‘Hypertelling’ With Eric Solomon

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“This is like saying water’s wet, but we’ve been in the midst of a digital revolution for a long time,” says Google/YouTube’s Eric Solomon as he begins to deliver the first keynote of the day at [a]list summit: Influencer Marketing.

“I really think of advertising as this idea of orchestrating things, not just integrating things” Solomon goes on. “I sat in a couple creative agencies before I worked at Google, and you go and there’s a lead creative agency and you have this 60-second TV spot and you sit and all the agencies would be sitting around the room and the digital agency would be like, ‘Great! We’re going to take that TV spot and put it up on YouTube, check the box– digital is done!’ and that was all there was to it.”

“These days I think of our jobs as how does all this crap go together How loud do you let a Twitterfeed go before you introduce a YouTube video ”

Watch the video below to learn more about why Solomon says we’ve gone beyond storytelling as brands, and have moved into what he calls “hypertelling.”

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Setting The Stage With Ayzenberg’s Julian Hollingshead

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There are a wide variety of influencers out there– from the beer afficianado with a moderate but devoted Twitter following, to the mommy blogger with some favorite products, to perhaps the biggest of them all, Beyonce, who can drop an album sans preemptive marketing efforts with a mere Facebook status.

From the hard-to-find influencers, to the ones on the tip of everyone’s tongues, there is a massive amount of tapped and untapped talent out there. Many are willing and able to work with brands in a way that is true and organic to the content they create.

Ayzenberg’s Julian Hollingshead opened up [a]list summit talking about the variety of influencers and how influencer marketing is becoming a more common and important component of campaigns. Check out this opening talk where Hollingshead sets the stage for other industry thought leaders and high profile influencers to talk about influencer marketing from art to science and business.

 

Coca-Cola: Why eSports Is Important

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Matt Wolf

The rapid rise of eSports in the past few years has taken many major brands by surprise. The size of the eSports audience has rapidly grown, and the numbers are there to demonstrate that. The Twitch streaming service has over 45 million monthly views, with most of that coming from games that are part of eSports. The prize pool in the recent DOTA 2 tournament The International reached over $10 million, exceeding the prize for the PGA Pro Tour. Last year’s League of Legends World Championships attracted an audience exceeding that of the NHL’s Stanley Cup playoffs. The message is clear —eSports has arrived.

Yet so far, most major brands have yet to put marketing dollars into eSports. There are a number of factors that might explain this, such as the bewildering array of video games that call themselves an eSport; a number of different professional leagues; a large variety of ways to advertise or sponsor eSports; and no clear guides to this complex, fast-growing and fast-changing universe. More than that, it’s difficult to convince executives not familiar with video games and eSports that this is really an under-utilized, powerful marketing channel.

The appeal of massive, highly engaged audiences of a core demographic that’s difficult ot reach in any other way is strong, and it won’t be overlooked forever. Smarter brands are already building marketing strategies and budgets that include eSports, and it’s not just brands that are in small product segments that are tightly involved in eSports. The appeal is now a mass-market appeal, and mass-market brands are responding to the siren call.

The Coca-Cola Company has been one of the early mainstream brands to embrace eSports. The company aligned with Riot Games and its global League of Legends eSports infrastructure to build an amateur league featuring its Coke Zero brand. Matt Wolf, Coca-Cola’s global head of gaming, said the company considers eSports a key pillar in its overall gaming strategy. So far, fans have embraced the new Twitter page, @cokeesports , and he expects the company’s foray into eSports to continue to grow. Wolf explains why it’s important to connect with this huge global audience today in this exclusive interview.

[a]list daily: Why did Coke decide to get involved in eSports?

Matt Wolf: Approximately one-fifth of the world actively plays video games for an average of an hour a day and its growing. ESports is booming as a result, generating billions of hours played and tens of millions of hours watched every month. Fans of eSports participate the sport in three ways — playing, watching and attending live events. For The Coca-Cola Company, the opportunity for us is how we can connect with the loyal eSports fans at these three participation points in an authentic way, and in a way that delivers added value to their experience and to the game. Through this partnership with Riot Games we strive to elevate eSports, using our brand as a lens to bring recognition to the gaming community and look forward to other exciting plans we currently have under development.

