What To Expect From VidCon’s Industry Track

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VidCon is set to take place this weekend in Anaheim, set to celebrate online video as a cultural force, with a number of sponsors, companies and video specialists in attendance. It’s a lot to take in, but a vital show for those looking to get the most out of the format.

Jim Louderback, editorial director for VidCon’s industry track, recently spoke to us about what makes the show stand out, as well as what’s different for this year’s event. “First, on the industry side, we have a track dedicated to seminars from experts that are focused on real, tangible strategies that can be put in place on Monday – from making better thumbnails to driving more viewership via Twitter and Facebook,” he said when asked about what’s unique for VidCon 2015. “Second, we have a demo track where we’ve invited the top new platforms and technologies to show off their stuff – including VR, analytics tools and new platforms. Finally, we’ve got 14 fireside chats that will blow everyone away. Oh, and there’s a new Creator track that’s chock full of great content and the show is taking over the entire convention center.”

The agenda, broken down here, has three events in general – community events, creator events, and industry events. There’s something for everyone in each category, from breaking down fan strategy and the basics of a brand campaign in industry, to workshops and finding ways to stand out in creator, to getting inside the heads of video makers with community.

Here are our recommendations:

 

  • Fireside Chat with Guillaume de Posch, Co-CEO RTL Group, led by Jocelyn Johnson, Founder, VideoInk – a global look at what the RTL Group, the leading European network, is up to. Those interested in overseas video markets would benefit from this panel. (July 23, 9:35 AM, The Ballroom)
  • Fireside Chat: How To Use Influencer Media To Reach Millennials – Ian Shafer and DJ Skee team up to discuss influencer media when it comes to reaching out to millennials. (July 23, 9:55 AM, The Ballroom)
  • Fireside Chat With Ze Frank, President of Buzzfeed Motion Pictures, and Katie Couric, Global News Anchor, Yahoo! – Couric brings plenty of star power to this panel, but this will cover the future of narrative media as a whole. (July 23, 10:15 AM, The Ballroom)
  • Mergers/Acquisitions – What Is the World Like Today – With online video companies being created on a nearly daily basis, this session will provide tips and proven strategies to help position a company into investment or acquisition down the road. (July 23, 12:30 PM, Room 304 CD)
  • Emerging Business Models for Creators – In this session, marketers can learn how much revenue a creator should expect from merchandise, mobile applications and traditional media, as well as crowdfunding plays a hand. (July 23, 2:00 PM, Room 304 AB)
  • Building Brand Campaigns Across Multiple Services – Social media campaigns are explored in this panel, as well as finding the right influencers for each platform that can deliver ROI. (July 23, 3:30 PM, The Ballroom)
  • Fireside Chat: What the Latest Research Is Telling Us – a general overview of the effectiveness of research. (July 24, 10:20 AM, The Ballroom)
  • Where Do We Go From Here Predictions For the Future – Where does the white space sit over the next few years, and what’s the next $100 million business This session takes a look into where the online video industry is going, and what trends are next. (July 24, 11:00 AM, The Ballroom)
  • Anatomy of a Brand Campaign – Mountain Dew Kickstart – Marketers trying to get the hang of a video campaign would be wise to check out this showcase, which discusses the fundamentals of what makes such a campaign work. (July 24, 11:00 AM, Room 304 CD)
  • Community Driven Platforms: Fandom and Fan Strategy – What is the value of a fan This session looks at the value and techniques for effective social listening, as well as how media can pay back. (July 24, 11:00 AM, Room 304 AB)
  • The Three Things To You Need to Do to Grow Your Audience On YouTube – the discussion of how to expand YouTube services is explored, with Head of Creator Growth Yury Polnar leading the charge. (July 24, 12:30 PM, Room 304 AB)
  • Content As Infleucner: How Traditional Media Can Build a New Media Audience – Expansion can be reached with the right methods in media, and with this panel, attendees can learn more about their effectiveness through a new crop of influencers. (July 24, 2:10 PM, Room 304 AB)
  • Using Facebook To Generate Web Video Revenue – There’s no stopping the power of Facebook video, and this panel looks at a number of case studies and quantitative experiments on where brands can take their biggest punch. (July 24, 3:50 PM, Room 304 AB)
  • Effective Strategies To Create and Promote On Twitter – headed by Global Media Partnerships Entertainment for Twitter, Fred Graver, this panel takes a closer look at said strategies for creativity and promotion. (July 24, 4:10 PM, Room 304 AB)

 

The full schedule can be found here for those who want to see what VidCon has to offer. The official show page is here.

