Hands On With Roku’s New OS 7

Originally published at TVREV.com on October 16, 2015

Roku rolled out its new OS 7 operating system the other week without a whole lot of fanfare.
But the features they did roll out should be the cause for much celebration for Roku users. And much fear in Cupertino.

There’s voice-enabled search. A watch list. Hotel and dorm room use. A new and improved iPhone app.

What’s notable is that since many of these new features are contained within the aforementioned new iPhone app, they’re available to everyone who already owns a Roku, any model released since 2011, anyway. This is a huge advantage as getting all these features on a $50 Roku stick is a huge value and and while some of the features on the new $150 Apple TV may be a little slicker, they’re certainly not $100 worth of slicker.

That matters, because for $150, you can hook up three Roku sticks, giving voice searchable streaming capability to every TV in the house. (The average American home has three TV sets.The new app really is the revelation Roku says it is.

It’s got a very easy to navigate main menu with Search and Remote as the top two options. Choose “Search” and you get a simple screen with just two graphic options: Voice or Text.
Roku performed admirably on our voice recognition tests, easily identifying Rizzoli and Isles and Starsky and Hutch. You can also search by actor names and Roku had no trouble with Mariska Hargitay and got Lupita Nyong’o when we limited the search to “Lupita” The only name it couldn’t get was “Uzo Abuda” from Orange Is The New Black, but overall,the voice recognition was pretty flawless and we’ve been relying on it since.           

Your own personal Watchlist
Calling up a show also gives you the ability to “Follow” it, which means that you’re notified when new episodes are posted on a range of streaming networks, including Amazon, HBO Go, Crackle, Hulu, Vudu, FoxNow, FX and others. Netflix was the only major service conspicuously missing.

But here comes the really amazing part, the thing that sets Roku apart from the pack: the shows and movies you follow are collected under the “My Feed” tab and become your own personal Watch List.

No more having to struggle to remember whether Treme was on Netflix or Amazon or HBO. No more clicking through various and sundry submenus to see whether there’s an episode you’ve missed.
You can add movies and TV shows to the “My Feed” list. Actors too. It adds a personalized program guide layer to Roku that’s been missing from all the other streaming devices, including the new and improved Apple TV.

The remote function on Roku is pretty slick as well. It has an automatic 10-second rewind button, for lost bits of dialog and turns on closed-captioning then too, a schtick that annoyed us at first glance, but which we quickly came to appreciate.

Roku OS7’s final trick is the ability to easily log in in hotels, dorm rooms and other places that have password-enabled WiFi

Here again, things could not be simpler. Roku generates a unique network name and password and you use that to log in on your laptop or tablet. For frequent travelers, taking the Roku stick along on trips is a nice bonus. It’s also something Apple TV can’t do.

Roku’s still the one to beat
With voice commands, a watchlist and a $50 price tag, Roku is still the gold standard for streaming players. The “My Feed” watchlist in particular is a killer feature, giving Roku the DVR-like feature set that streaming devices have been missing. If we were Apple, we’d be worried.

Is Facebook The New YouTube?

Originally published at TDG Research on October 15, 2015

News reports this week indicate that Facebook is beta testing a new Video tab on its mobile app. That’s not surprising, given Facebook’s emphasis on video over the past year – a push that has seen the number of daily video views on the platform go from one to four billion (from September 2014 to May 2015).This is a huge leap, and it’s likely to go much higher still.

So is Facebook going to unseat YouTube? What about the TV networks? Or Netflix and Hulu?

Facebook is well-positioned to take a sizable share of the video market. It serves up video using a very different system than YouTube, making it an attractive alternative to many people. Add to this the strong likelihood that it will start showing video from TV networks (clips or full shows), and you have a strong case for Facebook’s growing dominance in video.

Different User Experiences

Viewers are still, for the most part, finding YouTube videos via search or from an external site link. Once selected, the video plays on its own page, with a list of similar videos on the side. Immediately after the selected video ends, an auto-play feature plays a similar video. But, since many (if not most) users are not logged in, the site has no real data from which to pull, making its recommendations spotty at best.

Facebook’s recommendations, however, are anything but random. They are served up by the Mighty Algorithm. This allows the site to make recommendations based on what individual users might actually want to watch. Gone may be the real sense of boundless discovery found on YouTube, but with Facebook video, you can at least count on the content being of interest to you. For many people this is the ideal experience. They have no desire to browse through YouTube looking for hidden gems, and are happy just to lean back and enjoy whatever videos Facebook serves them.

The social platform can rely on the reams of data it has about users: what they like, where they vacation, who their friends are, etc. Further, once users start engaging with Facebook video, the algorithm can factor in what they watched and what they skipped, using that information to make its recommendations even more relevant.

Long Versus Short Form Video

Facebook has two possible paths when it comes to the TV networks. It can provide networks the opportunity to use clips to increase awareness of, and drive tune-in to current TV shows; or it can negotiate the rights to older seasons’ episodes in a bid to compete with Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu.
Option one makes Facebook an attractive venue for networks to promote current shows or, better still, to have users do the promoting for them. Given the very nature of Facebook, users are far more likely to share a short clip of Jimmy Fallon’s monologue than an entire episode of the Tonight Show. This is why Facebook might be the ideal home for “snackable” video content, i.e., short clips of 10 minutes or less. The shorter format would allow users to share something new with friends without taking too much time away from other activities on the platform.

It is also possible that Facebook might want to go long. The company could line up content deals that would put it in head-to-head competition with Netflix as the OTT operator of choice for the networks’ older seasons. This would certainly appeal to networks, providing them with a (delightfully) rich trove of data about the people who watch their shows. It would also give them pause, since that data would ultimately be owned by Facebook.

