Here’s the digital media news you may have missed last week:
General
- While everyone was focused on CES, Major League Gaming (MLG) launched their Overwatch League season. In proof that eSports can reach an audience, over 10 million people (globally) watched over 4 days. It’s worth checking out, as MLG have been really good at building, branding local and national team franchises.
- A week ago, Facebook upset publishers with changes to the news feed. Maybe a coincidence, maybe not, but Snap now a content platforms lead and has started publisher outreach. This includes a publisher summit. As details firm up, expect to hear from publishers as to how they are participating in the summit.
- Facebook has launched a WhatsApp business app. Android only (for now) and available in the US, Indonesia, Italy, Mexico, and the U.K. The app will support business profiles, as well as other tools (quick replies, statistics) to help make WhatsApp more effective for business communication.
- Instagram is testing a new feature called “type”. As the name suggests, it’s a post where the plain background/image where you can type your message. You can check out a video of how it works here.
- More details have emerged on the content coming to Facebook Watch. Including original series from Bear Grylls, The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly, and more. A list of programming can be found on Tubefilter.
- Interesting stat – AppAnnie reports that global app downloads for 2017 surpassed 175B and $86B in revenue. China and India are the top 2 countries driving app downloads.
- Jivox and IBM Watson announced a partnership around weather based triggers, which is evidence that this form of dynamic creative is now a given.
- Amazon is increasing the monthly price of Amazon Prime from $10.99 to $12.99. Amazon Prime student is also increasing in price. The increase is for pay-per-month plans only, annual subscription remains at $99. Why is this news? Amazon typically looks to add more “value” to membership off the back of Prime price increases. So keep an ear out for new features for Prime subscribers.
- Google inked a patent licensing deal with China’s Tencent. Google has done deals like this before with companies like Cisco, Samsung, and LG.
Brand Safety
- YouTube has made some major changes to improve brand safety on the platform. Full details are on the official blog post, but there’s also a post specifically for content creators. A summary:
- Google Preferred videos will all undergo manual review (as of mid-February)
- channels with fewer than 1,000 subs or 4,000 watch hours will no longer be eligible for ads
- public announcement of 3rd Party Verification (in beta) with IAS and DoubleVerify
Ad Fraud
- The Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG), the industry initiative to reduce fraud in the programmatic supply chain, has now mandated that Ads.txt be supported in order for publishers to be TAG certified. The deadline for implementation is July 1.
Joshua
PS. If you’re looking for a new Podcast, the latest IPG Media Lab podcast (Floor 9) is worth your time. Episode 8 has a great wrap of CES.