Newzoo: Consumers Becoming Producers With Games

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Video games have come a long way over the past few years, between the immense growth of eSports-based competitions and video popularity on both YouTube and Twitch. A lot of this has to do with the players behind these games — and their content is slowly but surely taking over the landscape.

Newzoo provided further proof of this with a new whitepaper report, sponsored by Limelight Networks, titled The Consumer As Producer: How Games & Video Converge To Drive Growth. The report examines the trend of consumers becoming the world’s producers, while at the same time delving into the origins of video in games and how pre-recorded video and live streaming are pushing games to new heights, with the players calling the shots.

“There was a brief moment where we collectively thought the fast pace of change in our industry would slow down following the mobile games revolution,” said Newzoo CEO Peter Warman. “However, the opposite has occurred as a unique alchemy of forces and trends continue to relentlessly drive innovative change. Games are now branching out in all directions, with consumers at the helm and the industry taking a facilitating role.”

The report breaks down a number of key trends for the future of the games market for this year, across Future, Consumer, Industry and World. A lot of factors figure into this process, such as creativity, the games themselves, connectivity and growth, with the creator, facilitator, accelerator and convergence all taking part to keep the ball rolling.

Video streaming and machinima (a process where game engines are used to make cinematic experiences) have grown over the last 20 years, becoming a driving force in this industry. Starting way back in 1996 with the short Diary of a Camper, but quickly moving into the mainstream with the likes of Red vs. Blue and other programming, gamers have been motivated to create content for new platforms, sharing and editing so that they find the right niche with it.

Newzoo’s data indicates that 41 percent of gamers who stream to Twitch regularly are males aged between 21-35, while 30 percent of those who stream are female. Of these frequent streamers, the company reports that nearly half are playing Candy Crush Saga, while a third prefer soccer. That’s not even counting the many players who engage in more serious competitive-based games like League of Legends and DOTA 2.

While the PC platform was the initial place for game content to take off, other platforms, like game consoles (such as Xbox One and PlayStation 4, which have built-in streaming capability) and mobile have taken off. Last year, Twitch announced that 30 percent of their viewers watched streams from mobile devices, and with new apps like Meerkat and Periscope on the market, more mobile games can be streamed as well – like the incredibly popular Hearthstone from Blizzard.

“Publishers will want to take a strategic look at their video sharing infrastructure based on the convergence of games and video,” said Anne Blanchard, Gaming Solutions for Limelight Networks. “The business opportunities are just beginning to emerge, but clearly this new surge in gaming creativity will demand tremendous scalability and innovative solutions.”

Two additional charts from the report, posted below, break down what devices gamers use for watching their sessions, as well as more specific Twitch numbers.

In this chart, video on demand is highly appreciated amongst gamers, by 73 percent, while 54 percent of those polled prefer live streaming video. Out of all devices accounted for, PC/laptop are the most popular in both categories, but mobile phones, tablets and TV’s have their fair share of appreciation as well.

As for Twitch’s numbers, while a majority of them are male, female gamers are on the rise, and in varying age groups, from 10-20 all the way to 51-65 (even though they’re at two percent). Only a small handful watch other Twitch sessions (16 percent) or stream to Twitch regularly (13 percent), but these numbers are on the rise as well, as more people catch on to its streaming services.

The full whitepaper can be found here.

This Curse Is a Blessing for Gamers

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The game industry and its audience has grown so large that there’s not only room for game publishers, but companies that provide products and services aimed at gamers. One of the largest and most diversified companies serving the game industry in this fashion is Curse, which combines gaming communities, game wikis, utilities like Curse Voice (where Riot Games recently invested $30 million), and the Union for Gamer MCN on YouTube that pulls in 1.2 billion views a month. The company is building great relationships with both publishers and gamers, and its efforts are something game marketers should be watching closely.

Nathan Lindberg, vice president of sales for Curse, spoke with [a]listdaily about the company’s success across a wide variety of services for gamers and where the company is headed next.

Curse Voice has really come a long way, and now with Riot Games investing it seems poised for even more. What’s ahead for Curse Voice?

