Archive for the ‘ Publishing Strategies ’ Category

Digital Marketing and the Role of Video

When digital marketing agencies first opened their doors for business it was all about banner ads, clickable creative, social media, SEO, blogs and newsletters. In the past year or so the digital marketing requests started coming in for content marketing or sponsored content. Fast forward to today, and it seems like everyone still wants the digital marketing efforts already mentioned but almost all conversations now begin with a discussion on video. Many marketers have a difficult time integrating video due to lack of knowledge in creation of video, a lack of understanding in the cost of video by agency and client, developing in-house talent and cost of equipment. Here are some tips for determining if you or your agency is ready to tackle video as part of your agency’s offerings.

Determine business case for pursuing video.

Why do you want to get into video? Are your clients requesting video and if so what percentage? Do you have the resources to pursue i.e. equipment, capital? Do you have any employees who have expertise with video production – videographers, editors? Finally do you have creative staff that can envision creative using video? There are certainly many other questions you need to answer but these are the main ones.

Identify team to lead the charge.

With anything new, it requires focus. It is a mistake to assume your creative, production and sales team can just add video as another service to sell. Many of the strategies are similar but having knowledge about the nuances of video is critical. There’s also the tendency for salespeople to hang on to what they have always sold until the bitter end.

Video production requires storyboards and ideas around the creative vision. Decisions have to be made on the use of animations within the video. What about music? Actors? Length? Music rights. How will it be used?

On the operations side of things it is critical to understand where the video is to be placed. If it’s social media, then the video should be 10-15 seconds or less. If the video is for blog posts or newsletters, I would still recommend no more than 2 minutes in length. If using primarily on a homepage of a website it can be longer but still less than 3 minutes and likely no audio. You also need to understand if different file versions will be needed based on platform you plan to run the video on or the players used to host the video.

Sales should also understand that typical pricing for other digital marketing efforts doesn’t work for video. The cost to produce a video is much more than other products in the digital marketing suite. I would also suggest that sales focus on getting someone with expertise involved in discussing video with the client or prospect. Having a creative team member who understands the complexity of shooting video should also be involved.

What does success look like.

The end product has to be a video that can be utilized in all aspects of digital marketing while also achieving a client’s goal. It should not be a one trick pony. The video needs to morph into each digital effort. It needs to work within a banner ad, on the advertiser’s website, on social media, in a blog, in an email campaign and blends in with photography, text and other aspects of any campaign. Success for the video starts with placement in the campaign, but the ultimate success is more user engagement, more product sales and a client that is proud of the video.

End Result.

Since video has become almost a “must offer” for digital marketing efforts it is critical your company spend the time and effort to develop an expertise. The backup if you don’t have the resources would be to hire freelance help until such time you build up your client base to afford in-house expertise.

While the tips above are general in scope they represent the basics to a successful effort with video. This video for Naked Mobile is an example of the video work we are proud of. Naked Mobile.

2017
10/16
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An Unlikely Trail From Digital to Print

As today’s media landscape continues to evolve, media groups must remain ambitious. As CEO of Ballantine Communications, Inc., nestled in the outdoor mecca of Durango, Colorado, my team and I found a media void in a place where you would expect it to be thriving, so we decided to act.

The annual booming $646 billion outdoor industry continues to grow and its audience is eager to learn, and even more eager to travel for their recreation. Market studies detail that for every dollar spent on outdoor equipment, four more are spent on travel and related needs. It is a broad group, male and female, ages 20-50 and beyond with a variety of interests. And we know how to reach them.

Today, BCI is aiming to be a basecamp for major online and regional outdoor media projects. Our Adventure Pro brand, an online website and now a print magazine, begins with the greater Southwest itself, a landscape of mountains and deserts, canyons and plateaus filled with renowned athletes and everyday explorers alike. With Adventure Pro, we embrace the huge world of outdoor recreation in a voice that aims to inspire our audience.

Our flagship website also aims to set itself apart with a vast amount of video-driven content. AdventurePro.us is composed of feature stories, tips and educational segments on equipment, how-tos, as well as travel pieces including après activity. We introduce something, whether sport or place, and dive right into where to get started.

Our newest entry in support of digital content is Adventure Pro Magazine, which will not only be an extension of the website experience, but will also stand alone as an engaging outdoor periodical. It will serve to redirect readers to the website so they can continue their experience. For every feature in the magazine, there is an elaboration of that content online.

Widely distributed, 20,000 copies will hit Northern New Mexico, Southeastern Utah and all along Colorado’s Western Slope. The quarterly magazine will celebrate each season and its unique recreational opportunities. Our carriers will stock strategic and highly visible places – restaurants, shops, cafes and hotels – in destinations synonymous with adventure: Moab, Utah; Taos, New Mexico; Pagosa Springs, Durango, Telluride and Grand Junction, Colorado.

