Tag: live streaming

MLB & Disney Acquired Streaming Rights For Leagues Of Legends Tournaments

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
BAMTech, a streaming tech company co-owned by Disney and the Major League Baseball, has picked up streaming rights to League of Legends tournaments, one of the biggest eSports franchises in the world. The company reportedly signed a deal north of $300 million with Riot Games for the exclusive rights to “stream and monetize” the massively popular video game tournament. In addition to taking over the tournaments’ distribution on existing streaming channels such as Twitch and YouTube Gaming, BAMTech plans to launch a dedicated streaming service for the LoL tournaments across various platforms.

What Brands Should Do
The massive acquisition underscores what a massive force of nature eSports live streaming has grown into in the media landscape. It easily commands millions of global viewers, a number that dwarfs most network TV programming today. In October, more than 43 million viewers worldwide watched online a League of Legends esports championship held at the Staples Center in LA. Some early-adopting brands, such as Coca-Cola and Geico, have been sponsoring eSports events to reach its young, male-skewing audience. More brands should consider leveraging the massive reach of eSports events to reach consumers via sponsorships or ads.

 

Source: The Wall Street Journal

How QSR Brands Are Using Livestreaming To Connect With Customers

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Several quick-service restaurants (QSRs) have been early-adopters of livestreaming, as marketers from Dunkin’ Donuts, Wendy’s, and Taco Bells shared some of their insights in using live video as a marketing channel with Digiday. The three QSR brands agree that livestreaming is a great way to connect with fans and boost online engagement in real time. While Dunkin’ Donuts and Taco Bells leveraged livestreaming to show customers some behind-the-scene peeks into their operations with kitchen tours and special events, Wendy’s partnered with social influencer Cody Johns this summer to promote its Baconator burger by making one live on air.

What Brands Should Do
Brand marketers looking to enter the livestreaming arena should take a cue from what these QSR brands are doing and learn from the insights and strategies they developed, from the necessity of fast and reliable internet connection in order to ensure the stream quality to letting the social media personalities take the center stage to avoid overt product promotion. In addition, it is also important for brands conducting live video sessions to remain nimble and open-minded to interact with the live audience and offer appropriate responses so as to maximize engagement.

 

Source: Digiday

Instagram Adds Ephemeral Live Video And Messages

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook continues its relentless chase after the Snapchat users by adding live videos and disappearing messages to Instagram. Starting today, users can start live broadcasting within Instagram Stories. Unlike other popular live-streaming platforms such as Facebook Live and Periscope, which allow users to save live videos for later viewing, the live videos on Instagram will become unavailable as soon as the broadcast ends. Besides live video, Instagram is also adding ephemeral messages to its Direct Messages, which appear in a dedicated horizontal message bar atop the permanent message threads.

This major update comes on the heels of Facebook’s several big moves to copy Snapchat features in the past month, including testing Snapchat-like features in its main app, buying a facial recognition startup that can help it develop smart selfie lenses, and even launching a Snapchat clone in emerging markets. It is safe to say that the social network giant is feeling the heat of the fast-growing messaging app.

What Brands Should Do
Nevertheless, Instagram’s 300 million daily monthly active users still double Snapchat’s user base at the moment. For brands, the addition of live video and ephemeral messages to Instagram opens the door for new types of customer interactions on one of the most popular social platforms. As Facebook continues to court young Millennial audience with Snapchat-inspired features, brands should consider incorporating these new features into their existing social strategies and choose the live-streaming platform that best suits their campaign objectives.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Lowe’s To Host Facebook Live Event To Promote Black Friday Deals

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Lowe’s is set to reveal eleven Black Friday deals during an upcoming Facebook Live event on Saturday. The home improvement retailer has been running video ads on the social platform for the last two weeks to push the 20-minute livestream event named “Mystery Box Bonanza.” This is not the first time Lowe’s has run a social video campaign on Facebook as the brand tested Facebook 360-degree video in July to teach viewers DIY home improvement skills and drive sales.

What Brands Should Do
This campaign marks the latest example of brands using live video to promote their products and drive sales. Brands such as Birchbox, Popeyes, McDonald’s, and GE have experimented with Facebook Live to reach customers while brands like Carl’s Jr, Coca-Cola, and Geico have sponsored livestreams on eSports sites. All these examples listed showcase the versatility of marketing opportunities that live streaming offers, which brands should leverage to connect with their audiences in innovative, exciting ways.

 

Source: AdWeek

Amex and JBL Harman Sign On As Sponsors For Twitter’s Original Live Shows

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Twitter has found two brand sponsors for its upcoming original live shows. Brand messages from American Express and JBL Harman will appear in and around The Starters and The Warmup, which are both athletic-minded shows produced by Twitter partner Turner Sports in conjunction with the NBA. The shows were first announced in July and will be broadcasted weekly via their designated Twitter pages as well as the NBA’s Twitter page.

What Brands Should Do
This announcement underscores Twitter’s aim to monetize its live video content and attracting sports fans who are also cord-cutters. As more and more consumers choose time-shifted viewing over linear TV, brands should follow the viewers and work with content creators to explore new TV ad formats on connected TV devices and engage with the audience in their living rooms.

