by Jacqueline Koch | May 11, 2016 |
By Janinne Brunyee
HelloGiggles.com seems to have cracked the code on creating content for millennial women. After a flight from San Francisco, participants on the 2016 Digital Innovators’ Tour assembled in the beautiful conference room at HelloGiggles’ designer offices in downtown Los Angeles to meet general manager, Penelope Linge. She told the group that the site was started by actress Zooey Deschanel as a blog because she felt there was a lack of positive content and a safe place for young women to gather online. Today, the site whose audience’s median age is 26, reaches more than 30 million millennial women a month. HelloGiggles.com was acquired by Time Inc in October last year.
According to Linge, content is sourced from a contributor network of 1,000 millennial women from whom 50 to 60 pieces of content are sourced each day. The common differentiating thread across all of this content is a positive narrative. Traffic to the site comes from mobile and social channels. ‘Our audience is so young, we had to design for mobile and social first, because this is the engagement pattern for young people. They live their lives on the phone and on their social platforms,” said Linge. Fully embracing social channels, It may be surprising to know that Linge anticipates that in 24 to 36 months, most content will not live on hellogiggles.com. “We are embracing a distributed content model with most of our articles being hosted as Facebook Instant Articles via an RSS feed as well as the other channels our audience engages with. We will still be able to monetize this content,” she said.
Linge says the HelloGiggles team is seeing the same trend on Snapchat. “Facebook is our number platform and we are investing in creating original content for this channel. We are an official partner for Facebook Live and we are embracing Facebook Instance Articles because of the amazing user experience. Pages load instantly and we’ve seen a significant traffic increase. “According to Linge, the same level of engagement has not been possible on Twitter with this audience in spite a posting 40 tweets a day. “Snapchat is where we are the most bullish.” She said. This is because 14 to 20 year-olds are on Snapchat all day. Linge is hiring a Snapchat-focused team that will create content including video and invite advertisers to participate. She is quick to stress that the team is equally bullish about other social channels.
HelloGiggles Content strategy
HelloGiggle’s content strategy is not one-size-fits-all. Instead, the team creates content for each channel. With Facebook, for example, the audience doesn’t listen to sound – while they are at work or in line at the coffee shop – they want captioning. So the team focuses on creating videos every woman can relate to.
A recent example is a funny short video titled: ‘If you suck at putting on eyeliner’ which shows a young woman applying eyeliner to each eye and then returning over and over again to make corrections until she ends up putting sunglasses on over a wiped clean face.
“We are hoping we can create videos that we can take to advertisers, said Linge. The opportunity is to add a front card or tail card with the brand’s information. “We are also creating original videos for them because we are proving we know this space,” she said.
With recent Facebook Live Videos the team has created, there have been 20,000 – 30,000 people watching the live videostream and asking questions. ‘We have looked at what Buzzfeed is doing and recognized that Live Video is doing very well for them,’ she said.
Linge and her team are testing across platforms and trying to figure out what is next. ‘I think Snapchat is a greenfield opportunity for publishers and we are hoping to define what it means to be a publisher on Snapchat
Because HelloGigglees’ audience has not embraced paying for content, Linge said the team realized that heavily commercial sponsored content will not work on the site. ‘Millennials have never seen advertising and this generation does not see a quid pro quo for advertising. That is why we try to create a lot of organic video that doesn’t feel sponsored, but is brought to you by a brand’
Brands want content that will go viral and according to Linge, this audience is turned off if content feels too commercial. Instead, the team is creating premium video series and bringing in sponsors. This content is then distributed across multiple channels on the web including hellogiggles.com. This makes HelloGiggles both a content creator and a distribution channel.
Solutions for advertisers
A growing part of the business for HelloGiggles is creating premium branded content for advertisers.
“There are so many ways for young
women to find out who they are today. Kids can pick from thousands and thousands of identities. Zoe tapped into that zeitgeist. Our narrative, therefore, is find your freedom to explore who you are and embrace that. This is the messaging we are taking to advertisers,” she said.
HelloGiggles’ content creation team consists of 10 staff writers aged between 22 and 28 who edit contributor content. If something breaks and editors are looking for immediate coverage, this team also writes original content. Currently there are 4 video producers on staff, but this team will be ramping up fast.
by Jacqueline Koch | May 9, 2016 |
By Janinne Brunyee
What happens when 16 executives from traditional European publishing companies converge in California to visit companies at the forefront of media transformation? Intellectual alchemy.
