CYNOPSIS MODEL D + “IT LIST” AWARDS
Cynopsis held its Model D and It List Awards on Friday, at New York City’s ThreeSixty. We asked honorees to select their personal theme songs. Here were some of the highlights:
– Accepting the award for Best Ad-Supported Video Service, Peter Naylor, Hulu’s SVP of Advertising Sales, cited Tom Petty’s ‘I Won’t Back Down’ as the company’s personal theme song. He even enthusiastically sang a line from the song as he stepped off-stage – if you were there, you couldn’t help but smile. It’s an appropriate song choice, too – why would a service that just won Best Drama Series at the Emmys back down now?
– Chris Wandell, Senior Director of Media Business Development at the PGA Tour, accepted the award for Best Use of Companion VR or 360-degree Video for Digital. Wandell described some of the hardships involved in capturing golf events in virtual reality. “We had to stick our VR camera in an-alligator infested lake,” he said. “And we had to worry about golf course chemicals in the water.” Naturally, Wandell selected Dave Matthews’ “Don’t Drink the Water” as the PGA Tour’s personal theme song.
– “It List” honoree Veronica Zelle, the Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder of Sweety High, was sure to give a shout-out to one of her company’s clients, Teagan Marie: She selected Marie’s “Keep It Lit” as Sweety High’s personal theme song. Afterward, presenter Andrew Gregory, of the YouTube comedy music group The Gregory Brothers, marveled at Zelle’s ingenuity. “Wow, everybody take note,” he said. “In-event marketing and placement!”
– “It List” honoree Sara Axelbaum, Fox Networks Group’s SVP of Client Services and Advanced Ad Products, affectionately thanked her “incredibly supportive,” husband, who was actually the one who nominated her for the honor. As her personal theme song, she chose Ben Folds’ “The Luckiest.”
– Closing out the event, our thoroughly British host Oliver Trevena thanked the attendees for coming. “Thank you everyone, I enjoyed being the token British guy tonight,” he said. “Today,” he corrected himself. “It’s daytime.” Indeed.
OTT + SVOD
Sports-focused OTT TV service fuboTV announced a new addition to its platform. NESN, the regional sports net covering New England sports, will launch on fuboTV “in the coming days,” according to the announcement. The launch comes as part of a multi-year agreement. NESN features game broadcasts and other coverage for teams such as the Boston Red Sox and Boston Bruins.
You probably won’t be surprised to hear that Netflix is pretty darn popular outside the U.S. as well. A new report from London-based research group Ampere Analysis finds that Netflix is now the most popular streaming service in Australia. (Second and third on the list are Stan and Foxtel Now.) One big reason for Netflix’s popularity in the country: The service’s Australian catalog is fairly large. Ampere points out that, within the past three years, Netflix has almost tripled the number of hours of movies and TV shows available on its platform.
LET’S MAKE A DEAL
Unless you live in China, there’s a chance you’ve never heard of the video and online news aggregator Bytedance. But the Beijing company is valued at about $20 billion, and it has over 120 million daily active Chinese users. Now it’s about to up its international profile. Bytedance has reached a deal to buy video-app maker Musical.ly. The acquisition price is somewhere between $800 million and $1 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. Musical.ly has over 215 million users around the globe. It also has deals in place with NBCU, Viacom, and Hearst Magazines Digital Media, which have developed short-form content for the platform. Separately, Bytedance has also partnered with Cheetah Mobile, a Chinese app developer, to provide $50 million worth of funding for Live.me, a widely used live-streaming app. Cheetah Mobile is Live.Me’s majority owner.
APPS + PLATFORMS
Days after doubling the max tweet length to 280 characters, Twitter made another tweak. Users’ display names can now be as long as 50 characters – more than double the previous limit. “Go ahead, add that middle name or even a few more emojis,” the company wrote in a tweet announcing the change.
CYNOPSIS WEBINAR: DIGITAL AD MEASUREMENT
INFLUENCERS
Influencer marketing company WhoSay announced a new integration with Watson, IBM’s supercomputer. WhoSay Match – the company’s matching platform for brand affinity influencer matching – will use the Watson integration to help it analyze millions of posts across social media platforms. WhoSay Match will also use Watson to calculate and display influencers’ values and personality traits, in order to better match specific brands to specific influencers.
RESEARCH
It can be easy to forget that one of the earliest forms of online marketing is still one of the most effective. Adobe projects that online sales this Holiday season (i.e., November and December) will see a 13.8% year-over-year increase, hitting $107.4 billion total. Notably, Adobe also predicts that email marketing could generate as much as $20 billion in revenue during that time period. (Last year, email marketing accounted for over 18% of online sales by the end of November, according to Adobe.) To arrive at its forecast, Adobe analyzed one trillion visits to more than 4,500 retail sites.
EXECUTIVE MOVES
Digital entertainment company Above Average (a subsidiary of Lorne Michaels’s Broadway Video) has made a new promotion. Marc Lieberman will now serve as President of Studio, a newly created position. He’d previously served as SVP of Business Development and Production. In the new role, Lieberman will oversee creative development and production of original programming, as well as the distribution of content through Above Average’s partnerships with media companies and networks.
UPCOMING DIGITAL PROGRAMMING…
… for the week of Monday, November 13, through Sunday, November 19
– People Now at People.com, Monday-Friday at 8:30 AM ET and 11:30 AM ET. Guests include actor Jacob Tremblay (Lionsgate’s Wonder), actor and comedian Bob Saget (Netflix’s Fuller House), and actor William H. Macy (Showtime’s Shameless)
– Netflix: DeRay Davis: How to Act Black, a new comedy special, debuts Tuesday, November 14
– Hulu: Future Man, a new comedy/sci-fi series, debuts Tuesday, November 14
– Sundance Now: Back, a new six-episode comedy series, begins streaming on Thursday, November 16; it will also debut on the Sundance Channel in 2018
– Hulu: There’s…Johnny!, a new comedy series from creators Paul Reiser and David Steven Simon, debuts Thursday, November 16
– Netflix: A Christmas Prince, a new comedy movie, debuts Friday, November 17
– Netflix: Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond – With a Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention of Tony Clifton, a new documentary about the making of the film Man on the Moon, debuts Friday, November 17
– Netflix: The final season of Longmire debuts Friday, November 17
– Netflix: Mudbound, a new original drama film, debuts Friday, November 17
– Netflix: Saving Capitalism, a new documentary, debuts Friday, November 17
– Netflix: Season three of animated family series Spirit: Riding Free debuts Friday, November 17
– Netflix: Animated family series Stretch Armstrong & the Flex Fighters debuts Friday, November 17
– Netflix: Animated kids’ series Luna Petunia returns Friday, November 17
– Netflix: Marvel’s The Punisher debuts Friday, November 17
TRIVIA
Who directed the upcoming Netflix film Bright? (Email [email protected] with your answer and be sure to include your name, company, city and state.)
Our Last Trivia Question: Who are the two co-creators of the Netflix comedy series Disjointed? Answer: Chuck Lorre and David Javerbaum. Kudos to Andrew Bellamy-Producers Guild of America/NY, Andy Pittman-TAMU/TX, Susan Nessanbaum-Goldberg-M and S Entertainment/CA, David Westberg-SAG-AFTRA Federal Credit Union/CA, Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/CA, and Lorrie Shilling/CA
