SMstudy Breaking News: Facebook and You, Live in 3, 2, 1

Recently, Facebook announced the release of new features for Facebook Live– a live-streaming video feature that saw a soft release last summer and was opened up to all Facebook users a couple of months ago. The addition of new interactive features reveals the social network’s belief in the big future of video.

From its vantage point, Facebook has noted that video consumption, in particular on mobile devices, has increased greatly over the last two years. The release of Facebook Live and its new features backs up their confidence in the trend towards video and live streaming. David Pierson, of the LA Times, reports that since 2014, Facebook has seen daily video views rise to 8 billion, an eightfold increase.

“The new features underscore the company's deepening commitment to video, which is gaining a growing share of digital audiences, especially on mobile devices...” Pierson said.

The increase in mobile video consumption has also been on the radar of the Adobe Digital Index. In a July 21, 2015 article, “Advertisers Must Be Prepared to Follow Increasing Eyeballs on Mobile Video,” they acknowledged a two-hour-a-day increase over the past five years.

They state, “It is clear that there is a consumer shift towards watching video across multiple media, with mobile viewing accounting for the largest gains.”

Here’s their chart on mobile video usage…

Acting on the observance that people are 10 times more likely to comment on live-streaming video compared with pre-recorded video, Facebook’s newly released features are all about interaction, connection and reaction. Brand new features include Live Groups that allows the user to broadcast to specific friends and groups, Live Events that allows the same for those attending a specific Facebook event and an extra-special new feature called Live Reactions that allows viewers to comment in real time and offer the Facebook-style reactions such as love, wow, angry and sad. (No word on Like yet?)

Facebook Live (now with added features) is replete with possibilities and opportunities, in particular, for marketers. The ability to take the temperature of an audience by monitoring viewer reactions seems to open the door for a variety of testing as marketers begin to use the tool for forecasting public reaction to products and campaigns. And as we reported back in February, social media insights such as these “are filling the role of the modern-day focus group and allow for adjustment before launching, saving money and perhaps even preventing a catastrophic mistake.” 

Of course, marketers and advertisers would also love to get in on this action. Pierson points out that advertisers are extremely interested in this new feature given Facebook’s advertising growth of close to 50% in 2015 to roughly $17 billion. But that bit will have to wait. Facebook has no intentions of opening this nascent channel to advertising… at least not yet.

“For now, the company is mainly interested in learning how users interact with its new tool and whether a vibrant ecosystem of user-generated videos can drive its growth,” Pierson says.

That being said, once it’s been proven viable, advertising will surely follow.

For more interesting information on sales and marketing, visit http://www.SMstudy.com/articles.

Sources:

“The Search for Social Media Insights,” SMstudy.com, Feb. 18, 2016. http://smstudy.com/Article/the-search-for-social-media-insights

"ADI: Advertisers Must Prepare To Follow Increasing Eyeballs On Mobile Video,” June 21, 2015. http://www.cmo.com/articles/2015/6/21/adi-advertisers-must-prepare-to-follow-increasing-eyeballs-on-mobile-video.html

“Facebook bolsters its video streaming tool with new features,”David Pierson, April 6, 2016 http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-facebook-live-20160406-story.html

Facebook Press Release, April 6, 2016 http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2016/04/introducing-new-ways-to-create-share-and-discover-live-video-on-facebook/

Paying Attention: A New Metric for Advertising on Mobile

Since the demise of newspaper’s great hegemonic grip on advertising, news media minds have been banging their big brains together, trying to come up with ways that not only monetize their content, but also generate some of the sweet ad revenue they used to have the luxury of enjoying. This is, of course, much harder in the infinite space and freedom of the Internet. (limited space and information gatekeeping was a true friend to print news.)

It’s been a bit of a slog and news outlets have been in “trial and error” mode for a while and still haven’t quite gotten it fully figured out. That being said, over the last year or so, user trends have been offering great nuggets of insight that are changing the way marketers and news sites are adapting to trends in mobile news consumption.

