CYNOPSISDIGITAL
02.25.16

Good morning. It’s Thursday February 25, 2016, and this is your first early morning digital briefing.

 
Leave it to Google to make advanced TV more advanced. According to sources who spoke with Variety, the company has partnered with the TV manufacturer Vizio on a series of new TV sets that will carry similar functionality to Google’s Chromecast digital media player. Instead of traditional smart TV apps, the TV will allow users to watch streaming services on their TV sets, with the streaming initiating from their mobile devices. The TVs might be available as early as this spring.

Roger Mincheff, who last November left his role as President of Relativity Digital Studios, is now set to work on his own behalf. Mincheff has provided seed capital (and secured funding from an unnamed investor) for Big Boots, a new studio focused on entertainment and branded content featuring Internet-native stars. Mincheff says that Big Boots has deals in place with with “A-Plus talent,” and will be working with media partners across music, gaming, and sports. He also says the studio will work with advertisers on branded content deals. So what will Mincheff be looking for in an Internet-native influencer? “The most important criteria is that the talent or influencer is on brand with the audience we are trying to reach,” he told Cynopsis Digital. “We work with specific talent because of the built-in audience they already have across social media. So in a sense, the influencers are driving the distribution strategy because we want our content to be in an environment where their audience already feels comfortable engaging.”
 
 

 
It’s no secret that Netflix’s international presence skyrocketed this year – the service is now live in 130 countries and counting. And moving forward, regional programming will likely factor heavily into the company’s expansion strategy. So it came as little surprise when the German trade pub Blickpunkt: Film recently reported that Netflix had greenlit its first German-language series. Now Netflix has gotten around to confirming the report, and we know more about the project: A supernaturally-themed series titled Dark, it centers on the disappearance of two children, and the relationships among four families. Baran bo Odar will serve as director.
 
Jukin Media, the media company known for its library of viral video clips, has partnered with the Spanish multimedia company Vocento. Jukin will license videos to Vocento, which boasts over 20 owned and operated media properties. Among those is eslang.es, which launched in beta in December; that project targets young Spanish-speaking millennials, and will now feature content from Jukin’s catalogue, as well as from Jukin’s owned and operated brands, including FailArmy and The Pet Collective.
 
YouTube star Davey Wavey has teamed up with What’s Trending to produce My First Time with Davey Wavey, a new web series documenting couples trying new things together. (The first episode, which already debuted, is titled Couples Try Watching Porn Together.) What’s Trending will release two episodes per month.  “As What’s Trending continues to grow and expand beyond real-time content, this represents one of many new evergreen original series and content partnerships [we’ll do] with digital talent,” said What’s Trending creator Shira Lazar.
 
Con: Your Facebook posts may start getting fewer likes. Pro: They may start getting more smiley faces. After a months-long trial run with select users, the social media site as made a wide array of Reactions available to its entire global user-base. Now, both web and mobile users will be able to respond to posts with an array of emojis, ranging from “Happy” to “Wow.” You can see what they look like here (or you can just go to Facebook).

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

 
Time Inc.’s Sports Illustrated is making a play for the TV and digital video market in Asia.  ASN and ASN 2 – the pay-TV channels of the Hong Kong-based sports programmer ASN – will be rebranded as Sports Illustrated and Sports Illustrated 2. The companies will also collaborate to cover a wide array of global sporting events, and pursue distribution across SVOD and mobile platforms. It’s a notable move for Time Inc., whose digital efforts have been ramping up lately. Those efforts might just culminate in a merger with Yahoo, as Bloomberg reported yesterday.
 
The SSP and media exchange Index Exchange announced a new partnership with the behavioral automation platform Bounce Exchange. The partnership expands on Index Exchange’s access to viewable ad inventory, and enables Bounce Exchange to access the demand available on Index Exchange.
 
Want to learn the best ways to take advantage of the programmatic TV marketplace? Come and hear from AOL, Dentsu Aegis Network, DISH Media, Turner, Cablevision Media Sales and more on March 24th at our Programmatic TV Summit. Register by March 4th and save: cynopsis.com/event/march-programmatic-tv-summit.
 
 

 
Now this is an interesting career move: David Litt, formerly a speechwriter for President Barack Obama, has been hired as Head Writer and Producer for Funny or Die’s Washington, D.C. operations. Strange as that may seem, when you look at what types of speeches Litt specialized in, it makes a lot more sense: He was the lead joke writer for the past four White House Correspondents Association dinners. He also helped the administration produce viral videos.
 
The digital media services company RR Media has hired David Treadway as joint Managing Director for Europe, to serve alongside existing Managing Director for Europe Simon Kay. Treadway will be responsible for developing & enhancing RR Media’s 24/7 broadcast services. He previously served as CEO of WRN Broadcast.
 
Index Exchange has named Drew Bradstock as its SVP of Product. Previously, he served as Group Product Manager of Google’s Ad Exchange.
 
Tumblr has named Brian Murphy as its new Chief Technology Officer. He joins the micro-blogging site from The New York Times, where he served as Vice President of Engineering for about five years.
 

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

 
Question: Are you getting psyched for the 2016 Summer Olympics? Then you should probably take a look at the invigorating new spot from Under Armour – part of its Rule Yourself campaign – featuring the U.S. women’s gymnastics team. Check out the ad here.

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