ADVERTISING
MediaRadar , a company that tracks how ad dollars are spent across all platforms, turned its sights on vertical video in a new report. The company found that adoption of the mobile ad format has moved slowly, with only 112 sites running the ads in Q1. According to MediaRadar’s research, companies that do buy vertical video inventory – such as AOL, Vox Media and NBCUniversal – tend to boast significant financial resources. TV programming and movies account for 40% of all such ads, the report finds. Apparel and retail come in at a distant second and third – 9% and 7%, respectively.
LET’S MAKE A DEAL
Amazon ’s Twitch and game developer Blizzard Entertainment announced a new collaboration. Lasting two years, the partnership will grant Twitch third-party streaming rights to select eSports content from Blizzard, including games such as Overwatch and World of Warcraft. Twitch users will be able to view events such as the Heroes of the Storm Global Championship and the Hearthstone Championship Tour. In addition, subscribers to Twitch Prime will gain access to in-game content from Blizzard titles.
INFLUENCERS
Ad giant Dentsu Aegis Network announced a new investment in Gleam Futures, a digital talent management company based in the U.K. Gleam represents about 40 YouTube stars, including Zoella (11.8 million subscribers), Caspar Lee (7.2 million) and Marcus Butler (4.6 million). All told, Gleam’s creators have roughly 60 million subscribers between them. The financial terms of Dentsu’s investment weren’t disclosed.
CYNOPSIS RISING STAR AWARDS
Today is the last day to nominate the young innovators and emerging leaders at your company, before late fees apply. Ensure that your team is represented at the 3rd Annual Rising Star Awards. Last year’s finalists came to us from ABC, BET, Viacom, Yahoo!, Univision, BTN, Turner, NBCUniversal, Pac-12, Horizon Media, Giant Spoon and many more. Add your company today !
DIGITAL PROGRAMMING
Here’s something new from Netflix: Interactive shows. The streaming giant has debuted Puss in Book: Trapped in an Epic Tale, a kid-oriented series that lets viewers choose between branching storylines. Netflix’s next interactive series, Buddy Thunderstruck: The Maybe Pile, debuts July 14. The choose-your-own-adventure style programming has been in the works for about two years; it took dozens of Netflix employees to develop the necessary technology.
Hulu landed the streaming rights to past seasons of Younger, the comedy/drama series from Viacom’s TV Land. The deal comes just ahead of the show’s season 4 premiere, which bows on June 28.
HBO just posted the final episode of recently-concluded drama series The Leftovers on its YouTube account. It’ll be free to watch for exactly one week. TV networks have tried such moves in the past, but generally with a premiere, not a finale (and certainly not a series finale).
MEASURING UP
The ListenFirst Television Interest (TVI) Rating (TM) is a standardized measurement of the most buzzed-about TV programs on linear TV and streaming services. A complement to ListenFirst’s other syndicated data products (such as the ListenFirstDigital Audience Rating – TV), the metrics included in the rating capture organic actions that are largely unaffected by paid media. Programs that surface on the TVI leaderboards are the most hashtagged on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Tumblr, as well as most searched for on Wikipedia (used as a proxy for organic search volume).
Streaming Series (6/12/17 – 6/18/17)
Source: ListenFirst. The TVI Rating aggregates metrics that measure organically generated activity by fans of the TV show. The metric includes total volume of official hashtag mentions on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Tumblr, along with Wikipedia page views (as a proxy for organic search volume) for a show as a percentage of the total volume of the same activities for all shows.
EXECUTIVE MOVES
Ooyala , a Telstra-owned platform devoted to video publishing, analytics and monetization, announced a new hire. Mike Nikzad will serve as Chief Operating Officer, overseeing Ooyala’s daily operations. Nikzad previously served as COO of Syncplicity, a software-as-a-service company specializing in file sharing and synchronization.
Cross-device marketing technology company Tapad has named Varun Gudiseva as VP of Market Development and Analytics. In the new role, Gudiseva will oversee strategy and commercialization for Tapad’s analytical products. He’ll report to Kate O’Loughlin, Tapad’s SVP and GM of Media. Gudiseva joins the company from Xaxis, where he served as Senior Partner and Director of Acount Services and Analytics.
TRIVIA
Our Last Trivia Question: Who plays notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar in the Netflix series Narcos? Answer: Wagner Moura. Kudos to Andy Pittman-TAMU/TX, Gayathri Jayakumar-THREE/NY, Susan Nessanbaumn-Goldberg-M and S Entertainment/CA, David Westberg-SAG-AFTRA Federal Credit Union/CA, Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/CA, Lorrie Shilling/CA, and Mathew Tombers-Intermat, Inc./NY
Narcos co-star Pedro Pescal played a character in the fourth season of HBO’s Game of Thrones. Which one? (Emai l [email protected] with your answer and be sure to include your name, company, city and state.)
