Mic Experiments With Facebook Video Monetization; Snapchat Is Vocal About Its Video Advantage

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Blurred Lines

Mic is experimenting aggressively with ways to monetize its video content on Facebook. The millennial-minded news org will intermittently insert a brand’s logo into a Facebook video, while also featuring the brand in the video title, Mike Shields reports for The Wall Street Journal. This designates it as branded content, according to Facebook, but Mic CEO Mike Altchek disputes the label on the grounds that the videos are produced by editorial, not by a brand or content studio. But he’ll take the revenue, thank you very much. More. Mic has pushed the envelope with Facebook ads before. In May Facebook changed its ad policy to forbid custom banner ads that Mic was inserting into editorial videos.

Snappy Retort

Snapchat has at least one major advantage over Facebook when it comes to video advertising ROI, and it isn’t keeping quiet about it. “Basically when you’re buying advertising without sound,” said Snapchat strategy chief Imran Khan onstage at DMEXCO, “you’re not really buying video, you’re buying a moving banner.” Google ad boss Sridhar Ramaswamy also brought up muted video, but only to say it wasn’t an active concern to YouTube advertisers (though YouTube does have an sound-on video ad offering). More at Ad Age.

Planting Seeds

VR attracted more than a billion dollars in investments in recent years, money that has gone largely to content development and gaming applications in particular. Now interest is seeping into the ”ad tech layer,” writes Adweek’s Christopher Heine. Read it. A self-described VR ad tech company, Vertebrae, just picked up $10 million. The company claims to facilitate ads on Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and other headsets. “We’re not just an agency,” according to Vincent Cacace, CEO of Vertebrae. “We’re building a conduit and a pipeline to give exposure across all parts of the ecosystem.”

Streaming For EU And Me

The EU may amend copyright laws to extend access to streaming content across its member nations. It’s great for Netflix and Amazon Prime, which won’t need country-by-country licensing deals, and for entertainers/singers/content creators who will be able to demand more from YouTube and their studios. One big loser – surprise surprise – may be Google, which could be required to mass-filter content on YouTube and other services. “This would effectively turn the internet into a place where everything uploaded to the web must be cleared by lawyers before it can find an audience,” responds Google global policy VP Caroline Atkinson. Agence France-Presse has the news via Yahoo. And, more At The New York Times.

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