[a]list daily: How have you worked with Riot Games with League of Legends?

Matt Wolf: Earlier this year, we kicked off our partnership with Riot Games through Coke Zero and the development of the “Challenger Series,” a series for amateur gamers to compete for a spot in the professional league. We have worked very closely and collaboratively with Riot Games to create a league that delivers true value to the fans and players of the sport, and that begins to build an infrastructure for eSports that mirrors that of the more traditional sports. To help promote the partnership, we recently launched @cokeesports on Twitter as a place for the brand to engage with fans through our activation with League of Legends. Moving through the end of the year, we will have a presence in South Korea for the World Finals in October.

[a]list daily: How have you seen eSports, especially League of Legends, grow in recent years?

Matt Wolf: It has been amazing to see eSports and League of Legends grow over time. The numbers are staggering. Those outside of the gaming community really aren’t aware of how intensely players and fans consume it. But we are hoping our involvement will help to enhance the community because, similar to The Matrix, once the general public is exposed to eSports, they may never look at the world of entertainment in quite the same way again.

[a]list daily: What opportunities have the livestreaming of eSports competitions, as well as player and team practice sessions, opened up for your brand?

Matt Wolf: Two words: reach and scale. Twitch is powerful because it offers a direct-to-consumer marketing platform, however, we are really interested in the deeper integration with the community that lends itself more to the live event side of the business. The key to both platforms is credibility and authenticity — the right voice at the right time is critical to connect with the audience.

Listen To PewDiePie’s One-And-A-Half-Hour Hit Radio Show

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Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg has over 27 million subscribers to his YouTube channel, which features videos of him playing and commenting video games. Last year his channel became the most subscribed YouTube channel in the world. His videos has been viewed more than 5 billion times. This last Saturday, PewDiePie got to host Radio Sweden’s show “Sommar” (which means summer in Swedish) and [a]listdaily has the link to listen to the show in English here:

 

http://sverigesradio.se/pewdiepie/Sommar_i_P1_with_Felix_PewDiePie_Kjellberg.mp3

The show is made up by interesting Swedes who get free hands to create their own hour and a half-long show; they get to choose their own music and what they want to talk about. Being a host on Sommar i P1 has been compared to receiving a knighthood in Sweden. According to Swedish press, the show caused Radio Sweden to have record amount of visitors last week.

“I’m a completely normal guy from Gothenburg in Sweden and I’m more commonly known as PewDiePie. Three years ago, no one knew who I was, and today I’m the most watched person on the internet. I’m gonna try to explain how that happened,” said Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg before hosting the show to Radion Sweden.

 

 

 

[a]list summit: Influencer Marketing Recap

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Covering everything under the sun about influencer marketing, from the art, to the science and the business, [a]list summit was well-attended this year.

“The [a]list summit really represents that cutting edge– what’s coming next in terms of media, what’s happening with influencers, and what’s happening with brands,” said Rob Ciampa of Pixability.

Take a look at what went down at the event in the recap below.

 

The Top 20 PC Games For July 2014

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Two different services now list the Top 20 PC games every month using different methodologies and different data sets, which is terrifically useful for anyone trying to get a sense of what’s popular in PC gaming. Retail sales just don’t begin to address where the money is in PC games these days, with most sales conducted digitally — and with huge revenues coming in from free-to-play games as well. Raptr tracks actual play time, and Newzoo/Overwolf tracks unique play sessions, which are both interesting looks at where players are spending time (and, by implication, money) in PC gaming.

Raptr has 30 million users playing PC games, and seeing what games they are playing offers useful insights into the popularity of various PC games. Especially for games that are free-to-play, the amount of time the game is being played is a crucial factor in how much money the game is making. Even paid games are concerned with this metric — if they are selling DLC, those sales will be affected by how much people are playing the game.

Overwolf has 8 million customers of its in-game software, and thus generates data about monthly players. Newzoo/Overwolf’s rankings are based on the number of unique play sessions per month rather than actual play time as with Raptr’s numbers. Working with analyst firm Newzoo, the monthly ranking service gives insight into the popularity of PC games in North America and Europe.

