A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM CRACKLE

Cynopsis: DIGITAL
09/10/12

Good morning. It’s Monday, September 10, 2012, and this is your first early morning digital briefing.

Last week I spoke with Marcus Startzel, GM/North America of Millennial Media, which recently published a Mobile Intel Series report that took a look at what entertainment marketers are doing, and how they’re performing, in mobile advertising.

How big is the Millennial Media ad platform? What about it would you say makes it a good indicator of trends in the mobile advertising landscape, particularly in the case of this latest Mobile Intel Series Report?

Millennial is currently the largest independent mobile ad platform, and in general, I think our platform possesses a few characteristics that really allow us to deliver what I call “clean insights,” which is to say, without a particular bias of any kind.

We are truly cross-platform, and we work with all the different devices and operating systems — Android, iOS, BlackBerry, smartphones, tablets, feature phones — everything that can be constituted as mobile. Right off the bat that gives us a very different set of data than many other companies out there, because we are truly platform and device agnostic.

Our scale is another. We have access to over 35,000 applications that have our technology embedded. This large inventory means that our content and data sources aren’t skewed in any way that could impact the numbers.

The third thing, and this points back to our scale, is that we’ve executed 10s of thousands of branded ad campaigns across mobile. We see a lot of different advertisers and a lot of different verticals running campaigns across our platform, and since we focus on brand advertisers, our data isn’t skewed at all by any particular vertical.

For the Mobile Intel Series, the insights are gleaned from a blend of two data sources. We partnered with comScore to have access to their consumer-focused data, and our platform data looks at who is spending and what they are doing in terms of audience targeting, creative, and more.

So then what can you tell us about entertainment marketers? What are they doing with Millennial?

More than anything else, they are always ahead of the curve. They’re always looking to break through the clutter to get you to go see that new movie that’s coming out, or check out a TV show that you haven’t seen yet.

A year ago I would have told you that they’re doing a lot of video advertising, whereas other verticals really aren’t. Now, they’re doing campaigns that include strong social elements, essentially promoting the viral element of a video trailer so users can share it across their social networks.

In general too — I’d say they are just being very creative with their campaigns. Whether this is including a “countdown clock” into their ads that will count down the days/hours/minutes to a release, or including gaming elements that let users physically interact with their devices to play a game and interact with a brand, the overall approach of entertainment advertisers is very sophisticated.

The entertainment vertical recognized sooner than other industries the value of the mobile consumer to their business. There’s an understanding that, “Hey if I want to drive people to watch my TV show, I need to get them while they’re browsing their mobile phone or tablet when sitting on the couch. Or if I’m a movie studio, I need to get users while they’re hanging around at the mall or near a movie theater so I can entice them into going to see our new release.” I think entertainment marketers realized before anyone else that consumers’ eyeballs were shifting to different media sources. You don’t see people checking out listings or movie times in newspapers anymore.

Is it just that? Using location-based advertising if you’re a studio or location and time-of-day if you’re a TV network to drive viewership? Are there any other differences between the two, or similarities?

I think the similarities outweigh the differences at this point. First it’s about the audience, right? You have to target the right audience. Whether it’s a campaign for a specific theatrical release, or a specific TV show, or let’s say a specific demographic you are going after for either a movie or TV show, it’s that same sort of targeting that would be in place. The thing about Millennial is that we offer real world audiences. We offer real world behavioral data to understand the value of a particular consumer to help brands meet their objective of reaching the right consumer, in the right place, at the right time. In our report, we talk about “movie buffs.” But how do you define a movie buff? It could be someone actually at a movie theater, or it could just be someone who is at a mall shopping for DVDs. There are many different ways to use just location to help define who a movie buff is.

One difference we actually see with entertainment advertisers is in the particular logistics that go into promoting a theatrical release or the ebbs and flows of a traditional TV season. For a major theatrical release, the biggest marketing push on mobile is obviously during the first weekend. That’s when the studio is spending the most. With that said — the advertising will be valuable throughout the lifespan of the release, and consumers will still be going to the theater after that first weekend. For a TV network trying to drive tune-in on the other hand, a particular episode is basically only on once — and it is essential to get viewers to watch at that particular time. Even if these two campaigns used similar audience targeting methods, the timing involved is very different, which means it requires different campaign objectives.

What is one recent exemplary mobile ad campaign run by a TV network on Millennial?

