Tag: video

Facebook Announced Free Video App For Apple TV And Amazon Fire TV [Updated]

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
After a week of speculations, Facebook has finally confirmed that it will be soon launching a free video app for OTT streaming devices such as Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV devices, and Samsung Smart TV,  with more platforms to come. This way, viewers will be able to watch the videos they already see on Facebook on their TV screens. In addition, Facebook also added some tweaks to video playback, including defaulting the autoplay videos to play with the sound on, picture-in-picture video when people want to watch a video while scrolling, as well as a wide rollout of vertical video format.

Update: On March 1st, Facebook officially released new Video app for fourth-gen Apple TV.

What Brands Need To Do
This announcement reaffirms Facebook’s commitment to building out its video offering in order to vy for a bigger piece of the ad dollars pouring into digital video. Earlier this month, the social network announced an expansion of partnerships with third-party ad tech companies, promising to provide advertisers more data and a clear comparison between social ads and TV ads. And these new video initiatives are all about positioning Facebook as a video destination across platforms.

Once launched, the app would offer brand advertisers a valuable new video channel to leverage Facebook’s audience data to reach targeted customers. As Facebook continues its push into the digital video space and challenges YouTube for a piece of the growing video ad budget, brands should carefully consider their video strategies and take into account Facebook’s growing video ad products.

 

Source: Facebook Newsroom

Facebook Offers Advanced Metrics For Live And 360-Degree Videos

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook has added some advanced metrics for video creators, aiming to help them better understand who their audience is and what they are interested in. Among the new metrics are demographic information for viewers of all videos, a breakdown of the most engaging moments in Live videos based on viewer activity, and a heat map of where viewers are paying attention while they watch 360-degree videos.

What Brands Need To Do
Facebook has been making a strong push for its video products in the past few years in pursuit of user attention and video ad spending. For example, earlier this week, the social network added support for Apple’s AirPlay and Google Chromecast on its mobile app to allow users to stream in-feed videos and Live videos to their TVs. These new video metrics should come as welcome additions for brands publishing videos and hosting live events on Facebook, allowing them to delve into viewer behavior to gain insights that could help guide future video production.  

 

Source: TechCrunch

Facebook To Expand The Reach Of Its Content With New API And SDKs

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Monday, Facebook introduced a new video embedding API and SDKs for Apple Watch and Apple TV, aiming to push content that currently lives on its platform into new places. The video embedding API will allow for third-party apps to use Facebook’s video player, which comes with an interactive drop-down sidebar and an autoplay option, further expanding the reach of Facebook videos. The two new SDKs, on the other hand, aim to help developers better incorporate Facebook services into the apps they are building for the new Apple TV and Apple Watch.

What Brands Need To Do
Facebook videos have been gaining momentum with brand advertisers in recent years, as Facebook’s vast amount of user data makes it as a more targeted and effective alternative to YouTube. With these new API and SDKs, brands should consider using them to expand the branded content that already lives on Facebook’s platform to reach more users across devices.

Source: The Next Web

Yahoo Brings Full Bleed Autoplay Video Ads To Search

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
In a bid for more digital ad dollars, Yahoo has started testing full-width, autoplaying video ads to its search pages. When users search for certain keywords that brands have bought Yahoo’s search ads for, Yahoo will place the brand’s video ads atop the search results. Fashion retailer Lands’ End is an early tester, and their video stretches the entire width of the webpage and plays automatically on mute. The test is limited to desktop only for now, and it remains unclear if or when Yahoo plans to officially roll out the ad product.

What Brands Need To Do
This is not the first time a search engine attempted to make a play at brands’ video ad dollars. In August, Google was also reported to be testing video ads on its search results pages. Video ads are popular among brand advertisers, and Yahoo’s new experiment may lead to an effective new ad experience that combines the expressiveness of video ads with the targeting capability of search ads. Brands, especially those with strong branded video content, should keep a close eye on this new ad unit’s development.