According to a new report from eMarketer (paywall), US connected TV users is projected to reach 202.1 million in 2020, up from 181.8 million this year. To read more on how brands can reach viewers on OTT platforms with ads and branded content, please check out the Appified TV section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: AdWeek

Periscope Adds New Features To Boost Audience Engagement

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Twitter-owned live-streaming service Periscope has added three new tools aimed to help broadcasters better drive engagement. The Superfans feature provides broadcasters with a list of their most engaged viewers to help them identify their biggest fans and gain insights about their audience. The new Groups feature enables broadcasters to selectively stream to certain groups of their followers, allowing for exclusive reveals and special offers for a select group of audience. Last but not the least, Periscope rolled out a revamped web portal that allows desktop viewers to do the same things that are previously limited to its mobile app, such as send hearts or comments during live broadcasts.

Why Brands Should Care
All three new features should come as welcome additions for brands using Periscope as a live video platform to connect with their audience in real time. Facing mounting pressure from Facebook Live’s rapid growth and Instagram’s upcoming live streaming product, Periscope will need more differentiating features like these to maintain its early-mover advantages.

At a time when live-streaming platforms are quickly growing and increasingly drawing consumer attention, brands and publishers such as Dunkin’ Donuts and Tastemade are also rushing to this emerging medium to connect with customers in real time. For brands that are looking to try their hands at live video, it is important to keep an open mind and choose a platform that best suits your need and, perhaps more importantly, matches where your audience is.

 

Source: The Verge

Header image courtesy of Periscope’s Medium blog

Twitch Launches Unblockable Video Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Popular live-streaming site Twitch is launching a new video ad product that aims to circumvent ad-blocking software. Taking a page out of Facebook’s playbook, Twitch is now making its video ads indistinguishable from the site’s regular content so as to bypass detection by ad-blockers. The Amazon-owned site acknowledges in a blog post that it is “well aware that many dedicated Twitch viewers” use ad blockers but insists its platform will stay “agnostic” toward ad-blocking.

What Brands Should Do
This new ad product highlights the ongoing push-and-pull between consumers’ increasing avoidance of ads and digital platforms’ need for monetization. While this initiative should boost the viewability of Twitch’s video ads, brands looking to reach the young Millennial audience on Twitch may also consider native advertising such as the live, in-stream branded content that Carl’s Jr. tried with Vice Media.

For more information on how brands should leverage interesting branded content to earn consumer eyeballs, check out the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: The Verge

Live Video May Be Coming To Instagram

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Instagram is reportedly testing a live-streaming feature in Russia, where it is encouraging select users to start a broadcast via a “Go Insta” prompt in its Android app. The new feature appears to be embedded into the Instagram Stories section atop the app’s main page, with Live videos marked by a red “LIVE” banner.

What Brands Should Do
Although Instagram declined to confirm if it is testing such a feature, it would fall perfectly in line with its parent company Facebook’s aggressive approach to getting more users to use its Live video feature. Last week, Facebook launched a global ad campaign for Facebook Live, in which it highlights the variety of user-generated live video content on its platform. The social network has also been testing ad products for Live video.

Extending Live video to Instagram – which seems like a matter of time given Instagram’s quest for more video content in recent years – would no doubt increase the reach of its live-streaming content, giving brands a valuable channel to connect with online audiences in real time. Brands like Birchbox and GE are already using Facebook Live to build relationships with customers and convert interested social followers into customers, and those efforts may be easily transplanted to Instagram to reach non-Facebook users.

 

Source: The Verge

Facebook Enables Scheduling And Pre-Stream Lobby For Live Video

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook has updated its Live video again to let content creators to better plan their live broadcasts. Verified Page-owners can now schedule their Live video session up to a week in advance and generate URL links to the Live video for pre-broadcast promotions. Scheduling a broadcast will trigger a News Feed post where interested followers can opt in for a reminder via push notification when the live event starts. In addition, Facebook added a virtual pre-show lobby to allow viewers to enter a Live video session three minutes ahead of the start time.

What Brands Should Do
These two useful additions should help content creators attract more viewers on Facebook and deliver a better live experience. As Facebook continues its efforts to build out its Live video product, early-adopting brands such as Popeyes and Birchbox have been hosting live events on Facebook to engage with fans. As livestreaming continues to take off, brands should consider sponsorships or hosting their own events to reach a live audience.

 

Source:TechCrunch

Header image is a promotional image courtesy of Facebook’s media blog

Periscope Now Allows Select Users To Broadcast From Any Device

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Twitter is unbundling Periscope from the smartphone camera with the launch of Periscope Producer, an API that allows select users to stream high-quality, live video from external sources, including “streaming software, hardware encoders, and professional cameras.” Periscope has been testing this new product in the past few weeks, during which brands and media partners such as Louis Vuitton and NBC leveraged it to broadcast professionally made video content.

What Brands Should Do
The launch of Periscope Producer marks a major step in Periscope’s quest for more quality video content from media companies and experienced content creators, who can now take footage from professional cameras and use editing software to add multiple camera angles, on-screen graphics, and pre- or post-roll ads to their Periscope stream.

The immediacy that livestreaming brings to content makes it a good format for brands looking to engage with online audiences. Early-adopting brands such as Popeyes and McDonald’s have been organizing live events to launch new products and engage with fans. Brands looking to improve the quality of their live video content on Periscope can sign up here to try it.

 

Source: ReCode

 

Header image is a promotional image courtesy of Periscope’s Medium Blog