DIGITAL VIDEO INSIGHTS:  Several of you forwarded me this fascinating AdAge article about a digital video efficacy study conducted by Google.  The cool part about this piece is that you can read the results and then actually watch the ad they tested.   It’s interesting that pacing of the creative had the biggest lift at +6% for the fast read, helping prove the importance of shorter video units.  And the fact that vertical video ads actually performed worse than standard horizontal video is good to know as marketers kill themselves to produce vertical creative.  Granted this is just one study from one (big) publisher.  But the results lead to the conclusion that not all digital video ads are created equal, and the shiny new creative variants aren’t always better than the tried and true versions.  (link)

SHARE OF EAR UPDATE:  Edison is out with their latest Share of Ear study – RAIN link below.  What’s cool about this research is that Edison has done it for long enough that we can now glean some long term trends.  For instance, when the first SOE study came out in 2013 AM/FM Radio commanded a 52% share of audio listening in the US – in three years that’s dropped 8 points to 44%.  Conversely Streaming used to get 11% of the total listening time – now it’s up 6 points to 17%.  Think there’s a migration pattern here?  Within the streaming slice of the pie you can see some parity amongst the 13-34 YOs, while Pandora is dominant within the adult demos.  For all you Pandas reading this, Ron Rodrigues has already posted the updated numbers in SF Libraries.  Always great ammo for your next call!  (link)

SOMEDAY IS TODAY:  Not sure if you’re aware of this, but last night there was the an important baseball game.  In an epic Game 7 the Cubs exorcised over a century of demons to beat a never-say-die Indians team.  I’m not a sports writer, so anything I say here won’t do the moment justice.  Instead I thought I’d pass along this video, which Hunter Bradford was circulating around the Chicago office yesterday.  If you’re a Cubs fan this one will speak to your passion and pain for the Cubs and Wrigley Field, which is part of who you are.  If you’re not from Chicago this might help explain the importance of the moment to an entire city.  The W is flying proudly today!  (link)

Have a great Thursday guys!

DOWNLOADS DWINDLE:  In another sign of the apocalypse for the digital download industry, Billboard is reporting the lowest number of purchased downloads in a given week for its #1 song than any time since 2006.  This week’s #1 is “Closer” by the Chainsmokers.  The poor guys only sold 84,000 downloads in their week at the top of the charts, which is the fewest since Hinder’s  #1 song “Lips of an Angel” – remember that jam?!?  It’s just another proof point that the age of buying downloads is going the way of the vinyl record, 8-track, cassette, and CD.  But music lovers take heart . . . while the delivery system may change over the years, passion for the artist and the music are still constants!  (link)

DIGITAL REVENUE ROUNDUP:  Yesterday the IAB released stats on US Digital Ad Spending for the first half of 2016.  The results were not surprising – Digital continues to surge at +19% YoY, on the strength of mobile which comprised 47% of the total spend.  Some interesting inside the numbers observations include web advertising actually declining -10% YoY for the first time in forever, and rich media/site sponsorship revenues also declining -20%.  The top 10 Digital Publishers are still ball-hogging 74% of the total rev – which is still a mind-blowing stat to me.  The WSJ has a nice summary of the data in the following link. (link)

PRIORITIZING PERISCOPE?:  Here’s an intriguing question – can Twitter make Periscope the dominant live streaming platform despite the fact that it couldn’t make Vine successful?  That’s the question at hand as the other big players in the Social Video space ramp up their live video offerings.  Periscope was another one of those new tech darlings from 2014 which broke ground as an innovative social platform.  But as sometimes happens, they sold to a bigger fish who didn’t move with enough urgency to maximize their opportunity.  And now Twitter is left with a solid product which has good scale, but has lost their presumed lead to the other guys.  I’m guessing it won’t take more than 6-12 months to know which direction this is headed.  (link)

Have a great Wednesday guys!

