Tag: youtube

Tumblr’s New Video Chat App Is For Watching YouTube With Friends

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Tumblr is built around the idea of bringing strangers together on the basis of shared interests. So it is a bit surprising to see the Yahoo-owned social network to come out with video chat app designed for bringing real-life friends together. This new app named Cabana enables a group video chat of up to six people at the same time to watch YouTube videos. After joining a Cabana chat, anyone in the room will be able to browse through YouTube and select a video, which will start playing for everyone in the group chat. There is no direct link to Tumblr at the moment in the Cabana app, which launches on iOS today in the United States and will come to Android in a few weeks.

What Brands Need To Do
This new Cabana app, along with the Houseparty app created by the team behind Meerkat, is ushering a new casual mode for online video chats. Both apps are designed for facilitating group chats and allow users to jump in and out of chats with ease, replacing the comparatively formal, one-on-one Facetime sessions with an interaction that is more spontaneous and closer to a two-way live streaming experience.

There is currently no ad products available on either of those two apps, and few brands have explored them to reach their young-skewing users. But if this type of casual video chat apps starts to take off, brands may consider adapting to this new mode of live interactions by taking a more of-the-moments approach and hosting their own YouTube viewing parties for either branded content or sponsored influencer content.

 

Source: The Verge

Header image courtesy of Cabana App in iTunes Store

YouTube Lowers Subscriber Requirement For Going Live On Mobile

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
YouTube is rolling out mobile live streaming to more users, lowering the previous 10,000 subscriber requirement to just 1,000 subscribers. This means more micro-influencers and smaller companies will now be able to leverage YouTube’s livestreaming tools to start a mobile broadcast and connect with viewers in real time.

What Brands Need To Do
This allows more brands to use YouTube live streams to showcase a more authentic side of their brand identity and engage with their fans. Live video remains a fast growth area for digital media, with 81% of mobile audiences watched more live video in 2016 than in 2015. Mobile live video is also particularly engaging, with the average time spent on mobile video being 3.5 minutes for livestreams, compared to 2.8 minutes for VOD. Therefore, more brands should be leveraging live video to reach global viewers and amplify their brand messages with live events, influencer takeovers, and behind-the-scene looks.

 

Source: Engadget

YouTube TV Goes Live In Five U.S. Markets

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Wednesday YouTube officially launched its live TV streaming service YouTube TV in five regional markets, including New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay area. This marks yet another high-profile entry of a tech giant into the OTT streaming market, as the battle for retaining TV subscribers and, more importantly, selling TV packages to cord-cutters and cord-nevers, continues to heat up.

Announced a little over a month ago, the “skinny bundle” from YouTube will cost $35 per month and cover live TV programming from all four major U.S. broadcasting networks —  ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC — as well as their affiliated cable channels such as ESPN and Bravo. YouTube also says it will soon add several AMC Networks channels, such as AMC, BBC America, BBC World News, IFC, Sundance TV and We TV to the service’s standard tier. Previously, the AMC Networks was reportedly working on an ad-free streaming service of its own for cable subscribers.

What Brands Need To Do
This launch marks another channel for brands to reach the audience that has abandoned linear TV viewing in favor of time-shifted viewing, as YouTube TV will carry all the live TV ads. Taking the vast user data and the sophisticated ad operations that Google owns into account, it seems likely that the search giant will be offering some ad tech integrations with the streaming service and allow brands to target audience in a more granular, personalized manner.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Header image courtesy of YouTube

Google Enters OTT Streaming Market With YouTube TV

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Tuesday, Google unveiled its long-rumored over-the-top TV streaming service, officially taking on the likes of Dish’s Sling TV and Sony’s PlayStation Vue to conquer the shifting TV market.

The service, dubbed YouTube TV, is essentially a “skinny bundle” that covers live TV programming from all four major U.S. broadcasting networks —  ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC — and their affiliated cable channels such as ESPN and Bravo. The inclusion of Missing from the lineup are channels owned by cable pay TV networks such as Viacom and Time Warner.