That said, we think Facebook will choose to go the clip route. This would give them the same amount of data, without the financial commitment of licensing full-length shows. Users come to Facebook to interact, so sending them off to watch hours of video seems contrary to the sort of use case Facebook desires.

You can read more about Facebook and Social TV in my report on Social TV, coming soon.

Voting In The Time Of Social Media

Originally published at TV[R]EV on September 18, 2015

Social media has altered just about every other aspect of our lives, so why not the way we vote. And make no bones about it, this is the first real social presidential election. Sure social media was around in 2012, but it was still in its nascency, people were just figuring Twitter out, Instagram was first coming into its own and Snapchat was just a gleam in Evan Spiegel’s eye.

Obama got wild praise just for having a Twitter account and the inability to figure out social media (and other things “the kids” were into) was an oft-cited reason for Romney’s demise. But now that even aging Southern governors are setting up shop on Snapchat, the definition of “table stakes” has most definitely shifted.

If the first two GOP debates are any indication, social media will play a major role in this year’s election, and not always for the better.

Who was the winner of last nights’ CNN sponsored debate? According to People magazine, it wasn’t any of the 11 candidates up on stage.

No, it was Greg Caruso, the previously unknown 24 year-old son of a billionaire California real estate developer who was dubbed #HotDebateGuy and who somehow managed to get more social media attention than Donald Trump himself. (#HotDebateGuy was sitting in the front row directly behind moderator Jake Tapper and was thus on camera every time Tapper spoke.)

Even  The Skimm mentioned #HotDebateGuy this morning.

So how do candidates compete with a hunky 24 year-old heir? Very very carefully.

You see in today’s Gawkerized social media world, it’s the gaffes that count. Candidates can (and should) maintain accounts across the various platforms in order to ensure that their bases are covered and that their supporters have the right messaging and imagery to share. But that’s about all those accounts are doing, supporting the supporters. Best case scenario, they might actually help a supporter convince an undecided voter, but it’s not like an Instagram video of Jeb! giving a stump speech is going to go viral.

Unless.

Unless he does something facepalm-worthy. Awkwardly grabs for a bottle of water. Mispronounces his wife’s name. Sneezes on an unsuspecting voter.

That’s social media gold and here’s why it sort of sucks.

Because actual policy statements aren’t sexy. They require thinking and they’re not “fun” like a spilled cup of coffee on a woman wearing a white dress. Blame it on America’s Funniest Home Videos or skateboarding cats, but we’ve been trained not to get too deep on our social media. or risk being branded “boring.” So if Jeb! were to propose a well thought out alternative to Obamacare, if Hillary were to suddenly reverse her position on Iran, neither of those would see much traction outside of small circle of people for whom politics and policy is entertainment.

So what’s a candidate to do?

They can start by adopting the language of social media. When in Rome and all that. So that if I were Hillary’s campaign team, I’d go find that meme of her with sunglasses on being all badass and sink a nice chunk of change into it. Keep it authentic and resist the urge to stick obvious talking points in there (no one is going to share those) and then sit back and watch the poll numbers go up. If I were Team Trump, I’d take those “Trump Face” gifs and do the same thing.

This sort of behavior is anathema to the sort of serious people who populate campaign staffs. They’ll feel it diminishes their candidate and makes a mockery out of the whole process. But like we tell brands and celebrities, that conversation is already happening, with or without your participation, so you might as well bite the bullet and join in so you can have some control over what’s being said.

It might make you feel a little sleazy, but it’ll also get you more exposure than #HotDebateGuy. And in a tight race, that could be the deciding factor.

Keeping PeriKat On The Up and Up

In the age of selfies and “citizen journalists,” it seems only natural that live streaming would become a trend. Over the years a number of companies have tried to make personal broadcast streaming a reality, but two newcomers appear to have succeeded: Meerkat and Periscope, the former a startup backed by the likes of actor Jared Leto, the latter a startup purchased by Twitter only a few months ago.

They both burst onto the stage in April during the Floyd Mayweather/Manny Pacquiao fight (known on the interwebs as #MayPac). The reason? Dozens of people were live streaming the $100 pay-per-view broadcast of the fight. Unsurprisingly, HBO and other rights holders were a bit unhappy about these unauthorized broadcasts, and even more unhappy about what they felt was Twitter’s lack of a serious response to their takedown requests.

Many in the industry rolled their eyes at HBO, noting that the shaky, hand-held streams were hardly a replacement for an HD broadcast and that the network was getting all bent out of shape over nothing.

So were HBO and other rights holders justified in coming down hard on Periscope and Meerkat? Or was it, yet again, much ado about nothing? Change is inevitable, right?

READ THE REST AT TDG RESEARCH

Multiple Pain Points: PromaxBDA Conference Explores The Challenges of Marketing TV Series

Originally published at TV[R]EV on June 8, 2015

The PromaxBDA conference, which is coming up on Tuesday in Los Angeles, highlights just how challenging marketing TV shows has become these days.




Once upon a time, the playing field was pretty level in the sense that there was a stable media environment: People turned on the TV after dinner and left it on until 11PM (10, if they lived in the Midwest.) They watched one of the three major networks and if you wanted to drive tune-in for your new prime-time series, you ran a promo during prime time. Sure there were billboards and print ads and transit posters and all, but promos and PR were the way to go.

Compare that to today’s landscape, where marketers need to navigate a range of outlets, from social media platforms to online to mobile to time-shifted television all in the hopes of chasing a rapidly-moving target called “tune-in,” that may or may not happen at the time the show is first aired and may or may not carry the same commercial load.

Changing viewing habits are hard enough, but then there’s social media, with different platforms playing different roles for different demographics and the marketing team having to make sense of it all while trying to get actors, writers, producers and showrunners to play along. Or at the very least, contribute the occasional tweet.



