CYNOPSISDIGITAL
05.04.15

Good morning. It’s Monday May 4, 2015, and this is your first early morning digital briefing.

 
At the Vice NewFront in Chelsea on Friday, CEO Shane Smith announced 20 new shows to debut on the gritty millennial network in the upcoming year. Titles include Gaycation with Ellen Page, Huang’s World, hosted by chef Eddie Huang, Weediquette, Vice Portraits with Marc Maron, Noisey, Motherboard, Fashion Week International, Black Market With Michael K. Williams, Vice World of Sports and F— That’s Delicious, hosted by the rapper Action Bronson. Talk is that the network will actually be a linear rebrand of A+E cable channel H2, but there’s no confirmation as of yet. A+E owns 10% of Vice.
 
Complex held its first NewFront at YouTube Space New York to announce a new partnership with BMP Digital (from Bunim/Murray Productions) to produce and distribute short-form unscripted and digital video projects and series. BMP Digital’s recent online shows include digital-to-TV crossover show BRKDWN; SOS: Stylist on Set starring Johnny Wujek; Best Ink Redemption; and two seasons of The Controller. The two companies will adapt Complex’s editorial content into video projects with the intention of evolving them into longer series and television projects.
 
At POPSUGAR’s NewFront held at New York’s Cedar Lake last week, execs unveiled a new slate of series and updates to its current shows to cater to the millennial woman. The company also released stats from ComScore: 60 percent of POPSUGAR’s audience accesses content on mobile. Digital video has surpassed two billion views to date. Its Facebook presence has grown in views from 20,000 in September 2014 to 14.5 million in March 2015. Most popular shows include Class FitSugar, with 70 million views. New programming includes:
* Three style series, Hannahgram with fashion influencer Hannah Bronfman, Upstaged with home stager Cheryl Eisen, and Knock Knock with designer Rachel Antonoff; two food series, Eat, Sleep, Repeat with foodie Eden Grinshpan and Ingrid Dishes with YouTube celeb chef Ingrid Nilsen; lifestyle shows Find Your Happy and Choose Your Challenge, Change Your Life!; plus Facebook-exclusive daily pop culture show POPSUGAR Rush.
* POPSUGAR will remain in the scripted-series market with two shows: an update to its comedy Seriously Distracted, which finds the returning cast breaking in a new boss, played by Nicole Richie. For its second scripted comedy series, PS formed a partnership with Above Average to create All My Friends Are Getting Married, produced by and starring Mae Whitman (Parenthood).
 
New Form Digital ended the first week of the NewFronts with a presence on three stages, announcing deals to produce original scripted digital series for Maker Studios and Refinery29. “Given that New Form only came into being a little over a year ago, I am thrilled to be bringing projects from digital-native creators to the best platforms in the business,” Kathleen Grace, chief creative officer, said. Shows include:
*Party Girl for Maker: A 10-episode comedy series created by Lisa Schwartz and Lacey Friedman that follows Lisa (played by Lisa Schwartz), a girl who dresses up as a princess at birthday parties.
*Sh—y Boyfriends for R29: An 8-episode comedy series written and created by Jessica Cabot and executive produced by Lisa Kudrow and Dan Bucatinsky.
 

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Emmy-winner Bernie Su (The Lizzie Bennett Diaries) and former TV executive producer David Tochterman (now with Versatility Media) teamed up to create Canvas Media Studios. Canvas will launch with a new original series for StyleHaul, which will be announced at its NewFronts tomorrow. "We were very excited to be tapped by StyleHaul to lead their expansion into scripted originals, and Bernie Su created this project specifically to integrate with their large influencer and advertiser network,” CMS’ Partner David Tochterman told Cynopsis.
 