This is what Boost! had the privilege to witness as co-organizers of the FIPP/VDZ 2016 Digital Innovators’ West Coast Tour. It was apparent in the animated conversations between tour participants on the bus between visits and in the deep engagement with tour hosts on a wide range of topics including the best approaches for reaching millennials, whether traditional publishing is truly dead and many more.
As Innovation Tour organizers, we worked with well-known German media innovation journalist, Ulrike Langer to set up the tour program. Over many months, we agonized over who the best organizations are in San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Los Angeles to help tour participants write the story of their digital future. And to ensure that bodies as well as minds were properly fed, we curated a set of restaurants that best represent modern California cuisine.
Innovation Tours are part of Boost!’s practice to help organizations facing disruptive change write their future storyline.
Innovation Tour program
Here is an overview of the tour:
DAY 1: SAN FRANCISCO
- RocketSpace is the ultimate technology campus for entrepreneurs, startups and corporate innovation professionals.
- LinkedIn, a professional networking site, allows its members to create business connections, search for jobs, and find potential clients.
- Bloomberg Beta is an early-stage fund, backed by Bloomberg L.P.
- Optimizely is the world’s leading experience optimization platform, providing website and mobile A/B testing and personalization.
- Tout helps publishers, content creators and advertisers generate more online video revenue.
- Contextly makes high-quality editorial tools for news sites and other publications
- Storied brings the native app experience to the mobile web.
- Jaunt’s technology provides an end-to-end solution for creating cinematic VR experiences.
- Buzzfeed’s Open Lab explores new ways of telling stories through hardware and software.
Food highlight: Dinner at the Slanted Door at the Ferry Terminal Market.
DAY 2: SAN FRANCISCO/SILICON VALLEY
- Stackla is the content marketing platform that puts user-generated content at the heart of marketing.
- Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project is improving the mobile web and enhancing the distribution ecosystem.
- The Brown Institute for Media Innovation provides grants for research and development for both the fields of journalism and technology.
- Known on campus as the d.school, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford works to develop innovative, human-centered solutions to real-world challenges.
Food highlight: Family style lunch at Tamerine in Palo Alto
DAY 3: SAN FRANCISCO/LOS ANGELES
- DistroScale is a platform + marketplace for delivering, managing, & measuring native content across websites, mobile web & apps.
- Hello Giggles publishes articles by young women under 18, and maintains a vibrant monthly youthful readership.
Food highlight: Dinner at Gracias Madre – known for delicious vegan Mexican fare.
DAY FOUR: LOS ANGELES
- Venture capital firm CrossCut Ventures which recently added $75 million to its fund, has 45 companies in its portfolio and 10 exits to date.
- Addressing the youth market, Awesomenesstv is a multi-channel network with 90,000 YouTube channels and over 3,300,000 subscribers.
- Meredith Xcelerated Marketing is the leading Content Marketing Agency for today’s hyper-connected world.
Food highlight: Delicious and fresh family style lunch at Rose Café in Venice
DAY FIVE: LOS ANGELES
- Digital native Tastemade, is a food and travel video network for the mobile generation.
Food highlight: Breakfast provided by Tastemade talent Bondi Harvest Café.
Facilitating deep and meaningful engagement
As we discovered first hand, an innovation tour offers participants an unprecedented opportunity to get up close and personal with the organizations who are driving innovation and transformation. Also the opportunity to share and learn from fellow tour participants who are facing or who have faced the same challenges is extremely valuable.
Next Innovation Tour
VDZ Akademie Digital Publishers’ Tour to New York City and Chicago – June 13 – 17, 2016. Limited seats are still available. Sign up today.
Contact us
Contact us if your organization is looking to create a powerful learning experience for key executives and managers. We will develop a program of company visits, manage all tour logistics and manage the day to day tour operations.
by Jacqueline Koch | May 2, 2016 |
By Janinne Brunyee
How do medium-sized publishers take advantage of revenue opportunities offered by online video without taking on the prohibitive costs associated with building out their own video production capabilities? This is the problem that four-year old San Francisco startup, Tout, set out to solve.
Participants on the 2016 Digital Innovators’ Tour got a first-hand account of how Tout is changing online video distribution from CEO and founder, Michael Downing.
Downing pointed out that many publishers are having a hard time making the transition from a print paradigm to more of a television paradigm. That is because today, 125 websites are driving 95 per cent of the US$9bn of revenue that online video is generating. “We are trying to democratise continent distribution by providing technology, content and expertise to allow a larger group of publishers to participate in the online video revenue opportunity,” he said.