At BCI, a content and video production team, a sales and marketing team and development team all work together to produce and promote Adventure Pro. For the esoteric realm of outdoor adventure, we’ve recognized a crucial need for a high level of expertise and an alternative skillset, so we built a staff accordingly to reflect the assorted audience we attract.

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Editor Brandon Mathis comes with 25 years of extensive outdoor experience and training, and a history in news media and storytelling. Mathis has a keen understanding of the culture and is himself a prime example of our audience.

Today’s outdoor enthusiast isn’t just a hiker or just a skier. They are hikers aspiring to ski and trail runners aspiring to mountain bike. They love to research online and educate themselves, from the latest performance wear to the best place for a breakfast on their weekend getaway. They want a little of everything. To them it’s all a lifestyle, not a weekend hobby.

The audience we are pursuing understands the sports we cover but wants to feel they are learning more than the basics. Our goal is to give novices enough information to make decisions about pursuit, and intermediate to experts those tips and information to help them better enjoy their adventure. This content is driven to deliver to people who want the most out of their passion.

We are also partnering with core outdoor businesses that share and reflect our brand’s values. Our supporters are niche retailers, gear supply shops, trending dining and social establishments, craft breweries and professional guide services. In addition to traditional advertising, we offer product placement, native content and digital and print packages, expanding our supporters’ marketing strategies.

The advertisers have also helped in driving our decision to add a print component to our offerings. In discussions with the different advertisers, they pushed the case that print still had a place in the mix due to the various locations many of the audience would consume content. Coffee shops, brewpubs and remote locations all still had strong print consumers not to mention a limitation with internet access in many locations. Thus they believed print and digital working in concert continues to make sense.

Our online presence is evergreen, immediately available and device-responsive as AdventurePro.us updates several times every week with new content. Our social media outlets, like Facebook and Instagram, have a growing audience, and we are developing new ways to engage them, even repurposing viewer-submitted social media content onto the print platform, making our own audience part of the content itself.

There is incredible potential to expand, with opportunities to push into an even broader geographic area. We have put tremendous efforts into our digital product, and now will grow our audience online by building a highly-visible print product as much for aspiring audiences as for seasoned experts.

This is an exciting time in media, and we see a turning point. Platform agnosticism used to be a battle cry. But the reality is that it’s not a platform, it’s the content.

Our audience is involved in these adventures, and in many cases they are in remote locations pursuing their passions. Given that, it makes perfect sense to give our consumers a great experience in digital and print.

2016
10/20
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Pursuing Online Video Strategy (TV model vs Category model)

We have been experimenting with video content for the past 2 years and it seems like we are finding new ways to achieve audience growth.  Content is typically “king” but success also comes down to how easy it is to find content on the web. In that regard, the importance of tagging was far greater than we ever anticipated.

Recently one of our video websites, 4flagtv.com, changed it’s approach to video. Originally 4flagtv.com shared content with it’s sister site, 4cornerstv.com, based in Durango, Co. Our hope from a production and business perspective was that sharing video content between the sites would increase our inventory and give our audience more content than one production team could produce.

However, analytics showed us that videos produced in the Durango area scored poorly when compared to the page views and time spent on videos produced in Flagstaff, about Flagstaff. To support this notion we wanted to pull all the non-Flagstaff content off the site and focus on local coverage. As we prototyped what the site would look like we had very few ‘shows’ left on the site. Up to that point our programming was similar to a broadcast model.

The Broadcast model

Originally, there were shows on our Flagstaff site with particular topics and a specific host, and they were published on a regular schedule. But we were hearing from the production team that the broadcast model was actually confining what they would cover because they were always trying to find a story that would fit into the shows’ format. One such example was Escape the Grind, a show about fitness. Our shows were simply too constrictive to allow us to adequately cover topics outside their scope.

In another show, #Flag, we had far fewer parameters on what we were doing. It’s open-ended content allowed us much more free range in coverage, letting us bring together disparate topics in its two-minute-plus running time that was far more of a YouTube model than what we had been doing.

#Flag taught us that it was the content, not the brand (especially at the show level), that was important to the younger readers we wanted to court. These millennials were far more accustomed to the YouTube model of programming, not the broadcast model. And if you’re true to your audience, you need to follow what they’re familiar and comfortable with, not what you want to impose on them. Our audience didn’t care about “shows,” so we needed to move away from slavishly producing them. We also needed to acknowledge that our audience cares about specific content, and they search it out by categories.

 

The Youtube model

We decided to break the broadcast model of branded shows and move to a system that utilizes topics and tags to associate content for the user. It also allows the production team to cover a much broader range of content.

What’s different for our users? Now when they come to the site, instead of seeing videos categorized by show name and episodes, they are greeted with the latest content published in reverse chronological order. Each video has collection of tags connected to it. A user may start with a video on bicycle products, but be exposed to links to other topics such as “industrial design, bicycles, business profile, sports, downtown, Flag and Dapper Dre (a local celebrity).