New platforms like Snapchat make the game even harder, as not only does the marketing team have to get itself up to speed, they’ve then got to go and convince the network executives that the platform is worth spending money on.

PromaxBDA runs for three days (Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday) at the JW Marriott in downtown L.A. The actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt will be delivering the opening keynote speech. Other featured speakers include Viacom’s Doug Herzog, comedian Tig Notaro, and producer Greg Berlanti, Many of the panels will focus on the challenges of marketing television and other entertainment properties and what to look for in the future.

In what promises to be one of the more popular panels, the Truth Company’s Linda Ong, Hulu’s Jim O’Donnell, TV[R]EV Founder Jesse Redniss, and Giant Spoon’s Alan Cohen will join moderator Frank Radice to explore the latest industry buzzwords and what they mean. Look for some great infographics on here all week around that topic.

Badges are still available from the PromaxBDA website.

Verizon's AOL Deal Is So Money And The Media Still Doesn't Know It

Co-written with Jesse Redniss and originally published at www.braveventures.com.

The media has been doing a lot of snickering about Verizon’s purchase of AOL today, because, after all, who actually admits to watching something on AOL or even knowing what’s on there. It’s all so 1998.

Media types may not watch AOL but clearly someone is: over 65 million Americans to be exact. In fact, when it comes to video, Comscore consistently shows AOL a not-too-distant third behind YouTube and Facebook, a fact not unnoticed by ad buyers. While it may not be sexy, it is the future of TV, which isn't about "shows" but about great stories both long and short form, something AOL has in spades.

While the perception may be that AOL is stuck in the “You’ve Got Mail” days (note the number of headlines that will pun off of this today), the reality is quite different: AOL is a sleek 21st century media company that has wide-ranging content deals with everyone from the very successful millennial-focused MCN AwesomenessTV to NBC to the Huffington Post to dozens of other niche creators. It’s that range that makes them so strong: AOL covers a broad spectrum of demos which not only enables consumer choice (do I want to snack on video or do I want a full meal),  it also gives advertisers the breadth and depth they want for better, more focused targeting.

Which is really what the AOL deal is all about: targeting. If there’s an audience segment you want to reach, you can find them on AOL. And if you want a way to deliver it, they’ve got that covered too.

You see, while no one was looking, AOL made the transition from chat room organizer to ad tech powerhouse. With first quarter revenue from their ad tech units well north of $200 million. AOL has bought up a number of technologies like Adap.tv, AdLearn Open Platform, Vidible, Gravity and Convertro, which they’ve recently relaunched under the One by AOL moniker, giving advertisers an end-to-end solution across multiple screens.

Verizon, on the other hand, has a way to serve that up, via its VDMS (Verizon Digital Media Services, a content and ad delivery system that competes with the likes of Brightcove and the Platform.) And while VDMS has yet to live up to its potential, combining that platform with AOL’s ad tech services gives Verizon the ability to serve up ads to whatever segment you want to reach.

That’s just on desktop. The problem AOL, Yahoo and other web-based services have run into is that more and more views are coming via mobile and mobile means no cookies. No cookies means all that sexy ad tech software is pretty much useless, which is where Verizon comes in: as the nation’s largest mobile provider, they have all sorts of data about mobile usage, including the ability to track user identity across devices, which can make those ad tech platforms useful again. 

While the tech is clearly driving this deal, it’s AOL’s content play that make it all the more interesting,  particularly if Verizon is planning on using all this new AOL content in its upcoming V-POP (Virtual Pay-TV Operator) play.

Oh right, that.

Verizon’s V-POP is more than just a rumor, it’s something the company has actually announced it’s planning on rolling out sometime this summer and if you look under the hood, the pieces are all there for a really kick-ass system.

There’s the UX piece that they have from OnCue, the failed Intel V-POP they bought last January. There’s the distribution piece from their mobile network (we’re thinking video watched over the Verizon V-POP is exempt from bandwidth caps.) And now there’s the additional content, both short and long form, that they get from AOL to supplement the network content they’ll negotiate through FIOS. 

The combination of short and long form content reflects the way people watch video now: a two minute clip on the phone while you’re waiting for an appointment, a sixty minute show at home on the big screen TV. And it’s baffling to viewers why the same company can’t provide them with all of this, why they have to switch inputs, switch apps to go from one to the other.

A fully integrated experience is where the future is going as it gives viewers the option of choosing their own experience, sort of like a Sleep Number mattress: everyone can get the exact bundle they want with the right mix of short and long form content. (Remember Verizon’s recent pick-your-own-bundle fiasco? While ESPN and NBC certainly weren’t happy, the notion of “dialing in” the perfect bundle might just be the secret sauce behind Verizon’s new V-POP service.)

So let’s review what we have here: a strong tech play that boosts the value of AOL’s ad tech products by giving them some much needed mobile juju.  A strong content play that may form the nucleus of the upcoming Verizon V-POP’s broader content strategy. A dial-your-own content bundling option.

Looks like a win from here.

Periscope Up, Set Torpedoes To Stun The Media Market

It’s all about the headline folks, but here’s the real punchline: if you logged onto Periscope or Meerkat during the Mayweather/Pacquiao fight this weekend, you were greeted by the sight of dozens of live streams of a fight many people paid $100 to watch.

That’s right: someone paid $100, and then out of some Robin Hood-esque sense of fairness, the desire to grow their follower base, a misguided notion of sticking it to the man or maybe even some “Hey, let’s turn this on and see what happens” hijinks, some of the fans who’d paid $100 for the HD broadcast on PayPerView turned on their smartphones and broadcast the event to tens of thousands of other people who didn’t pay $100 for the privilege.

Some of the more popular Periscope streams had close to 10,000 viewers. Meerkat, which was the night’s clear runner-up, was running closer to 3,000.

