including seamless integration of branded content." He added the network chose not to redesign NBC News’ homepage or “other highly visible portions of the site” because it “can doom the project from the outset.” Instead, the team chose to redesign “from the outside in” by starting with three new verticals. The redesign includes a new font family, color palette, image treatments, content packaging, motion language, iconography and overall layout system. NBC News’ product and design staff teamed up with digital agency Code and Theory to revamp the design of Mach and Better. Around one-third of the project’s staff came from Code and Theory and two-thirds from NBC News, according to Gimbel. Code and Theory also redesigned Vogue.com in 2014. Additional features will roll out this year. “Over the next nine months, we will redesign and rebuild every product and pixel at NBC News Digital,” Gimbel wrote. Separately, The Atlantic announced it has reached a record audience of 42.3 million in May, the same month The Atlantic.com underwent a redesign to its homepage and published viral story “My Family’s Slave.” It was The Atlantic’s second-most-read story of all time. The article helped TheAtlantic.com reach two consecutive days of record audience, on May 16 and May 17, with 4.4 million and 4.8 million uniques, respectively.
SourceMedia has continued its digital reinvention in 2017 with the launch of a new “in-article” outstream video ad unit. The B2B publisher will now provide outstream video impressions embedded in the company’s various content verticals. In early 2016, SourceMedia announced the relaunch of its digital publishing platform to enhance engagement, with a focus on native advertising. The new ad format, announced today, allows marketers to place video ads in articles and various other non-video content. SourceMedia says the units are “interactive” and offer “enhanced viewability.” The company offers marketers the ability to hyper-target consumers based on behavior, purchase intent and demographics to serve relevant videos to readers. These capabilities are backed by a customer data platform, a unified data science and machine-learning product. “In B2B environments, video is highly engaging to the users but hard to effectively and efficiently monetize, primarily due to scale of video views,” Matthew Yorke, CMO of SourceMedia, told Real-Time Daily via email. “Most B2B publishers have separate video sections that are not natural to user navigation," he added. "For the large advertiser demand in video, it’s been frustrating -- stuck with sponsorship models only and relatively low view-through rates.” The sales cycle is inherently more complex in the B2B space. SourceMedia’s new units will allow for stronger storytelling across publisher properties.
Sling TV’s new TV marketing campaign “Get Picky” harkens back to the phrase "a la carte TV" all to spur more consumer business with the emphasis on choice. In one spot, a nervous woman goes into a coffee shop and gets too detailed about her coffee request. She ends her request with this: “Oh, can you put a heart? “A broken one,” says the barista, played by Danny Trejo. Then speaking into the camera in his usual gruff, tough-guy character: “If you can get picky with your coffee, why not get picky with your TV? A voiceover then says: “Introducing a la carte TV... Start building your perfect TV package from $20 bucks a month.” Another spot has several guys talking about their vacation and getting specific about their needs -- a beachfront house, but no sand, a pool with a jacuzzi,and a massive TV -- by the jacuzzi. Then Trejo appears coming out of a shower, toweling down: “And a Octagon for fighting!” He adds to the camera: “If you get picky with your bro weekend, why not get picky with your TV?” In addition to the TV campaign, Dish says the campaign will include exposure on digital, mobile, social, print and new media platforms. Sling TV was the first major virtual/digital pay TV provider of networks, starting in January 2015. According to estimates, the Dish Network service has grown to around 1 million subscribers. But overall pay TV business at Dish Network have been slipping in subscribers. In the first three months of 2017, Dish Network, for both its satellite pay TV service and Sling TV, lost 143,000 subscribers, Dish Network company-wide now has 13.53 million total subscribers.
Independent video platform JW Player has hired Pablo Calamera as CTO from Vonage, where he was also CTO. JW Player claims more than 20,000 customers, including enterprises such as Univision, Hearst, Red Bull, VICE Media and Bell Media. Its video player footprint spans 193 countries and is live on more than 2 million sites with more than 1.3 billion monthly unique viewers across all devices.