For Raptr, the top two slots were held, as usual, by League of Legends and DOTA 2, both muliplayer online battle arenas (MOBAs). Those two MOBAs held 26 percent of all time spent playing games — no wonder so many more MOBAs are in development, whether on PC or tablet. Riot and Valve have demonstrated the value of being on top in that genre, and even a small part of that market can be worth a lot of money. The MOBA genre is a difficult one, though, and it’s not a genre where you can expect to reach a huge audience right away. A stern chase is a long chase, and the leaders are continuing to sail ahead at full speed. To be a successful MOBA, it’s not sufficient to be fun and balanced and fast with beautiful graphics. The meta (what players call the various strategies involved in creating teams and choosing abilities) has to be interesting too, and crafting a game with not one but two levels of fascinating play is a tall order.

In the Newzoo/Overwolf numbers, League of Legends is still on top but DOTA 2 is in sixth place, while Minecraft takes the #2 position.

It’s interesting to note that six of the Raptr top 20 games are MMORPGs, or nearly thirty percent; the number is similar in the Newzoo/Overwolf numbers. It’s also instructive to see how much of the total playing time belongs to free-to-play (F2P) games. Of the Top 20 Raptr games, five of them are F2P, but they account for almost one-third of all the time spent playing games on PCs. For Newzoo/Overwolf, F2P games are even more dominant. Both in terms of time spent and number of unique play sessions, F2P games are coming to claim an ever-greater share of the PC game business. F2P is not as overwhelming as it is in mobile, but it may yet get to that point.

Another interesting thing to note is how far new MMORPG WildStar fell in both indices, though it’s perhaps not unexpected given that the initial newness has worn off. It remains to be seen if WildStar‘s impressive pace of new content releases will drag in a lot of players. How long should we give this strategy to know how well it’s working

Raptr Analysis
You might expect overall gameplay hours to fall in the middle of summer, but they haven’t, at least not among Raptr members: Total monthly play time was up 30.19% from June. And while Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, Smite, and Payday 2 all had big gains, Diablo III, WildStar, and Watch Dogs headed in the other direction.

Highlights
June’s top four games, League of Legends, DOTA 2, World of Warcraft, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, retained their respective rankings in July, and all enjoyed month-on-month play time increases of over 30 percent.

League of Legends’ highest peak in July was on the 27th, the final day of the featured game mode Doom Bots of Doom, where the AI bots were set to an extreme difficulty level. LoL was relatively quiet on the eSports front.

DOTA 2′s premier tournament, The International, took place mid-month and led to a significant play time increase.

Despite Blizzard’s announcement of a decline in WoW players, Raptr members showed no signs of slowing down. We’ll be watching to see what kind of impact WoW’s 10-year anniversary events have in the run-up to, and through, November.

CS:GO’s new Operation Breakout DLC introduced new missions, weapon balancing, skins, map fixes, and various other tweaks to the game at the beginning of the month, and had a significant impact. CS:GO gameplay time was up a staggering 65.19 percent versus June.

The news wasn’t so good for Diablo III, which slipped just one spot despite losing 20.66 percent play time compared to last month.

Hearthstone’s Curse of Naxxramas DLC started rolling out in July and had a very strong impact; the game was up two ranks and play time climbed 53.33 percent over June. The weekly content roll-out schedule seems to be working very well for retention.

Battlefield 4 also climbed two ranks, thanks in part to its Dragon’s Teeth DLC that went live in mid-July for premium members, with everyone else getting the extra content at the end of the month. EA also kicked off Battlefest — a series of community contests and activities, including Raptr’s own Instant Replay contest — in July.

Payday 2 rose five places, riding the tail end of a big sale and a big boost from the Gage Shotgun Pack DLC, which included new weapons, masks, ammo, and achievements.

Smite was the biggest gainer of the month, shooting up eight spots and 128.27 percent over June, although a series of rewards in Raptr’s Rewards Store was certainly a significant factor there.

Final Fantasy XIV Online also had a big month, gaining five spots thanks in large part to a free login weekend in the latter half of the month as well as the Defenders of Eorzea content update.

The new MMO WildStar lost seven spots in its second month of release – but more worryingly, gameplay was down 45.63 percent.  We’ll see if its latest PvP game mode, Sabotage, launched on July 31, can help spur a rebound, though initial signs point towards probably not.