The idea is to get the user to follow a click trail to videos about their favorite things. To make it easier for them, we went back through over 2,000 videos and retagged them with additional information. Navigationally, our site is now structured to make it easy to find content based on categories of content, trending content and newest releases.

We spent much time and energy promoting our show names and branded websites when in reality our viewers only really cared about content categories and the pure entertainment value we could offer. Our road map now follows a major and important detour that emphasizes tags over titles.

Below are 3 examples of our current format.

 

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2016
07/05
CATEGORY
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Seeking a Younger Audience Using Video – Make Sure You Understand Audience

4 Corners TV has built a growing audience of 25-45-year-olds, but constant experimentation in its year-long existence has shown that younger viewers don’t want straight news from their online videos, even if it’s irreverent. What its Southwestern audience does like is content on pot, extreme sports and local comedy, and the site is taking another crack at news, this time with a sock puppet.  See full article at NetNewsCheck.com.

By Doug Bennett

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It’s hard to imagine that last year at this time we were preparing for the first episode of 4CornersTV.com, an online network sprung from the understanding that our newspapers did not attract a younger demographic. Our goal was to attract and retain a younger audience through new formats and content choices.

Initial audience reactions led us away from daily coverage of socially-focused news to more entertainment-themed content on a weekly schedule. The coverage of adventure sports, craft breweries and other topics related to the four corners area of the Southwest and specifically the Durango, Colo. area resulted in a steady growth trajectory of site visits.

Here’s just a snapshot of the data we’ve collected in our first year: over half of weekly viewers are 25-45-years-old. We’ve seen an average 3,000 videos viewed each week (or over 12,000 views a month) and growing.

Other things we’ve noticed: 75% of all visits convert into video views, 54% of our visitors each week are new and 40% of traffic comes from mobile devices.

Because this demographic is more and more likely to consume its entertainment through mobile devices, we weren’t surprised at the numbers of tablets and smart phones in the analytics. What was surprising is that desktop usage is still very popular. This seems to correlate with the highest viewing times ranging from Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., when 57% of usage comes from desktop, leading us to believe this group has a habit of watching at work.

Eager to continue the steady increase in views, we reached outside our area to Farmington, New Mexico to tap into a larger audience.

Although the city of Farmington is only 45 miles away, it is demographically different and has over twice the population. To directly appeal to this audience, we featured Farmington specific episodes hosted by local talent, including a Navajo comedy team. The numbers jumped significantly, with average monthly site visits climbing from 12,000 to over 25,000 with over half in the desired age group.

Happy with the success we experienced when adding in additional geographic areas, we experimented with a strategic approach to our content to raise the number of our younger demographic visitors.

The 4CornersTV.com mission of delivering stories with an irreverent tone led us to push the boundaries with topics like cannabis, covering everything from dispensaries to edibles and more. Again, we saw a jump in interest. We also went more extreme with our adventure sports coverage showing mountain climbing, night biking and ice climbing, to name a few atypical sports popular in our area. This resulted in an all-time episode high and increased visitors in the target age group by 12 points.

During this period of testing we confirmed that straight news, even with an irreverent tone, was the least-watched programming. But we’re not ready to give up on news altogether, so we’re looking to models like “The Simpsons” to take a cynical, more off-kilter and character-driven approach to news to appeal to this important age group.

With this in mind, we’re introducing Phil N. Handy, a very talented sock puppet, to anchor our news desk. He’ll focus on slightly off-color stories using a humorous delivery, while keeping a straight face, as it were.

We’re beginning Phil’s welcome campaign through a mock press release and using social media to target groups that enjoy funny, experimental news content. This move towards more unconventional programming will be measured through audience growth numbers over the next quarter to determine if Phil’s “contract” will be renewed.

The lessons learned in our first year have brought a measure of success and given us the flexibility to try new ideas. Along the way, we realized that additional staffing was necessary to pull off the kind of programming that has worked, so we’ve added another editor and show producer along the way. Fortunately, our focus on entertainment over news has created a higher acceptance rate among advertisers, helping us to absorb the cost.

Our change is ongoing, and 4 Corners TV will constantly be experimenting and pushing the boundaries to capture this profitable younger demographic. We’re also in early stages of planning expansion into new cities with similar demographics as areas we serve today, but that’s a story for another time.greenlight[1]

2015
02/12
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Inform and Entertain is Key to Success with Online Vid @4CornersTV.com

I just finished writing an article giving a progress report on the online video channel 4CornersTV.com for NetNewsCheck.com. We are off to a great start and I hope you find this information useful. For the full article go to NetNewsCheck.com.

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4CornersTV.com, launched in February by Ballantine Communications Inc, represents a new initiative for media companies to do what will be essential to their continued success; connect with new and younger audiences.

Knowing that a demographic of 30-45 year olds would not be engaged as strongly with traditional news formats, 4CornersTV.com was created to provide them content that both informs and entertains while being accessible to them in the formats they like at any time and on any device.

