| Our biggest stories from October included a look at Reddit's growth in video, an autopsy of Dramafever and a look at why audience development is shifting inside publishers.
Reddit hits 1 billion video views per month a year after launching its own video player
The first billion is the hardest. A year after introducing a native video player and giving its users the ability to record and post their own videos to the platform, Reddit says it’s now averaging one billion “native” video views per month.
How PinkNews plans to drive revenue from Snapchat
PinkNews is betting big that Snapchat will be instrumental in driving additional revenue streams beyond advertising, starting with e-commerce. The LGBT+ digital publisher has created a range of animated characters and memes for stories created exclusively in its Snapchat Discover editions. Many of these have caused viral spikes in its audience and engagement figures, said the publisher.
Facebook adds pixel to Groups so marketers can track engaged audiences
Facebook is slowly rolling out access to a pixel for Facebook Groups, which allows marketers to track users’ behavior after clicking on posts. The feature is another reason for Facebook advertisers to pay more attention to groups as user growth of Facebook’s news feed has slowed. It also aligns with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s company focus on community.
‘Consistent and reliable’: Pluto TV is a bright spot for video programmers
Unlike its namesake planet, video streaming startup Pluto TV hasn’t been relegated to the shadows — certainly not by over-the-top news and video programmers who say the company is delivering incremental but growing revenue for them.
‘This is a big boy’s game now’: DramaFever is a casualty of the big-money OTT war
The 320 Studios space in Manhattan’s Garment District was rocking the night of Oct. 10, 2013. About 150 people had gathered at the venue for a premiere screening of “Heirs,” a new Korean soap opera. The show was a major milestone for DramaFever, a subscription video streaming service focused on Korean dramas, as it was the company’s first “original series” thanks to a co-production deal with Korean studio Hwa & Dam Pictures.
Audience development shifts focus from Facebook traffic to generating revenue
Audience development pros have always been crucial to how publishers reach new readers. But increasingly, they’re all about the revenue, trying to get people to return to the site in hopes they eventually sign up for a membership, subscribe or buy a ticket to an event.
‘Retailers have to be ready for it’: Visual search sits on the brink of a breakthrough
Inside the cavernous walls of The Home Depot, customers wander the aisles in search of a store employee wearing a signature orange apron. They’re trying to replace a specific part — maybe a gasket, or a flange. It can be like finding a needle in a haystack. In 2016, in an effort to aid customers with this exact problem, the retailer added visual search to its mobile app by adding a camera icon to the search bar. Two years later, it's still waiting for it to pay off. DTC brands, fueled by Facebook ads, are shifting focus elsewhere
Instagram darling Glossier is going rogue. After relying on Facebook and Instagram to facilitate the majority of its conversations between brand and audience, the beauty startup that has raised nearly $90 million in funding is heavily investing in building its own platform to talk to its customers. The brand didn’t share how much of its marketing budget goes to Facebook and Instagram, but brand president Henry Davis believes that accessing its audience through third-party platforms makes the conversations less rich and the feedback that comes out of them less insightful.
‘Google a decade ago’: Buyers still have gripes about Amazon advertising
For a $3 billion ad business, with Citibank projecting it to reach $50 billion in the next decade, Amazon is still failing at many of the basics, according to ad buyers, with common complaints around slow and rudimentary tools and dashboards, case studies and robust sales support for buyers. Digiday Research: What marketers pay for branded content distribution
The majority of client-side marketers aren’t paying much to distribute content in their branded content campaigns according to a Digiday survey. Of the 31 client-side marketers surveyed at the Digiday Content Marketing Summit this August, six in 10 say they pay under $10,000 for branded content distribution on an average campaign. [Member-exclusive research] | 