PLATFORMS + APPS
At long last, Twitter announced that it will start displaying view counts for video tweets. The change has been in the works for a while now; back in January, Mashable reported that Twitter was testing a video view-count feature with Australian users. “View counts provide helpful context on the popularity of a video, and we are exploring this feature to help surface the best content,” a spokesperson said at the time. According to Mashable, Twitter’s minimum criteria for a view is two seconds of watch time. Twitter is a little late to this party; Instagram began displaying video view counts about two years ago.
Google has officially begun shipping the Google Home Max, the tech giant’s latest smart speaker. The speaker is now available at Verizon and Best Buy stores, as well as Google’s own online store. The company first unveiled the device in October. The Google Home Max is larger (and louder) than the original Google Home speaker, and features what Google calls “smart sound” capabilities. The device can measure the acoustics of a room, and then automatically adjust its audio settings to suit its surroundings.
ADVERTISING
To date, the vast majority of Snap Inc.’s revenue has come from the domestic market. But the Snapchat parent has faced its share of struggles, and now it’s looking to shore up its business in China. That much is clear from a new job ad – noticed by Digiday – that Snap recently posted to LinkedIn. The posting calls for an International Strategy Manager – someone who will “become an evangelist for Snapchat ad products in the China media community, including through direct meetings with advertisers, marketing events and trainings, etc.” One big obstacle: People in China’s mainland don’t actually have access to Snapchat at the moment. (Snap does have a Chinese office, but so far it’s largely been devoted to developing its Spectacles hardware.). A Snap spokesperson told Digiday that the new role is intended to “benefit Chinese companies who sell products outside of China.”
SHORT FORM VIDEO
BuzzFeed unveiled its new slate of content for Watch, Facebook’s recently-launched video section. Tubefilter was the first to report on the new content slate. All told, BuzzFeed is rolling out five new shows. Three of those shows debuted yesterday: Night In/Night Out, a food-heavy series featuring Try Guys co-founder Ned Fulmer; Puppy Prep, a show focusing on the training of assistant dogs; and Quinta Vs. Everything, a new series starring BuzzFeed personality Quinta Brunson. An additional series will debut Thursday: BuzzFeed Unsolved: Sports, the newest version of BuzzFeed’s BuzzFeed Unsolved series focused on real-life mysteries. The fifth series, called Worth It: Chicago, will explore local Chicago cuisine; it’ll debut the week of January 15. All five shows have received five-episode orders.
RESEARCH
Google is once again the biggest source of referral traffic for publishers, according to new data from the digital analytics company Parse.ly. Facebook had earlier claimed the title: In January, the social giant accounted for almost 40 percent of web publishers’ external traffic. Google, on the other hand, sat at 34 percent. Now, according to Parse.ly, it’s 44 percent for Google and 26 percent for Facebook. Parse.ly culled its data from about 2,500 publishers that use its service, such as the Huffington Post, Time Inc., and the Wall Street Journal.
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 ListenFirst Digital 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).
All Series (12/4/17 – 12/10/17)
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.
SHAREABLEE SOCIAL TV RATINGS: Top U.S. Streaming Shows Overall by Engagement for the week of December 4-December 10, 2017
Program, Total Actions (000), Total Content, Actions per Post (000), Fans/Followers (000)
EXECUTIVE MOVES
Digital media startup Inverse recently named David Spiegel as its Chief Revenue Officer. Spiegel most recently served as SVP of Sales and Brand Strategy at Great Big Story, a CNN-backed startup focused on documentary-style short form content. Before that, Spiegel spent four years as BuzzFeed, most recently serving as VP of Brand Strategy and Partnerships. Inverse, which is based in New York, was founded in 2015.
TRIVIA
Our Last Trivia question: In Hulu’s Future Man, two seasoned warriors recruit protagonist Josh Futterman (Josh Hutcherson) to fight a futuristic enemy. The warriors only enlist his help once he defeats a seemingly unwinnable video game – which was actually a recruitment tool. That premise – as Futterman himself observes during Future Man’s premiere – is extremely similar to that of a 1984 movie. Which one? Answer: The Last Starfighter. Kudos to Luke Watson-Essential TV/NY, David Westberg-SAG-AFTRA Federal Credit Union/CA, Tom Moore-Kalt Productions/CA, Josh Lappin-Mlbam/NY, and Alejandro Sacasa-Albavision/FL
Nick Castle, who directed The Last Starfighter, is perhaps best known for being the first actor to play a legendary horror villain. (You wouldn’t recognize him, of course – he wore a mask the whole time.) Who was the villain? (Email [email protected] with your answer and be sure to include your name, company, city and state.)
