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It's all-video, all the time: improvements to our Sunday evening Live video chat; TV faces a difficult future; Amazon's video bet pays off; video news from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and even SoundCloud; agencies have growing competition at media companies; shiny object syndrome is alive and well; a new Twitter app for influencers and celebrities; Snapchat hacks; blockchain and the collaborative economy; the real earnings of Uber drivers; what a future car company looks like; VR was all the rage at Cannes; a new PR measurement guide; Ogilvy's classic 'How to Write'; the power of cheese; plus the chart of the week, our trivia challenge, podcast pick, and more.
It's all-video, all the time: improvements to our Sunday evening Live video chat; TV faces a difficult future; Amazon's video bet pays off; video news from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and even SoundCloud; agencies have growing competition at media companies; shiny object syndrome is alive and well; a new Twitter app for influencers and celebrities; Snapchat hacks; blockchain and the collaborative economy; the real earnings of Uber drivers; what a future car company looks like; VR was all the rage at Cannes; a new PR measurement guide; Ogilvy's classic 'How to Write'; the power of cheese; plus the chart of the week, our trivia challenge, podcast pick, and more.
Virtually everything you need in business intelligence. If you’re on Flipboard, you can get these links — and additional ones — by subscribing to The Full Monty Magazine at smonty.co/fullmontymag.
If you're around at 9:30 pm ET on Sunday evenings, you can get a preview of a couple of topics from the week's via the live video on Facebook. If not, you can always catch the replay here.
Join Me
- I'll be hosting an online seminar for MarketingProfs on July 14: Making the Customer the Center of What We Do.
- On July 26, I'll be speaking at the 12th Public Relations and Communications Summit, hosted by ExL Events at Pfizer Headquarters in New York City. Use my code C769SPK and receive a 15 percent discount.
- Planning further ahead, I'll be keynoting at Brand ManageCamp in in September and Pubcon in October in Las Vegas.
Industry
- Video is increasingly becoming a focal point for many industries, brands and publishers. A number of stories throughout this week's update indicate that it is no longer safe to ignore video.
- Television executives may be excused for looking at the increase in advertising revenue and thinking that there's a resurgence in TV. They might think a little more long term, as there's a younger train coming down the tracks at them.
- Live video is one of the things that's picking up steam. And Al Roker is there to create Live Fronts to get advertisers to invest in live video shows. As ironic as live video might seem in our time-shifted schedules, people will stop to watch quality appointment-based content.
- Amazon Video downstream traffic share in North America hits 4.26%, up from 1.97% in 2015, overtaking iTunes and placing it at #3. Netflix leads with 35.15% share, followed by YouTube has 17.53%. Amazon's investments have paid off.
- YouTube Red isn't standing by idly, either. It's joining Netflix, Amazon and Hulu by spending money to buy content from big media companies. They've acquired a drama based on the street dance movie that launched Channing Tatum's career.
- It's going to take a culture shift of sorts to embrace video; big media companies need to reimagine themselves as factories of video content if they want to bring in younger audiences.
- And just to put a coda on the news about TV vs. video, US digital video ad spending will grow at double digits through 2020 — a pace that will exceed TV advertising growth.
- This threat by video is nothing news. Established companies are often late to spot mortal threats to their business model. Here’s how they should respond when industry disruption strikes.
- Ad agencies are facing growing competition as Vice, BuzzFeed and others start producing branded content. While such internal "agencies" at media companies are not enough to completely supplant traditional ad agencies, they may provide a core of services that eats into agency budgets. Agencies must provide better quality, faster or less expensive options if they wish to counteract this trend. Remember: good, fast or cheap — pick two.
- Case in point: shaking up the legacy model of ad agencies, like DDB and others to move faster and more efficiently.
- The change can't come quickly enough, as 25 percent of US consumers will use ad blocking this year — an increase of more than 34% over last year.
- Restaurant apps aren't performing well overall. Unless they provide some utility, like Starbucks' rewards program or Domino's pizza tracker (or zero-click ordering).
- It seems silly to say this in 2016, but with the popularity of certain apps, it's worth noting that you should beware of shiny object syndrome in marketing. Or GMOOT managers — "get me one of those!"