Either way, there were a lot of people pirating the boxing match which equated to a whole lot of copyright violations going on.

So should HBO and Showtime, who hosted the PPV event and whose revenues stand to be affected be concerned?

Absolutely. AsAdAge reported today, during the night of the fight, copyright holders sent Perisciope 66 takedown requests and only 30 of them were removed. But should the onus here be on the copyright holders to monitor and send in requests?

Aswe pointed out when YouTube quietly shut down Katch a few weeks ago, the platform provider needs to make a concerted effort to monitor the content they are hosting and proactively shut down streams that are clearly in violation of their Terms of Service. This is the very reason YouTube spent nearly a decade in corporate litigation with Viacom, and why they are now extremely diligent in monitoring the YouTube universe with their Content ID system.

Based on the reporting that only 30 streams were shut down, Periscope could have done a much better job to identify the offending streams. The process is simple: use searchable key terms and concurrent video load alerts to identify high demand streams, manually check them out and then shut them down… by hand using humans… without having to wait for a takedown notice from the copyright holder, a notice that’s particularly futile as streams are only live for 24 hours and the appeal is watching them in real time.

Which brings us back to the headline: during the early days of social and UGC, big media lawyers spent a great deal of time trying to get comfortable with a myriad of issues such as Privacy Policy, Rights Management, Copyright Infringement, Trademark Infringement and Fair Use.

And now, thanks to live streaming, we have a Meerkat in a coal mine.

Because all these live streams create a new wave of legal and broadcast rights issues that we’re just beginning to scratch the surface of. And the answer is going to be a lot trickier than it ever was for tweets and Facebook posts.

How are we ever going to track and compensate these athletes, musicians and rights holders for all of the streamed performances once they go big time? On top of that, what’s going to happen once anyone tries to monetize these platforms?

Imagine what would happen if Jared Leto, one of the most popular casters was at the Meadowlands and decided to start casting a Jets game along with Gary Vaynerchuk, another popular caster (and big time Jets fan.) Combined, the two of them could drive a considerable audience to their streams. What if Periscope started running ads against those streams… Who owns that revenue? How is it tracked? How furious (and litigious) would the NFL be, let alone CBS, ESPN and NBC?

It’s not just about advertising. The PGA Tour had a meltdown this week when Stephanie Wei, a well-regarded blogger, Periscoped the tour’s golden boy Jordan Speith taking some practice rounds. This is not footage anyone would ever broadcast, but the PGA reacted as if Wei had drilled a peephole into the locker room: they’ve banned her from the tour for the rest of the year.

The question here is who owns that footage. The PGA says that anything that happens on the tour is their intellectual property, even if it never would have made it on air. The very fact that it could have made it on air is enough. Wei and her supporters (who boosted #FreeWei to trending Twitter status) contend that they are just enhancing the overall experience and driving more fans to the main event. But that just raises a larger question: since Wei is a “journalist” does she get a free pass? What if a couple hundred fans were Periscoping that practice round? Would that make it different?

The controversies are only going to continue as more and events from sports to concerts to court proceedings are live streamed without the “express written consent” of the people who own the rights to the event. It’s a huge boon for anyone specializing in media and copyright issues and it’s sure to spur a number of court cases challenging everyone from Twitter to fans to rights holders for years to come.

However it shakes out, one thing is clear: social and mobile based live streaming is here to stay. But, Twitter is sailing in deadly waters, do they really want to use Periscope to seek out their next battle with the major media companies?

Originally published at www.braveventures.com and co-written with Jesse Redniss

Time To Step Away From The Buzzwords

There’s a very funny video (below) making the rounds from Defy Media that mocks the new fronts. And while much of it is over the top, there’s a lot that’s true and the industry definitely needs to cut through all the bullshit and buzzwords about “snackable content” and more clearly explain the superior value proposition behind #CreatedWith content.

#CreatedWith operates under the premise that brands are forgoing the in your face product shill of old. Instead, they are identifying the passion points of their audience, embracing the storytellers, creators and celebrities who might be associated with the brand. They’re not creating the old school endorsement, hold up the package and smile, but actually making something entertaining in the creator’s own voice that seamlessly (and more effectively) promotes the brand.

That’s a strong value proposition and one that’s much easier accomplished with the new legion of video stars who have a much more personal connection with their audiences than old school Hollywood celebrities. They’re not just available on YouTube, but on a range of social media outlets from Twitter to Snapchat where the person engaging with the fans is the creator themselves… not some hired PR flack or social media intern. The difference, and the resulting level of authenticity is tremendous and it’s why smart brands are looking to #CreateWith influencers rather than #RentOut celebrities.

That authenticity is what makes #CreatedWith content so powerful: viewers feel they are getting an endorsement from a trusted friend, not a hired shill. They also get to watch something that’s enjoyable, the sort of content they actively seek out, not thirty seconds worth of sales-speak, no matter how cleverly crafted.

As we move through the new fronts, we’d love to see the companies that are best able to enable #CreatedWith content — whether they are publishers, portals or MCNs — put that front and center as the reason why advertisers should pay attention to them. Yes there are many “eyeballs” and pre and post roll ads get a lot of views. But the real value proposition, that one that makes digital video so appealing right now, is the ability to enable #CreatedWith content and get it in front of people who won’t just passively watch it but will actively engage with it, share it and take its message to heart.

That’s a lot more effective than a clever TV spot and a whole passel of buzzwords. #CreatedWith — the only buzzword you ever need. How’s that for a tagline?

Originally published at www.braveventures.com. 

Facebook Anthology

an·thol·o·gy anˈTHäləjē/Submit noun a published collection of poems or other pieces of writing. "an anthology of BRaVe insights and articles on Facebook TV"

an·thol·o·gy

anˈTHäləjē/Submit

noun

a published collection of poems or other pieces of writing.