To say we’re excited about Curse Voice’s success is an understatement. It started out as a true passion side project and is growing into a must-use for gamers everywhere. For us, the next 12-24 months we are going to be focused on three key areas for Voice:

  • Expansion into more games — We’ve seen massive success with titles like League of Legends, SMITE, and Evolve, but there are many more titles that are already out like World of Tanks, World of Warcraft, Starcraft, Path of Exile and others we feel Curse Voice would be excellent for.
  • Optimizations and Additional Features for existing games — We’ve done a good job supporting the games we already have connected with Curse Voice, but there’s more to be done.
  • General features and heavy polish — We’re still in beta! So there is much to work on still from a polish perspective. We have a high standard and relish having such an open dialogue with our community.

Curse’s communities have been a great benefit to a number of games. How have these communities been evolving over the last year, and what’s ahead for them?

Gaming communities are such an important part of successful game franchises these days that we see this area continuing to increase and do a better job of integrating with publishers. For a long time, these communities were outcasts, rogue websites just providing information to people fed up with the News & Reviews establishment. As we move forward, the unifying theme we’ll see is a more honest and open partnership with publishers. Over the last eight years, more and more publishers are realizing that Curse presents a symbiotic relationship for them, where as if they do well, our websites and wikis prosper as well.

From there, we’ll have to work with each partner to best determine their needs, could be a mobile app like we launched for FUTHead.com or it might be expanded integrations with Curse Voice (like we’ve done with Hi-Rez’s SMITE). It’s all a matter of what’s best for the players, once we find that agreement with a publisher, great things will happen next.

Curse has multiple parts to its business, from communities to Curse Voice to strategy guides to eSports. Such a diverse assemblage of products and services is a marketing challenge — what are your most effective marketing tactics?

It’s true, we’ve got quite a few pots we’re stirring in the gaming space, but everything boils down to one key focus: Providing the best resources and tools to help gamers “Enjoy the Game.” It’s a phrase we take seriously and something we, as a company, constantly evaluate. Gaming has been one of the fastest evolving businesses within the last 10 years and we’re seeing new demands from gamers. Our goal is to help meet those demands and help our media partners achieve the same thing. If we keep our focus on that, the right opportunities and tactics will present themselves naturally. Today we have four pillars to Community: Create, Contribute, Content and Communicate. These four pillars represent our four focuses as a company:

  • Create — Our Union for Gamer MCN on YouTube, home to over 5,000 creators, 100 million subscribers and 1.2 billion views a month. It’s ranked in the top 35 of ComScore’s Video Top 100 platforms report and one of the hottest growing segments of the gaming space.
  • Contribute — Refers to Gamepedia, our purely gaming wiki platform that is both content and publisher friendly. We have over 800 wikis currently, with nearly 300 of them as the official wiki for the game they cover (including massive titles like Titanfall, Everquest Next and most recently Mad Max).
  • Content — This is the spot for our website communities, which is comprised of 65+ video game related sites, gaming resources, and apps that cover the biggest franchises in the industry from World of Warcraft to League of Legends, FIFA to Madden and Minecraft to Terraria, our websites are the lifeblood of the community of gamers that makes these franchises so special.
  • Communicate — Our Curse Voice platform is the clearest and fastest way for gamers to communicate. The platform utilizes cloud server technology to maintain privacy while allowing gamers to connect, play and disconnect seamlessly and safely. 

What got you most excited at this year’s E3 show for Curse and the year ahead?

For starters, I just love E3, it is such a wonderful time and place to be a gamer. There were a number of announcements that got Curse really excited:

  • Fallout 4  — First and foremost, WHOA, does that look awesome or what Curse is extremely excited for the opportunity to partner with the folks at Bethesda on the game. The franchise has a mod community that has really taken shape since Fallout 3 and we hope to reignite those creative passions for Fallout 4.
  • Draft Champions in Madden ’16 — This is an awesome new mode that they’ve added to the game, based off the phenomenon that is Fantasy Football drafting. This new mode allows players to try out new cards before they buy and will hopefully increase players’ enjoyment of the Ultimate Team mode. For us, this led MUTHead.com to launch a “Pack Generator” section on our website, dedicated to showing fans what they might expect in packs. It was a community led feature that resulted in our largest traffic day ever, in the middle of the offseason.
  • Continued growth of the Battle Arena genre — With folks like 2K and Bethesda getting into the game of short, action based multiplayer combat with titles like Battleborn and Battlecry, we see tremendous opportunity for continued growth with Curse Voice integrations and partnerships. So far, games like League of Legends, Robocraft and SMITE have been catalysts for our Voice technology and we are really excited to grow those partnerships out with exceptional looking games like those two and more.

What are the big goals for Curse in the coming year?