Though we predicted last month that both The Elder Scrolls games likely wouldn’t chart in July, a major Quakecon-related sale proved us wrong — at least about Skyrim, which jumped five places. The Elder Scrolls Online, however, dropped six ranks to 26.

Throwback RPG Divinity: Original Sin missed the top 20, coming in at the 25 spot, while Watch Dogs tumbled 25 ranks to #33, with gameplay down 67.72 percent.

Note: The Share number by each game represents that title’s gameplay time as a percentage of the total time spent on all the PC games played by Raptr members, and is useful for comparing the relative amount of playtime between particular games.

Overwolf/Newzoo Analysis
July’s 2014 rankings reveal some surprising shifts compared to the previous month, especially in the area of MMO’s and Free To Play. The Top 8 core PC titles in July compared to June remain unchanged, with Riot’s League of Legends maintaining its pole position, followed by Minecraft (number 2) and World of Tanks (number 3). Two of these three titles are Free to Play, illustrating the consumer attractiveness of the business model in the core PC gaming segment. Impressively, League of Legends accounts for 20 percent of all the game sessions generated by the top 20 games while the top 5 games account for over 60 percent. The full monthly rankings can be found here.

The biggest change in the top 20 rankings is Blizzard’s Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft moving up 4 positions to number 9 (13 in June) for July 2014. This success is no doubt due to the tricks that Blizzard employed in creating a title that appeals to new gamers and hardcore World of Warcraft fans alike. EA’s Battlefield 3, after a strong showing in June at number 9, has quickly fallen 10 places to no 19 by the end of July 2014 — influenced perhaps in some measure by the decision of EA to stop releasing it for free and also gamers migrating to the newer Battlefield 4. EA now have three titles in the top 20 rankings, with Valve taking the lead with an impressive four titles.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is the complete disappearance of NCSoft’s WildStar. While it debuted in June at number 19, the game has dropped 3 places and vanished from the Top 20. NCSoft’s Aion has also vanished from the top 20 Rankings (number 20 in June), with Hi-Rez’s Smite rising up 1 rank to take the number 20 spot. The title with the biggest month on month shift was Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which rose up 5 ranks from June to take number 18 in the July core PC Games Rankings.

Zynga’s COO Talks Strategy

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Zynga reported its quarterly earnings yesterday with disappointing results, falling in at the bottom of the forecast range and disappointing analysts. Investors responded by pushing the share price down 7% since, as Zynga lowered its outlook for the year due to further declines in the web business and the delay of several products that had been expected for the second quarter.

Zynga’s revenue for the last quarter was $175.1 million on a non-GAAP basis ($153.2 million GAAP), with net income of $2.8 million non-GAAP (a loss of $62.5 million GAAP). This compared to the same quarter last year, which was $187.6 million non-GAAP bookings ($230.7 GAAP) with a loss of $6.1 million non-GAAP ($15.8 million GAAP). In other words, revenues are down but losses are sharp (on a GAAP) basis, continuing the trend from the first quarter of this year.

The company attributed the performance to two main factors: “Bookings came in at the low end of our previously provided outlook primarily due to the delayed launches of new games and features as well as the continued decline of our web business,” said CFO David Lee. The decision to move release of key products out of the quarter was a hard one, but CEO Don Mattrick felt it was necessary. “In Q2, we made a decision to hold back the global launches of new Zynga Poker and the new Words with Friends which were originally slated to launch in the quarter,” said Mattrick. “We made these decisions during our geo-lock and testing phases after we identified specific areas where additional development time could improve product quality and customer experience.”

The key numbers for Zynga were an interesting look into the company’s transition. Zynga is moving from its dependence on Facebook and a few titles to a broader range of platforms and products, and the process is painful. The company’s audience, measured by daily active users (DAU) shrank, from 39 million in the same quarter last year to 29 million — but the number was up from the 28 million in the first quarter of this year. While ad revenue was shrinking (dropping 22 percent compared to last year, and 38 percent from the first quarter of this year), average daily bookings per DAU (ABPU) increased from $0.053 in the second quarter of 2013 to $0.067 this waurter, up 28 percent year-over-year (and up 7 percent from last quarter).

