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Cynopsis: DIGITAL
06.03.13

Good morning. It’s Monday, June 3, 2013, and this is your first early morning digital briefing.

DirecTV is one of three Hulu bidders to offer more than $1 billion for the premium video site, according to Bloomberg. It seems the bidding war is truly heating up, as the report also indicates that Hulu’s owners plan to narrow the number of buyers down to three or four in the next couple of weeks. Here is what else we know: The Chernin Group offered $500 million for Hulu, with the understanding that the price will increase based on how much licensed TV content will come with any purchase. Yahoo’s bid for Hulu was somewhere in the $600-$800 million range. No word on whether those bids increased to make either The Chernin Group or Yahoo (or both) the two unnamed bidders who have also offered $1 billion for Hulu.
— In other words: You’ll hear about how this makes it more likely that Hulu will be sold this time around. But bids during the video site’s last sales process also surpassed $1 billion, so while it’s definitely true that the higher the bid, the more likely it is sold, it is far away from being a done deal.

Collective Digital Studios and Rocket Jump Studios plan to launch the second season of Video Game High School, an action/comedy series from YouTube star Freddie Wong, in mid-July during San Diego Comic-Con. The series, which takes place in an alternate reality where video gaming is the biggest spectator sport, will be available on RocketJump.com and YouTube. The Dodge-sponsored second season consists of six, “TV-length” episodes and a total running time of 120 minutes. On RocketJump.com, the show will be available in a mixed frame rate, with all video game scenes being shot in 48 frames per second (fps) and all regular scenes available in the regular 24 fps. 48fps was the format that Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit was presented in. The first season of the show grabbed 55 million total views across all episodes and other, related content. The second season was funded in part by a Kickstarter project that raised over $800,000.

Cynopsis Digital’s BIG Monetization Summit is 15 days away. Have you registered? We have a pretty cool lineup of speakers and program prepared for you, headlined by Howard Handler, Chief Marketing Officer of Major League Soccer and a Hall of Famer when it comes brand building. So if you haven’t registered, click the link and make it happen. See you at the Time Warner Center on June 18.

Disney/ABC Television’s Watch ABC service, which offers access to live national and local station programming, is now available for free on the Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD. Unveiled last month at the ABC upfront, the app is available to all iOS users in the New York and Philadelphia markets via an “open access preview” that runs through the end of June. After this, only authenticated subscribers in these markets will be able to watch live and on-demand ABC programming. Disney/ABC plans to roll the app out to additional station markets by the start of the fall TV season. This includes ABC stations in LA, Chicago, SF, Houston, Raleigh-Durham, and Fresno, as well as all 13 ABC station markets owned by Hearst Television (Boston, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, and Milwaukee, among others). No word on when the app will show up on Google Play.

MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM) and YouTube are expanding the official MLB.com channel in the US to offer more content. Since 2010, MLBAM and YouTube have been offering full-game videos and highlights on YouTube to fans in Australia, Brazil, Japan, New Zealand, and Russia. The updated MLB.com Channel now brings that content, which is also available on MLB.com, to a more “global audience,” including those in the US. The MLB.com YouTube channel features in-season highlights from every MLB game (available roughly two days after that game has been completed). If you’re not in the US or any of MLBAM’s “core distribution territories” (North America, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea), you will also have access to two live games every day during the regular season. Archived content from previous seasons is also available on the channel.

Nick’s iPad app, which lets users watch full episodes of TV shows as well as original online video content, is now also available for iPhone and iPod Touch devices, per Variety. If you remember, the Nick app also works as a content-incubator of sorts, specifically via the network’s animated shorts competition, which the network looks at for future TV pilots and franchises. The network plans to launch a similar video-based app on Xbox Live on June 25.

CBS has acquired all of TV Guide Digital. Prior to this deal, CBS and Lionsgate each owned 50% of the TV Guide Digital portfolio, which consists of TVGuide.com and the site’s mobile properties. Earlier this year, CBS and Lionsgate each had purchased a 50% stake in TV Guide Digital from One Equity Partners for a reported $100 million. TV Guide Digital will now become a part of CBS Interactive’s Technology, Games, and Lifestyle group, which oversees other digital properties like CNET, GameSpot, Last.fm, Metacritic, and Chow.com. CBS and Lionsgate will continue their 50/50 partnership on the TVGN cable network. Here are some stats provided by CBS on TV Guide Digital’s audience: TVGuide.com receives more than 16.5 million unique visitors per month and TV Guide’s mobile apps average 2.5 million monthly visitors who engage with the brand nearly 20 days a month; more than 50% of the online audience and 60% of the mobile audience are under the age of 35.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

Wideo ad network SourceKnowledge now offers access to online data company Datonics’ consumer data within its RTB video ad-serving platform. Per the deal, SourceKnowledge customers in the US and Canada will be able to use Datonics’ pre-packaged search, purchase-intent, and life-stage data segments as well as custom-keyword derived segments — which Datonics says are based on 180 million US and Canadian consumers who recently demonstrated interest in products and services — to better target those most likely to buy their products.

