Snapchat Teamed Up With The NFL To Sell Ads In Super Bowl Live Story

What Happened
Snapchat has sold out the ad spots in its Live Story for the upcoming Super Bowl, with Marriott, Budweiser, Pepsi, and Amazon on board as sponsors. Video ads from these sponsors will run amid the Super Bowl Live Story, which gains its content from a content partnership that Snapchat inked with the NFL in September. As part of the deal, the ad revenue will be split between the NFL and Snapchat, who missed out on last year’s Super Bowl when it sought a single brand to sponsor its Live Story for $1.77 million.

What Brands Need To Do
Through this NFL deal, Snapchat shows it is getting serious on buffing up its content offerings and turning its vast user base into a monetizable audience. For brands that wish to reach young millennials and centennials, Snapchat is a platform that should be taken into consideration. Besides Live Stories, brands can engage with Snapchat users by posting their own content or purchasing video ads in its Discover channels.

 


Source: Digiday

How Brands Can Make Use Of Twitter’s New “Moments” Feature

What Happened
Earlier today, Twitter officially launched Moments, a brand new way for users to discover top tweets and for brands to reach a wider audience. Previously known as Projected Lightning, this new Moments feature presents editorially curated collections of best tweets in regard to various news items and live media events. With this new feature, users can now easily find the top tweets of the moment in a separate tab across Twitter’s mobile apps and desktop sites, therefore shifting its content focus from a user’s timeline to breaking news and events in real time. Major publishers like BuzzFeed, The New York Times, and The Washington Post have signed up to try out this new product. Twitter also reportedly has deals in place with a number of unnamed brands to run ads within the collections in coming weeks.

What Brands Need To Do
This new feature makes content discovery on Twitter easier and quicker, especially for casual users. Therefore it enhances Twitter’s appeal as a go-to site for real time news and events, which in turn brings a bigger audience for brands. Moreover, it also provides brands specific channels to reach different audience segments based on their interests, such as a sportswear brand reaching sports lovers by live-tweeting a major sports event. Although Twitter’s selections seem to be fairly news-centric at the moment, we can already foresee brands of all types getting on board during live media events with high-quality, timely tweets to get a piece of the amplified attention.

 


Source: The Verge

Promotional image courtesy of Twitter 

Periscope Users Live-Pirated The MayPac Fight

Read original story on: The Verge

This past Saturday night, the welterweight boxing championship match between Mayweather and Pacquiao captured the nation’s attention. Yet the pay-per-view content providers HBO and Showtime weren’t happy when they found out that a handful of paid viewers used live-streaming app Periscope and, to a lesser extent, rival app Meerkat, to re-broadcast the fight to thousands of non-paying fans. Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo, even declared Periscope the “winner” of the night via a tweet, but the obvious piracy issue here no doubt undermined such victory.

Despite the complications it causes in re-broadcasting live events, the rise of live-streaming apps also brings content creators new channels to connect with an increasingly fragmented audience. HBO itself used Periscope to offer a behind-the-scene look into Manny Pacquiao’s dressing room via Twitter. When it comes to live-streaming, like many new media platforms before it, there may be more potential that could be utilized by media owners than its downsides.

What To Expect From Tomorrow’s Apple Event

By now, you probably know about Apple’s live event tomorrow. But after September’s double punch of the Apple Watch and iPhone 6 (and Plus), how will the Cupertino company attempt to wow audiences this time?

Loads of Hardware Updates

The focus of tomorrow’s Apple event is widely speculated to be hardware updates: from new iPads to an updated Mac Mini, everything seems ripe for an annual update just in time for the holiday season. Still, the suspense remains on just how “drastic” the updates will be. For instance, everybody knows that the new iPads are going to be thinner, lighter and faster—but will they come with NFC and Touch ID to make it Apple Pay-ready?

Public Release of Yosemite And Apple Pay

The much-anticipated public release for OS Yosemite and Apple Pay is all-but-confirmed at this point. The scope of Apple Pay’s roll-out, though, will be one interesting thing that we will hopefully find out.

Possible Update of Apple HomeKit

Finally, rumor has it that Apple will update its long-ignored HomeKit by integrating Siri and turning Apple TV into a central hub for smart home appliances. Though least likely to happen, this update would no doubt fit with the “it’s been way too long” tagline on Apple’s event invite.

As usual, we’ll be live-tweeting the event. Check back with us tomorrow to find out what Apple is up to this time.