Crucially, Zynga is now deriving more revenue from mobile games ($88 million) than from Facebook games ($86 million), the first time this has happened. That’s a key moment in the company’s transition strategy. While two games accounted for 56 percent of the company’s revenue (FarmVille 2 was 32 percent and Zynga Poker was 24 percent), that’s something Zynga is working on changing. In another mark of the company’s transition, Zynga announced a new sports effort featuring licenses with the NFL, NFL Players and Tiger Woods, along with an exclusive licenses with Warner Bros. for Looney Tunes.

“Our Sports effort introduces a new franchise brand for us — Zynga Sports 365 — and with it, new mobile games in football with the NFL and NFL Players Inc. and in golf with one of the most iconic athletes in the world, Tiger Woods” said Mattrick. “Our Runner expansion features a new partnership with Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment to bring to life their beloved Looney Tunes brand for mobile consumers. We are pleased to launch the geo-lock for our new football game — NFL Showdown — today and look forward to making it, along with our Tiger Woods golf game and Looney Tunes runner game available globally to fans around the world.”

Zynga’s got a deep bench of talent for creating these sports titles. Mike Taramykin, VP at Zynga Orlando, spent eight years at EA Sports where he was the VP and general manager of the Tiger Woods PGA Tour franchise, which included games on HD console, mobile and web. Taramykin was also responsible for bringing Madden NFL to Facebook and free-to-play mobile gaming. Other EA Sports vets on board at Zynga include Jason Shenkman, director of product at Zynga Orlando, who worked on Tiger Woods and Madden; Jeff Luhr, now director of design for NFL Showdown, who worked on NCAA Football and produced several versions of Madden Football; Ian Cummings, director of design at Zynga Orlando, previously the creative director of the Madden NFL franchise forover a decade,; and Michael Cayado, executive producer of NFL Showdown, who lead the design and development of Tiger Woods PGA Tour on Xbox360 and PS3 for seven years.

Zynga COO Clive Downie

[a]listdaily spoke exclusively with Zynga COO Clive Downie about the company’s strategy and the new licenses.

[a]listdaily: Has Zynga’s move into sports been contemplated for a while, or is this a new initiative since the new executive team came on board?

Clive Downie: This is something that developed since Don [Mattrick] and I and the new management team have been here. We did have a couple of the very talented people who now are in our Orlando studio on staff, they were pushing us to contemplate the sports strategy that they had. I remember sitting down and listening to them… I think it might have been one of the first meetings I had on my first day here, I think Don had been talking about it previously with them.

We’d been thinking about how to get into this space, after seeing this first strategy and plan, and formulating our market insights, looking at the competitive set, looking at the capabilities that we had and then building capabilities. Then we looked at the P&L and committed to it and went about getting our first three partners from a licensing standpoint, the NFL, the NFL Players and Tiger. That’s how that came about.

[a]listdaily: Are any of the sports titles using Natural Motion technology?

Clive Downie: The teams have been talking. As you know, Natural Motion has a wonderful motion engine in Euphoria, and the teams have been talking, sharing needs and opportunities. My hope is that there will be shared technology in the product, if it’s something that can drive efficiencies and match the design aspirations of the team. That’s something we’re trying to do across the board in our new and existing pipelines, is make sure technology is shared. Where appropriate we’re sprinkling the goodness of Natural Motion’s technology throughout the products.

[a]listdaily: NFL management, and golf for that matter, seems to target a narrower demographic than something like FarmVille or Words With Friends — but one with a potential for more devoted fans and higher monetization. In other words, is this a move towards more core gaming, but perhaps with greater ease of use?

Clive Downie: I see sports as an overall market that is obviously segmented, and there are very large numbers of fans of sports who want to participate and spend the time slices they have per day on their mobile devices in a gaming experience, but they’re unable to do so. We’re talking about very large addressable markets that have not been able to participate previously because of the kinds of games that have been available. Generally games on their mobile devices are ports from the console world, very twitch-orientated, not suited to the control mechanisms on the devices, not suited to the time slices that people have.