After more than three months of daily production with over 275 videos produced, there have been a number of significant things we have learned. The first, and likely the most important, is the relationship between content and audience engagement. Striking a balance between information and entertainment, with the latter being the most crucial, has been the most substantially effective way to boost traffic.

Since we made adjustments to programming, caused by a slowing growth rate in our targeted audience (according Google Analytics) we have seen a 63% growth in traffic, averaging 4% growth each week. 53% of audience is between the ages of 25-45. And 30% of our traffic is from mobile devices. Our audience values the enjoyment of 4CornersTV.com programming more than it does the information gathering.

This was very evident to us on an April Fools edition of our daily “news” program “The Local Roundup.” While the Roundup has a strong daily audience, consumers weren’t as prone to share or engage with it. So we decided to use April 1 as a test case in favoring entertainment over information, and produced a program filled entirely with fake news.

From federal controls on beer production (a taboo topic in our home state of Colorado) to piranhas in a local river, the fake-news allowed humor to shine through our traditional format. This resulted in the most watched episode of “The Local Roundup” to date, and led us to a more focused initiative to drive entertainment as a first priority of production.

This focus on entertainment has also been reflected in the topics we choose to cover. Generally, the episodes that more directly reflect aspects of the area’s lifestyle are most successful. Shows about mountain biking, rafting and other adventure sports are better received than more socially-focused news.

Home Page Overview[3]

One surprising development in the first three months of production was the more peripheral role of our newsrooms in 4CornersTV.com. Ballantine Communications owns several newspapers, including The Durango Herald and The Cortez Journal. Initially, we assumed that we would draw heavily on the expertise of those newsrooms for content creation on 4CornersTV.com.

In reality, this expertise was more frequently utilized in an advisory role. The newsroom has passed along ideas that better fit the audience and experience we are focused on at 4CornersTV.com. Our newsroom now plays more of a role as a source for material, as 4CornersTV.com staff writes their own material and depending on story also originates the content.

We have also spent extensive time examining how to maximize workflow for the resources we have available. We must strike a balance between the time it takes to find great stories with the time required to produce daily programming. This has made it essential to set aside time for production teams to sit down and look ahead.

The questions we found ourselves asking: What events are happening in the next month? Which is the right show and host for this story or that? Is there a way to make this more entertaining for our audience? Being intentional about the content and branding choices we make has enabled us to couple production and promotion effectively. We needed to follow the same approach as a company dedicated to video production. Our efforts with video were thus the primary intent as opposed to an add on video to a news story.

The most impactful way 4CornersTV can build its brand and cultivate new audiences is through the addition of new programming and hosts. The first imperative is relatively straightforward. We determine the show we’d like to make, agree on a creative direction and outline the first collection of episodes.

Matching the talent with the program has proven to be a more involved process. Once a creative direction has been established for the show, the next consideration is finding the host that fits with that strategy. At 4CornersTV it starts with a casting call.

We look for hosts who seem natural on camera, even if slightly unpolished, but are able to convey an enthusiasm about the subjects they are covering. For example, once we understood that our show “In the Neighborhood” needed to be fun and fast paced with original content, we hired a host who was willing to have fun herself on camera when engaging the subject, such as letting the audience fly along with her on her first sky dive.

Flying HIGH in the Sky Hero Image[5]

Check out the rest of the article on NetNewsCheck.com. Enjoy.

 

2014
07/10
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Building a Video Channel: First Steps

I recently wrote an article for NetNewsCheck.com on the topic of building an online video channel within the confines of a traditional media business.  I included a portion of the article on my blog.  You can read entire article on NetNewsCheck.com.

As the CEO of a traditional media company, I think a lot about building audiences these days.

My company, Ballantine Communications, Inc.  (BCI), owns and operates several daily newspapers in Southwest Colorado, including The Durango Herald and The Cortez Journal. For nearly 50 years, it has been a leading source of news in these areas. But like most media organizations, BCI needs new, younger audiences to continue its strong role in the community.

To reach this demographic (ages 30-45), traditional news formats are not going to be an effective method of distribution, no matter the relevancy of the content. This audience is far more likely to consume news on a mobile device. In fact, they actively seek out video content to inform them on everything from news, celebrity gossip, buying decisions and life choices.

So my team concluded that the right type of programming for us to launch was a local-online TV channel, which we call 4cornersTV.com (4CTV). But we internally debated: Should the content be focused solely on the interests of locals? Or should it have more universal appeal to match the information tourists are looking for when researching the area? For an organization rooted in a history of traditional journalism distributed in traditional formats, an online TV channel is an exciting prospect, but logistical questions abound.

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Here was our challenge: How could we incorporate the skill sets that have been cultivated through 50-years of news gathering and content creation into a video channel focused on a new demographic, in a new format with new goals while continuing our role as a prominent information outlet for the community?

