Spotify puts its vast trove of listener data to playful use in a new global out-of-home ad campaign—its largest OOH effort to date—with executions that playfully highlight some of the more bizarre user habits it noticed throughout 2016. The work began rolling out Monday. It's been weird.
In a blog post earlier today, Eddy Wu, director of product innovation at Netflix, announced that member can now download videos for offline viewing. Offline viewing is for now only available on mobile and tablet devices, and customers will see a download button on the details page for available film and TV series. Not all content is yet available, but some original shows that are include Orange is The New Black, Narcos and The Crown. It's about time.
Over the past century, technological advancements have massively reduced the cost and time needed to create and circulate content. Though this has liberated artists, consumers are now drowning in a virtually infinite supply of things to watch, listen to and read. The answer to a world where attention is the key constraint, not capital or distribution, isn’t Big Media – it’s the Influencer Curator. No one to blame but ourselves.
While different forms of VR arcades have been around since the late ‘90s, it hasn’t been until recently that new virtual reality gaming centers have been gaining massive popularity around the world, first in China, then in other parts of Asia and soon widespread in Europe and North America. Earlier this week, the senior vice president of HTC’s virtual reality efforts announced initiatives meant to make it easier for people to open these arcades as small businesses. My inner child is coming out.
Pro football, which has riveted TV viewers for decades, is now repelling them. Ratings are down across the board, particularly during prime-time games. So far this season, Monday Night Football ratings are down 20 percent from this time last year. Blame the banter.
Internet giants, armed with a new breed of chatbots, are stepping up a war over messaging services that increasingly hold the key to controlling customer relationships. But these technology trendsetters are missing a chance to tailor services to a large audience of low-income people or those in unconventional households. These are two of the main trends highlighted in a detailed review of the tech-and-media landscape. Digital gatekeepers will fare better than content media.
Facebook’s live video might rack up enormous numbers, but TV broadcasters still see it as a marketing vehicle for the cash cow of TV. While Twitter has started buying broadcast rights to live sports, and a few Facebook-savvy publishers like Bleacher Report and The Lad Bible are doing some live-game broadcasts of their own on the platform, the reality is that live sports on social platforms at scale is still pretty far away. Going with the flow.
TV broadcasters have long been hesitant when it comes to the adoption of programmatic advertising techniques, often fearing the risk of commoditization. Yet, slowly but surely, buyers report that more digital inventory from broadcasters is available through programmatic in the upfront market. This just in.
Spotify is serving its first vertical video ads through a new "branded moments" offering that gives people 30 minutes of commercial-free listening music afterward. The streaming music app is in the middle of a roadshow across Madison Avenue where it is pitching agencies and brands on products including branded moments. Spotify argues that it has unique insights into what consumers are doing at any given time that make its ads more valuable to marketers. To hear or to see, that is the question.
Yesterday Google added a new “fact-check” tag to its popular Google News service. The site aggregates popular timely news from multiple sources and has traditionally grouped them with tags like “opinion,” “local source” and “highly cited.” Now readers can see highlighted fact-checks right next to trending stories. You can handle the truth.