THE DEEP END OF THE DIGITAL POOL: If you’ve ever wondered where the big digital money resides, look no further than this Business Insider article featuring WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell.  $1B in spending with Facebook seems like a lot until you read that WPP is spending $5B with Google in 2016 (what?), which is up $1B since just last year.  While those jaw dropping numbers make for a good headline, the most important part of this article is his call for both publishers to improve on the “3Vs — viewability, verification, and value — to prove they are being transparent about the success of ad campaigns on their platforms.”  It goes to show that even the biggest fish in our digital pond need to be held accountable with the rest of the industry.  (link)

SOCIAL VIDEO AD DILEMMA: There’s little doubt that today’s social video platforms are a big hit with younger demos.  Snapchat and Instagram have even replaced texting as the primary way teens and young adults are communicating these days.  But it turns out that there’s a pretty big disparity between raw usage of these publishers and their efficacy as advertising platforms.  The following AdWeek article discusses the differences between the two publishers from an ad perspective.  What’s most amazing to me is the following stat – that over 50% of Snapchat and Instagram users either “hate” or “rarely notice” the ads.  I get that advertising is generally considered a burden by consumers who rarely enjoy the ads, but over half the ads being loathed or not being noticed at all is a pretty big challenge for marketers to overcome.  No wonder advertisers are starting to question viewability and attribution of the social video sites.  (link)

CABLE MUD SLINGING:  And finally today, there’s a good bit of finger pointing happening in Cable right now as Nielsen and ESPN spar over the accuracy of Nielsen’s November Cable Ratings.  The numbers show a 1.4% decline in cable viewership in just the last month, led by ESPN who shed 621,000 unique viewers since October.  Both numbers are so staggering that ESPN is claiming there are inaccuracies in the survey.  This has forced Nielsen to recall and review the November ratings to determine if ESPN’s concerns are valid.  In response Nielsen took a swipe at ESPN, who had the biggest single-month decline in the network’s history, by saying ESPN “has experienced a sustained decline in subscribers since 2014.”  Time will tell if this is a Nielsen or ESPN issue.  In the meantime it’s an ugly scene in Cableville to be sure.  (link)

Have a great Tuesday guys!

TOP DIGITAL STATS:  First up today is an AdWeek roundup of last week’s top digital stats.  The most interesting ones for me are #2 (Google continues to kill it), and #5 (NPR’s podcast pioneering).  It’s probably worth clicking into the link on that NPR bullet to read the original article.  It’s impressive to understand the commitment NPR made to incubating it’s podcasting products early on, and then to see how that investment has paid off for them.  Their ability to monetize podcasting is a good blue print for the entire audio industry.  (link)

MOBILE DOMINATION:  Zenith Media released a research piece on the continuing surge of mobile from both usage and advertising standpoints.  The two stats in this piece which really stand out to me are the forecast that 75% of internet usage will be done on a mobile device by 2017 (that’s in just two months!), and that mobile will account for 60% of digital ad revenue by 2018.  It’s amazing to think back just a few years ago when clients were being challenged to define their mobile strategy.  Now mobile is everyone’s entire strategy, period.  (link)

TWITTER LAYOFFS:  You can start to see the fallout of Twitter’s inability to find a merger partner, with Friday’s announcement that they’re laying off about 10% of their workforce.  Twitter also released its quarterly earnings which seems to contradict the need for cutbacks.  Ad revenues and unique users are up – that’s still a good thing, right?  But it looks like Twitter is going into a period of new reinvestment to speed the development of products and algorithms.  Personally I’ve never thought businesses can cut their way to success, but I’m not sitting in Twitter’s C-suite.  It’ll be interesting to see how this shakes out.  (link)

AN ATTEMPT AT HALLOWEEN COMEDY:  And finally today there aren’t many occasions to roll out a Halloween themed cyber-attack cartoon.  So this one’s for all you ghoulish tech geeks out there.  Do you get it?

Happy Halloween (and have a great Monday) guys!

PROGRAMMATIC 2.0:  First up this morning, an update on the programmatic landscape through the lens of the following AdExchanger article.  It’s interesting to see how direct PMP deals between advertisers and publishers are growing in prominence over third party open exchanges and agency trading desks.  This trend could affect SSPs, whose relevance will be diminished as they’re not utilized in PMP setups.  And finally the emergence of header bidding, which allows DSPs to bid on a publisher’s inventory without the publisher having to directly serve the ads.  All of these trends make it feel like we’re heading into 3^rd-4^th inning of an ever-changing programmatic ballgame.  Stay on top of this stuff people!  http://adexchanger.com/on-the-ecosystem/changing-auction-mechanics-agencies-go-direct-publisher/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWkRkbVpqTXpPVGRqT1RVNSIsInQiOiJBZVFQb2o1SFVPSHNDdFBibzMxNmt3aU90d3hQSFlxVFwvbSt0K0s5TGFMZG9kRWMrc2N2d2E4RGJNVHhDN2lCdG1YNWFLd1JsK3dSSjFMOFQ1aVdwZHdualwvWjVoQklVcXhveitIUFMrOW5jPSJ9