Is it possible to strategically allocate internal resources, like writers and photojournalists from the newspapers, to help create the initial mass of content 4CTV would need to entice viewers? Would these resources understand how to create content that appeals to a previously under-served demographic?

What amount of capital investment would be needed to launch 4CTV before definitive content and operational procedures were in place? Essentially, how could BCI launch 4CTV with compelling content and the ability improve its programming on the fly but without a financial over-commitment?

To successfully launch 4CTV on Jan. 27, we decided that the initial investment would have to be in talent and expertise. We budgeted to spend $25,000 per quarter. These personnel needed to produce content sought by the target audience and to manage a continuous production schedule. We found there was no substitute for the unique overlapping skill sets needed not only to produce content, but also create and manage the procedures that will be the govern the channel as a whole.

The challenges in building a new channel from scratch could only be overcome by focusing on relevant content creation and by providing local advertisers with strong opportunities to market to these prospective customers through video.

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As we built the 4CTV team, the need for demographic relevance had to be incorporated into everything from marketing to development to composition of our production team.

As we moved ahead – and continue to do so – we take every step guided by this core question: Is this content relevant to the needs of our target audience and the way they interact with digital devices? For an audience of 30-45-year-olds living in Southwestern Colorado, much of that content had to be informed by the unique lifestyle they live. In this case, this audience is active, locally-focused and drawn to the area for reasons other than a career.  Check out rest of article on NetNewsCheck.

2014
02/07
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How Publishers Should Forge A Video Strategy

I recently wrote an article for NetNewsCheck.com on the topic of original video content and should publishers pursue this strategy.  I included a portion of the article on my blog.  You can read entire article on NetNewsCheck.com.

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Online video can prompt many questions for a publisher. Should it be short, curated clips that serve as a supplement to a story? Original video content that can stand alone? Should the video be designed specifically for mobile or desktop?

But the most important question to ask is this: Who is the publisher trying to reach? If the answer is a new audience such as a younger demographic, then the process of producing video must begin with collecting and reviewing data that supports the interests of this audience.

It’s also important to realize that starting with a mobile experience and bridging back to desktop may be a critical element to consider as well.

Publishers must begin the process by framing out some key questions, then laying out a plan to support their strategy.

What do we know about the audience?

Is the target younger then traditional users? I recently was involved in the creation of a video strategy to reach a much younger audience (30-45-year-olds). We felt we had some great content that would resonate well with this demographic, but we knew we had to develop even more.

In looking at Scarborough data for 30-45 year-olds, we found the interests were ranked differently from a typical audience for a news site. Top activities for this audience in the last 12 months included (in order of preference): Swimming, gardening, jogging, bicycling, photography, volunteer work, bowling, camping, fishing and backpacking.

We quickly learned that this younger demographic had similar interests to our current audience, yet it was dramatically more active, and hence ranked certain activities differently in terms of importance. Data from BI Intelligence and IDC also indicated the audience was very connected and decidedly at the much-vaunted intersection of social, local and mobile.

What type of content would they be interested in?

Based on information above, the ideal programming for this age demographic was related to physical activities, things-to-do and lifestyle. If one then considers the digitally-connected aspect and the proliferation of video with this younger demographic, it was fairly easy to determine the need for curated, compelling and original video content to stimulate their minds.

Do publishers already have any of this content? If not, where do they get it?

Read the rest of this article on NetNewsCheck.com.

2013
08/22
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Tablet Publishing: What Magazines Can Teach

I recently wrote an article for NetNewsCheck.com on the topic tablet publishing and why it seems that magazines are more innovative in this area than newspapers.  I have included a portion of the article.  You can read the full article at NetNewsCheck.com.

Tablet computers have scaled faster than any computing device in history, and there’s no slowdown anytime soon. According to a recent International Data Corporation (IDC) forecast, 121 million were sold in 2012 and the number could reach 190 million in 2013.

The top age demographic for purchasing tablets is 30-49-year-olds. Interestingly, almost as many 55-64 year olds are buying tablets as 18-24 year olds.

What are the daily reading activities on these tablets? According to BI Intelligence, 30-49-year-olds read news content on their tablets 38% of the time, spending 17% on books and 6% on magazines. The core age group for most newspapers, 50-64-year-olds, read news 43% of the time, followed by 17% on books and 6% on magazines.

Considering the relatively small amount of time tablet users spend on magazines, it is curious to observe what appears to be a higher level of innovation from magazines than from newspapers (perhaps driven by advertisers’ attraction to the form factor’s stunning visuals).

Many newspapers are currently pursuing mobile and tablet publishing by creating responsive design Web sites. This means that the exact same content displayed on a desktop website automatically re-formats to fit smaller (or bigger) screens such as tablet and smartphone screens.

From a cost perspective, it is the most efficient use of resources. Rather than developing a multitude of Web sites and/or apps for different screens and platforms, a publisher simply uses one code base. This also enables publishers to avoid Apple’s App Store and its submission guidelines as an added bonus.