Tout: How does it work?
Tout works with large video content publishers like television stations who need to find new ways to distribute their content beyond their own web properties. “For large content creators, online advertising is the largest source of digital revenue but they have run out of space to carry more ads. Syndication is important for continued growth,’ he said.
Then Tout works with mid-tier publishers who do not have the in-house capabilities to create their own video content. These publishers make all the articles they publish available to the Tout platform where the text is scanned. The platform then identifies which videos are relevant for each targeted article and the video is seamlessly integrated into the story.
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by Jacqueline Koch | Apr 7, 2016 |
Now that 2016 is off to a running start, it’s a good time to take a step back and look at some of the social media trends that are expected to make an impact this year. From livestreaming on social media platforms to enhanced image search on Pinterest, there are some exciting developments that are transforming how users interact with social media.
Livestreaming on social media
Real-time streaming is one of the biggest trends hitting social media this year. Companies as diverse as VISA and Spotify are using livestreaming applications like Meerkat and Periscope to drive deeper engagement with their customers who continue to crave intimacy and immediacy.
And the cost of entry remains low because livestreaming apps turn a phone’s camera into a live-streaming device, broadcasting everything it sees to a user’s Twitter followers with the tap of a button. In January, Twitter-owned Periscope took livestreaming one step further by integrating with GoPro to let its 10 million users broadcast to their followers from an action camera connected to an iPhone.
Paul Ronzheimer, a journalist from German publication Bild, used Periscope to help Syrian refugees tell their stories to the publication’s readers. ‘Periscope’s features include the ability for viewers to comment during the broadcasts, which in this case often included questions that the refugees could answer live and unmediated,’ he said.
On a lighter note, BuzzFeed recently used Meerkat to live-stream the ‘vigil’ for Zayn Malik—a teen-driven, reaction to the pop singer leaving the group One Direction.
Facebook has also joined the livestream party with Facebook Live. According to Facebook Live team members Vadim Lavrusik and Dave Capra, on average people watch a video more than three times longer when it is live compared to when it is not. To share a live video, users simply tap ‘What’s on your mind?’ at the top of their News Feed and select the Live Video icon. With 1.5 billion users, Facebook is sure to be a driving force behind the adoption of livestreaming on social platforms this year.
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by Jacqueline Koch | Jan 14, 2016 |
By Steven Wise
There are many reasons why digital games are an ideal channel for advertising. They reach an audience that is more engaged and receptive than most other media channels, and they eliminate some of the issues that complicate other forms of digital advertising, like viewability and banner blindness. Advertisers who take the time to understand the power of game advertising, are likely to find they can be winners in this ad game.
PwC analysts forecast game advertising to be the fastest growing (but still smallest) segment of games revenue, growing from $2.84bn in 2014 to $4.75bn by 2019. Globally, the US, the UK, China, and Japan are the largest markets for game advertising, thanks to their advanced ad ecosystems and large potential audiences. There’s ample data to corroborate the effectiveness of the games channel. MediaBrix found social and mobile gaming videos have an average click-through rate (CTR) 30 times higher than those for standard banner ads.
Who’s playing now
Games both reflect and shape some of the major trends in Internet usage. As the Internet becomes increasingly central in facilitating social connections, more and more people want to play games with new or existing friends. Meanwhile, mobile phones make a great platform for gaming and have been a driving factor for drawing additional consumers to online games. In fact, eMarketer forecasts that by next year, 80 per cent of smartphone users will use the device to play games. These shifts are changing the business models for video games and changing the demographics of who’s a gamer.
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by Jacqueline Koch | Jan 6, 2016 |
Magazine Media 360’s October Brand Audience Report provides a revealing look at the trends that the magazine publishing industry is facing today.
Overall, the audience across all platforms – print, web, mobile and video – grew 4.4 per cent from 1.68bn in October 2014 to 1.75bn this October. Today, print and digital editions attract 53 per cent of readers, down from 60 per cent at the same time last year with the mobile audience growing strongly to 27 per cent, up from 19 per cent last October. The video audience grew modestly from 3 per cent to 4 per cent this October. While these numbers reflect the market in October, they are pretty indicative of the state of reader preferences throughout 2015 and there is every reason to believe, that next year, these trends will continue.
NYLON, the multi-platform media company and magazine which focuses on pop culture and fashion, led the Top 10 Total Brand Audience ranking for the third month in a row, growing 226 per cent vs October last year. In September, growth was 145 per cent and in August, 214 per cent.
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