2015 has already been an amazing year for Curse as a company. We’ve made numerous major announcements, however our CEO Hubert Thieblot, always keeps us grounded and humbled, reminding us that “the work is just beginning.” In order to maintain the goals we’ve given ourselves for 2015 and 2016 we’ll need to execute flawlessly on three main priorities:

  • Making Curse Voice the best solution for gamers, period. This calling is not only a business one, but a companywide passion. Curse Voice has the potential to be the default communications platform for gamers everywhere and we owe it to ourselves and to our users to make sure that it outperforms, out-features and outdoes the competition. For us, this is a must, there is no try!
  • Expanding our official partnerships for Gamepedia is another prime focus. As the most layout friendly wiki platform for gamers, publishers are realizing more and more the value of partnering with it. Curse needs to focus on expanding our dashboard reporting abilities for publishers, especially partners with multiple franchises within our Gamepedia platform. As well, we need to continue innovating on the ways we incentivize our millions of contributors, they are the core of what makes Gamepedia great and we want to make sure they continue for years to come.
  • Finally, the last piece of the puzzle is continuing to grow and revolutionize our Union for Gamers MCN on YouTube. This is a program with limitless possibilities and our abilities to connect brands to their evangelists is essential for increasing the overall ecosystem of the gaming industry. So many partners come to us, asking how they can leverage and partner with content creators, but they have a myriad of issues in trying to get those programs off the ground. One of the items Curse will be discussing at the [a]list Video Summit in August will be about our influencer ad program and the massive success brands like Nestle, Dell and Activision have found with it. Continuing to be that innovator in this space is going to clearly define us away from being just another participant in the space.

 

Nielsen Expands Ad Ratings to 7 New Global Markets

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by Evan DeSimone

Rating organization Nielsen is expanding the reach of its digital advertising ratings service to seven new markets in Asia and Latin America.

The product, which tracks the performance of digital advertising across platforms and devices, is commercially available now in Singapore, Japan and Indonesia, and is expected to reach the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Mexico by the end of the third quarter. The move will bring the total number of global markets where digital advertising ratings are available to 16 by the end of the year.

Keep reading…

This article was originally posted on VideoInk and is reposted on [a]listdaily via a partnership with the news publication, which is the online video industry’s go-to source for breaking news, features, and industry analysis. Follow VideoInk on Twitter @VideoInkNews, or subscribe via thevideoink.com for the latest news and stories, delivered right to your inbox.

With Emojis, Marketers Will Be Taking Great Care

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Emojis have been around for quite some time. Originating in Japan as a method for sending pictographs between phone users, the tiny images were extremely popular inside the country for a number of years. Emojis made their western debut after Apple included the first official emoji keyboard in iOS 5. The Unicode consortium standardized Emojis in 2011, as part of Unicode 6.0.

In the four years since Apple released its emoji keyboard, these pictures have changed the way consumers communicate online. Still, the biggest problem facing emojis is that, while they can be used to express an assortment of things, they (surprise!) still can’t, and don’t communicate certain things as accurately as words can. However, as of 2015 the use of emojis has proliferated tenfold, with marketers feverishly trying to (1) devise ways to interpret and analyze the impact of these emotive icons commonly used in text messages, and more frequently, social media platforms including Instagram and Twitter; and (2) attempting to integrate them into innovative marketing campaigns.

The goal, essentially, is to apply some of the same techniques for quantifying value and measuring brand sentiment based on words in social media to metrics for imagery. Social-media agencies are eager to learn the differences in meaning and sentiment between a red heart and a blue one, for instance.

Going off this idea, some services have recently incorporated emojis directly into its user interfaces in an attempt communicate something complex with a single character. Snapchat is a perfect example of this – a channel that, with its most recent update, is trying to harness this newfound infatuation by adding emojis that indicate and describe the type of relationship multiple users have with each other.

Another emoji advocate is Instagram who claims that almost half of all text on its service contains at least one emoji.

“The vocabulary of Instagram is shifting similarly across many different cohorts with a decline in internet slang corresponding to rise in the usage of emoji,” wrote Thomas Dimson, a software engineer on the company’s data team, via Ad Age.

This all might seem rather obvious to some – the idea that kids enjoy communication via pictures instead of plain English sounds conspicuous. However, it’s no longer enough to just include a smiley face after your tweet – you have to build a campaign with emojis at its core.

But just how can marketers take advantage of, and implement this generational phenomenon into a successful and effective campaign that will simultaneously add value And more importantly, how can they do so without overindulging in emojis so far as to drive the popular emoticon statement icons to their death, like we saw with the onslaught of other media fads such as gifs and memes, etc.

