Category: Social Media

YouTube collaborates with Subhash Ghai’s WWI to create YouTube Space in Mumbai

MUMBAI: India is seeing an emergence of a new generation of YouTube creators who are capturing the color, music, humour, and drama of India more creatively than ever before. In fact, Indian creators are now amongst the top contributors in Asia when it comes to driving time spent on YouTube watching videos.

Recently, the country also celebrated milestones for two Indian creators All India Bakchod (AIB) and The Viral Fever (TVF), who reached over one million fans within two years on the platform. To support this increasing community of YouTube creators and foster the next generation of talent, YouTube has partnered with Subhash Ghai’s film school, Whistling Woods International (WWI), to set up a new YouTube Space in Mumbai.

“Through this collaboration, India’s popular up-and-coming YouTube creators, as well as their students, will have free access to Whistling Woods’ studios, high-end audio, visual and editing equipment, in addition to training programs, workshops and community events. We’re already in advanced stages of setting up the place and we’ll be opening the gates for all creators soon,” said YouTube Spaces Asia Pacific head David Macdonald.

As of now YouTube Spaces has a presence in Los Angeles, London, Tokyo, New York City, Sao Paulo, and more recently in Berlin. Since the first Space was launched in 2012, creators have visited YouTube Spaces over 100,000 times. “We have had over 800 events and workshops and our partners have created over 11,000 videos. Like all of our production facilities, YouTube Space Mumbai will be a place where creators can collaborate, innovate and experiment with new content for audiences around the world to watch and love,” added Macdonald.

The YouTube Space Mumbai is a move forward from YouTube to help foster creativity, entrepreneurship and partnership with top video creators in the country and around the world.

The collaboration between YouTube and WWI will offer opportunities to:

• Learn: From training programs and workshops to master classes, there are opportunities to get hands-on experience from industry leaders, and learn to use high end production equipment, production techniques, and YouTube best practices.

• Connect: Attend events, meet fellow creators, spark new ideas and share experiences on how to succeed on YouTube.

• Create: This is a space for creators to bring stories to life. They’ll have access, for free, to studios and all the latest audio, visual and editing equipment that will enable them to experiment and create great videos that fans will love.

August 19, 2015
Facebook’s new features help increase interactivity & user-interest

NEW DELHI: In a series of rapid announcements specifically aimed at advertisers, Facebook has made a significant expansion of ad types and formats available in the Audience Network to get better outcomes for the advertisers, and the people that use the app.

Some of the features of the new innovations are:

1. Native autoplay video: By upgrading to the latest SDK and utilizing the new MediaView, publishers can now bring the autoplay video ads experience from Facebook directly to their apps. Video demand will also compete with native display in the same auction to maximize yield for each impression served. Over the past six months, Facebook has seen increased publisher adoption of native ads with ~ five times more apps now using native ads than the start of 2015. In fact, native ads represent over 80 per cent of impressions in the Audience Network.

2. Click-to-play video: Via a server-side change, Facebook will now show click-to-play video ads from Mobile App Install advertisers in full screen interstitials. Publishers who already use Audience Network full screen interstitials will be eligible to deliver the following formats without any changes to their existing placements:

3. Carousel Ads: High engaging format that shows multiple ads in a single view that people can scroll through. This experience is very similar to H-Scroll, however all ads are from a single advertisers instead of multiple advertisers. They can showcase up to five images within a single ad unit.

4. Dynamic Product Ads: Retailers and e-commerce businesses with large product catalogs have seen success creating personalized ads for their shoppers on Facebook, and now their campaigns can extend to the Audience Network. This solution will generally be delivered in Carousel formats.

In a statement, Facebook said, “We have a deep understanding of what formats perform well and drive engagement in Facebook News Feed and are taking two of our best performing units and making them available off Facebook to further empower Audience Network publishers and help drive results for advertisers.”

August 16, 2015
Why Google’s new structure is good news

Google has announced a major overhaul of its corporate structure. The new structure creates a holding company which is called Alphabet. This will comprise a collection of companies, the largest of which will be Google. Within Google will sit key services such as Search, Maps, Chrome, YouTube and Android. Outside of Google will sit projects such as Fiber and Nest. The full announcement can be seen here on the new Alphabet website https://abc.xyz/ . In addition to the restructure there are several key management changes, the most notable being the elevation Sundar Pichai to Google CEO.