Starz developed a campaign with us for Spartacus. Some TV networks like to work with us to build anticipation for a new season. Well what’s the best way to showcase a product if you’re a TV network? Video. We used a great HTML5-based creative that enabled the user to watch the trailer for the upcoming season from directly inside the ad. People are much more willing to engage with video content on mobile than they are on the PC web, and this easily took advantage of that. Not having to click-through to a mobile website to watch the trailer was key, and the fact that we included the ability to share the trailer helped light up social channels.

Starz also included interactive elements that let consumers swipe the ad back and forth to get more info on the various characters on the show. This gave the ad another hook to grab the user’s attention and keep them engaged.

While we’re on video, how would you characterize the mobile video advertising landscape as it stands now?

As you might imagine, video is growing pretty significantly.

The entertainment vertical has been leading the way for a long time trying to drive trailer and video views, and since trailers play such a key role in selling tickets, it’s easy to see why the entertainment vertical spends a lot of time with video.

In addition, over the last two years we’ve also seen a huge increase in high-speed connections. The proliferation of smartphones and tablets has been staggering, and these two things mean more and more wireless carriers are capable of providing a platform where users can watch high-quality video content at fast speeds. It’s then a natural byproduct that we’re seeing advertisers rely on this to give people the opportunity to consume video on their mobile devices.

A few years ago, advertisers were using video content but there would occasionally be an experience where a user would be watching a trailer, and then all of a sudden, it would pause midway.

This isn’t the case anymore. Our goal at Millennial is to ensure that the video does not obstruct the user experience, and at the same time, helps advertisers meet their campaign objectives. We have developed a way where the downloading of a video trailer happens in the background, so it doesn’t slow down user activity within the app, and doesn’t impede that ad experience when the trailer is ready to play. It’s HD pre-cached video.

On top of that, advertisers can use now add interactive features on top of their video, allowing users to not only watch the video, but also do things such as sharing, downloading an app, or playing a variety of gaming features.

I think what we’re seeing in mobile video advertising is that advertisers both inside and outside the entertainment vertical are recognizing that consumers are no longer tied exclusively to the TV. The device that video runs on has become secondary to the delivery of the actual video itself. This means that more advertisers are taking a longer look at how the mobile device can run their video content, and use mobile to enhance the video ads they choose to run on TV.

Beginning today, ABC is making the first episode of its new drama series Last Resort available exclusively on Yahoo TV in advance of the show’s television premiere on September 27. “We feel that making the show available to an entertainment enthusiast audience on Yahoo will let people see just how amazing this show is, building a long-term fan base and amplifying great word-of-mouth that will help lead to a successful premiere on ABC,” said Ben Blatt, ABC Entertainment’s Director/Digital Strategy, in a statement. Who says the web and television can’t get along? The entire episode will be available on Yahoo through September 17.

Hunting Season, a new web series written, directed, and executive produced by Jon Marcus (Scoundrels, Party Monster), will debut this Wednesday, September 12 on Viacom’s LogoTV.com as well as on its own website, HuntingSeason.tv. The show follows a group of openly gay men in New York City as they try to navigate the ups and downs of their love lives. Hunting Season is comprised of eight total episodes, each with a running time of 10-12 minutes. A new episode will premiere every Wednesday night on the aforementioned websites, beginning with this week’s launch. LogoTV.com will premiere an edited and “SFW” version of the show on September 12, with an uncut version available as a paid download on HuntingSeason.tv. Each episode will be available to stream for free a week after it airs.

Fox Filmed Entertainment plans to offer a digital copy of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus at a cheaper price ($15 instead of $20), three weeks before the film is available on DVD, Blu-ray, and VOD. This is according to The New York Times, which reports that Fox will also join Hollywood’s UltraViolet initiative that makes digital copies of films available to watch and store in the cloud, once a physical copy has been purchased. Fox is planning this type of advanced digital rollout in nearly 50 countries. After Prometheus, which is scheduled to come out for home video later this month, Fox told The Times that other titles, including Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, The Watch, and Ice Age: Continental Drift, will receive the same treatment.

Independent social media management software company Syncapse has launched a social analytics suite to help marketers measure paid, earned, and owned social accounts/pages across Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. The Syncapse Analytics Suite provides marketers with a profile of each owned social network page, which the company says includes comparisons of actions and the impact marketing teams and support agencies have across global brand portfolios and markets. The solution also enables marketers to monitor and compare performance trends of pages and content, this includes earned media value and participation rate, along with other social metrics such as fan growth, reach, and engagement, as well as social ad metrics such as impressions, clicks, and click-through rates. With the launch of its Analytics Suite, Syncapse has also landed a Facebook Preferred Marketing Developer badge, its third.