YouTube Live will cost $35 per month for up to six accounts, and it also comes with an unlimited cloud DVR feature as well as a content recommendation system powered by Google’s AI engine. In addition, subscribers will also have access to YouTube’s original content. Google says it will roll out the service in the U.S. in the coming months.

What Brands Need To Do
This announcement marks another high-profile entry of a tech giant into the OTT streaming market, as the battle for retaining TV subscribers and, more importantly, selling TV packages to cord-cutters and cord-nevers, continues to heat up. It also shows the remarkable journey that YouTube has been on since its founding in 2005 as a website where people upload their home videos. Now, viewers worldwide are watching more than 1 billion hours of video content on YouTube every day, growing at a pace that easily eclipses U.S. television viewership.

As for brands, this means another channel to reach the audience that has abandoned linear TV viewing in favor of time-shifted viewing, as YouTube TV will carry all the live TV ads. Taking the vast user data and the sophisticated ad operations that Google owns into account, it seems likely that the search giant will be offering some ad tech integrations with the streaming service and allow brands to target audience in a more granular, personalized manner.

 

Source: ReCode

Header image courtesy of YouTube TV

YouTube To End 30-Second Unskippable Ads Next Year

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Google has announced that it will stop supporting 30-second-long unskippable pre-roll ads on YouTube in 2018, as it aims to provide a better ad experience for viewers. Instead, it will focus on “formats that work well for both users and advertisers,” including the 6-second unskippable “bumper” ads. 15-second and 20-second unskippable pre-roll units are also here to stay for the time being.

What Brands Need To Do
Google’s announcement is a tacit acknowledgment of the annoyingness of unskippable ads, which often plays out against at viewers’ vexation. Fortunately for brand marketers, our recent media trial with Magna shows that even skipped ads have considerable impact on persuasion metrics and brand attributes. Plus, our study also found that attention to pre-roll ads is typically high regardless of ad length.

For more information on how brands can get ready for a skippable future, check out our media trial report Turbocharge Your Skippable Pre-Roll Campaign.

Source: The Verge

YouTube Opens Mobile Live Streaming To More Influencers

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
YouTube is now allowing content creators with over 10,000 subscribers to live broadcast directly from their mobile devices. This marks the latest roll out of YouTube’s mobile live streaming products, which the company first started limited testing in June. YouTube also noted it is working to roll out this feature to all users soon. In addition, YouTube also created a new “Super Chat” feature to let fans amplify their comments by featuring them atop the chat window and highlighted in various colors.

What Brands Need To Do
According to a recent AYTM Market Research survey, over 56% of U.S. internet users have viewed live video content from others on social media or livestreaming apps, with 11% reporting that they do it regularly. With this update, YouTube is finally catching up with its mobile-friendly rivals like Facebook Live and Twitter, making it easier to YouTube influencers to go live and monetize their content. Despite being late to support mobile livestreaming, YouTube still commands significant traffic as the world’s leading video destination site, making it the default choice for many digital marketers. For now, brands with a substantial following on YouTube should consider taking advantage of this update to connect with fans in a more spontaneous way, whereas other brands may consider teaming up with influencers to get their messages across with a sponsored live event.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Facebook And YouTube Join The Livestream War Over Presidential Debates

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Following Twitter’s announcement on Tuesday that it will work with Bloomberg to livestream the upcoming presidential debates, Facebook and YouTube have announced similar partnerships to simulcast the debates on their sites. Facebook is teaming up with ABC News to bring the network’s debate coverage to the social network, with the network creating Facebook Live content throughout the day on its Facebook Page. YouTube, on the other hand, will broadcast the debates as part of its #voteIRL campaign with some help from PBS, Telemundo, and the Washington Post.

In related news, NBC will broadcast the upcoming debates in virtual reality. Working with AltspaceVR, the network created an election-themed “Democracy Plaza” where interested viewers can watch the debate together virtually.

Why Brands Should Care
It will be interesting to see how these debate-related live streams stack up against each other in terms of viewership numbers and the user experience that each site delivers. Although it appears that neither Facebook nor YouTube will carry ads on their live feeds, brands still need to pay attention to how this plays out as it may offer some clarity on the ongoing platform war over live video content.