It is important to remember why people started using emojis in the first place. Considering the whole shtick of emojis is that they express a user’s agglomeration of emotions, brands and marketers should be cognizant of their user’s emotions and do their best to try and tap into them. According to B2B Marketing Insider, emotion is almost twice as effective as paid promotion.

While an elemental and prevalent way to use emojis is to spread joy, marketers can also use them to tell a story or paint a larger picture. For example, several brands are fortunate enough to have intimate connections to certain, already popular emojis. Beer brands, for instance, frequently take advantage of the various beer emojis for their marketing efforts. An example of this would be Bud Light’s 2014, 4th of July campaign. Bud Light created an emoji-filled tweet that utilized felicitous (i.e. American flag and clinking beers) emojis to illustrate an American flag. The post was retweeted more than 150,000 times (via Marketo), leading to an even greater number of impressions.

Another example is General Electric, whose approach at an emoji-centered campaign included an attempt making science fun by constructing an “Emoji Table of Experiments.” This enabled kids to create kid-friendly scientific experiments using various, but fitting emojis – a showpiece for GE.

As The Guardian noted, in addition to tapping into emotion, brands should also strive to drive user engagement in a simple, but effective way. A consumer’s journey must be as easy as possible. The brands that win are the ones that will deliver amazingly simple customer experiences. If emojis and mobile marketing have taught us anything, it’s that users are looking for the most effective ways to communicate information faster.

What about brands that want to go even further with these cute caricatures I mean after all, the emojis that come with the iPhone are pretty cool, we can all agree about that. But why should marketers constrict themselves to a single keyboard

Companies are beginning to go the extra mile, bringing notoriety to their brand by enabling customers to download and use packages of custom, branded emojis. For example, Burger King created its own Chicken Fries emoji keyboard as part of a wider promotion for this beloved menu item. Doing this allows consumers to engage with a brand on a whole new level. Now consumers can communicate and engage with a brand all through a single application.

A number of platforms, like Swyft Media and Snaps, have emerged to streamline this process for brands. Another instance of a successful deployment of custom emojis can be found within the world of Electronic Dance Music (EDM), which Billboard estimates to be a $6.2 billion industry. Renowned EDM producer DJ Snake, for example, who is known for his unabashed sense of humor, recently released an emoji package that depicts his rendition of several other famous Djs as emojis, along with other iconic symbols or totems that are prevalent in the EDM universe.

Any way you look at it, smart marketers are beginning to grasp the power of these icons, and are tuning into consumers’ fascination with the trend – using it to their advantage. In a world that is consistently migrating more and more to the online space, a space that is exceedingly limited by word counts, emojis convey more information in less space, all while being visually engaging. They are versatile, friendly, and fun marketing tools that also help brands connect with their audiences.

The Year of Video Marketing

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It’s been widely stated in marketing circles that 2015 will be the Year of Video Marketing, and it’s not hard to see why once you start looking at some numbers. A report from Demand Metric notes that 70 percent of marketers are now using videos in their marketing strategies. Another 82 percent of marketers indicate that video content marketing has proven to be successful. Why is video taking over? It’s a convergence of several key factors — the ubiquity of smartphones, the rise of video on social networks, the greater ease of creating good video, and the natural attraction that well-crafted moving images have over other forms of presentation.

The reasons aren’t as important as understanding the effect of video on consumers. Audiences prefer video over other forms of content, as one survey after another points out. While many businesses are finding great success with longer videos (three to five minutes, or even the ten to twenty minute or longer videos some use), the short-form video is getting much greater play with the popularity of Vine, Instagram, and Facebook.

Of course, video isn’t just created and shared by companies — the enormous growth in video sharing is fueled by user-generated video, and the rise of influencers is the ultimate expression of that. User-generated videos beat out company-created videos in terms of generating responses.

The power of video for marketers is also driven by the sophisticated analytics and attribution that’s possible these days, and those tools are improving with each passing month. Marketers can get deep analytics that show not just views, but analyze retention and how much videos contribute to lead generation and revenue.

The power of video is transforming the entire approach to marketing, especially as consumers begin to wield that power. Influencers are a key part of many marketing campaigns because of their reach (with audiences in the millions or even tens of millions) and their ability to drive consumer actions. When an influencer you follow tells you something is cool, then you are certainly going to check it out. Of course, that ability to influence comes with a cost — the loss of direct control marketers may be used to. Brands who are flexible enough, and confident enough, to work with influencers are finding great benefits. It’s not the marketing campaign of days gone by when you controlled every last thing about the content and strategy. That loosening of control is leading to a great flowering of creativity among consumers and influencers, who are taking brands further than they ever could have gotten on their own.

