APPS + DEVICES
Roku announced that it now has 15 million monthly active accounts. That number represents 43% year-over-year growth for the streaming device and smart TV maker. According to Roku, those 14 million accounts streamed about 7 billion hours of content during the first half of 2017, marking 61% growth over the number of hours streamed during the first half of 2016.
INFLUENCERS
Not all marketers think that Snapchat has been terribly accommodating to their brand-building efforts, but that’s not necessarily stopping them from trying. Ikea’s latest back-to-school campaign makes use of Superfruit, an online comedy duo. The initiative uses Snapchat’s interactive video product to promote products for college dorms. “Swiping” up will play a video clip that lets users answer quiz questions and click buttons relating to home décor, with the goal of steering them toward Ikea products. Superfruit will also post the clip to their respective Snapchat accounts. Ikea worked on the campaign with media agency MEC.
PROGRAMMING
Come next year, Netflix will debut an original animated series based on Rilakkuma, a Hello Kitty-esque toy bear that’s gained popularity in Japan. To date, most of Netflix’s Japanese animation has been in the science fiction vein, or has been niche content geared toward die-hard anime fans. This is the first time that Netflix has targeted the Japanese kids and family market.
Twitter has reached a deal to live-stream the inaugural Electronic Music Awards. The ceremony, which will be produced by Live L!ve Media, is set to take place on September 21. The stream will be available to Twitter users globally at the handle @theemawards, or at theemaawards.twitter.com.
VIRTUAL + AUGMENTED REALITY
Facebook is taking its social VR efforts a step further. Earlier this year, the company launched Facebook Spaces, a sort of social hangout where VR users can interact. Now Facebook Spaces users can broadcast their experiences via Facebook Live. The new feature allows users to live-stream what is, essentially, a VR talk show. Their followers can watch even if they only have a desktop browser or mobile phone.
MEASURING UP
SHAREABLEE SOCIAL TV RATINGS: Top 10 U.S. Primetime and Streaming Shows for July 3 – July 9. Based on Shareablee’s Video Power Index (VPI), which combines viewing, consumer interactions and audience scale across all active platforms, and includes the video performance of primetime and streaming shows.
Source: Shareablee Inc. The total actions metric includes the total volume of post-level likes, shares, favorites, retweets and comments across social platforms.
RESEARCH
Live TV viewing kept on declining in the first quarter, according to Nielsen’s Q1 Total Audience Report. The total dropped by ten minutes, and now stands at four hours and 21 minutes per day per person (among adults). Not coincidentally, use of apps and the web on smartphones shot up by twenty minutes per day. Time shifting TV viewing, meanwhile, increased by one minute per day, now standing at 34 minutes. One other notable tidbit: Nielsen found that the number of homes subscribing to SVOD services like Netflix and Hulu rose to 57%, up from 50% a year ago.
Tweet of the week: @JCH21103: All hail the Judge #HomeRunDerby
Canvs, the emotion analytics company, analyzed tweets about TV and streaming programming from July 5-11 using Twitter data from Nielsen. Insights from the 1,783,432 tweets expressing a specific Emotional Reaction (ER) include:
– Viewers flooded social media with congratulatory messages when Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees won the 2017 Home Run Derby, which was broadcast on ESPN and ESPN 2.
– Fans went into overdrive admiring the contestants during the most recent episode of ABC’s The Bachelorette, with many talking about the hotness of Peter and Dean in particular. (In the reality TV universe, a show about love and dating is also automatically about eye candy.)
– Outside of sports, Big Brother on CBS continued to generate peak excitement among viewers, especially during a recent episode that included a house vote and subsequent eviction.
– This week’s episode of Shadowhunters on Freeform had many fans in tears due to some drama between Simon and Clary, and Simon’s resulting broken heart.
– Canvs
TRIVIA
Netflix recently acquired its first foreign-language stand-up comedy special. Who’s the comedian? (Email [email protected] with your answer and be sure to include your name, company, city and state.)
Our Last Trivia Question: Nicholas Stoller, co-creator of Netflix’s Friends from College, made his feature film directorial debut with which 2008 comedy? Answer: Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Kudos to Andy Pittman-TAMU/TX, Louis Lewow-Lewow Media Group/GA, Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/CA, David Westberg-SAG-AFTRA Federal Credit Union/CA, Lorrie Shilling/CA, Susan Nessanbaum-Goldberg-M and S Entertainment/CA, and Neil Marks-Universal Kids/CA