"an anthology of BRaVe insights and articles on Facebook TV"

We’ve been watching Facebook’s gradual evolution from social network to TV network over the past year and everything we’ve seen seems to confirm our belief that the Zuckerberg network is going to be a major player in the television industry, or rather we’ll say the “Future of TV” in whatever format and on whatever screen that may play out in. In light of Wednesday’s upcoming Facebook Anthology announcements, we thought it made sense to take a quick look back and create our own Facebook TV Anthology.

 Back in May 2014, we looked at Facebook’s foray into ACR and their TV focused APIs and saw the beginnings of a strategy: by running ads that matched what viewers were watching on TV, Facebook could begin to monetize those billion plus users and become a major source of revenue.

SCALE AND DATA: Plain and simple, Facebook has it and it’s massive. With multiple ways to pull data insights from the graph, TV focused hashtag mentions API, topics API, key word insights API, likes, shares and comments… The insights and psychographic data attached to a few hundred thousand people verifying they are watching TV is roughly 10x larger than the current Nielsen sample size. Now, what happens if this scales to millions of people synching every day? #metricsgamechange

Then, in October 2014, Facebook introduced its first video ad network and we saw an opening: Facebook could drive tune-in with those ads, Nielsen would measure the ratings and since the MVPDs were starting to allow Facebook authentication, viewers could even start to watch TV directly from Facebook. And most importantly, the hoodie-wearers would control all that data. What seemed like a stretch back then seems far more likely right now.

All of this combines to give Facebook the ability to not just be the primary driver of live tune-in but the viewing platform as well. From Nielsen’s Online Campaign Ratings, to the networks ability to cull data surrounding viewing habits and integration capabilities, this is a comprehensive approach that takes into account measurement, user data, real-time adjustment and finally monetization.

This January we took a look at the rapid growth of Facebook’s native video, which lead us to wonder if Facebook wasn’t also trying to compete with YouTube to become an MCN: they certainly have the means to promote their short form video content and with a whopping 3 billion video views a day (as of January 2015) they certainly have the audience.

In true Facebook fashion, they will test this across various smaller groups of users to see the optimal mix of content with ads vs. content play without ads. Facebook is pushing so much volume right now that they can take their time to test and roll out various trials for the next year and still create meaningful revenue for 2015, while also playing the long game.” 

In March, we delved into the motives behind Facebook’s newest video innovations: original content, the ability to embed Facebook native video on third party sites as well as native comments and how much more spreadable that made Facebook video. We also compared Facebook’s “The Mighty Algorithm knows what’s best” philosophy towards discovery with YouTube’s “you just pick what you like” attitude and discussed how that might play out with different types of users.

Facebook just launched a product called Topic Data in conjunction with social data firm, DataSift, The product taps into Facebook’s firehose of data to produce anonymized reports of what’s being discussed on the platform. This deeper insight into what’s being buzzed about gives marketers and advertisers a better idea of the type of content to use to target their demographic, making Facebook a more efficient platform overall.

 Finally, just a few weeks back, we wrote about the promise of Facebook authentication and how allowing Facebook to be both a tune-in driver and portal to the MVPD content some 90% of Americans are still watching, might give them the sort of data needed to really be an industry player and why that notion both scared and intrigued the networks.

If you’re a network, you get to see who tuned in, what type of message they responded to, even learn how long they watched, what other shows they watched that night and whether they felt compelled to comment on anything. That’s the sort of information the MVPDs have had access to for a while (thanks to Adobe Pass) but have never shared with the networks and it’s incredibly valuable

Tomorrow we’ll be looking to see what Facebook Anthology really entails, what content creators they will be partnering with and what they’re thinking in terms of leveraging their strong position and massive user base for both revenue opportunity and programming the stream.  PLEASE STAND BY FOR TOTAL TV WORLD DOMINATION.

Co-written with Jesse Redniss, this first appeared at BRaVe Ventures on April 21, 2015

Introducing Whipclip, Your New Favorite 2nd Screen App

Originally published at 2nd Screen Society on March 26, 2015

While the industry may still be salivating over livestreaming in general and Meerkat in particular, a new app called Whipclip may well steal the thunder away from them. Designed to allow users to (legally) share high definition clips from current TV shows, WhipClip is going to be a force to be reckoned with.

The legal part is huge: Whipclip is partnering with a host of major TV networks, including ABC, CBS, Comedy Central, FOX, VH1, A+E Network, Lifetime, Bloomberg, OWN and Turner in order to launch the first legitimate TV clipping service.

It’s huge because not only are those networks making their programs available to Whipclippers, they’re actively working with the app to make previously aired shows searchable.

And therein lies the magic of Whipclip: Not only can you go in and find and edit a clip from a show you are currently watching, you can go in and search for a particular term or phrase or name from a sizable back catalog.

That means a user can go to the Bob’s Burgers page and search for “Tina” and turn up every scene featuring that character. Or they can get more specific and search for “Tina smells like ketchup” to turn up that particular scene.

The app serves up a one-minute clip, which the user can then edit down to 30 seconds using a very intuitive clipping tool. Searches can also be for real people, so that an actor’s manager can easily call up episodes of Late Night, Oprah and other shows the actor has appeared on and send them out to fans and/or interested production companies.

That’s pretty revolutionary, as Whipclips can be shared across a range of social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Pinterest (to start) as well as via email and text message, easily spreading the word to millions of fans.

The implications of all that sharing from a data perspective are tremendous: networks will be able to keep track of fans’ favorite moments in a show and understand which segments resonated with which demographic and on which platform.

In addition, they’ll be able to use Whipclip as a promotional vehicle, sending out the clips they want fans to share in the hopes of turning a popular moment into a meme.

