Tag: Livestreaming

Kohl’s To Livestream On Periscope During The Oscars

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
National retail chain Kohl’s aims to connect with young Millennials with a branded livestream during Oscar’s red carpet show and commercial breaks. As part of its social marketing push, Kohl’s teamed up with comedian Vanessa Bayer and renowned party planner Mindy Weiss to help fans plan their Oscar viewing parties with Kohl’s products. Thanks to Periscope’s recent Twitter integration, people will be able to watch Kohl’s livestream right in their timelines as well.

What Brands Need To Do
As an emerging medium, livestreaming gives brands a platform to engage consumers in real time with branded content, Kohl’s Oscars livestream provides viewers with a behind-the-scene peak at a major media event, which should generate a lot of interest organically for Kohl’s content. If your brand haven’t tried livestreaming yet, now would be a good time to start experimenting with this rising platform.

 

Source: AdWeek

 

YouTube To Combine Live Streaming With 360-Degree Videos

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
You will soon be able to live stream 360-degree videos on YouTube, as the digital video platform looks to push deeper into virtual reality content with immersive live broadcasts. YouTube added live-streaming capability back in 2010, and introduced support for 360-degree videos in July last year. The Alphabet-owned company has been reportedly meeting with multiple 360-degree camera makers to discuss possible partnerships and integrations. Previously, YouTube has worked with GoPro to create The GoPro Odyssey, a 16-camera rig developed by Google’s JUMP program, which allows for real-time stitching of 360-degree videos while shooting.

What Brands Need To Do
Both virtual reality and live streaming provide new platforms for brands to connect with their audiences in innovative, exciting ways. By combining the two, YouTube may provide brands with a killer tool to amplify the reach of their sponsored events and engage with online consumers in real time, and that is something all brands with branded events planned should pay heed to.

 

Source: Buzzfeed

Facebook’s Live-Streaming Feature Now Available To All iOS Users In U.S.

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Nearly two months after Facebook started rolling out its live-streaming feature Live Video to non-celebrity users, the social network now declares that the feature is available to all U.S. users with iPhones. Android users and international markets will receive the self-broadcasting tool in coming weeks. Facebook introduced the feature in August last year to certified celebrity Pages exclusively at first, five months after live-streaming app Meerkat broke out at the SXSW festival last March.

What Brands Need To Do
Compared to Meerkat and Twitter’s Periscope, Facebook may be late in its entry. But its vast user base (1.59 billion and growing, per Facebook’s latest quarterly report) should give this new feature a competitive edge over the two aforementioned early movers in mobile live streaming. The option to save a live broadcast to a timeline should come in handy for brands seeking to create video content straight from their live events. Overall, this new feature will provide brands with a new channel to connect with fans in real time, as well as opportunities for sponsoring social influencers or broadcasting branded events.

 

Source: Wired

Header image courtesy of Facebook Newsroom

YouTube Gaming To Offer Mobile Broadcasting And Ad-free Monthly Subscription

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
YouTube Gaming continues to catch up with its archrival Twitch with an Android app update, which adds paid subscriptions, called “sponsorships.” For a monthly fee of $3.99, sponsorships let users go ad-free and unlock exclusive content from their favorite streamers. Moreover, the new update also lets users broadcast directly from their mobile devices, largely simplifying the set-up process.

Industry Impact
As YouTube gradually closes the gap between its gaming division and Twitch, these new features, especially the “sponsorships,” give gamers some incentives to put up their content on YouTube Gaming, as it does not require exclusivity as Twitch does. And with the proliferation of content, YouTube Gaming should be able to attract more eyeballs, which, combined with the vast amount of user data that Google has, offers brands and advertisers a great platform to target millions of young millennials that make up the gaming community.

 

Source: The Verge

This Presidential Election Will Be Live Streamed

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Tuesday’s Democratic debate drew a record 15.3 million live viewers for CNN. More impressive, however, is the number of people that watched the debate via CNN’s live streaming feed via its mobile apps, website, and Apple TV channel. According to CNN, viewers peaked at 980,000 concurrent streams around 10:20 p.m., topping the 921,000 peak concurrent streams CNN had for the first GOP debate last month, and setting an all-time record for a live news event.

Industry Impact
Political campaign ad spending has been historically crucial for the media industry in election years. But this time around, we may be seeing a significant portion of the ad dollars shifting toward digital and mobile. In fact, according to expert estimations, ad spending will top $4.4 billion for the presidential race, of which digital spending could take up about $1 billion in 2016, a staggering 576% growth over 2012. As livestreaming continues to evolve as a legitimate alternative to live TV, we expect to see more brand opportunities and content formats arise.

