Mobile fix: the battle between long and short video
As Facebook announces Instagram’s newest adoption – a potential ‘killer’ feature for advertisers across the globe – Simon Andrews, founder of Addictive!, takes a look at the rivalry between long and short video.
Short Video
The social platform arms war continues. Last week Facebook added hashtags and now it has evolved Instagram to enable video.
It sounds like it could now have a better product than Vine – 13 filters to add special effects in the way that made Instagram so popular, the ability to choose the frame that shows as a still and videos that are 15 seconds long rather than just six.
Some think the 15 seconds is the killer feature – because it seems so good for advertisers who make ads that sort of length. We wonder if that ease of repurposing ads could be a problem though – ads are designed for TV, not for social.
And over the past months people have started to embrace the six second limit and create a new form of content.
Just as Twitter’s 140 characters seems to produce leaner, smarter comment than the ability for long posts on Facebook, we wonder if these 15 seconds could seem a little long? Time will tell.
Vine, of course, will come back with some enhancements and some of these are already being teased by Vine’s founders.
Written before the actual announcement, this is a good take on how Facebook will most likely monetise video – to simply have brands add video to their Instagram accounts and cross post it to Facebook – then pay Facebook to promote that post to followers.
Long Video
Longer form video is a big money earner for the content creators and the people who distribute it. ITV share price is back at a level it hasn’t seen since 2004 and Apple has announced that is sells 800,000 TV episodes and 350,000 films every day.
The Financial Times estimate that the company is grossing between $3 and $4 million a day. Will Apple double down on this sector by doing something interesting with Apple TV? We think so.
As digital evolves from a text medium to a video one, YouTube remains the key player – handling everything from user generated short form clips through to professional long form.
But as its revenues grow, we are seeing some signs of discontent. Controversial Dotcom pioneer Jason Calcanis has reinvented himself as a video content producer and despite being a major player on YouTube, he is being very vocal about its shortcomings.
And new funding for Fullscreen – another major player on YouTube – will be used, in part, to help make Fullscreen content available on other platforms – including connected TVs.
The gap between traditional TV and new TV is shrinking.
Shazam
The gap between traditional TV and digital is shrinking too. Shazam is building on its partnership with leading broadcasters by launching a new metric – Shazam Engagement Rate – for brands that partner with the company.
It’s pretty straightforward: the number of times the ad is tagged by Shazam users divided by the GRP for each spot.
“We’re a leader in second screen and working with brands to help consumers engage with their ads through their smart devices,” Shazam CEO Rich Riley told Adweek.
“Launching this new engagement metric is going to provide some unique insights to brands and help us make the second screen increasingly effective.”
Facebook; the ITV of Social
If the recent ad focused changes in the Facebook team across Europe didn’t get the message across, this quote from Carolyn Everson talking about the evolution of Facebook makes it clear that it is wholly focused on ad revenue.
“I had two major client meetings, and those clients came in talking about Facebook six months ago, which [meant talking] about fans on your page, social context and what I would call social-media tactics. And it was a really key turning point in both of those meetings when I said that that was Facebook six months ago.
“Where Facebook is today is about being a mass reach vehicle in an incredibly targeted way. It’s explaining that we have all of the people that matter to [marketers] every single day and on every single device that they want to reach people on.”
Facebook are reported to now have 1 million brands using their ad products.
Twitter deals
Twitter has been busy this week too; a new partnership with Viacom means it can share clips from MTV and Comedy Central, with Viacom selling the prerolls and Twitter selling promoted tweets to drive sharing.
And it has bought Spindle – a start-up focused on location – and whilst they are closing the service we expect that the talent acquired will soon add some local discovery tools to Twitter.