Whipclip also works as a discovery tool, ranking the most shared moments so that users can easily see what everyone else is sharing. This feature then provides valuable data to the networks, who can use it to predict how well new shows are resonating with fans by the number of clips that wind up in the top lists.

The app launches today (Thursday, March 26th) in the App Store, and as part of the launch, Whipclip has partnered with Comedy Central and Justin Bieber so viewers can clip their favorite moments from the live broadcast of the “Comedy Central Roast of Justin Bieber” this, Monday, March 30 at 10 p.m. Whipclip users will be able to create customized clips of the #BieberRoast and then share them to their social networks, the first time a televised event has been shared in real-time.

Really ambitious users can also Meerkat themselves Whipclipping moments from the Bieber Roast for total Social Television Synergy.

We will be keeping our eye on this promising second screen app as it rolls out and reporting back on the unique ways fans and marketers are using it.

Meerkat Is TV's Next, Next Thing

Ever since Twitter “broke” at SXSW in 2007, industry observers have been looking for the new new thing, the technology that they can say “I was there first” about.

There haven’t been many wins on that front since 2007 (FourSquare and GroupMe both arguably had their moments in the sun) but that seems all but guaranteed to change this year, thanks to new live streaming start-up called Meerkat.

The output of a Bay Area company called Life on Air with roots in Israel, Meerkat allows users to livestream video directly from a Twitter feed. Launching the app calls up a screen that invites you to start streaming and then tweets the news of the livestream directly to Twitter.

That’s it: no editing, no special effects. And the stream is gone once it’s done: Meerkat just leaves a placeholder frame in place with the message that the stream is over. This Snapchattian feature is easily overcome, however, as Meerkat allows you to save the video to your iPhone (an Android version is coming soon) where you can upload it to YouTube, Facebook or, if it’s shorter than 30 seconds, Twitter.

All the usual suspects are playing with it and I suspect that almost every panel at SXSW will have someone Meerkatting it. In most cases, several someones. (Confession: I Meerkatted the last audience question of the panel I did at BBTVCON last week and was surprised to find I’d accumulated 10 viewers in just two minutes time.)

So what is the application of this new 2nd screen app for the television industry?

It can be a great driver of live tune-in, particularly for shows like news, sports and even talk shows, that are filmed live. Meerkat offers the ability to show off behind-the-scenes activity, uncensored, as it’s happening. It gives TV news crews the ability to stream what’s essentially raw footage from the scene of breaking events, along with their own commentary. It can even be used by scripted series to show off the cast and crew during a table read or similar meeting where the audience gets to see the cast in “unscripted” mode.

CNBC has already been experimenting with Meerkat, webcasting host Jim Kramer’s ringing of the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange to celebrate his show “Mad Money’s” 10th anniversary.

 CNBC's Meerkat Stream

That’s exactly the type of use case Meerkat is good for. Smart network marketers will promote the webcasts ahead of time so that viewers will know when to be looking for them. And with Twitter’s new third party ad serving system in place, those Meerkat streams can be pushed out to additional sites and apps where users can engage with them.

Since Meerkat users need to sign in via Twitter, there’s a lot of data that can be gleaned from the app: who was watching, for how long, what are their demographics, have they engaged with the show previously, what else do they tweet about, what else do they follow.

While Meerkat will never be another Facebook (at least not with its current functionality) it’s a very well done value-add for Twitter, and showrunners and network marketing teams should definitely look into experimenting with it.

As for us, we’re keeping on eye on which shorthand emerges from SXSW this week. Will people be #Meering or will they be #Katting? We’ll keep you posted.

Originally published at www.2ndscreensociety.com on March 12, 2015. on March 12, 2015.

Social Media Turned Awards Season Into Newest American Holiday

Originally published at brief.promaxbda.org on February 25, 2015, co-written with BRaVe Ventures

It’s only a matter of time before Hallmark starts selling cards for it, but it looks like Awards Show Season is the newest American holiday.

And social media is to blame.

The confluence of fans, brands and the shows themselves have taken what were once minor spectacles and turned them into major celebrations. That’s been a boon for the events themselves as well as the brands smart enough to be associated with them.

And what started out as a handful of fans using Twitter to make snarky comments about Super Bowl commercials has turned into an eight week-long celebration of celebrity that takes place not just on Twitter, but on Facebook, Instagram, Vine, Pinterest and, more and more, Snapchat.

People now await the second-screen activity going on around these events as much as they anticipate the events themselves. That’s a huge sea change and about as close as we’ll get to proof that the Unified Screen world is here to stay. Brands and shows are creating not just cross-screen executions, but cross-screen story arcs that start before the show and end afterwards. (Another bit of fallout courtesy of social media: award shows used to be a one-day event. Now they eat up much of the week beforehand and a day or two afterwards.)

One positive result of all this inflation is that brands, shows and frequent social media users now realize they need to bring their creative A games, that social media is built on buzz and that the only way to get that buzz is to create something people want to talk about. Which is rarely (if ever) a canned marketing message.

That’s lead to some BRaVe executions this year, the most notable (in our humble opinion) being the four minute Imagine Dragons concert that Target pulled together for the Grammys, the first real example of branded content being used as a commercial. The spot was perfectly Targeted (pun intended) at the music-loving Grammys audience and by giving them something they wanted to see rather than more “me! me! me!” the brand (and the band) both garnered lots of social media love… all while getting their message across.

Not to mention that Target is now running pre-roll in front of the clip on YouTube directing people to buy the band’s new album at — where else? — Target.

From the Golden Globes to the Super Bowl to the Grammys to the Oscars (with Saturday Night Live’s 40th Anniversary special thrown in just to snark things up) this year has seen an increased use of platforms-that-aren’t-Twitter with positive results.