Now compare that to what’s happening in the magazine world.

Among magazines’ old guard, the five largest publishers in the U.S. formed a joint venture and launched a start-up, Next Issue Media, with the specific aim to bring about innovation in the digital space.  Read rest of article at netnewscheck.com.

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2013
06/06
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Curated Content vs Sponsored Content – What’s the Difference and Does It Matter?

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I have worked for several large content publishers, supporting both publisher and advertiser brands in traditional print and digital/interactive.  A particular subject has been receiving a lot of attention lately – Curated Content vs. Sponsored Content; what’s the difference and does it matter? First, let’s understand the meaning of each term:

–       Curated Content: content aggregated for “cherry-picked” topics intended for specific audiences.  The content is gathered by various means, but the two most prevalent are Search (a la Google & Yahoo) and the typical human review. Two good examples of content curation come from Flipboard for curated news aggregation and from YouTube for curated video content.  They each create a tailored experience for the audience based on topics of interest.

–       Sponsored Content: In the last year we have started hearing a lot more about sponsored content.  Another term used frequently is advertorial content.  Basically it is content that is produced around a topic with an eye toward an advertiser to support the effort.  Have you ever been reading an article and at the top it says “paid advertisement”.  It could be an article in print or online that is covering the launch of a new vehicle.  This is content that the advertiser is paying for (note: not all advertorial content carries the “paid advertisement” statement; sometimes the grey lines between the two get fuzzy or even fade away entirely).

Both ways of delivering content to an end user have merit.  Curated content is not associated with advertising dollars, however the sources for content are not always 100% relevant and could possibly cause harm to a brand if the content isn’t closely monitored for the particular audience.  On the other hand, curated content can be a great way of providing depth into specific topics. The person responsible for curating the content must be careful not to claim ownership of the content.  He/She must provide appropriate links, credit, and/or attribution.

Sponsored content might seem tainted or biased to some, but it’s not always the case.  There is a great deal of sponsored content that is very valuable. The author of the sponsored content may be “speaking from the heart” or exactly the opposite, by giving unwarranted, favorable comments and attention to the paid sponsor of the content.  Whichever the case, sponsored content should be clearly identified.

Consumers today expect transparency from brands; they also want to be entertained!  Creating great content around unique topics may require specific focus and most likely needs to be contracted out.  The hired curator needs to work hand-in-hand with the brand, i.e. when creating an entertaining video on certain topics related to the brand.

Content creation by a curator is a specialized field.  The curator must be adept at finding unique and original content and developing sponsored content in a way the brand’s target consumers expect it.  The key to providing successful content is quality of each pursuit.  I read this great interview of Jim Farley, Ford Motor’s CMO, by Digiday.  Below are some excerpts I pulled to validate what I am saying.

Farley spoke to Digiday about how the carmaker is approaching digital, particularly in its focus on creating shareable content.

Have you figured out social media yet? We’re getting closer to figuring out the cadence in the social space. We’ve made a lot of progress. We’ve committed a lot of resources to our digital spend and the human capital to promote the company and our products. We developed a lot of new muscles. We learned a lot about how to make social make sense for the company and still be authentic and not interrupt people’s natural interactions. In social, we learned how important content generation is. At first, we didn’t understand how much content we needed to produce. That’s the currency of the social experience.

Why is content so important?
What we found is that shareable content is something you have to be professional about and quick to develop. You can’t do it by content alone. You have to have paid advertising. But it’s best to start with a running start. If you’re doing pre-launch on the Fusion, start with Ryan Seacrest’s fan base. If you want to have a conversation about Ford, start with Mustang. You have to find something that starts the dialogue and is compelling. You have to have great sharable content, which isn’t easy to produce.

Content keeps coming up. Brands have always created content. How is it different now?
If I walked through the agency three years ago, the team was mostly working on broadcast advertising. There were a couple people in other areas, including the Web. They’d be working on banner ads or our own cool videos the banner ads would link to. When I walk through today, one person is working on a Ken Block video, the next is working on an animated figurine doing comedy, the next is working on Ryan Seacrest videos. It’s almost overwhelming. We’re not used to entertaining people. We’re used to informing people. Entertaining people means taking risks and making cultural judgments. Take Doug the puppet. He had a press conference where he had to be funny, but if he was too inappropriate, it would be bad for our brand. Those are new creative muscles.

Full Interview http://www.digiday.com/brands/why-fords-cmo-has-content-on-his-mind/

Having a content strategy is critical as it relates to pursuit of existing and new audiences for a brand.  What constitutes a content strategy ten years ago is vastly different in today’s brand community.  There is an expectation from the audience that not only the brand should be the expert but they should also identify other reputable sources of content to further bring robust information on a topic.

This article helps with the discussion of this topic.  http://spinsucks.com/marketing/curating-content-and-community/

So in today’s world a consumer realizes the differences between original content, curated content and sponsored content.  They are looking for the best overall experience and want to be informed and entertained.  The need for print, video, digital, apps etc. requires the use of many sources of content.  Content experts now and in the future cannot be one dimensional.  We should never think of curated and sponsored content as a bad thing.

