Media News Roundup: Japanese Buzzfeed, 2016 Candidate Ads on Instagram, and Twitter’s Sale of Video Ads Outside of their App

September 3, 2015

Buzzfeed and Yahoo Japan are working together to create a Japanese-language version of the site. It’s a new type of partnership for Buzzfeed, which previously had complete ownership of operations in other countries.
By working with Yahoo Japan, Buzzfeed will have the opportunity to get massive traffic and will also gain
access to the largest digital media sales team in Japan.
This is yet another step taken by Buzzfeed to go more international as it reaches an increasingly global audience.

As of this week, Instagram is offering 2016 candidates ways to advertise. Advertisers are able to use Facebook’s ad targeting capabilities to reach users.
With the new ad targeting options, candidates can upload a file of voter information and Facebook will match it to user accounts. Campaigns can also target Instagram users by demographics such as ZIP code, gender, relationship status, and interests.
“It’s a two-way dialogue between the candidates and the electorate,” said Liz Bourgeois, the Instagram spokeswoman who is working on 2016 campaign-related projects.

Twitter announced this week that it’s now selling autoplay video ads inside of other apps through it MoPub ad network. This means that advertisers buying video ads on Twitter can use the same targeting to show people video ads inside other apps they use.
Video ads are the most profitable type of ads, so this move means Twitter can sell more video ads than it could otherwise fit into user timelines on Twitter itself, thus boosting revenue further.
Video ads are rising in popularity thanks to the targeting capabilities of social networks and the rise of mobile video. Twitter isn’t alone in this move; Facebook announced the same ad-buying feature last week.

Media News Roundup: ESPN Declines; Facebook Ads Best YouTube; Do Twitter Cards Help Publishers?

July 24, 2015

Here is this week’s roundup of media news, with a touch of our take.

Even ESPN isn’t protected from the decline in cable TV. The network lost 3.2 million cable subscribers in about a year.
GoogleVentures’ M.G. Siegler notes challenges for the sports powerhouse, said to contribute 25% of Disney’s operating profits.
Signer predicts they will go it alone with a service outside any traditional network “sooner than many people think.” SportsCenter viewership is declining with consumers getting sports news via apps.

Facebook is growing as an ad platform as their ads get more targeted and relevant to users, AdWeek reports.
Though they’ve decreased the number of ads per page, they’ve seen an increase in engagement. Clicks of Facebook ads are up 12% in a year, while impressions dropped 47%.
An Adobe survey found 51% of people find Facebook ads relevant, compared to 17% for YouTube.

The new Twitter cards allow for each link to have an expanded summary and image to been seen from the newsfeed without actually clicking on it.
There is a image and quick summary shown in the expanded space, which is another part of the company’s attempt to bring more media into the newsfeed instead of text.
The more time users keep scrolling through their newsfeeds, the more revenue Twitter will make. However, will these article preview cards lead to more traffic on the actual article page, or will users read the quick summary and keep scrolling, leaving the original content page with even less clicks and viewers?

April 10, 2015

Here’s a collection of media business and tech news that caught our eye this week, with a touch of explanation and commentary:

Oyster is an e-book subscription service that offers its subscribers, who pay $9.95 a month, access to over 1 million e-books in a fashion similar to that of Netflix’s offerings of movies and television; as long as they are connected to the internet, users can read as much of any of the e-books available on Oyster as they please at any time using their phones, tablets or computers.
On Wednesday, April 8th, Oyster announced that it would soon offer the option for subscribers and non-subscribers alike to buy individual e-books, both to expand its reach past that of its subscribers and to give customers access to things like new releases and pre-orders which subscribers of Oyster currently do not gain immediate access to.
Oyster will have a hard time challenging Amazon’s massive e-book empire which was solidified by the development of the Kindle, but it has favorable relationships with publishers that Amazon has not been able to establish which set it apart and make it an appealing platform for major publishers to consider.

The China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) is the government agency which ensures that sites using .cn addresses and Chinese-language domains are legitimate sites that are secure and safe for users to access.
Following findings two weeks ago that the CNNIC had not taken steps to ensure the maximum security of the security certificates it issues and had instead made them very vulnerable to unauthorized and potentially harmful interception, Google announced that its Chrome web browser and other affiliated products won’t recognize security certificates issued by the CNNIC.
This is a fairly drastic and unusual step taken by Google, and it will be interesting to see how the CNNIC responds and the effects this has on Google Chrome users in China.