Justin Timberlake, Billy Crystal and Jimmy Fallon all appeared on SNL’s 40th Anniversary special.

Few people over 21 had even heard of Snapchat last year, but then BOOM this year it was all over the big events, with a sizable influx of dollars and creative energy as everyone was trying to reach its young millennial audience.

Last year too, Instagram and Facebook were barely calls to action and had no notable “real-time” plays that people could see. This year, both platforms had major calls to action and Instagram literally won the red carpet at a few of the events — the Golden Globes in particular, but Vanity Fair’s celebrity Instagram portraits by photographer Mark Seliger also made quite a splash.

 Oscar goes a little more classic, a little less glitzy with its Instagram celebrity portraits.

‘The Imitation Game’‘s Benedict Cumberbatch and ‘Cake’‘s Jennifer Aniston gave away a Golden Globe and then posed for Instagram pictures backstage.

And while there was no Ellen Selfie moment in this year’s Oscars — although everyone was certainly expecting it — Facebook still managed to pull in 58 million engagements on a night when Twitter’s numbers actually went down. (Not that it’s fair to look at Twitter’s numbers: things change so quickly it makes little sense to try and do year over end analysis. Rather than comparing apples to apples, you wind up comparing apples to a never ending fruit salad of platforms.)

The takeaway is that Awards Season gives us a unique opportunity to test out those platforms, each of which offers a unique way to reach a segment of the audience that’s tuned out of traditional interruptive advertising and is looking for entertainment, a bar that rises higher every year as audiences continue to look for bigger and better circuses.

More than just a celebration however, Awards Season 2015 has been an eight-week marathon of creative growth as well as a proving ground for the unified screen world that’s showing us why TV+Social+Digital will be the force that drives this industry into a “CreatedWith” revolution.

We’re in the middle of an unprecedented TV (r)evolution right now, so fasten your seatbelts and hang on for the ride

The Ellen Selfie And Other Oscar Dos and Don’ts

Ask someone what they remember about last year’s Oscar broadcast and the one thing they’re likely to spit back at you is the Ellen selfie. Or maybe they call it the Bradley Cooper selfie, or the celebrity selfie. The one thing they won’t be calling it though, is the Samsung selfie.

Which is a shame because it was Samsung who paid for and sponsored the shot.

Samsung is just the latest in a long line of brands who missed their close-ups, who paid to sponsor or promote something and wound up getting zero credit for it.

So how can you prevent this from happening to you?

Let’s look at the Samsung example first, for it contains some excellent lessons. Samsung gave Oscar MC Ellen DeGeneres a Samsung phone to carry with her during the telecast with the understanding she’d use it to take photos and viewers at home would be impressed that a celebrity like Ellen was using a Samsung Galaxy.

Big mistake.

While Samsung executives can no doubt recognize the difference between a Galaxy and an iPhone at 50 paces, the average consumer at home can not. Providing a close-up of the phone wouldn’t have helped much either — viewers would be too busy looking to see what apps Ellen had on her home screen to notice the logo. Chances are good most viewers assumed she was carrying an iPhone anyway. (The fact that she normally does carry an iPhone didn’t help that perception either.)

So what could Samsung have done differently?

This is one case where subtlety is a no-no. They should have had Ellen mention that she was taking photos with a Samsung Galaxy. Or at the very least included #Samsung as a hashtag. That way, what’s arguably the most famous piece of #CreatedWith content would have had some Samsung branding on it.

As we wend our way through this year’s award show season, we’ve already started to get a feel for this season’s winners and losers: Nationwide was a big loser during the Super Bowl after their home safety spot #NationwideDeadKid very quickly turned into the sort of meme brands fear most. Target on the other hand, was a winner for its four-minute Imagine Dragons concert during the Grammys, the first instance of branded content advertising.


Don’t want to be a loser? Here’s some do’s and don’ts on how to approach branded awards-show promotions:

— DO make sure there is some logical tie-in between your product and the event. If not, you’re going to want to create one because the only way people are going to listen to you is if they understand why you’re there. (HINT: “Because everyone else is” is not a good answer.)

— DON’T slap your logo on a promotion that has nothing to do with your brand . People won’t see your logo and they won’t know you’re behind it. And in the unlikely event they do see your logo, they won’t know why it’s up there.

— DO make sure that the promotion is relevant to the people watching the show. A hockey themed promotion may be part of who you are, but unless it’s going to resonate with the Oscar audience, don’t go there.

— DON’T do your own thing. If you’re piggybacking off of a show’s own promotion, don’t do your own (branded) version of it. The show’s version is fun and probably has a popular celebrity attached to it. Yours doesn’t. Guess who wins.

— DO be entertaining. While that sounds super obvious, we’re always amazed how often brands assume their strategic marketing position is so compelling audience will wait with baited breath to hear it. You’re running during an award show about the movies with every star in Hollywood. You’ve got to bring your A game or go home.

— DON’T be inorganic. Nobody likes a GMOP (genetically modified online promotion.) You want to strive to feel like a part of the program, not a bolted on side show.The more organic your promotion feels, the more likely it is to resonate with fans.

Originally published at brief.promaxbda.org on February 20, 2015

Who Needs Networks Anyway? Bringing Film and Television Directly To The Consumer

Originally published at tdgresearch.com on February 19, 2015

Eliminating the middleman has long been one of the tenets of the Internet revolution. While this formula has worked well in a range of industries from taxicabs (Uber) to lodging (Airbnb), it remains to be seen whether it can upend the conventional order of the entertainment industry.

There are a number of startups now banking on the notion that it’s more profitable for content producers to distribute their shows directly to consumers themselves, allowing them to keep the lion’s share of whatever advertising and/or subscription revenue they might earn.