The rise of livestreaming is a perfect example. Twitch draws over 100 million viewers a month, most of whom are watching people play games. Why Because it’s fun to watch, and the top streamers are funny and engaging and educational as well as exciting. Yet the games that are being played are not being tightly controlled by the publishers — the savvier publishers realize the vast value they gain by letting everyone play and share with others the joy of playing games. Nintendo’s attempts to control the sharing of its games have only resulted in fewer of its games being shared, and the company should reconsider its approach.

“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but the stories you tell,” Seth Godin noted. And video lets you tell stories fast with great impact. That’s why Facebook has spent so much time and effort refining its video offerings, and it’s getting tremendous results as it battles YouTube for the leadership in video viewing. Platforms will continue to evolve and new ones will appear, and the market share of each will shift. But video crosses all of those barriers, as well as demographics and geography and language and culture. The simple power of the moving image transcends language and culture, when it’s most powerful. That’s why we’ll continue to see video become ever more popular and powerful as a marketing tool.

This week’s VidCon in Anaheim on July 23 through July 25 will cover all aspects of online video, and [a]listdaily will be there to cover it. Keep your eye on this space for the latest from the show.

Infographic courtesy of  HighQ.

The Continued Evolution of ‘Street Fighter’

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Capcom’s Street Fighter fighting game series continues to be a huge draw for fans around the world. Ever since its introduction back in 1989, it has evolved with a number of sequels, including Ultra Street Fighter IV, which has become a phenomenon at tournaments everywhere.

Now, the series is about to enter its next evolution for PlayStation 4 and PC, and that new version gained a lot of exposure this past weekend at the EVO fighting tournament in Las Vegas. At the tournament, live viewers and online streamers via Twitch got a chance to see the next big step in the Street Fighter franchise.

Street Fighter V, which was initially announced late last year at Sony’s PlayStation Experience, gained even more buzz at the Electronic Entertainment Expo last month with the introduction of two new fighters – Cammy and Birdie – alongside a better explanation of its changing battle system, which players can adapt to on the fly as they fight with one another.

This past weekend at EVO, Capcom added yet another piece to the fighting puzzle, introducing a new combatant named Necalli. This big-haired brawler will add a new fighting style for players to adapt to in the game, whether they’re playing as him or taking him on in battle.

“Players who enjoy a straightforward, hard-hitting character will feel right at home with Necalli, as he possesses a wide variety of savage, close-range attacks, as well as a command grab, all with the goal of demolishing his foes,” Capcom’s Peter Rosas stated in a blog post.

“We want to change the way that players interact with the series, and create an ever-evolving environment for players to enjoy. By releasing new characters on a regular basis, it will ensure that there is always new content to look forward to in the short term, and it prevents the competitive environment from ever becoming stale.”

The debut trailer directed and produced by Ayzenberg for Necalli is below.

In addition to revealing a new character – and hinting at more to come before the game’s release next year – Capcom also broke down its business plan for Street Fighter V, and it’s quite different from the usual plan game developers follow these days.

Instead of having to pay extra money to unlock new combatants in the game, players can actually earn all the content by playing through it. This marks a changing of the guard for usual development from Capcom, a move that a number of fans have come to appreciate since its announcement yesterday.

Balancing will also be kept in check, according to Rosas. “Players can take a break from the game, but then come back at any time and continue to play with the characters they already own, with the newest gameplay balance,” he said.

This will be good news for avid fans who have stuck with Street Fighter over the years, and ones that keep coming for a number of profitable pro tournaments. Capcom has even devoted itself to marketing a Pro Tour to hype the games in the series, with a number of popular players competing for prizes.

And these fighting tournaments are definitely a big draw with consumers. GamesIndustry International reports that over 250,000 people tuned into the final Ultra Street Fighter IV competition, marking a huge record for a fighting tournament. The entire event was streamed all weekend, with thousands tuning in to see the best of the best compete in a number of games, including Mortal Kombat X and Super Smash Bros. Melee, an older favorite for Nintendo’s GameCube console.

With these records continuing to rise – and Street Fighter V looming in the distance for a 2016 release on PlayStation 4 and PC – there’s no doubt that the fight will continue.

