Guiding Lite
Now that TV is the number-one device for watching YouTube, the free content platform is focusing on competing with the likes of Netflix, Max and Disney+.
Following in the footsteps of streamers who require users to pay for content, even if they are on an ad-supporter tier, YouTube is adding a new tier with a “light” ad load. Its new “Premium Lite” plan still serves up some ads to users at a slightly cheaper price than the OG version.
Ars Technica reports that Premium Lite will drop YouTube music and a few other features, like background playback or offline downloads, for roughly half the cost of the existing Premium plan, possibly somewhere around $7 or $8.
This means you likely won’t see preroll ads before your favorite video podcast – but you will see them before music videos and in some other places on the site, according to users in international markets where the new tier is already available.
Unlike most streaming services, YouTube’s revenue is derived primarily from ads rather than subscriptions, as one senior Emarketer analyst told Adweek. But its push toward a hybrid model is typical of how the streaming market has moved over the last few years – even if YouTube is coming at it from the exact opposite direction.
Uncringed
Remember Facebook?
Not, like, Meta. But the Big Blue app, as it’s actually called internally. Well, it’s Little Blue now.
And Facebook wants to matter again. Its plan involves enlisting top creators from YouTube, particularly, to post as much or more on Big Blue.
Facebook has a “big hill to climb,” Mark Rober, a former NASA engineer whose physics videos have a huge YouTube following, and who’s received the Facebook pitch, tells The Information.
“Instagram is culturally relevant – Facebook is not.”
Ouch.
Mark Zuckerberg told investors in January that he wanted to get back to “OG Facebook.” Presumably he didn’t mean a service that placed photos of freshmen women side by side to vote on, which is what precipitated Facebook.
But who knows.
“The corporate world is pretty culturally neutered,” Zuckerberg said on Joe Rogan’s podcast, also last month. “It’s one thing to say we want to be kind of, like, welcoming and make a good environment for everyone, and I think it’s another to basically say that ‘masculinity is bad.’”
A spokesperson tells The Information that Facebook is “exploring adding fun features that are a throwback to how Facebook was originally used in colleges and could create some buzz amongst younger audiences.”
Transparency In The Amazon
Media buyers (and lawmakers) have pushed ad tech companies for page-level reporting transparency in the wake of a damning Adalytics report regarding ads delivered on sites containing CSAM (child sexual abuse material).
Now, Amazon is making changes to its demand-side platform in the name of transparency, Digiday reports. Updates to Amazon’s DSP include new page-level reporting through the Traffic Events API. Amazon plans to lean on both internal and third-party tech to strengthen its brand safety controls.
“We are taking additional steps to help ensure this does not happen in the future,” says an Amazon Ads spokesperson, referring to the contents of the Adalytics report.
Amazon says it already gives brands site-level data through its Inventory Report within its DSP as well as through Amazon Marketing Cloud. But applying this degree of transparency to the Traffic Events API could fill in some gaps for marketers. One media buyer says site-level reporting through AMC isn’t particularly helpful.
Still, one in-house media buyer at a brand says they’d “like to see this [transparency] in practice before celebrating.”
But Wait! There’s More
Apple pulls its end-to-end encryption iCloud storage from new users in the UK over demands to install a government-accessible backdoor. [The Verge]
How TV news brands are chasing audiences on YouTube. [Ad Age]
Ray-Ban names A$AP Rocky its first creative director. [Business of Fashion]
How Gallery Media Group built a $50 million per year social-first publishing business. [Press Gazette]
You’re Hired
Newsweek promotes Danielle Varvaro to chief revenue officer. [release]
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