The landscape for mobile news outlets was important enough to make it to the front page of The Pew Research State of the Media 2015. What was the big deal? That 39 out of 50 legacy news outlets get more traffic from mobile devices than from desktop computers!  

Full list (stats provided by comScore)…http://www.journalism.org/media-indicators/digital-top-50-online-news-entities-2015/

In the digital-only “newsscape,” a similar trend was noted.

The report states, “similar to the larger list of top 50 digital news entities, just a minority of these digital-only sites, 11 in all, had audiences that spent more time with them via a mobile device than a desktop.”

Here’s the complete list of digital native sites... http://www.journalism.org/media-indicators/digital-top-50-digital-native-news-sites-2015/

This preference for mobile news consumption is only mildly tempered by the fact that longer times were spent on news sites when being read on desktop computers.

Nevertheless, it matters.

Believe it or not, tracking consumer behavior has been one of the main problems with news outlets and marketers alike when considering ad dollars for mobile. Now we know that people are preferring their mobile devices for their news both while in on-the-go situations as well as in the down time of “Netflix and chill” moments.

In addition, we appear to be in a “mobile ad desert” where despite a rapid increase year over year in mobile advertising spending, there’s still a gap between advertising dollars spent on TV and other marketing channels and those spent on mobile. It seems that marketers haven’t quite picked up on the huge leap mobile viewership has taken. As an example, Adobe Digital Index reported in July 2015 that media has risen by two hours a day over the last five years, but advertisers have been slow to respond.

The article states, “Just as internet advertising once experienced a lag between the number of unique users and advertising spend, a gulf now exists between the growing amount of time consumers spend viewing content on mobile devices and the relatively small investment brands are making in the channel. But it’s just a matter of time until the numbers match.”

When confronted with new information, a new approach is often required. And this positive mobile news usage data begs for new solutions.

One of the more interesting examples of calculating an accurate measure was put forward by the Financial Times. The FT has switched to a time-based metric, one that places attention front and center in their value assessment. Other news outlets are also recognizing the truer value of an attention-based metric, as well. I’ve begun calling this the “after the fold” ad as it appears when I’ve stayed on a story long enough to show I’m committed. This strategy bets squarely on the contents ability to hold attention. And so far, so good.

Although various solutions abound, no silver bullet has yet been discovered (and perhaps never will). Serious impediments to accurate metrics (and hence, the flow of ad dollars) include bots that inflate the numbers and the easy accessibility to, and preference for, ad-blocking. This trend is particularly noted among millennials. 

But even so, a new approach based on time as opposed to volume (number of clicks) could be the way forward for news outlets. Getting a handle on what they have to offer marketers may be the thing to lead news outlets out of the red and back into the black.

For more on sales and marketing, visit www.smstudy.com/articles.

 Sources:

The Pew Research State of the Medial 2015

http://www.journalism.org/2015/04/29/state-of-the-news-media-2015/

“How mobile metrics fall short for news outlets and advertisers,” James Breiner, July 13, 2015 https://ijnet.org/en/blog/how-mobile-metrics-fall-short-news-outlets-and-advertisers

“Is Digital Advertising Ready to Ditch the Click?”  Michael Sebastian. September 29, 2014. http://adage.com/article/media/digital-advertising-ready-ditch-click/295143/

"ADI: Advertisers Must Prepare To Follow Increasing Eyeballs On Mobile Video,” June 21, 2015. http://www.cmo.com/articles/2015/6/21/adi-advertisers-must-prepare-to-follow-increasing-eyeballs-on-mobile-video.html

“When Will Mobile Marketers Move Beyond Basic Measurement?”  June 15, 2015 http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Will-Mobile-Marketers-Move-Beyond-Basic-Measurement/1012600?ecid=NL1001#sthash.B8b4GxdM.dpuf