When you can design a product to match those market aspirations, you’re still talking about a very remarkable scale. I wouldn’t classify them as core. I would classify them as mass. These sports are mass sports, they just haven’t been tapped into in the way that we know they can be, with smart design around time slicing.

[a]listdaily: You have not just the sports licenses, but Looney Tunes, and that said to me that Zynga is interested in licenses that reach into different areas. Should we look for more of that in the future where that fits with your strategy

Clive Downie: Our strategy is to be the at-scale leader. That means our aspiration is to have the number one products and adjacent products in a large number of categories. We already have the broadest portfolio of live and in production games that Zynga has ever had, in terms of the number of categories that we’ve hit. When you have that breadth of portfolio, targeting those large-scale addressable markets, you’re going to have a mix of owned IP and created IP because it’s a wonderful way of going into markets and being successful, by giving people what they need and can relate to.

You’re going to have some licensed IP. I think going forward we will always consider what’s the best way to achieve the aspiration of getting to number one in those categories, and if the aspiration is best fulfilled by combining a licensed intellectual property with innovation in our tech foundations or our tech systems, then we’ll do that. Alternatively, the best way to be number one in a category might be owned IP and created IP from internal at Zynga. You’re going to continue to see a mix, just because of our scale aspirations.

[a]listdaily: With the breadth of the product portfolio, it seems like Zynga is trying to ensure a solid range of successful titles to be ready to have a mega hit. There are companies that are depending on one or two massive hits, but those aren’t really something you can reliably predict or create. In a long-term strategic sense, doesn’t having a strong portfolio of solid successes give you a stable footing so you’re ready to capitalize when you do have a mega-hit?

Clive Downie: You’re right. We’re trying to be the at-scale leader, we’re going to have number one in a variety of categories, and to get to that you have to have shots on goal. We’re going to do that. The benefit of having a very broad portfolio is network strength and the ability to cross-promote relevant games with smart targeting to consumers. The ability of a broad portfolio is, I think, increased predictability of hit-making and the ability to get to a hit. And the ability of Zynga’s scale, with 2000 people, I don’t know if there’s any other company that can do that effectively. We are purposefully at the scale of 2000 people because we want to purposefully create lots of games that we can purposefully prosecute the goal of being the at-scale leader by having number one productss in a variety of categories.

One-On-One With YouTube’s Eric Solomon

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Eric Solomon sees the concept of influencers growing beyond what we’re familiar with now.

“I don’t think it’s just on YouTube,” Solomon says. “YouTube at this point is nine years-old and the fact that it’s thriving as much as it is is amazing for a nine-year-old platform. We’re going to see influencers grow on YouTube and across all the new media that’s coming about.”

When Eric Solomon provided the first keynote for the day on last Thursday’s popular [a]list summit, we couldn’t miss the opportunity to chat with Eric about who influencers really are and the sheer immensity of untapped talent out there.

 

Activision And TakeTwo Earnings Compared

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Now that the console hardware giants have reported their earnings, it’s time for the console software giants to weigh in. Times are good all around, it would seem, for those making AAA console games. Activision and TakeTwo all reported better-than-expected numbers, though in TakeTwo’s case it’s losing less money than they anticipated. It is both interesting and educational to compare the results from these three companies, and to read between the lines of the official comments made during the earnings calls.

Starting with Activision Blizzard, the company reported a strong second quarter, with both GAAP and non-GAAP revenues beating the company’s prior outlook, though GAAP revenues were below last year’s level. Activision Blizzard brought in $970 million in GAAP revenue, beating the $910 million projected, and down from $1.05 billion in the same quarter last year. On a non-GAAP basis (usually the better way to assess a company’s revenues when digital products are important), revenue was $658 million compared to last year’s $608 million.

Activision’s CEO Bobby Kotick noted a key fact: “On a non-GAAP basis, we generated $658 million in revenues, with a record 73 percent from digital channels and earnings per share of $0.06.” Quite impressive for a company so heavily invested in the traditional packaged goods business model, but rather a scary indicator for retailers like GameStop. The march towards digital continues, and it’s not slowing down.

