Snapchat means business. The ephemeral photo and video messaging platform even abandonded its usual ‘who cares?’ approach this week to present its new “3V” video advertising offering in what Techcrunch called a “zero-fun infomercial”. Video ads are to be delivered inbetween snaps (above), supposedly in an unobtrusive way. Yet there could be little joking about the key figure dropped by CEO Evan Spiegel in said video: Snapchat now racks up 2 billion video views per day, no less. And as Digiday revealed last week, 1.82 million of those daily views are for Cosmopolitan’s “Discover” Snapchat channel. Still not convinced? Consider Snapchat hired former Fox comedy executive Marcus Wiley as its new head of programme planning and development for Snap Channel, according to VideoInk, and maybe it’s time to start taking the platform’s 100 million daily active users seriously…
That, of course, is not the only multi-million userbase-level disruption heading TV’s way. Twitch, the video game streaming outlet which had 55 million users when Amazon acquired it last year, has just announced a YouTube-style partner programme for is most successful broadcasters, reports Tubefilter. A move capable of creating the next generation of online video stars?
More worrying for the ‘traditional’ TV industry, perhaps, is the continued growth of Popcorn Time, the peer-to-peer streaming platform known as “Netflix for pirates”. Its iOS app has now been downloaded over a million times, reports VentureBeat, despite the fact that it’s not officially approved by Apple, and as such requires a long-winded sideloading process to install. Over a million people have decided the end user experience is clearly worth the hassle…
Not forgetting Buzzfeed, of course: another relatively new player which, like Snapchat, is currently going from strength to strength, notably thanks to its multi-platform strategy. With video views now fragmenting across multiple platforms — not just YouTube — Tubular Labs decided to look at views on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Vine too, reports VideoInk. Not only does BuzzFeedVideo come out top of this new chart: its total views (see below) are double that of the biggest YouTube creator, FunToyzCollector. One reason, perhaps, why Buzzfeed has hired former top Pepsi exec Frank Cooper III, as Tubefilter reports?
Not that YouTube execs should lose sleep for now: generation Z still watches more than 2 hours of the Google-owned platform’s content per day, according to a new millennials-focused report by JWT (below). Even more strikingly, “36% of survey respondents (aged 12 to 19) watch four or more hours of YouTube content daily, compared to 34% who spend four or more hours watching television.” Food for thought…
How is TV heavyweight HBO adapting to these ongoing groundshifts? A fascinating — and must-read — feature by The Hollywoood Reporter notably explains how the network’s top execs denied its cord-cutting service, HBO Now, was in development when, in fact, it was. “”This is the single boldest decision that anybody in the existing cable-satellite ecosystem of programmers has ever made,” says BTIG media analyst Rich Greenfield. “There is no doubt that (HBO CEO) Richard (Plepler)’s partners” — the cable companies — “didn’t want him to do it. And he did it anyway.”” Today, the ongoing rise of Netflix no longer provokes comments such as “HBO-over”, THR points out (Plepler is pictured below, centre, with – left to right – Justin Theroux, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Lena Dunham, head of programming Michael Lombardo and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau).
And if you think the network’s future depends on its flagship series, Game of Thrones, think again: documentaries like the much-discussed The Jinx will also be crucial moving forwards. Its creators speak to Variety here.
Neither, it would seem, are all new media trends here to stay. Also according to THR, a “backlash is brewing against binge TV“, with Orange is the New Black showrunner Jenji Kohan admitting “I miss having people on the same page.”I do miss being able to go online and have the conversation the day after.” Quite a big deal from the creator of one of Netflix’s biggest series. But, she admits, “it’s kind of a waste of time to lament that because that’s not the way our show comes.”
Time to accept the new status quo…?
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