Google has long been considered part of the fabric of the internet. In many respects it has been the electricity of the web powering many consumer journeys, driving the largest share of advertising experiences globally, and certainly contributing significantly to the digital economy.

Google Corp itself was constructed like an electrical circuit running in series (rather than in parallel). The challenge with a ‘series’ organisational structure is that if there is a break in one part of the chain, the whole is affected. For example if Google Glass fails it affects Google’s core business (if only in terms of public perception). Similarly, if Google (Search) faces regulatory scrutiny it is likely to negatively impact the development of other areas of the business such as Nest, driverless cars etc.

The move to operate in parallel (through the creation of Alphabet) rather than in series will have a positive impact in several areas:

1. Innovation: Google can take its moonshots and fail without impacting the core business of advertising. Having this structure should therefore enable it to be more agile.

2. Regulation: Google has come under significant regulatory scrutiny particularly in Europe where it has already restructured to give a more singular approach to the authorities. The new structure will protect it further from regulatory issues by enabling it to fight one product/company at a time.

3. Organisation: With the new structure the Google subsidiary will be better able to focus on the reorganisation of its advertising and technology sales operations which require closer integration if the company is to take full advantage of its market-leading integrated advertising stack approach.

4. FaceOff: Facebook has deliberately kept the majority of its operations (FB, Instagram, Oculus) relatively separate from a B2B and consumer point of view, which has resulted in product innovation, advertising success and much less regulatory scrutiny. Although the Alphabet structure doesn’t exactly replicate that of Facebook, it is certainly an implicit acknowledgement of the successful Facebook corporate strategy.

5. Investor Relations: Google’s new structure is a clear signal of the arrival of a new finance director. The structural change and the subsequent increase in organisational clarity and transparency will no doubt be a very positive sign to investors.

(The author of this article is ZenithOptimedia chief digital officer. The article has been sourced from ZenithOptimedia’s website. The views expressed here are purely personal views of the author and Indiantelevision.com does not necessarily subscribe to them.)

August 14, 2015
Realistic web series launched to engross the internet-savvy

NEW DELHI: With the average Indian spending more than eight hours on the internet and with TV content being aimed at women over 35 years, the first ever tech thriller web series has been launched in India.

Hankaar on the theme of drugs, real-estate dirty deals and prostitution in Mumbai entails ‘realistic fiction’ content that explores the stories of five ordinary people who go through extraordinary life changing experiences. Unfortunately, in the real world of television, ‘realistic fiction’ is not the most ideal space for producers to put their money in.

Writer Yogi Chopra said, “As producers, we realize that Indian television is not ready for this kind of content. But we are keen to create not just one, but at least three seasons of this series. It is certain that there is an audience for this type of content, but because it is deemed non-commercial, it is difficult to find required funding.”

Hankaar is looking to raise Rs 8 lakh in 50 days and is live on Wishberry.in.

People who back the project will get an opportunity to be co-producers and give their inputs in the making of the series. Crowd funding has become a new favourite way for filmmakers to find genuine backing – monetary and non-monetary.

August 10, 2015
Facebook introduces private messaging between advertisers & consumers

NEW DELHI: Facebook has launched new communication features for Pages, making it easier for people and businesses to connect through private messaging. Private messaging is a popular way for people to connect with family and friends, and businesses are increasingly using it to connect with their customers.

Messages can now be sent to a Page from local awareness ads and this makes it easy for people to start a private message conversation with businesses directly from an ad.

Replies to comments can be sent privately with a message and allows Page administrators to address customer requests on their Page more effectively. It also helps show which Pages are highly responsive to customer messages through a rating badge displayed on the business’s profile. New tools have been provided for Page administrators to respond faster and track messages more efficiently.

A Blog Post by Facebook says, “There’s a reason many people prefer to communicate with friends and family through private messaging: it’s fast and convenient. And increasingly people want to communicate with businesses in the same efficient way. Over a billion people visit Pages every month looking for more information from businesses. Today we’re introducing new communication features for Pages, including more ways for customers to send private messages to businesses and new tools for Page admins to manage and respond to messages.”