Are they onto something? Maybe.

To begin with, let’s take a look at the core value proposition of what’s become known as “the sharing economy.” In established industries where the elimination of the middleman has worked very well, the sharing economy innovation solves a consumer problem, providing a service they’ve been unable to obtain elsewhere, such as reliable non-taxi taxi service or a safe and accountable way to use an apartment as a hotel room.

In the entertainment industry, eliminating the middleman solves a vendor problem, as content producers believe they are giving up too much of their profits to middlemen (in this case, the studios and networks). And while that may well be the case, it’s not something consumers particularly care about. They just want to watch their favorite programs.

From a consumer point of view, the television industry already has a (relatively) easy and widely accessible distribution system. While many feel it is overpriced, the new solutions aren’t promising to be any cheaper. The problem they are solving is that many content producers look at what networks and movie studios offer (distribution and marketing) and think, “I can do that myself, and make a lot more money doing so.”

Startups like Whalerock and VHX make it easy to find a reliable distribution platform. And marketing, many believe, can be handled for free, using social media. That, however, may prove to be a very dangerous assumption.

Too often I hear people expounding on how easy it is to use social media for promoting entertainment properties, pointing to Vine and YouTube stars (among others) as examples. While this is true for a small subset of performers, once you get past that subset, the premise falls apart.

People look to celebrities like Howard Stern as proof that using social media to drive buzz is a snap. What they forget is that in addition to over one million Twitter followers, Stern has millions of captive listeners via his Sirius radio show. The combination makes it easy for him to create buzz around his projects.

But few celebrities have those kinds of resources.

Social media is easy to use for marketing purposes if you have the time and the staff to run a proper campaign. A good social media marketing campaign is far more complicated than just issuing a tweet every other day. It’s a full time job, one that requires both a dedicated support team and the temperament to become a ceaseless self-promoter. For many celebrities that’s just not who they are, and if they ever decided to take that route, their fans would surely have a negative reaction.

But that Kardashian-esque compulsion for constant self-promotion is the only thing that’s going to deliver the sizeable audience they need. Without it, they’re better off sticking with the studios or networks.

This is not to say direct distribution by content creators is a total wipeout. It has worked very well for performers with dedicated followings. For example, comedian Louis CK is able to sell his specials directly to fans precisely because they are so loyal. Ditto for WWE, which enjoys millions of devoted fans and Twitter followers. Many music acts could probably achieve the same results, provided they have developed sufficiently large social media followings to market their performances.

Niche performers can also benefit from cutting out the middleman, provided they have an active social media fan base. Former Kodak CMO and Bloomberg TV personality Jeffrey Hayzlett was able to launch his own C-Suite Network, using his sizable social media following to create buzz for the show that runs on an OTT platform created by Piksel.

As live viewing numbers continue to decline, we can expect a greater number of content creators to explore the direct-to-consumer model. Of course, we will be surveying the landscape as this plays out, so stick with TDG and stay ahead of the curve.

Ready For It’s Close-Up: How 2nd Screen Is Going To Transform The Oscars

With the Oscars fast approaching, it’s interesting to think about what the show might look like once Twitter’s new third party ad system in place. That’s the newly announced system whereby Twitter is going to allow Tweets to be surfaced as native advertising on third party apps and sites.

Like the Super Bowl, the Oscars attracts a large global audience, and everyone is watching the show live, at the exact same time. As such, it’s one of the few events that still draws a real-time audience — even the Grammy’s were delayed for the West Coast this year.

The Oscars, even more so than other event shows, is made for social media. There are dozens of readily identifiable stars (with sizable social media followings) coming in on the red carpet and heading up to the stage to present and accept awards. There’s the host, Neil Patrick Harris, who has 13.7 million Twitter followers and 1.3 million Instagram followers.

There’s the fact that Twitter gave Harris the honor of producing the very first Twitter native video, a :30 promo for the Oscars that was shot with his phone’s camera. And of course there’s the world’s most famous selfie, the shot that Bradley Cooper took with Ellen DeGeneres that swiftly became the most retweeted photo ever.

Now let’s imagine that Twitter’s third party ad serving platform had been in place last year. That photo could have been served up (by Samsung, the company who sponsored the photo and by the Osars themselves) and pushed out to hundreds of major websites and mobile apps, along with a call to action to tune into the Oscars now.

I can only but imagine the amount of traffic that would have created, especially if it was part of a feed showing other key Oscar moments.

Which is another thing to remember: in addition to spontaneous moments like the selfie, the Oscars are chockablock full of what you might call “tweetable moments” as well known actors come on stage to receive their awards.

These can soon be syndicated, along with thirty second video clips and 140 characters of copy, to a variety of sites and apps where they can create the sort of buzz that helps to drive tune-in. (Especially if the tweets come with a compelling call to action.)

The real value of 2nd screen however, won’t be in the amount of tune-in those Twitter ads will drive. Rather, it will be in the data that the Oscars will be able to collect. They’ll be able to learn which skits created the most buzz and with whom, which ones drove the most tune-in and if there was a correlation between the two.

They’ll learn which sites and apps drove the most traffic, which demographics are responding to which segments, which messages attached to the same photo or video worked best.

They can use those findings for the next Oscars to build on and retain the current year’s audience. Determine which skits and jokes work best and which ones fell flat in order to guide next year’s script development.

The data will also help them sell advertising, as they’ll be able to give potential advertisers a clearer snapshot of who their viewers are and then offer them different opportunities by combining on screen and 2nd screen options.

That won’t be happening for the 2015 Oscars, but it’s something to think about as you’re watching: how much more powerful is 2nd screen going to be at next year’s show when Twitter’s third party site ad serving is in place.

Originally published at www.2ndscreensociety.com on February 19, 2015.