FANTASY BLUES:  A few weeks ago I shared some stats about the NFL’s TV ratings being down 10-15% so far this year.  To add insult to injury, it looks like there’s another player on the field causing havoc with TV ad revenues – fantasy football.  According to SMI TV ad revenue dropped 13% YoY in September, and most of the drop is attributed to Draft Kings and FanDuel’s decreased ad spending.  Just think back to last September – you couldn’t get out of the way of one of these ads as the “play every week” FF model went berserk.  But just as quickly as it spiked, the spending has come back down to Earth.  This creates attrition for the category spending, and also lowers the overall pricing for every other advertiser in TV due to a large demand decrease.  Who knew Roger Goodell could be such a pain in TV’s rear?  http://www.adweek.com/news/television/september-broadcast-ad-sales-dropped-13-due-fanduel-and-draftkings-rapid-decline-174278

THE ULTIMATE BEER RUN:  Auto Team take notice – the future has just arrived in the form of a beer truck.  Think self-driving cars are still not ready for the open road?  Well check out this article and video about 18-wheeler full of Bud flawlessly making a 120 mile drive on the open highway.  The fact that self-driving technology has progressed to the point that trucks (much less cars) no longer need drivers, could lead to an amazing boom, and even bust, for the auto industry.  Who would want to purchase a self-driving car? . . . how about everyone!  But could this eventually lead to vehicle transportation becoming completely commoditized, where individuals wouldn’t own a car and instead hail a ride to/from wherever from a giant driverless taxi-like service.  No wonder the big auto makers are racing to build their own driverless tech and are investing in up and coming rideshare companies.  http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/ubers-self-driving-truck-delivered-semitrailer-full-budweiser-120-miles-174258

Have a great Thursday guys!

SPOTIFY’S STAND ON FREE LISTENING: First up today is some fresh perspective from Spotify’s head of Label Relations on the topic of free ad-supported listening.  There’s been much speculation in the industry about whether or not the labels will continue to allow Spotify to offer free listening outside of the subscription pay wall.  Right now Spotify is living month-to-month on grandfathered licensing deals, as they try to negotiate long-term contracts similar to the ones Pandora just inked.  Apparently Spotify is pretty bullish on the prospect of keeping their free tier, as noted in the following CNET link.  Not sure where this is headed, but it’s worth keeping an eye on.  https://www.cnet.com/news/spotify-free-tier-staying-if-spotify-has-its-way/

ANOTHER ROYALTY BATTLE BREWING:  Last Fall, as we were awaiting the CRB’s ruling on the streaming rates Pandora and others would pay from 2016-2020, did you ever wonder how satellite radio (Sirius XM) gets the licensing for their music?  Well SoundExchange hasn’t forgotten about these guys, as evidenced by their formal request to double the performance royalties satellite will pay for music from 2018-2022.  Obviously this is just SoundExchange’s starting position in a long negotiation, so I’d expect the final number to be much lower.  But keep in mind that either the % of revenue or % per subscriber model (shown in the link below) is only for music.  On top of these royalties, Sirius still has to pay for spoken word content like Howard Stern and sports like MLB.  Safe to say there’s no free ride, even for satellites, in the audio game!  http://rainnews.com/soundexchange-files-royalty-rate-request-for-satelite-radio/

TRITON RATINGS – AUG’17:  Looks like Triton is playing catch up with their Monthly Webcast Metrics Ratings, because they released their August #s just two weeks after July came out.  Overall August showed a seasonal rebound from the summer doldrums with a 4% MoM increase.  When compared to Aug’15 all streamers are up 16% – so we’re still seeing very healthy YoY growth.  In addition to the normal historical graph below, I thought I’d share the 6a-12md ranker showing total consumption by streamer.  The key number in the table below is AAS, which is the average number of active sessions each streamer has at any given time.  So Pandora has 2,063,000 listeners at any given moment, Spotify has 1,259,000, iHeart has 311,000, etc..  http://rainnews.com/webcast-listening-enjoys-an-august-uplift-triton-digital/

Have a great Wednesday guys!