 

Some Stats About YouTube’s Branded Content

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With more and more branded content making its way to the YouTube video channel, Google has decided to get a better idea of what marketers and content producers want from the channel with a new analytical program, working alongside Pixability to get a better idea of how effective it truly is.

Per this story from MediaPost, Google is doing more than just looking at the “likes” and “dislikes” for videos, even though they can tell quite a story when it comes to the acceptance or criticizing of a branded video. A deeper analysis can provide a better idea of how effective a video campaign is for a company, depending on how many viewers drop off or stick around to see more videos in the overall campaign.

By teaming up with Pixability, Google hopes to get a better idea of viewership and publishing trends for these videos, across the Top 100 brands defined through the Interbrand 2014 Best Global Brands ranking. There’s a lot of interest within this ranking, with over 40 billion views across content on all of their channels, half of them calculated from this past year alone.

The number of monthly views through these brands managed to rise a whopping 55 percent over the past year, and the number of videos across these brands have expanded greatly, with those garnering one million views increasing by 29 percent from 2014 to 2015.

With the data emerging from this research, Google is able to get a better idea of what industries are thriving through likes and dislikes. Out of the ones with the least approval, financial services seem to lead the charge, while media companies like Disney have the most likes. Pixability CTO Andreas Goeldi said, “Viewers clearly express when they’re not happy. There are examples of videos where there are more thumbs down than thumbs up because people don’t believe the message.”

The analysis managed to tally 90 million likes from videos in the top 100 brands, compared to only 8.9 million dislikes – a nearly 90 to 10 percent ratio. With 16 million comments on videos and 73 million total subscribers to take into account, there’s a lot to study.

Subscribers have also increased with popular video campaigns, increasing by 47 percent compared to the previous year. That indicates that consumers will stick with certain brands for the long haul, rather than just one video – and that’s good news for certain businesses.

Research also depends on which engines are used for finding videos. YouTube focuses more on tutorial content and reviews in general, while Google is more on a transactional basis, according to the report. Black Friday in particular had an abundant amount of searches on YouTube for certain tablets, whereas Google focused more on where to find “cheap tablets” or “tablet discounts”.

It also depends on the effectiveness of the brand, even though there’s sometimes not a direct mention. For instance, Red Bull has thrived with its sports content, even though sometimes the company isn’t mentioned. Meanwhile, Western Union worked on videos that ran across the U.S., asking people what their idea of the American Dream is like – again, without heavily going into mention, and instead focusing more on the content itself.

Collaborations also play a key part, like L’oreal working alongside independent YouTube personalities with one million (or more) subscribers. They’re not alone, as electronics manufacturers are looking to do the same thing with specific partners, as well as luxury brands and financial services. By doing this, companies know they have an assured following, provided that the content is just right.

The top 100 brands have managed to upload 611,000 videos to YouTube thus far, with a new video posted every 18.5 minutes for this year alone. Each of these brands don’t stick with just one channel either – the general average is 24.3 per company, totally 2,434 in all.

YouTube business continues to boom, and it looks like companies are adapting to what kind of content viewers want to see. Here’s hoping it stays on the upswing.

More information on this report can be found here.

Programmatic Ads Reach All-Time High

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Internet advertising reached an all-time high last year, around $50 billion, and a good amount of that actually went towards programmatic ad revenue – even at a time when companies are still trying to get a better understanding of how it works.

AdAge recently reported that programmatic ad revenue makes up over one-fifth of overall Internet advertising, with a total of $10.1 billion for 2014. This comes from a survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, on behalf of the Interactive Advertising Bureau. That makes up for nearly half of all revenue from online display advertising, a whopping number when you consider that some companies are putting up with inconsistencies from it.

Some companies define programmatic in different ways, while also dealing with pratfalls in ad formats and media marketplaces, according to the research. Programmatic seems to refer to display and video ads on desktop and mobile that were bought and sold through automated channels – a practice some companies are still getting used to.

“I wasn’t surprised by the findings so much as the challenge it took to get clean numbers,” said Sherrill Mane, senior vice president of research, analytics and measurement for the IAB. The company went to great lengths to avoid double-counting revenue, according to her. “We need more consistency and clarity around what we’re talking about, and the value of automation and targeting and efficiency will come through.”

According to the report, only ten companies account for 66 percent of the $10.1 billion programmatic revenue, with 25 percent accounting for 75 percent overall. A lot of these industry leaders make money through programmatic buying and selling before the revenue even makes its way to publishers, including a variety of technology companies that facilitate sales for publishers and buys for marketers.