- Good news if you're a local business like a bank, the police or local online store: you're among those who are more trusted than not by US consumers. Otherwise, there's more mistrust than trust of US businesses by consumers overall. We're wondering how the market research firm managed to conduct this study, as market research companies are among the least trusted.
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Platforms
- Social video is everywhere (as you'll see below). Engagement is up and so is adoption by businesses. Click through to see an infographic on what's next in social video.
- Facebook is contuing to evolve its Live video function, adding the ability to broadcast a video chat with a second person and a waiting room to account for critical mass before launching the video. We built our own waiting room of sorts in our Live video this week; see the embedded video above or here.
- Facebook isn't taking any chances when it comes to video; the company has signed deals with celebrities and media companies to adopt Live video. Nearly 140 contracts with video creators total more than $50 million in Facebook's massive push.
- The company's new structure with Class C shares puts even more control into Mark Zuckerberg's hands.
- Facebook will provide employees with political bias training to address concerns that the company has a bias against conservatives. Whether or not the concerns are true, this is a smart move that aims to silence critics and ensure the company is a balanced media entity. They should try the same at MSNBC or Fox News.
- Facebook will let Page owners use the interactive Canvas ad format for organic Page posts in a bid to get people to spend more time in the social network. It should make it that much easier to sell the utility of the format for paid ads.
- Twitter/Periscope/Vine
- Not to be outdone, Twitter is getting serious about video as well. Aside from icons in the mobile app that make it easier to integrate live and recorded video, Twitter is increasing the length of its video and Vine's to 140 seconds, up from 30 and 6 seconds, respectively.
- Twitter launched Engage, a new app aimed at celebrities and influencers. "One thing Engage doesn't have: a timeline. Engage is for the celebrity who sees the value in tweeting, but would rather not pay attention to the broader conversation in the global town square." Engage: for celebrities who don't want to deal with peons. Our bigger concern is that the widespread availability of this app may encourage less engagement between users.
- Twitter turned on venue-specific location with Foursquare. You'll now be able to see tweets from a specific location like a sports stadium, restaurant or business. No word on the level of detail yet — so please take care when tweeting from the restroom.
- Expect to see more in Twitter's visual machine learning capabilities with the acquisition of Magic Pony Technologies.
- If you haven't tried Twitter's lead generation cards for your business yet, what are you waiting for?
- Instagram now has over 500 million users — 300 million of which are daily active users.
- The app is becoming more global with the addition of an instant in-app translation feature.
- And Instagram isn't going to let you forget about video with its 'Picked for You' feature on the Explore tab.
- Alphabet/Google
- YouTube announced at VidCon16 that it would be introducing YouTube Live, a competitor to Facebook Live and Periscope. It's an extension of Google+ Hangouts, but branded under YouTube and completely mobile.
- Snapchat
- Here are 16 Snapchat hacks you probably didn't know about.
- Tumblr
- And even Tumblr launched live video last week.
Trivia question: With the advent of Brexit this week, what other names were suggested for EU exits for other members of the European Union?*
Collaborative / Autonomous Economy
- Is the 'Uber for ____' model dead? The on-demand economy hits the reset button as the market for services matures.
- Could blockchain disrupt the likes of Airbnb and Uber? The author of Blockchain Revolution explains why it may be possible and how it could occur.
- Transportation
- Uber starts showing upfront fares for UberX instead of surge multipliers. It wants you to forget that surge pricing exists.
- An analysis of leaked Uber data finds that drivers make $13.17/hr in Denver, $10.75 in Houston, and $8.77 in Detroit, after expenses.
- Things must not be too rosy in New York either, as new arrival Juno feeds off of Uber drivers' desperation as it signed 9,000 new drivers since May.
- A look at Ola CEO and co-founder Bhavish Aggarwal's tactics in competing with Uber in India.
- Austin, Texas is a wasteland of ridesharing ever since Lyft and Uber left.
