ft digital media

LONDON — Time was, investors wouldn’t look a content startup in the face. Lately, we have seen some financial energy go back in to ambitious, content-related companies. But that doesn’t change the challenging outlook, says one leading investor. “Content as original programming remains a very hard category to invest in,” says Saul Klein of Index […]

LONDON — Advertisers are being urged to quit viewing spending allocation as an “either-or” between TV and online video, and instead buy both together for campaigns. “We’re entering in to an economy where there are friends with benefits – video and TV working together,” says video advertising technology platform vendor Videology‘s head of global TV […]

LONDON — From Google’s Loon to Facbeook’s drones, the internet that Silicon Valley’s giants will create in Africa will be quite different to the one back home. With many first-time consumers adopting mobile devices before desktop, Africa may be a vision of the west’s media future. “The rate at which the mobile phone has grown […]

LONDON — Quartz, Atlantic Media’s online-only journalism offshoot, may be pitched at providing premium-grade analysis, but don’t expect the site to start charging any time soon. “Social mechanisms (are) the primary way that traffic is derived for most content sites today,” Quartz publisher and Atlantic Media SVP Jay Lauf tells Beet.TV. “Anything you do in […]

LONDON — With added TV and video features, the recent launches of the next-generation Xbox One and PlayStation 4 consoles has seen Microsoft and Sony move further increments closer toward their dreams of being living room entertainment super hubs. But that’s a “flawed strategy”, says one analyst. “The Xbox One strategy is … based on […]

LONDON — The Washington Post already invested in its Post TV online video brand last year. Now it plans to increase editorial video volume and to make more video available to native ad brands. “We’ll be telling more stories using more video content than ever before,” chief revenue officer Kevin Gentzel tells Beet.TV. “We’ll lead […]

LONDON — The Guardian’s publisher will post annual digital revenue up by a quarter to over £70 million ($116 million) for the year ending March, CEO Andrew Miller tells Beet.TV. Although many in the industry report worsening ad rates, the Guardian Media Group CEO says: “We’re seeing a hardening of our CPMs.” The group will […]

LONDON — The BBC’s proposal to close its linear youth TV channel BBC Three in the UK but to go on publishing its shows online under the same brand will have little impact for a service already heavily consumed online, says the corporation’s future media director. “The BBC is the first broadcaster to go online-only […]

LONDON — It may be forbidden from running even traditional display ads at home in the UK, but elsewhere in the world, the BBC’s commercial wing is embarking on blending marketing and editorial material, having recently embarked on sponsored content production effort. “There’s no reason why a brand … shouldn’t have a voice; anyone can […]

LONDON — Media people are talking a lot about “barbells” – Tim Armstrong’s metaphor for an advertising world that is coalescing around the seemingly polar forms of sponsored content on the one hand and data-driven display sales on the other. But one ad exec reckons those opposite ends aren’t as distinct as the metaphor suggests. […]

LONDON — BuzzFeed’s commercial stock in trade is offering sponsored editorial articles to brand marketers. Now it is extending the offering to digital videos. “We’ve done roughly 1,300 videos, 20% of them have over a million views.” says the publisher’s agency strategy VP Jonathan Perelman, who also recently took on its video GM role. BuzzFeed […]

LONDON — Nearly two years after launching, HuffPost Live, Huffington Post’s effort to reinvent rolling TV news, is on the verge of breaking even, says HuffPost’s CEO. “We’ve gotten to more than 100 million video views on a monthly basis now,” Jimmy Maymann tells Beet.TV. “We need scale to appeal to TV buyers – we’re […]

LONDON — The New York Times must halt its digital advertising decline as a priority, says CEO Mark Thompson in this interview with Beet.TV Advertising, which historically has only ever grown since digital media are themselves growing platforms, fell again by a small amount during the publisher’s last quarter. “We are absolutely determined to get […]