Hulu has upgraded the user experience for the Hulu Plus app on Samsung Smart TVs and Blu-ray players and Roku streaming boxes. Updates include a tray-style format that allows users to scroll through recommendations, popular shows and movies, the top 100 clips on Hulu, and movie trailers, as well as Hulu’s “Shows You Watch” feature that sends users directly to the latest episodes of their favorite shows. The ad-free Hulu Kids section is also now available on these connected devices. The update will soon arrive on the Hulu Plus app on the Nintendo Wii.

AMC has launched The Killing: Story Sync, a live second-screen experience for the third season of The Killing, which premiered last night at 8pm ET. Similar to what AMC did with The Walking Dead and Breaking Bad, viewers will be able to sync to the live telecasts in order to access additional content tied to the storyline playing out on the screen. This includes access to the smartphone of one character, through which viewers can check out crime scene and evidence photos and documents related to the investigation. The Killing: Story Sync will be available online and on mobile devices via TheKillingStorySync.com.

Whirled is a creative ad shop that you may not know of, but definitely recognize some of the videos they’ve produced over the past several years for clients such as Google, the White House, BBC America, HBO, Lady Gaga, David Beckham, Zagat, and more. In April, the agency hit a pretty cool milestone: 100 million lifetime views across its entire library of video ads. Last month, Whirled was selected by device-maker ASUS to produce branded online videos for its VivoBook Touch laptops. The first spot, “A Mother’s Touch,” is already available and is nearing 1.4 million views on YouTube. I spoke with Scott T. Chan, Founder and Creative Director at Whirled, about the company’s work with ASUS, as well as the nature of trying to create branded content that people want to watch and share.

How did the campaign for ASUS come about? What were some of the goals?

They had seen a bunch of our work, specifically the Google Zeitgeist campaign that we do every year. Kevin Huang, the Head of Marketing for North America at ASUS, basically asked his team to go find out whoever did that campaign for Google, and that’s how they got in touch with us. Up until that point, they had been doing standard product commercials — there wasn’t really anything that stood out. So in the meeting, they were like: We love the way you add a human element to technology, could you do that for the VivoBook?

As for the goals, we were looking to target new demos for them. I think primarily ASUS has been an enthusiast consumer PC manufacturer, they wanted to extend beyond that and into the general market — to create something that had a broader appeal.

The first spot launched on Mother’s Day. At the time, it was said that more video/ads were planned. Which ones are next?

There’s one tied to Father’s Day coming out this month, and then another related to graduation that will be released in the end of June. The Father’s Day video is a continuation of the story of the family featured in the Mother’s Day video. The graduation-themed ad will focus on something completely different.

The whole idea behind this campaign for the touch-enabled VivoBook is to focus on showing “touch” in both a literal and figurative sense. So for the Mother’s Day video, we showed the magic of a mother’s touch. I think we all sort of know how moms have this special ability to make everything better – it’s something everyone can relate to. So the video takes us through these familiar moments, all the while organically featuring the touch-screen laptop.

Everyone is always trying to figure out how to create viral content, or to make something they’ve already produced “go viral.” Whirled definitely has had some success on this front. Any tips to share?

There’s no way to make something “go viral,” to be completely honest. But there are ways to stack the deck in your favor. First and foremost, you have to create great content, which sounds easy to say, but if it was, then everyone could do it. You have to create something that people are going to genuinely react to. Not just enjoy watching the video, but something that will make them want to take that extra step and share it. Viral by nature is when you spread something, so you have to be able to give people the reason to make that effort.

It also has to be something people are interested in. One way to accomplish this is to time the campaign around big news events or trending stories — when a lot of people are paying attention to one thing. For the ASUS campaign, we timed the videos around family-centric holidays. If you can create content that is timely, you will have access to a more captive audience — one that is actively looking for content related to the big story/trend.

What are some things your brand clients look for when assessing campaign performance and ROI?

The big thing is views, for both our clients and us at Whirled. The other big one is, quite honestly, press coverage. Specifically, organic press coverage — when people are writing about you of their own accord. This extends to social media posts from consumers as well.

We also look at some other metrics, such as shares on social media. Shares measure something that requires the consumer to do something more than view a piece of content. By nature, that’s what “viral” is: people sharing stuff. If you think about it from the standpoint of how much you post on your Facebook, you don’t post every single thing that you see. There’s something about the video that has compelled you to share it. I think it’s a huge barometer for whether or not something is successful.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

While that aforementioned MLBAM/YouTube deal feels like a small step to bringing more baseball content and highlights on YouTube (something that fans have long griped about), there is one awesome result: the MLB Classics YouTube channel, which offers full-game replays of some of the most memorable games in MLB history. You can re-watch perfect games and no-hitters, famous LCS and World Series games, and even memorable All-Star Games. For example, if you’re a dashing young Yankees fan who just sat through a laughable four-game sweep at the hands of the Mets (THE METS!), all you need to do is go to the MLB Classics channel and watch a couple of games from the 2000 Subway Series (which the Yankees won in five by the way). Word of advice, though: don’t click on anything labeled the 2004 ALCS. There’s nothing of any value there.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

Later – Sahil
Sahil Patel, Editor for Cynopsis Digital
06.03.13

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