CALL OF DUTY PANDORA:  If you’re a music-loving gamer this one’s for you.  Pandora is teaming up with the rapper YG to launch a custom station to accompany the new COD launch.  For those of you not in the know, listening to music other than the game’s ambient soundtrack is a must for any hardcore gamer.  Because if you spend hour after hour playing you need something cool to listen to, right?  Well Pandora is taking it one step further by curating a custom playlist with YG, who’s one of COD’s biggest celebrity fans.  Given that YG already has 8M followers on Pandora, this one seems like a match made in gamer heaven!  http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/pandora-and-rapper-yg-created-call-duty-playlist-promote-games-release-174207

WHAT ABOUT VERIZON?:  Yesterday I featured an article on AT&T’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner.  I drew the comparison of this corporate marriage to Comcast-NBC/Universal since both mergers include the elements of content and delivery.   A few of you asked me how AT&T’s deal stacks up against Verizon, who has also been on a buying spree over the last six months with acquisitions of Yahoo and AOL.  The following AdExchanger article compares these two deals.  While AT&T and Verizon are similar in that they’re Telcos who are acquiring companies to vertically integrate their industry, the size of the deals (AT&T’s is 9x that of Verizon), and the different assets each gets (AT&T gets content while Verizon gets data), makes these two M&A’s seem very far apart.  Of course, the DOJ (Dept of Justice) still needs to approve the AT&T deal before it becomes reality.  Assuming that happens, you’ll see the creation of Telco-Media juggernaut like no other in the industry.  http://adexchanger.com/digital-tv/verizon-vs-att-tale-two-telco-deals/?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWkRkbVpqTXpPVGRqT1RVNSIsInQiOiJBZVFQb2o1SFVPSHNDdFBibzMxNmt3aU90d3hQSFlxVFwvbSt0K0s5TGFMZG9kRWMrc2N2d2E4RGJNVHhDN2lCdG1YNWFLd1JsK3dSSjFMOFQ1aVdwZHdualwvWjVoQklVcXhveitIUFMrOW5jPSJ9

TV + PPM = ???:  Last month I sent an article around about Nielsen’s plan to finally launch a Total TV Ratings Measurement product by next April.  The goal of this new platform is to roll digital consumption of TV (on VOD, Stream, etc.) in with traditional set top ratings.  Now Nielsen is taking this idea one step further by using their existing PPM panel to measure out of home TV consumption in places like bars, hotels, etc..  Yes, these are the same craptastic PPM radio measurement devices I make fun of constantly.  On the surface this is a brilliant idea – use an existing in-market measurement tool to capture more TV viewership ratings.  But then reality rears its ugly head.  These are still the same pager-looking devices volunteers wear on the belt or purse strap.  Nielsen is chronically running short of volunteers agreeing to be panelists, because who wants to be carting one of these things around.  To give you some idea of scale, in a market like Chicago where there are ~8M people in the DMA, Nielsen has under 2,000 PPMs in the field.  This creates an amazingly small and unstable sample size, which they are now going to use for TV ratings.  Yikes!  http://www.adweek.com/news/television/nielsen-will-measure-tv-viewing-places-bars-hotels-gyms-and-office-174238

Have a great Tuesday guys!

MEDIA MARRIAGE: First up, some blockbuster news over the weekend as AT&T announced an agreement to acquire Time Warner for $86B.  This feels like a very synergistic move for both parties.  AT&T gets a major foothold on the content side with networks like HBO and CNN, and the Warner Brothers Studios.  And it’s the perfect hedge to offset AT&T’s flattening broadband and mobile handset business.  As for Time Warner they’ll now get the benefit of AT&T’s fiber optic and satellite piping into 132M households.  The combination of these two companies will be able to compete toe to toe with the Comcast/NBC Universal conglomerate.  Get ready for these next gen media titans to start rumbling over the coming years.  http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2016/10/22/att-time-warner-team-up-to-fight-for-the-future-of-tv/#69f8cb326069

NEWSPAPER’S DEATH SPIRAL: Print ad revenues have been on the decline for the last 15 years . . . that’s no surprise to anyone.  Nobody under 45 reads a daily paper, and advertisers have long ago supplanted NP with Digital as their go-to for display based advertising.  But what’s amazing is that the rate of global NP revenue decline appears to be accelerating over the past year – shedding another 9% off last year’s miserable number.  Throughout this free fall NPs are trying to convert to a digital model, with paid subscriptions and native ads embedded within digital content.  But these efforts aren’t able to offset the decline in traditional ad revenue, which is leading industry experts to ponder life without heritage NPs.  Ironically the WSJ has a detailed breakdown of its industry’s own woes.  I also thought the following chart showing the shifting shares of all media types was fairly insightful.  http://www.wsj.com/articles/plummeting-newspaper-ad-revenue-sparks-new-wave-of-changes-1476955801