The new “Send Message” call-to-action button for local awareness ads allows people to initiate private conversations with business Pages from News Feed ads, giving people a personal way to connect with businesses directly from ads.

Advertisers can start using the “Send Message” call-to-action button by creating a new local awareness ad and selecting “Send Message” in the “Call to Action” field. Until now, Page admins could only respond to customers either through a comment or private message. In the coming weeks, Page admins will be able to reply to public comments with a private message, helping them solve private customer requests more efficiently.

When a business responds privately to a comment, the comment shows a note that the business responded privately, so other Page visitors know that the business handled the request.

To make sure the messaging experience is valuable for both businesses and people, additional tools have been built to help people manage messages, including an option to block private messages from businesses.

To help Page admins respond faster to incoming messages, they can now create and save responses to common questions. Page admins can pull up saved replies and send them in one tap, making it faster and easier to respond to customers from mobile devices.

Facebook has also updated the admin inbox to make it easier to keep track of messages. Page admins can now conduct the following actions in bulk: archive, delete, flag and mark messages as read, unread and spam.

August 10, 2015
Kenshoo integrates with Instagram Ads API

MUMBAI: Kenshoo, a player in agile marketing software, has integrated with Instagram Ads API, enabling marketers to reach more than 300 million monthly active mobile consumers via the popular photo sharing service.

Pertinent to note here is that almost three years after being acquired by Facebook, Instagram recently launched Instagram Ads API.

Kenshoo is among the first Facebook Marketing Partners granted initial access to the Instagram Ads API. Kenshoo clients can now deliver engaging experiences to a highly immersive community of consumers on Instagram.

“Our integration with Instagram makes high-value mobile advertising inventory accessible to more advertisers. Kenshoo is thrilled to be among a group of the first Facebook Marketing Partners given initial access to the Instagram Ads API. The mobile audience on Instagram is significant and brands want to place their brand messages in front of this engaged audience,” said Kenshoo Asia-Pacific and Japan managing director Yukihiko Imamura.

Kenshoo’s Infinity Suite, integrated with Instagram’s Ads API, enables advertisers to gain a more holistic view and understanding of their social and mobile consumers. Additionally, advertisers benefit from the award-winning Kenshoo technology to automate the management and optimization of budgeting, bidding, and creative assets to meet their overall marketing goals.

Group M Australia SEM director Furqan Wasif said, “Instagram has quickly become a must-have advertising channel for brands that want to stay at the forefront of mobile engagement. Kenshoo’s access to the Instagram Ads API offering will enable us to streamline our campaign launches, and integrate them seamlessly with our existing mobile campaigns; allowing our team to get a comprehensive view of our entire campaign portfolio. The integration strategically complements our Facebook campaigns and creates extended reach for our clients to build their brands on a proven mobile platform.”

Kenshoo said the evidence showed already that Instagram advertising delivers substantial benefits to brands.

“Clients that have launched Instagram ads through Kenshoo are achieving average click-through rates higher than Q2 2015 industry averages for social advertising. When coupled with Kenshoo’s innovative suite of targeting and optimization tools, and brands advertising on Instagram have the potential to exponentially improve results for their entire campaign portfolio,” said Kenshoo SVP, product Will Martin-Gill.

The Kenshoo Infinity Suite leads the way in digital marketing innovation and plays a key role in helping the industry’s leading marketers understand and embrace innovation for their marketing success.

Built upon Kenshoo’s industry-leading and award-winning software for cross-channel digital marketing, the Kenshoo Infinity Suite provides enterprise software licensing options to reduce total cost of ownership by eliminating single point solutions. It also provides more value to clients by packaging all performance and optimization capabilities into one single dashboard.

August 7, 2015
Facebook introduces live interactions by celebrities

NEW DELHI: Athletes, musicians, politicians and other influencers who use Facebook Mentions to share and connect with their fans, can now go Live.

At a time when more than 900 million people are connected to public figures on Facebook, the company launched – Live, a new way for public figures to share live video from Mentions with their fans on Facebook.