Source: AdAge

Twitter Expands Promoted Tweets And Videos To Other Apps

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Following Facebook’s announcement last week to expand its mobile ad platform, Twitter is also expanding its ad offerings on mobile, allowing promoted tweets and videos ads to appear in other apps. Previously, Twitter’s Audience Platform only offered app-install ads in mobile apps outside of Twitter.

What Brands Should Do
This move means that brands now can use Twitter’s platform, which operates across a network of thousands of apps, to extend the reach of their promoted videos and tweets, using new ad formats. By employing some of these new high performance ad formats, brands and marketers may find a way to figure out new, efficient ways to reach consumers in today’s mobile-first world.

 

Source: AdAge

GoPro To License Stock Video Content

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened:

GoPro continues its transition from a camera manufacturer to a media brand with the launch of its GoPro Licensing content platform, which grants marketers and brands alike access to high-quality videos produced by GoPro, professional athletes, and GoPro users, with licensing fees starting at $1,000 apiece.

What Brands Should Do:

For brands seeking video content for promotional or marketing purposes, but lacking the resources to actually produce the content themselves, this new platform offered by GoPro could provide a nice shortcut for quality stock video content. Moreover, brands also can learn a thing or two from GoPro’s ongoing transition and try to monetize the user-generated-content to increase revenue as well as to elevate brand equity.

Source: TechCrunch

Facebook Tweaks Video Ranking Algorithm, Promises 10 Seconds Ad View

Posted on by Lab Team

Facebook has been making strides in eclipsing online video views from YouTube, with reports claiming that at least for brands, native Facebook video posts have completely overtaken YouTube video posts. This week, Facebook unleashed a one-two punch to further improve its video ad unit.

Officially set to rolled out next Tuesday, Facebook will soon offer marketers an option to only pay for video ads that are viewed by users for at least 10 seconds, instead of charging advertisers immediately when video ads came into view and start autoplaying.

Moreover, Facebook is also adjusting its news feed algorithm to more accurately reflect viewers’ attentions. In order do that, the company will expand on the traditional metrics such as like, comment and share, and start including new metrics like whether people are activating audio, making video full screen and other actions that indicate interest.

Reddit To Create Original Video Content

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original story on: The Verge

Continuing its trend toward generating content instead of aggregating it, Reddit is moving beyond podcasts with the launch of its video division, which will no doubt open up new monetization opportunities for the self-claimed “front page of the internet” site. Given the concentrated young male audience that Reddit generally attracts, this new video platform should be a great opportunity for brands looking to reach that highly coveted demo.

By creating its own video content, Reddit can tap into a more lucrative advertising format. Reportedly, the first patch of original content would be videos of its staple feature —the Ask Me Anything (AMA) interviews. After all, it makes perfect sense to develop videos based on a forum that even the sitting president appeared on in order to capitalize on that attention and fully explore its potential.

 

Tinder Unveils First Native Video Ad For Bud Light

Posted on by Lab Team

Read the original story: AdWeek

Partnering with Bud Light to promote its “Whatever, USA” campaign, Tinder unveiled its first-ever native video ad, which invites users to “swipe right” on Bud Light’s Tinder profile to enter for a chance to win a trip to the next Whatever, USA in an as yet unselected city. Last year, the beer brand held a festival event in Crested Butte, Colorado. Using Tinder for event activation this year, Bud Light looks to connect with the Millennial audience on mobile in new ways.

Head image taken from Tinder’s press video

Why Some YouTube Stars Are Leaving The Platform

Posted on by Lab Team

Read original article on: The Verge

Michelle Phan, one of YouTube’s biggest celebrities, might be ready to leave YouTube behind. Phan, who built an online fanbase with her make-up and fashion tutorial videos, is launching her own online network ICON with some other beauty, lifestyle, and health personalities from YouTube. While Phan’s work will still appear on YouTube, new videos will also start appearing on DailyMotion, Roku, and ICON mobile apps.

Similarly, we are seeing more and more content creators on YouTube outgrowing the platform. With newly launched platforms like Vessel and Patreon luring YouTube personalities away with higher incentives, it will be up to YouTube to improve their monetization offers in order to keep content creators on board.

 

Head image taken from ICON website