2013
02/12
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Publishing Strategies
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INTERNET VIDEO IS THE FUTURE

I recently worked on developing a business plan for a consumer internet video business.  Much of the research done was compelling as it relates to the future of internet video.  The market is exploding and once again mobile plays a big role in the growth.  I thought I would share the information.

Consumers are watching more video than ever. But the way they watch is changing. Increasingly, the demand is being met via the Internet. From smart and connected TVs to laptops, tablets and smartphones, consumers now have more devices than ever to connect to the Internet to stream content.

More and more of consumers are taking advantage of the increased ability to determine what, how, when and where to watch.

Even so, video consumption and interaction by screen and device varies greatly by life-stage and lifestyle, by age, gender, and by ethnicity.  No longer does one size fit all, and new trends continue to emerge.

Yet, the US consumer’s attention continues to lie in the quest to seek TV and TV-like professionally produced content. Consider Netflix which earlier this year expanded its offering not just by increasing its partnerships to re-air programming but also jumped into the game of producing and delivering original content.

The key to success will be to identify the biggest and most immediate opportunities for growth in the growing market of Internet Video. The following section will analyze the market opportunities.

internet_video_overview

Internet video[1]

Traditional TV is still king. But more and more consumers are discovering new video content via the Internet. The lion’s share of Internet video can be assumed to come from desktops/laptops.162.5M users now watching video on the Internet while 36M watch on a mobile phone.

table2

Internet video is still in its infancy as evidenced by the chart below. However, there’s a trend emerging: Time spent watching traditional TV is in decline and Internet video is increasing. We can expect the change to start happening more rapidly over the next couple of years, as more people get high-speed Internet connections and get Internet enabled devices.

table3

Looking at a month in the life of Americans, traditional TV by far garners the most attention, with the 65+ age demographic spending 220:22 hours per month. Younger demographics increasingly watch timeshifted TV and are gradually turning to Internet video. The age groups 18-24 and 25-34 take the lead, spending 9:38 and 7:09 respectively watching online. In addition, they spend 7:35 and 4:53 watching video on a mobile phone.

table4

Of the 162.5M watching video on the Internet, the composition skews a little older with 44% coming from the 25-49 age group, and 23% coming from the 50-64 age group. For the 36M watching video on mobile, the composition is younger, with 53%% in the 18-34 age group, and 24% in the 35-49 age group.

table7a

The bottom line:

  • Of the 162.5M users now watching video on the Internet, it is a safe bet that most access from desktop/laptop, while 36M watch on a mobile phones
  • Although traditional TV is king, it is in decline, while we can expect the acceleration of online video watching to increase
  • The age groups 18-24 and 25-34 spend the most time watching both online in general and on mobile
  • The composition for Internet video viewers is slightly older (25-49) and the composition for mobile video viewers is slightly younger (18-34).

Mobile (smartphones and tablets)[2]

In the past, mobile video has been held back by a single factor: bandwidth.  The wireless infrastructure wasn’t fast enough to allow for clean video viewing.

4G LTE is changing that, and mobile video is fast becoming popular on the faster wireless networks.  In the US, 4G subscribers are 33% more likely to watch video on their smartphones than the average mobile user, according to Comscore “Mobile Future 2012” report.

Device design also helps, with smartphones now integrating larger screens and speedier processors (and LTE connectivity).

In short, mobile video is becoming a mass consumer phenomenon, much as digital photos were earlier in the smartphone adoption cycle. As a consequence, consumer behavior is changing in favor of higher mobile video usage, video app uptake and advertising.

Mobile video is growing across the board, but tilts young, reaching audiences not easily penetrated by traditional TV.

Video length is increasing across device types, offering more ad opportunities.

Triple digit growth rates in mobile video ad bookings signal the promise of multi-screen campaigns.

Mobile video is not displacing other mediums.  Instead it appears to be an additive activity: it offers new opportunities for video viewing.

The shift to mobile video is best understood as part of a larger trend away from traditional TV and toward on-demand video, which gives viewers more control over their content and allows for “time shifted” viewing.

Smartphones and tablets now offer options in terms of both when and where content can be viewed.  Tablets can be watched in bed or in your neighborhood café.  Smartphones and mini-tablets can stream a TV sitcom or music video at a bus stop.