- Autonomous Vehicles
- It's Silicon Valley and Detroit in a race to build autonomous vehicles. But the question remains: what will the successful car company of the 21st century look like? It needs to account for more than just vehicles, for certain. Be sure to click through for a succinct and informative 2:30 video.
- Pearl, a startup with 50 Apple alumni, plans slew of devices to retrofit cars to enable latest autonomous driving capabilities, starting with a rear-view camera.
- The development of self-driving, or autonomous, vehicles is accelerating. McKinsey has a take on 10 ways they could affect consumers and companies.
- And an interesting take on the marketing implications for consumers in those vehicles. Although we personally reject the prediction of "millions of self-driving cars on the highways" by 2020 and the notion that drivers will be completely disengaged — at least in the short term.
- More than marketing, the drivers may need to be more concerned about whether or not their vehicle is going to kill them in preference to killing pedestrians. Prime example why I personally think that autonomous vehicles still need a driver at the wheel (like pilots in an airplane, despite autopilot).
- AI/Bots
- Food giant Mondelez is making massive investments in Facebook: specifically in the Audience Insights API to target ads better and in Messenger bots. Looking forward to chatting with my Oreos.
Virtual Reality / Audio
- Virtual Reality
- Google is bullish about VR, but the technology has a long way to go. The Chart of the Week below illustrates just how important VR was as a topic at the Cannes Festival this year.
- Audio
- SoundCloud is getting video ads across its mobile apps in the US. Just what you need: video pop-ups when you're listening to audio! This probably portends a premium ad-free option at some point.
- SoundCloud launched Suggested Tracks to help with music discoverability — a key area in which it is lagging Spotify.
- Spotify has more than 100 million users. The streaming music giant is adding 1.8 million users monthly, with 30% as paying subscribers,
- Program of the Week. This week's recommendation is from Vincenzo Landino: the #AskGaryVee Show. The non-stop CEO answers your questions about marketing, social media and entrepreneurship. And it doesn't hurt that he's been creating videos longer than you've been watching video. Do you have a program to recommend? Add yours to our Google Sheet: smonty.co/yourpodcasts
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Content / Customer Experience / Influencer Marketing
- The motivations behind the creation of longform content may surprise you. But longform is still vitally important.
- A study says that 6 in 10 of you will share this article without reading it. But you should read it — it's well worth your while. Anyway, my money is on you sharing the longform article without reading it.
- The ultimate in content marketing: this guy got an internship with GQ without even being interviewed.
Measurement / Metrics / Data
- Some PR measurement guidance: the AMEC integrated evaluation framework. This is an update on the Barcelona Principles.
- Here's how Twitter, Instagram and Facebook measure engagement.
- What if you could put together a plan, a strategy, and a budget rooted in reality that gave you the resources you need to succeed? If you take the Build Your Data-driven Customer Journey course developed by Christopher S. Penn, you'll have exactly what you need. [Affiliate link]
Zignal Labs Chart of the Week
Last week, we were able to get the initial (weekend) topics of Cannes in an emoji cloud. But after the festival got into full swing and more serious topics were at hand, it was clear that there were issues that kept repeating throughout. Virtual reality spiked four separate times during the week, as seen below in the screen grab from Zignal Labs. The topic was bolstered by the New York Times' VR film The Displaced winning the Lions Entertainment Gran Prix.
* Answer to the trivia question above:
- Brexit could be followed by Grexit, Departugal, Italeave, Czechout, Oustria, Finish, Slovakout, Latervia, Byegium. Only Remania will stay.
When You Have the Time: Essential Watching / Listening / Reading
- Since we spent so much time on video in this edition, let's dedicate some space to writing. For after all, any successful video will be based on a script, storyboard and other written direction.
- The legendary David Ogilvy has 10 tips on writing, sourced from his memo to employees titled "How to Write." His contention was "People who think well, write well." Not sure if he'd include newsletters in that assessment.
- As long as we're focused on writing, How to Write Letters is a 19th-century guide to the lost art of epistolary etiquette.
- Who really cares about the Oxford comma? We do.
- A senior GE executive started asking this one question in meetings after realizing an important lesson about leadership.
- There's science behind the iconic "cheese-pull" in pizza commercials.
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