Livestreaming and VR content offer the kind of immediacy and immersion that brands can benefit from, and as mainstream consumers become increasingly familiar with these emerging formats, brands need to work with content creators and tech partners to develop engaging live and VR content.

 

Source: TechCrunch & Variety & Variety

YouTube Adds Call-To-Action Format To TrueView Ads, Tests New “Community” Tab

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
This week, YouTube added two new features that brands need to look out for. To begin with, the Google-owned video platform added a new call-to-action format for its TrueView video ads, allowing brand advertisers to display a customizable call-to-action banner at the bottom of a video during or at the end of playback. Google says it will be testing this format throughout the year, aiming to make it available globally soon.

On Tuesday, YouTube started testing a Community tab, a Facebook News Feed-esque social feed where content creators can share text, images, GIFs, and even live videos with their subscribers. Viewers can vote “thumbs up or down” and comment on those updates, in addition to choosing to receive push notifications for posts from their favorite YouTubers. Community features are only available to a select group of content creators at the moment.

What Brands Need To Do
With competitors such as Facebook and Twitter ramping up their video products, YouTube is also improving theirs to maintain its appeal to digital advertisers. The TrueView ad format grants brands some flexibility to customize call-to-action messages so as to best suit their needs. The Community social features, on the other hand, could offer brands a valuable fan engagement tool on YouTube once it becomes more widely available, allowing them to engage with subscribers with a variety of content.

 

Source: AdWeek

YouTube Brings Live Video Broadcasting to Mobile

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Following major news from both Twitter and Facebook in regards to their live-streaming products, YouTube announced on Friday that it is bringing YouTube Live to mobile. The updated YouTube apps, both on iOS and Android, allow users to start and view live broadcasts on their mobile devices, complete with scrolling live comments a la Periscope. The feature is currently available to select partners such as SacconeJolys and The Young Turks with plans to roll out to all users soon.

What Brands Need To Do
As more and more people opt to consume digital video on their mobile devices, it makes sense that YouTube finally transplanted their live video product to its mobile apps. While YouTube lacks the social platforms that Facebook Live and Periscope can leverage to amass viewers, it makes up for it with its homegrown stars and massive reach as the de facto destination for digital video. For brands, this update levels the playfield among the competing live-streaming services and gives them a good reason to try out YouTube.

 

Source: Business Insider

Tumblr Launches Live Video Through Syndication

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Tumblr launched a live video feature on Tuesday. Unlike its competitors, however, the Yahoo-owned company neither developed a native streaming product in-house a la Facebook, nor did it acquire a startup to integrate with its service like Twitter did with Periscope. Instead, Tumblr is teaming up with several live-streaming sites such as YouTube, YouNow, AOL’s Kanvas, and Betaworks-backed Upclose to allow broadcasters to cross-post their livestreams to their linked Tumblr blogs.

Tumblr users will receive a push notification when someone they follow posts a live video, and the posts will also be pinned atop dashboard feeds to boost visibility. Users will also have the option to save their livestreams as a regular video post on Tumblr once they are done. Besides syndicating content from other services, Tumblr is also working closely with publishers such as Mashable, Refinery29, MTV and The Huffington Post to promote their live video across Tumblr’s “owned channels.”

Why Brands Should Care
By joining forces with several livestreaming sites, Tumblr can help broadcasters on those services reach a bigger audience and offers them a good place to build an archive for their live video content. Although Tumblr has yet to lay out a plan to monetize this new product, it is still a new channel that brands experimenting with live content should heed. As live video starts to take off, brands should consider sponsorships or broadcasting their own events to connect with their audience and draw some new eyeballs.

While it is safe to say that Tumblr, along with all other services it joined forces with, has a lot of catching up to do to compete with Facebook, which just signed about 140 deals with celebrities and media companies for live content creation, it is important that brands try out different platforms to figure out which one best matches with their target audience.

 

Source: Marketing Land