With Live, public figures can take fans behind the scenes, host a Q&A, share announcements, and more — all in real time.

Public figures can use Live to grow and engage their fan base. Live is a new way for you to connect authentically with fans in a moment. When one starts a Live video, it will appear in News Feed for the fans to comment, like and share with their friends. People who have recently interacted with posts will also receive a notification when a broadcast starts.

Live can also help interact directly with fans and other public figures in real time, according to Facebook product manager Vadim Lavrusik. During a broadcast, the number of viewers and a real time stream of comments from people tuning in will appear and one can respond to comments live during the broadcast, or choose to hide comments.

A video can be kept by Live for fans to view later. After a broadcast has ended, the video will be published on the Page of the performer so that fans who missed it can watch at a later time, and remove it at any time.

Some live broadcasts that are lined up by public figures in the near future are Dwayne The Rock Johnson, Serena Williams, Luke Bryan, Ricardo Kaká, Ashley Tisdale, Lester Holt, Martha Stewart, Michael Bublé and more.

August 6, 2015
Q2-2015: Twitter sees 61% revenue growth, ad revenue up 63.2%

BENGALURU: Twitter, Inc. reported 60.9 per cent growth in revenue for the quarter ended 30 June, 2015 (Q2-2015) at $502.38 million as compared to the $312.17 million in the corresponding year ago quarter. Excluding the impact of year-over-year changes in foreign exchange rates, revenue would have increased 68 per cent says Twitter.Advertising revenue increased 63.2 per cent to $452 million as compared to $277 million in Q2-2014.

GAAP net loss of $136.66 million in Q2-2015 was lower than the net loss of $144.64 million in Q2-2014, while non-GAAP income in the current quarter was $48.52 million as compared to the $14.60 million in the corresponding year ago quarter. Adjusted EBIDTA for Q2-2015 at $120.19 million more than doubled (up 2.2 times) as compared to the $54.13 million in Q2-2014.

“Our Q2 results show good progress in monetization, but we are not satisfied with our growth in audience. However, product initiatives we’ve mentioned in previous earnings calls, like instant timelines and logged-out experiences, have not yet had meaningful impact on growing our audience or participation. This is unacceptable and we’re not happy about it. In order to realize Twitter’s full potential, we must improve in three key areas: ensure more disciplined execution, simplify our service to deliver Twitter’s value faster, and better communicate that value,” said Twitter interim CEO Jack Dorsey.

YTD, Twitter’s revenue increased 66.6 per cent to $938 million in Q2-2015 from $563 million in the six month period ended 30 June, 2014 (6M-2014). Ad revenue in 6M-2015 increased 67 per cent to $840 million as compared to the $503 million in 6M-2014. GAAP Net loss in 6M-2015 increased to $299.10 million as compared to the net loss of $277 million in the corresponding period of last year. Non GAAP net income in 6M-2015 increased to $95.03 million as compared to the $14.80 million in 6M-2014. YTD EBIDTA increased to $224.21 million as compared to the $91.08 million in 6M-2014.

Twitter says that Monthly Active Users – Average Monthly Active Users (MAUs) were 316 million for Q2-2015, up 15 per cent y-o-y, and compared to 308 million in Q1-2015. The vast majority of MAUs added in the quarter on a sequential basis came from SMS Fast Followers. Excluding SMS Fast Followers, MAUs were 304 million for Q2-2015, up 12 per cent y-o-y, and compared to 302 million in Q1-2015. Mobile MAUs represented approximately 80 per cent of total MAUs.

In Q2-2015, Twitter launched a new autoplay feature for native videos, Vines and GIFs, as well as Periscope live video streaming on Android.

July 31, 2015
Q2-2015: Facebook Ad revenue up 43 percent

BENGALURU: The Mark Zuckerberg led Facebook, Inc (Facebook) reported a 43 per cent increase in advertisement revenue in the quarter ended 30 June, 2015 (Q2-2015) at $3287 million (94.7 per cent of Total Revenue or TR) as compared to the $2676 million (92 per cent of TR) in Q2-2014 and a 15.3 per cent increase as compared to the $4420 million (93.6 per cent of TR) in Q1-2015. As is obvious, advertising revenue, which in any case formed the biggest component of TR is increasing its share of TR even more. Facebook offered fresh evidence of its allure to deep-pocketed big brands, as it and Google Inc., increasingly take the lion’s share of the fast-growing mobile advertising market says a Wall Street Journal report. (http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-revenue-rises-39-1438200350). Please refer to Fig A below.

