If Instagram and Vine are the media in which millennials spend their time, why aren’t news producers publishing there?
That’s what NowThisNews, a news startup founded by Huffington Post co-founder Ken Lerer, is doing.
“We’re building the first video news org that produces original videos for the platforms and devices you take with you,” SVP Frank Kavilanz tells Beet.TV in this video interview.
“Whether it’s your mobile phone, your tablet, your accounts on Instagram, Vine or Snapchat … we produce 50 original videos for those platforms every day.”
NowThisNews’ news videos are naturally short – six or 15 seconds in the case of Vine and Instagram. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an advertiser opportunity here, too.
Kavlianz is trying to sell marketers on “the branding power of video without the traditions pre-roll” – meaning sponsored messages that go out alongside social videos, an original branded content production offering and marketing video production around real-time news events.
Ben & Jerry’s has already taken up the startup’s offer of branded content. NowThisNews could be one to watch. Om Malik this week wrote an interesting take on the short-form ad opportunity.
Kavlianz was speaking at the Beet.TV summit on cross-platform monetization, hosted by Starcom MediaVest Group and sponsored by Dailymotion.