BECOMING THE BRAND: Andy finally today, check out this Business Insider article on T-Mobile CEO John Legere, whose commitment to transforming T-Mobile’s entire mission and culture was so profound that it actually changed him personally.  T-Mobile’s rise can be traced back to Legere’s strategy to be the “uncarrier” in a highly commoditized telco industry.  The key to doing this was to legitimately walking the walk by embodying the brand he wanted T-Mobile to become.  Not an easy task for a 50-something VC suit, but check out the before and after pictures below.  The work was hard, with a near 24/7 dedication and a relentless commitment to spend time in the field with employees and customers alike.  The results have been impressive though.  From a business standpoint, T-Mobile past Sprint from fourth to third amongst the telcos, and is now threatening AT&T for second place.  On a personal level, Legere has achieved a CEO Rock Star status that’s comparable to Richard Branson.  All this is thanks to a decision to totally commit one’s self to doing things differently (and better) than anyone else.  http://www.businessinsider.com/t-mobile-ceo-john-legere-company-culture-2016-10

Have a great Monday everyone!

LOOKING MORE LIKE A TV NETWORK:  We’re seeing a really interesting pivot in Snapchat’s strategy to pay for third party content that lives on their site.  Up to now they’ve used a rev share model which is similar to other digital publishers like FB, YouTube, etc..  In simplest terms, you post content, Snapcat sells the ads, and you get a portion of the ad revenue.  Now Snapchat is trying to replace that model with a licensing plan similar to what you see in TV syndication.  In this model Snapchat will pay content providers a fixed fee to “air the show”, and then keep all the ad revenue for themselves.  If this works it will be an important inflextion point in the way digital video content is brought to market and monetized.  Keep an eye on this one.  http://www.recode.net/2016/10/18/13326196/snapchat-discover-ad-sales-plan-change?mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTkRabU5UUXpNelZoWW1SaSIsInQiOiI5dmI1R1VhdjlmY21NUUowVFNEZVc2aVpLMGduSU9LOXA3OWtLSVwvZ3lTMGI1QXFyM1Y4eTBuaHY2aGdKbURodnNiODhHTzFtOE1QTVJSMVwvWUUyMkpyWnBITCtcL1dFdUI1Y3JhV3dDMGlSYz0ifQ%3D%3D

DIGITAL MAKEGOOD:  Speaking of TV, there’s another trend emerging from this year’s Upfront buying season.  TV clients are allocating more and more of their budgets to digital video which is transacted programmatically (no surprise there).  But what’s new is the acceptance of “automatic guarantees”, which allow broadcasters to makegood ratings shortfalls from set top and/or digital buys with pre-negotiated PMP deals.  This is a win-win for both sides, as it gives clients and their agencies access to more inventory to clear their TRP goals.  As for broadcasters it allows them to fulfill makegoods by monetizing their digital inventory at IO-level CPMs (not garbage CPMs on open exchanges).  With developments like this the line between traditional and digital TV is really starting to blur.  http://digiday.com/publishers/broadcasters-begin-embrace-programmatic-ad-buying/

AT LEAST THEY LOOK SUCCESSFUL:  Finally this week, I’d like you leave you with some perspective about what I saw at this year’s ANA Masters Conference in Orlando.  One of the evening events featured a concert by the Back Street Boys (yes, they’re still around), presented by iHeart.  Pictured below is iHeart CEO Bob Pittman introducing the group.  While the concert was nice it got me wondering why iHeart, who is over $22B in debt and is projected to lose another $200-300M this year, spends money lavishly on events like this.  It sort of feels like your one-uppity neighbor who has a new Range Rover and BMW (both leased) in their driveway, but more credit card debt than they have money in the bank.  For these guys the image of being a successful media company is everything, even if that means spending their way into bankruptcy.  I wonder what some of iHeart’s investors would say about this picture as they worry about every getting repaid on their investment?!?

Have a great Friday (and weekend) guys!