After a serial killer used Facebook Live to broadcast his confession, having used their video platform to share footage of himself murdering an elderly man, many marketers were left asking: Do we really want to be on the live bandwagon right now? Sinister events like this trigger a renewed sense of urgency for brands to revisit their live content strategy — even if the best strategy is to stay away. But is it? There are less risky yet lucrative ways brands can capitalize on live content — and sports is an excellent place to start. For starters, live sports are aligned with tradition. Especially in times of uncertainty and change, people yearn for the comfort and predictability of a simpler, more wholesome time. Watching sports is a time-honored, shared experience for millions of consumers and their loved ones. It’s a way to engage in those legacy rituals, like indulging in beer and pizza with friends and family, or marking the start of spring with a season opener with hot dogs and (more) beer. This holds a major opportunity for brands to connect with consumers while they are in a mindset and environment infused with positive feelings. Of course, people also watch sports for the suspense. Who wins, who gets benched, and how the refs call the game are all elements that make tuning in worth viewers’ time. But there is also a reassuring lack of variation in sports: the same seasons, tournaments, and drafts happen annually. That means advertisers can go into a sporting event with confidence about what certain games are going to deliver. This should be especially valuable to media buyers. As content formats have multiplied, the buy-side of advertising has been under tremendous pressure to assess a seemingly infinite number of opportunities and their accompanying risks. Live sports can make life easier and less crisis-prone for them, too. Media buyers can take comfort in knowing they’re probably not going to be advertising during a live murder scene. When it comes to sports, marketers should consider both linear ads and brand integrations. This kind of sports advertising can be very effective if the placement aligns with who you are as a brand. Everybody associates Gatorade with the celebratory spirit of its product being dumped on the heads of the game-winning football team. Accordingly, Gatorade is seen as a drink for elite athletes, with a halo of victory and festivity. Brand integrations in these competitions can be especially effective in an environment where consumers continue to engage in that age-old practice of turning their attention away during commercial breaks. Research confirms that those who are active on a second screen while watching TV are less likely to notice and engage with the commercials they’re exposed to during the show. One thing working to brands’ advantage here is the parallel engagement consumers often experience on social media. Capitalizing on real-time and post-game online chatter, with a tightly integrated, brand-building strategy, can help extend and deepen the impact of advertising. No matter how live content evolves, the demands on marketers remain the same:, create awareness, build the brand, persuade consumers to consider your product, and ultimately increase sales. And while live video might be the flavor of the month, brands ultimately need to execute in a way that’s ready for prime-time. In contrast with the danger and uncertainty of live streaming, consumer-generated video, live sports offers both a safer bet and one much more likely to pay higher returns. Bonus: It’s ready for prime-time and weekend afternoons.
Web connections in the U.S. have become faster, but many people still surf the Internet at slower speeds than 25 Mbps -- the Federal Communications Commission's definition of "broadband." That's according to Akamai's most recent report on the state of Internet connections. Overall, the average Web speed in the U.S. reached 18.7 Mbps in the first quarter of this year, up by 22% from the first three months of 2016. The U.S. also had the 10th fastest average Web connections in the world. The speediest country was South Korea (average 28.6 Mbps), followed by Norway (23.5 Mbps) and Sweden (22.5 Mbps). But although speeds are increasing, most connections aren't considered "broadband" by the FCC's standard. In the U.S., only around one in five (21%) of connections were faster than 25 Mbps. The FCC's decision in 2015 to revise the definition of broadband to 25 Mbps downstream and 3 Mbps upstream -- a significant increase from the prior definition of 4 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream -- proved controversial. Advocacy groups like Public Knowledge, as well as video provider Netflix, had urged the FCC to adopt the 25 Mbps standard, but the cable industry opposed the move. The agency's definition of broadband can be important, because it will affect the FCC's conclusion about whether carriers are deploying broadband quickly enough. Now that the FCC is under the control of Republicans, the cable industry is again urging the agency to rethink the concept of "broadband." In March, the lobbying group NCTA - Internet & Television Association criticized the current standard. The group said in a regulatory filing that it met with the FCC and urged it to state that the 25 Mbps definition "is not the only valid or economically significant measure of broadband service." Advocacy organizations, on the other hand, would like the FCC to define broadand as an even faster 50 Mbps. "People use their connections for many reasons, and often multitask," the Open Technology Institute told the FCC last September. "It is easy to see how multiple people with multiple devices engaging in multiple online activities on the same residential connection can quickly lead to buffering, slow load times, and frustration even with a 25/3 connection."
Define “annoying” digital advertising. That’s what Google needs to figure out. One person’s “annoying” is another’s “entertaining” is another’s indifference. Much of this discussion comes with the growing consumer ad-blocker issue -- which has given publishers headaches. Google has told publishers it will be adding an ad blocker to its Chrome browser next year to filter out the most annoying ads. Google is doing this -- with a long lead time issue -- for publishers hoping they will use less intrusive advertising formats. Users who have ad blockers will be encouraged by publishers to disable them or pay for access through a new program called Google Contributor. What types of digital media have annoying messages? For one, Google says they are those you seemingly can’t get rid of on your screen -- say videos ads that immediately start after visiting a site where users need to wait, say 10-seconds, before being able to X out the offending ad content. Google says is offering publishers -- affected by ad blockers that customers use -- another way to monetize their content. Google, along with other digital media leaders like Facebook, realize they have make a stand about content -- perhaps all content -- fake news, advertising, and yes, even some straight ahead content. Now, to be fair, there is a lot of annoying traditional TV commercials that viewers can’t nix, either. Watching live, linear TV means no way to X-out that content (though muting is an option); time-shifted viewing is, of course, a different matter. But ask yourself this: Does TV do a better job at vetting TV advertising content? At the networks, there has always been a standards and practices units -- especially when it comes to consumer-product messaging. Seems Google and Facebook are looking to step up in this area. Eliminating annoying digital advertising -- and digital advertising formats -- will hopefully signal to viewers that big digital media players mean business. Consumers should put down their arms — their ad-blocker arms. What publishers don’t want, ultimately, is to deny potential consumers access to their platforms. That does not curry any favors with anyone -- including advertisers.