Activision’s dependent on five franchises now, and hoping to make that six when Destiny comes out next month. “Our strong performance was driven by 5 distinct franchises, which highlights the increasing breadth and depth of our expanding portfolio,” noted CFO Dennis Durbin. “Blizzard Entertainment’s strong results were driven by World of Warcraft subscriptions, Warlords of Draenor prepurchases and paid character boost, Diablo III: Reaper of Souls expansion pack sales and sales of Hearthstone cards. On the Activision Publishing side, performance was driven by Call of Duty: Ghosts, and Skylanders SWAP Force.”

It’s quite impressive how Hearthstone continues to grow, showing the strength of the collectible card game model when properly executed. It’s also a strong performer for Activision in the mobile space, where the company hasn’t previously had a major impact.

While the company expects a strong second half driven by releases like Destiny, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, the new Skylanders: Trap Team, and the Warlords of Draenor expansion for World of Warcraft. Still, there are some cautionary notes embedded in the good news.

“We see industry-wide, that there’s been sort of a secular downturn as it relates to preorders,” said Activision president Eric Hirshberg, while noting that Destiny is on track to have the highest pre-orders ever for any new IP in the industry. “We think that’s happening due to a number of factors, things like increased digital consumption, particularly on the next-gen consoles, titles being widely available on day 1 and the decline overall for demand on previous-gen consoles. ” Also in the category of things to be concerned about, Blizzard saw a drop of 800,000 subscribers for World of Warcraft, which they claimed was to be expected.

TakeTwo’s earnings call, held at the same time as Activision’s, was quite different. There TakeTwo was careful to try and position its earnings in the best light, but it’s tough to do that when you (a) lost money and (b) had less revenue than last year. On the bright side, TakeTwo lost less money than it did last year, and the company was also quick to point out that it made an enormous pile of money from Grand Theft Auto V last year. So who cares about a few million lost this last quarter

The lackluster results were probably why TakeTwo put them later in the earnings call, and CEO Strauss Zelnick’s statement focused on the past (making great money from GTA V last year) and the future (there’s a great lineup of products ahead) rather than talking about the unpleasant present. TakeTwo lost $35.4 million on net revenue of $125.4 million for the quarter, compared to a loss of $61.9 million on $142.6 million in the same quarter last year.

TakeTwo would prefer that we look ahead to the fall, when Grand Theft Auto V will be coming out on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. Will current owners (all 35 million of them) buy a new version of the same game That’s tough to say, but TakeTwo is allowing transfer of characters to the new versions. Aside from GTA V, TakeTwo is also looking to NBA 2K15 to be a hit, as the game makes it to next-gen consoles and PC as well as current-gen consoles. Also coming out this fall will be Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Civilization: Beyond Earth, and WWE 2K15. Sadly, though, one of TakeTwo’s most anticipated titles, Evolve, has been pushed out to 2015. Still, the company should have more than enough new product this fall to make up for it.

TakeTwo’s digitally delivered revenue grew 43 percent in the quarter, to $106.4 million. That’s impressive growth, but the company is still far behind both Activision and EA, where digital revenue is now providing the majority of the company’s sales. TakeTwo is still far behind, with 16 percent of its revenue coming from digital. “Nearly 90 percent of this growth came from recurrent consumer spending, which accounted for approximately 60 percent of our digitally delivered revenue during the period,” said CEO Strauss Zelnick. “The remainder came from full game downloads across console, PC and mobile platforms. The largest contributor to recurrent consumer spending was virtual currency for Grand Theft Auto Online and NBA 2K14.”

The bottom line for both Activision and TakeTwo is that new releases are important to keep the companies growing and to deliver good results. Catalog sales are important, to be sure, but gamers want new experiences constantly. Digital delivery is increasingly important, too. It’s great to focus on extending successful titles, and making sure each title is a hit, but reducing the experimentation on new titles is going to increase a company’s risk in the long term. New IPs like Destiny and Evolve are critical to keeping game publishers at the top of their game.

The Influence Of Influencer Marketing

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The [a]list summit on Influencer Marketing took place last Thursday, and it was an amazing day crammed with information. The array of speakers brought a variety of perspectives to the topic, and most came well-armed with facts, figures and insights about the growing role of influencers in marketing. What follows are some of the key learnings attendees took away from the summit.