According to BI Intelligence analysis of Nielsen data, the US mobile video audience increased 77% to 36 million viewers over last two years.  The second fastest growing category, the audience for time-shifted TV, grew 54% to 146 million.  The chart below shows how mobile video’s share of total video viewing worldwide has also surged.


mobileshare

A misperception about mobile video is that a small screen automatically translates to a consumer preference for shorter videos.  However, as the chart below shows, almost half of videos watched on smartphone screens are 10 minutes or longer, according to Ooyala’s data.  Tablet viewers spend even more of their time – 67% – watching videos longer than 10 minutes.

smartphone_longer_videos

Apple’s IOS-powered devices have a huge lead in terms of driving the most mobile video views. The chart below shows which percentage of videos not viewed on a desktop. IOS devices drive 57% of the views, versus 15% for Android.  Xbox drives more views than Android.

video_ios

On the advertising front, video is part of a larger shift in mobile advertising toward rich media ads that provide more engagement and interactivity and a more tailored experience particular to the device the user is immersed in.

In the chart below, data from Opera’s mobile ad network illustrate the tectonic shift to rich media and video ads, with mobile video ads doubling from 6% to 13% of ad executions in just six months.

Mobile video is a promising medium for advertisers, because it offers a polished TV-style ad, while also presenting an opportunity to ask users to perform other actions, such as signing up for an e-mail about a product or an app.

ads

Video will be key to monetizing mobile advertising.  The relatively low value of mobile ads has in large part been driven by small screens and consumers’ distaste for intrusive ads.  The hope is that mobile video will be the engaging ad format that finally unlocks mobile’s potential.

YuMe, a multi-screen ad solutions provider saw mobile video ad impressions grow 75% from Q1 to Q2, reaching 7% of all impressions.  Mobile ad network Greystripe reported a 300% increase in mobile video ad bookings between Q3 and Q4 last year.  They also boasted 1% to 3% click-through rates on its mobile video ads, and completion rates of 50%.

Bear in mind that mobile ad numbers are still tiny and are growing from a small base of limited inventory.  But even if the value of mobile video ads trend down, spending will still flow to them.  Advertisers will need to capture those eyeballs becoming glued to the small screen.

Current eCPMs for mobile video ads run in the $5 range while in-app video can garner a $10 eCPM.

The bottom line:

  • Users are watching longer videos across all devices, and watching a greater proportion of their video on mobile.
  • Mobile video ad bookings are growing at triple digit rates.
  • Over the long term, robust video-ad CPMs could be threatened by consumers’ tendency to tire of digital ad formats but new formats will need to evolve.

 

Connected Television[3]

Connected TVs are TVs connected to the Internet, whether it’s via Web-TV devices such as Roku and Apple TV, game consoles, or smart TVs.

It is estimated that by 2018, 80% of all TVs shipped will be smart TVs. In the meantime, existing TVs are being connected from the 8.6M Web-TV devices sold globally last year[4].

The chart below shows the number of households with the different sources of service provided.  These same sources are critical in supplying high speed internet access.

table10table9

When you consider the amount of bandwidth needed to support streaming video, it is important the number of households with broadband reaches critical mass.  As the chart below indicates broadband penetration of U.S. households now stands at almost 84 million.

table10

In addition, gaming console manufacturers are also seeking to claim a stake in this evolving ecosystem.  Not only have they strategically aligned themselves to provide video content and gaming interactivity through their consoles, they are capitalizing on an established footprint.  These evolving entertainment hubs are enabling a new set of opportunities for entertainment consumption through media applications.

Owners of game consoles spend considerable time with their devices. PS3 users are spending 36 minutes daily, Wii users 17 minutes, and Xbox 360 users 32 minutes.  And it’s not just for gaming. These consoles act as both gaming vehicles and video content purveyors.  They enable social gaming as well as DVD play and streaming through apps.

The chart below identifies how many U.S. households have devices that could have capability to access the Internet in the home.

table12

The bottom Line:

  • Connected TVs represents the future, however it is still in its infancy
  • Web-TV devices a transition while smart TV’s will be the norm by 2015
  • We cannot forget the impact of multi purpose game consoles, unlike Web-TV devices, this segment will continue to grow

 

AUDIENCE

Having grown up with the Internet, Generation Y is more connected than any other generation. As such, their needs and wants are different.

They don’t think of TV as a box in the living room. To them, it doesn’t matter if their videos come from a TV, an iPad or a smartphone. As long as it’s what they want, when they want it.

Gen Y are socially connected consumers. They share everything and they are “on” all the time. They expect the services and products they interact with to enable their connected lifestyles.

Increasingly, consumers are “social explorers”, meaning they use social media channels as their primary source for news and entertainment.

Consider these facts[5]:

  • 17% of all users are Social Explorers
  • People share to talk about themselves, to “brand” themselves
  • 47% of Gen Y’s will write about positive experiences online
  • 39% of Gen Y’s will share negative encounters online
  • 50% of Gen Y’s have over 300 Facebook friends
  • 43% of Gen Y’s have Liked more than 23 brands
  • 40% of Gen Y’s visit Facebook more than 10 times a day

 

The bottom line:

 

  • Gen Y is ahead of other generations and are currently more socially connected
  • In order to be successful with this audience it is important to embed social features in all aspects of the product

[1] Source for data tables: Nielsen cross platform report

2012
12/03
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Publishing Strategies
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