Ben Young
Ben Young
August 24, 2018

Our 200th Edition! ?

Thanks ? to all subscribers – it’s a nice milestone.

I pulled together some thoughts on the lessons learned, the highs, the lows, how our business has changed and my take on where the industry will be in another 200 editions.

Please, if you enjoy do give it a share. Thanks in advance.

Read it here.

One big thing
Ad supported Netflix is just around the corner – I’ve riffed on this before. It is inevitable. At some point – they will want to expand their reach and that can be easily done by opening it up and supporting with ads. What they have done though, by delaying it as far along as possible, they are letting the digital video advertising ecosystem become way more robust. Which does mean, when they flip the switch, the yield could be a LOT higher.

For example, a CPV on YouTube could be $0.20, that’s 60 ads/month to recoup the economics. But at $0.50, that’s only 24. Over a month! Or rather than replace, they supplement existing revenue, show high value users four ads/month, increase ARPU 20%. Counter, introduce a slightly lower pricepoint but with more ad coverage.

Notable stories this week

  • Facebook removes a bunch of discriminatory ad targeting.
  • Tubi launches branded partner channels. <- Have any readers tried Tubi?
  • BuzzFeed CEO and CRO discuss the state of media.
  • Land O’Lakes leaps in to the fray with its latest campaign.
  • Spotify experiments with branded content podcasts.
  • Vice goes full retail with a food count in NJ net Metlife Stadium. As a part of the agreement, Munchies gets a brand licensing fee, plus royalties that change depending on how much revenue the food court generates. It declined to share specific financial details of the deal.
  • Understanding social video success with Bustle. Reach and engagement. <- Ping Gustaf for social video benchmarks.
  • Good long read on how Siobhan O’Connor is trying to grow Medium’s subscription business. The strategy of building micro-outlets/magazines, sounds similar to what Yahoo was trying to do. But this makes a lot more sense, as it’s ‘right sized’ the concept.

Deals/M&A

  • A new holding company focused on investing in, buying and building digital media businesses opens up. Lead by former HuffPo CEO Betsy Morgan.

Campaign of the week

  • The Atlantic + Land Rover. Scoring the Drive, a beautifully shot piece of the Land Rover with a score by Hans Zimmer. Epic. Definitely put the audio on for this one. I watched it twice.
  • ^ This YouTube embed also highlights the advantage for YouTube, being able to host and embed the video content – spreads it a lot further.
  • Sonos x Lost At E Minor: Day in the Life of a Creative, is a campaign that delivered Australia’s first ever Dumb Speaker Amnesty – a digitally lead live activation giving consumers the chance to exchange their old speaker for a brand new Sonos One.
  • Bertha Benz: The First Driver. An IGTV launch (but shared here via YouTube). Simple story, works without audio (with audio on it’s a bit lacking). But a nice early example for IGTV.
  • Submit your own and then view all 2018.

Smartest commentary

  • “With an estimated 46 million visitors per month, Balkan estimates that it costs humanity 7.2 years of human life each month in people waiting for the interstitial page to go away and let them see the content they came for. That’s time humanity is never getting back.”Aral Balkan

Datapoints of note

Events

That’s it for this week. I’ll be at Dmexco in a few weeks, as will Nudge partners, Burda Forward, PulsePoint, Sharethrough, Polar, PowerLinks -> hit us up, or them there, to talk how to make the most of your content.

-Ben

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