 

Source: Variety

Fashion Meets Live Streaming At NYFW

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
The future of New York Fashion Week will be live streamed. While approximately 100,000 people attended last September’s shows in person, 2.6 million live-streamed them instead. This year, the streams are going mobile, as Ralph Lauren announced it’s broadcasting its Collection show live on Periscope next week. Moreover, Rebecca Minkoff recently packaged its fall 2015 show into a virtual reality video with Jaunt, a California-based cinematic VR company, for an immersive viewing experience.

What Brands Should Do
Fashion shows are usually well-produced luxury experiences, and fashion brands would be missing out on the opportunity to reach a wider audience if they don’t take advantage of nascent media platforms and emerging technologies. Moreover, brands like Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger have started to include buy buttons on their live streams that link to their online shops, turning the content streams into direct sales channels, something that more brands should explore.

 

Source: Racked

Livestreaming Continues To Evolve With Branded Streams And Mirrativ

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Mobile-based livestreaming continues to gain momentum as eight brands – including Taco Bell, CoverGirl, Verizon, and Pepsi – sponsored branded Periscope streams for this Sunday’s VMAs on MTV channel. Though not the first time brands have sponsored a livestream, this is definitely the largest one in scale so far.

While existing livestream apps such as Meerkat and Periscope captures their feeds from the phone’s cameras, Japanese mobile game maker DeNA is looking to flip the script by allowing easy streaming of one’s screen display. Last week, the company announced Mirrativ, an Android-based livestreaming platform that essentially brings Twitch’s interface to mobile, as it uses the phone’s camera and microphone to capture the stream host’s face and voice while also capturing what’s on the screen’s display.

What Brands Should Do
As livestreaming continues to evolve as an emerging media platform, we expect to see more brand opportunities and content formats arise as experiments continue. Mirrativ, while positioned as a game livestreaming app, could easily be repurposed for live app demos or customer services a la Amazon Fire’s real-time Mayday tech support. And branded livestrreams during big media events offer brands a great shortcut to get their content in front of a mobile audience in real time. Therefore, brands that wish to stay connected to today’s mobile-first consumers would be wise to start exploring the vast potential this nascent media platform holds today.

 

Source: AdWeek & VentureBeat

Facebook Debuts Live-Streaming Feature For Celebrity Pages

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Wednesday, Facebook unveiled a new “Live” feature in its Mentions app for verified celebrities, which allows stars to live-stream video footage to their fans watching through the main Facebook app or on the web. After the live sessions end, a recording of the livestreams will be published to celebrites’ pages so that fans can catch up or rewatch.

What Brands Should Do
Facebook’s entry into the live-streaming space offers brands and early adopters one more prominent platform to explore, and its larger user base makes it instantly appealing, compared to the much smaller audience Meerkat and Periscope have been drawing. Even though this is only offered to celebrities as of now, brands can still easily find ways to capitalize on the live audience via sponsorships and product placements. If it takes off, we expect Facebook to expand this feature to all users.

Update 8/13: As we anticipated. Facebook has confirmed that this new live broadcasting feature will soon be open to journalists and all Verified Profiles.

Source: AdWeek

Image courtesy of Facebook

Meerkat Debuts Original Content With Al Roker-Fronted Cooking Series

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Meerkat, the popular live-streaming app that broke out at this year’s SXSW, has been consciously diversifying its content offering, partnering up with cable channels like CMT and Discovery for exclusive behind-the-scene looks. Now, it is ready to venture into and encourage original content with a three-part cooking series starring well-known TV personality Al Roker, a noted early Meerkat adopter.

What Brands Should Do
Already, several brands in various industries, including entertainment, sports, and automobile, have been eagerly experimenting with live-streaming on Meerkat and Periscope to reach today’s mobile-first, instant gratification-seeking consumers. Earlier last month, Nestlé became the first brand to run a paid campaign on Periscope, hiring social influencers to promote its Drumstick ice cream cone in their live streams. As the platform continues to grow and add more brand-friendly features, brands of all types would be wise to start to develop livestreaming strategies and explore the nascent platform.

 

Source: The Verge

Meerkat Adds Support For HD Live Streaming From GoPro Cameras

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Meerkat continues to break new ground as it announced a GoPro integration on Thursday. Built with GoPro’s open-source software, this new feature allows Meerkat users on iOS devices to easily live stream HD footage from their GoPro 3 cameras when connected to the same wireless network.

What Brands Should Do
The new feature came on the heels of Meerkat’s recent addition of brand-friendly “Cameo” feature (read our in-depth Fast Forward analysis on this here), and both present great opportunity for Millennial-focused brands to connect with their audience on mobile devices. The integration with GoPro cameras brings high-quality footage to Meerkat, making live-streaming a more appealing content platform for media owners and brands. Brands, especially those in travel or outdoor categories, could benefit greatly from this integration by making good use of the flexibility and high-definition footage that GoPro cameras provide in outdoor shooting.

 

Source: AdWeek