The scope of influencer marketing is amazing, and particularly so when you consider how quickly the field has blossomed. Certainly the growth of YouTube is a key factor here, with YouTube currently clocking in with over 100 hours of video being posted every minute. That’s only part of the way influencers reach their audiences, though. The tools are YouTube and Twitch, but also Twitter, Instagram, Vine, Pinterest and of course Facebook. Here’s a key fact for you: There are over 1 million influencers with a substantial audience, and the number is growing.

At the top end, the reach of influencers is astounding if you haven’t been paying close attention. The top YouTuber is Felix Kjellberg, AKA PewDiePie, and he notched an incredible 351 million page views in June from his network of over 29 million subscribers. By way of comparison, the top networks (CBS and NBC) get around 5 million viewers per week. You can see why Disney paid $500 million for Maker Studios (where PewDiePie is signed), and why marketers everywhere are interested in influencers.

Another interesting fact to note, especially for game companies, is that 8 out of the top 10 YouTubers are doing their videos based around gaming. Perhaps that’s not too much of a surprise, given how much the demographic for YouTube viewing overlaps the demographic for game playing. Still, it’s another testament to the extraordinary reach and influence of gaming in the popular culture. This may be a surprise to long-time marketers who have thought of games as something relegated to a fanatic faction of the marketplace.

As with mobile advertising, marketers and budgets have yet to embrace influencer marketing to the degree it deserves given the clout influencers have, both in the scope of the audience and the depth of the influence they wield. The summit’s presenters had plenty of great examples of how influencers delivered great results for brands. And it’s not just in terms of impressions, either, but solid sales results.

If influencer marketing is that effective, why aren’t more marketing plans including budget for that? There are several reasons. Part of it is technical, with a lack of really good ways to use it simply, and part of it is awareness. Other forms of marketing have been around long enough that the process is easy. You want a print No problem, the entire process from ad creation to placement is straightforward and easy to implement. Same with a TV commercial — everyone in the business knows how that process works. Get an influencer campaign going? Ummm, let me think… I’m not sure who to call, or where to start, or how long it will take or how much it will cost…

Services are still developing to help with all those questions for influencer marketing campaigns, and already there are people who have ready answers to all of those questions. It’s just not widespread yet, and the rapid development of influencer marketing is part of the problem. There just hasn’t been time enough to get the word out about it, and for marketers everywhere to know how it works. If you haven’t looked closely in the last year, the changes have been astounding. There will be tremendous growth in this area as services continue to develop and makes themselves known to marketers.

The summit was a great way to learn directly from influencers and brands how the process of creating an influencer marketing campaign works. One of the key messages from influencers rang out crystal clear: Hands off! Don’t script your campaign for the influencers. Influencers have their audience because it’s been a very personal thing. The influencer has built an audience (which can be in the millions) because of who they are, what they create, and how they choose to do it. If a brand steps in and says “Here’s what I want you to say and how you will say it,” that will immediately ring false to the influencer’s audience. The result is a failed campaign, and possible damage to the influencer as well. Savvy influencers won’t allow that, so brands must work together the the influencers to develop a campaign. That’s a hard lesson for some brands to learn, but learn it they must.

Another point that was implicit in the presentations is that the audience is gaining control of many brands now, and the influencers are the leading edge of this trend. Sure, brands can and do fight back and try to maintain control in many cases, but the power of social media is giving a voice and a way to connect for audiences that were once isolated from themselves. Now fans of a brand can talk to each other, and share thoughts about a brand, and create their own marketing pieces. Savvy brands are realizing the power of this and trying to ride the wave, while some brands just seems to have the waves breaking over their heads. Influencer marketing is a good way for brands to get involved with the audience and understand how the roles of brands and audiences are changing.

Influencer marketing is becoming a very important tool that brands can use. It’s clear that influencer marketing works best when it’s integrated into an overall marketing strategy. It’s also opportunistic —smart brand marketers are ready to seize opportunities that appear, and working with influencers is often a great way to capitalize on those opportunities.

One other things was very clear — influencer marketing is still growing and changing rapidly. There’s plenty of creativity happening in this space, and there’s plenty of opportunity for innovation. Every brand needs to be aware of influencer marketing and watching how it develops, because this is something every brand could benefit from.