Adobe has released Adobe Social, a new end-to-end social marketing product that is integrated with the company’s Digital Marketing Suite. Framed as a product that helps marketers connect social media campaigns to real business results, the company says Adobe Social can automatically track the performance of all social media posts for a campaign and then link that data to KPIs for the business, including revenue, which would allow marketers to see how much revenue was generated by a particular post. Other capabilities include the ability to see the “actual influence” of a social media follower (down to how much revenue he or she drove by, say, retweeting an offer) and measure consumer behavioral data across multiple social, web, mobile, and advertising channels. Adobe says the integration with its Digital Marketing Suite also enables a business’ social marketing team to collaborate with other departments. For example, Adobe Test&Target would allow marketers to work with web developers to build a more “consistent and personalized brand experience” based on social profile data, or Adobe AdLens, which would allow the social marketing team to send the ad manager social app engagement data in order to better target segments for paid Facebook ads.

Gracenote has partnered Digitalsmiths to offer a combined connected TV solution for consumer electronics manufacturers and content providers. Gracenote will integrate its interactive program guide solution (eyeQ) and audio-fingerprinting technology (Entourage) with Digitalsmiths’ video discovery platform (Seamless Discovery) in order to provider customers with the ability to develop digital program guides and second-screen applications, replete with personalized content search, recommendations, and browsing capabilities. This new offering will be available to companies in North America, Europe, and Asia.

HBO Europe has picked RGB Networks’ video transcoding and packaging solutions to support its HBO Go TV Everywhere service in the region. HBO Europe is available in fifteen European countries. Much like with the US version, HBO Go in Europe is only available to those who subscribe to the pay-TV channel and offers a wealth of programming that is available wherever there is a broadband connection. It’s being rolled out across the region, with most HBO subscribers currently having access to the service, which also offers live streaming to a variety of connected devices.

This past Thursday night’s MTV Video Music Awards show was the “most social tentpole event” of 2012, according to Trendrr.TV. Measuring social activity across sites and services like Twitter, Facebook, GetGlue, Viggle, and more, Trendrr’s data shows that the 2012 MTV VMAs generated 19.18 million social interactions throughout the day of the show (13.63 million during the telecast alone). In comparison, this year’s Super Bowl (XLVI) generated 17.46 million and this year’s Grammy Awards telecast brought in 17.12 million, good enough for second and third place, respectively. Fourth and fifth place for 2012 so far belong to the London Olympics’ Closing Ceremony (11.73 million) and the BET Awards (10.13 million). It goes without saying that the 2012 MTV VMAs was also the most social awards show of the year. Other nuggets of data from Trendrr about the VMAs that you might want to know:

• The top five markets driving social activity were NYC, LA, Chicago, Atlanta, and Miami, in that order.
• Women accounted for 71% of all social interactions around the VMAs.
• 53% of tweets came from mobile devices, with the rest coming from the web.

Join us on November 14, 2012 at the Cynopsis Digital Video Measurement Summit in NYC. REGISTER NOW.

The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences is allowing third-party developers to integrate a variety of Emmy-related content into their own apps in order to build second-screen experiences for viewers of the 64th Primetime Emmy Awards. Developers that choose to participate will have access to the Television Academy’s private online media center, Dropbox account, along with the show rundown and awards order for the telecast. Developers will also be able to grab behind-the-scenes photos from the red carpet, awards show, and Governors Ball, as well as have “the potential to access live video streams” of these events. To participate, developers have to fill out a form in order to become a “certified vendor.” The Emmys will air live on September 23, beginning at 8pm ET on ABC.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE

Add Conan O’Brien to the list of comedians who have decided to venture into original online programming. The late night host has launched Serious Jibber-Jabber, a new web-exclusive talk series that will be hosted by O’Brien as he “talks for a long time with interesting people.” No other information has been released as to who is scheduled to appear as a guest. However, as the first episode features a discussion between O’Brien and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edmund Morris about American presidents, it seems O’Brien is going for a more serious, thoughtful vibe than say the loose shenanigans of Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. AT&T has signed on to sponsor the series.

Later – Sahil
Sahil Patel, Associate Editor for Cynopsis Digital
09.10.12

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