With the charge-up for fees regarding these platforms or ad servers, tech companies can charge a markup from 15 to 50 percent for the cost of the ad space. One example of this includes ad networks, facilitating the purchase and sale of online ad inventory, typically charging 30 to 50 percent in value-add mark-up fees, with certain networks possibly charging even more, according to the report. The IAB also noted that, by contrast, feels for demand-side platforms, agency trading desks and exchange marketplaces can fall below 30 percent.

Meanwhile, display banner ads for desktop and mobile devices made up a good portion of programmatic revenue, 80 percent per the report. Although these ads are popular, there are still challenges when it comes to tracking and targeting audiences across devices. The study notes, “For example, behavioral data available in apps may not be available outside of those apps,” making it hard to track overall engagement across both desktop and mobile devices to see which is more effective.

So where exactly is programmatic bought and sold The report notes that open auction marketplaces make up 70 percent of programmatic revenue for the past year, while invitation-only auctions and automated- guaranteed markets make up the other 30.

But there are still questions being raised about buying and selling in the programmatic market. “In its current state, the open auction market is perceived as a big black box for advertisers, and demand from advertisers for greater control over brand safety, ad verification and performance measurement will require better solutions,” said the report.

ROI also remains difficult to calculate overall, and ad fraud and server ads continue to be a problem when it comes to viewable inventory. “With our estimate of approximately 45 percent of programmatic revenues reaching publishers, understanding where dollars are distributed across the ad-stack from advertiser to publisher can be quite disorienting in the current programmatic landscape,” says the report. “Are the added costs of programmatic buying and selling resulting in stronger overall revenues than traditional direct sales ”

More information on the report can be found here.

Brands Realizing the Power of GoPro

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For years, GoPro has been the go-to tool for athletes and extreme sports lovers that want to show the world the thrills they experience from their activities, ranging from wing-diving to motorcycle riding. But the appeal of GoPro is about to go one step further, as the company has introduced a new platform that is set to appeal to marketers.

Adweek recently posted a story regarding the introduction of GoPro Licensing, which puts hundreds of these first-person athletic videos in the hands of marketers. “We’ve gotten calls almost daily from creative agencies, TV networks and film studios that want to use our content,” said Adam Dornbusch, head of programming at GoPro, explaining the reasoning behind the creation of the new platform.

General user-generated content is one thing, but seeing an “extreme” sports video – like wing-diving off a mountain – is another, according to 72and Sunny’s director of business affairs, Michelle Slusser McKinney. The clips tend to provide better consumer engagement based on their content, which in turn can be better incorporated into campaigns for certain products.

“The most significant difference between regular user-generated content and GoPro content is higher quality and footage (that comes from) in and around spaces that are not easily captured,” she stated. “When you want adventurous high-quality, then GoPro fills that space. It brings a unique, first-person experience with content that also differs from traditional licensed content.”

Over 600 videos from amateur and professional filmmakers are available through GoPro Marketing, through partnership via licensing agreements. More clips will become available over time as well, going for $1,000 apiece, depending on both commercial use and distribution with the partners.

“This is going to stay at a very premium level,” said Dornbusch. “If you are looking for top-shelf content, this is the platform.”

And with it, insiders believe that GoPro Licensing will become an immense success, especially considering that video ads have taken off as a $7.7 billion industry. “I believe licensed video is another step in the evolution of user-generated content in brand marketing,” said David Karnstedt, CEO of branding consultancy firm Quantifind. “There is a significant demand from marketers for quality video content, and with proven economic models from (peripheral incumbents like Getty Images and Shutterstock), I believe this new market could be a significant value-creation event for GoPro.”

But will this shake up the agency model in general “I do think agency executives may be somewhat resistant,” added Karnstedt. “Instead of a two-day video shoot, brands can now purchase a video and take the production expenses out of the equation, which could reduce creative costs in a significant way.”

However, brands are likely to see this as a positive overall. “A lot of brands want one-of-a-kind, crazy types of content but don’t want to pay for the necessary production,” said Jeremy Greene, CEO of social-animation app creator PingTank. “And we are going to eventually see TV commercials that are made by the hands of GoPro creators. Some kid from Omaha, Nebraska is going to be watching TV and suddenly realize, ‘Hey, I made that.’, which is pretty cool.”

Indeed, the future for GoPro looks, dare we say it, extreme. Check out a sample clip from its YouTube channel below.