TR in the current quarter improved by 38.9 per cent to $4042 million as compared to the $2910 million in the corresponding year ago quarter and increased 14 per cent as compared to the $3546 million in Q1-2015, which had seen q-o-q revenues dip.

A digression here – over the past few years, Facebook revenues (led by Ad revenue) trend to dip in the first quarter of the year. This could potentially lead to advertisers asking for, and with a higher chance of Facebook accepting/offering discounts in the first quarter of each year.

For the six month period ended 30 June, 2015 (6M-2015, YTD), TR increased 40.2 per cent to $7586 million as compared to the $5412 million in 6M-2015. Ad revenue in 6M-2015 was up 45 per cent to $7147 million (94.2 per cent of TR) as compared to the $4941 million (91.3 per cent of TR) in the corresponding year ago period.

Mobile Ad revenue share has been increasing in Facebook’s Ad and TR. Mobile Ad revenue represented approximately 76 per cent of advertising revenue for Q2-2015, up from approximately 62 per cent of advertising revenue in Q2-2014 and approximately 73 per cent in the immediate trailing quarter. Please refer to Fig B below.

User Data

Daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 96.8 million on average for June 2015, an increase of 17 per cent y-o-y.

Mobile DAUs – Mobile DAUs were 84.4 million on average for June 2015, an increase of 29 per cent y-o-y.

Monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 1.49 billion as of 30 June, 2015, an increase of 13 per cent y-o-y.

Mobile MAUs – Mobile MAUs were 1.31 billion as of 30 June, 2015, an increase of 23 per cent y-o-y.

“This was another strong quarter for our community,” said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “Engagement across our family of apps keeps growing, and we remain focused on improving the quality of our services. Users now spend more than 46 minutes a day on average on Facebook and its other properties, including Facebook Messenger and photo-sharing app Instagram “.

The company’s income however did not keep up with the growth in revenue. Operating Income declined 8.4 per cent to $1273 million (31.5 per cent margin) as compared to the $1390 million (47.8 per cent margin) in Q2-2014, but improved 36.34 per cent q-o-q from $933 million (26.3 per cent margin) in the immediate trailing quarter.

Net income in the current quarter also declined 9.1 per cent to $719 million (17.8 per cent) as compared to the $791 million (27.2 per cent margin) in Q2-2014, but improved by 40.4 per cent as compared to the $512 million in the immediate trailing quarter. Please refer to Fig C below.

July 30, 2015
YouTube redesigns mobile app; adds new tabs

MUMBAI: If you watched a YouTube video recently, chances are you did it on your phone or tablet and also saw the new look and design of the app.

With more than half the views on YouTube coming from mobile devices, YouTube has now updated the official YouTube apps to bring an even better mobile experience to consumers thus making it easier than ever to find and create videos.

The update – available now on Android, mobile web, and soon on iOS – introduces three new tabs:

• Home: Easily explore and discover videos with recommendations based on watch history as well as personalized playlists.

• Subscriptions: Find the latest videos from your favorite channels and creators on the new Subscriptions tab. And to help make sure one never misses an upload, consumers can now tap the bell icon on channels to get a notification as soon as a new video is posted.

• Account: One can check out playlists, watch history, and the videos they have uploaded all in one spot.

Additionally, in the new updated app, one can also now watch full-screen vertical videos with just a single tap for the very first time.

“But YouTube isn’t just about enjoying videos; it’s a place to express yourself and show the world what you love. With the redesigned app you can take your creativity to new levels using a new set of video creation tools. You’ve got an amazing camera in your phone or tablet, and now you can trim your footage, tint the image with filters, add music, and upload – all inside the app,” said YouTube product managers Matt Darby and Omri Amarilio.

“These are just a few of the features we’ve been working on, and you’ll see many more later this year,” the duo added.

July 24, 2015