My Country Nation (MyCN) will host a Mother’s Day special featuring music superstars Trisha Yearwood, Brad Paisley, Martina McBride and Sara Evans, comedian Tom Mabe as well as moms of stars Luke Bryan, Jerrod Niemann and Jana Kramer on May 10. Also this month, This Week In The Nation hosts will head to Arkansas and cover the Bentonville Film Festival. YouTube stars The Nive Nulls will also continue their DIY projects on the show, Starter House. These series join the lineup of MyCountryNation.com originals, including Karoke Kab, Superfan Nation, Young In The Nation, Bloodline Barons, Camping With Kids, and Simply Sara.
 
Fusion and Timeline, a digital media company that provides historical context behind the news, premiered a bi-weekly series highlighting major historical events for Snapchat. The series will weave video, text, and animation together to bring history to life for Snapchat users. The show joins originals Outpost, Weird Threads, Capitals, and The Artisans on Fusion’s Snapchat Discover page.
 
 

 
Last week, ad tech firm Unruly released a report that found that 80 percent of millennials will watch a TV show after viewing a promo shared online within their social network; yet TV marketers are failing to create engaging promos for digital natives. Cynopsis sat down with Unruly U.S. President Richard Kosinski to dive deeper into the study in advance of the presentation of the report at the IAB NewFronts Insights Lunch this week.
 
Cynopsis: Why did Unruly choose to research TV promos on social media?
Richard Kosinski: TV viewership of ad-supported content is down. There’s been a 30 percent drop in Live TV viewing since 2008. We’ve seen first-hand the impact of video engagement and sharing and its effect on the purchase process- from awareness to consideration to purchase intent, and we wanted to see how this translates to the TV space. It turns out that Millennials are eager to watch a TV show if a promo is shared with them – the key now for networks is create content that will resonate with a Millennial audience strongly enough to win their shares and launch them quickly. The viral peak for online videos is the day after launch.
CYN: How did you define “TV promo”?
RK: We used 3 classifications:
1. Clips: standalone scenes from an episode that has already aired.
2. Original Promos: newly filmed original content, often featuring one or more actors
3. Trailers: a compilation of teaser clips, usually with voice-over and text
 
We found that clips are the most prevalent format of promo used. This isn’t surprising, because they require the least additional production. However, original promos are the most viral – that is they had the greatest share rate (shares as a percentage of views).
CYN: Explain the "promo paradox."
RK: This is where things get really interesting! 80 percent of the Millennials in our study said they would watch a show if someone shared the promo with them online. This made sense to us – Millennials are highly social and eager to discover new content. A recommendation from a friend would carry a lot of stock. However, we saw that Millennials were ten percent less likely to share a promo – that is, they found them less engaging and relevant and weren’t as keen to attach the promo to their personal brand with a recommendation. So the promo paradox is that Millennials are eager to discover new content and be social with their friends in watching TV together, but the promos networks are making are falling flat.
CYN: Why should networks, shows, brands consider a social TV strategy?
RK: It’s important because fans expect it now. It’s one of the few cases where having a branded hashtag makes a big difference – fans want to be a part of the "official" conversation about their favorite TV shows. And from a purely monetary standpoint, getting people involved in your show and watching in real time means that the chance they’re actually seeing the commercials you’re airing is far, far greater than if they’re time-shifting.
CYN: Can you give us a peak of what to expect at the Insights lunch?
RK: I’ll be introducing the need for advertisers to have a content stack to overlay their programmatic plumbing to offer situational-relevant, personal online ads to targeted viewers. We’ll show marketers how to make better use of the content they’re already creating – namely TV commercials – and deploy them across all screens (from the big one in the living room to little one in the pocket) without increasing budgets.

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What better way to celebrate YouTube’s tenth birthday than by watching cute animals? “By the time you finish reading this post, YouTube viewers around the world will have watched about 2.5 years’ worth of animal-related videos,” YouTube’s blog noted in its introduction to first birthday-related animal themed vid. The Google platform goes on to say that there are more then ten million cat videos on YT at this moment, with an average of one to two feline vids uploaded per minute over the last ten years. Not a cat lover? Apparently, dog searches began surpassing cat searches on the site since 2010. Check out YT’s appreciation for the animal kingdom and help celebrate #10YearsofYouTube at www.cynopsis.com/#video.

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