Dive Brief:

• ComScore has added a new mobile video metric for YouTube and its partner channels, according to a comScore press release. The expanded measurement options aim to help content producers show a clearer picture of their audience size as mobile viewing becomes increasingly important.  
• YouTube Partner Program members should be able to use the new metrics to improve cross-channel monetization of content across channels. Singling out mobile viewership has become important as 70% of YouTube views now happen on mobile devices, according to research cited by comScore.

• Of the top 50 YouTube channels, each, on average, extended its desktop reach by 218% when accounting for things like smartphones and tablets; total time viewed on those channels also increased by 380% after factoring in mobile views. Sixty-nine YouTube Partner channels reached a monthly audience of at least 10 million viewers across desktop and mobile combined when just 15 YouTube Partners reached that audience on desktop alone.

Dive Insight:

For content producers, the new measurements should allow for a clear picture of their total reach. In turn, these numbers can help them attract marketers interested in getting in front of large digital video audiences and ensure ad revenue better reflects a content producer’s influence. 

Video is an increasingly important content type for marketers and much of video viewership now happens on mobile. YouTube, in particular, is a dominant platform for video marketing: Recent eMarketer forecasts predict YouTube’s net U.S. video ad revenue could reach $2.59 billion in 2017, accounting for 20% of the U.S. total in the space.

The fact that 70% of YouTube viewership might happen on mobile devices is another clear signal that marketers need to be optimizing their content for smaller screens. 

YouTube, for its part, has been making active efforts to better accommodate transparent, accurate advertising on its platform. Earlier this week, parent company Google enlisted the help of the Media Rating Council (MRC) to audit YouTube ad partners Moat, Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify to validate their viewability measurements; YouTube also reportedly plans to ax intrusive formats like unskippple 30-second pre-roll spots.

ComScore has also been putting a premium on transparency and more finely tuned measurements for marketers. The firm recently received MRC accreditation for mobile viewable impressions and related viewability metrics across ad offerings. 

« We’re working hard to help our clients and the industry bridge the gaps that divide devices and platforms. Cross-platform ad verification — including mobile viewability — helps close one such gap, » Dan Hess, executive vice president of products at comScore, said in a statement at the time.

I won’t do it. I won’t watch that cat-riding-a-tricycle video. Nope, not gonna.

Okay, just a peek:

Alright, maybe I’m a sucker for kitty videos—but, in my defense, there are millions of open eyeballs now blinking for immersive visual experiences that tell stories in engaging and powerful ways. As marketing trends go, video is huge. And in 2017, it’s about to get a whole lot bigger.

If you’re the VP of marketing at your enterprise, you probably already know that video marketing is a scorching marketing trend. If you’re that same exec that’s only dabbled in video for your firm, you’ll know that your lost sales are the thing that’s getting torched.

Now that video—even live video—is on phones, tablets, in cars, and planes (and yes, the implants will come), it’s hard to escape. And most people don’t want to. If you’re looking to bolster your next pitch to the C suite and prove that your company needs to dial up the dollars for video, let’s visit 10 trends that prove investing in video marketing is a strong bet for 2017 margins.

1. Video Content Is Taking Over

Some pundits predict that within just a couple of years, 80 percent of online content will be video. As all proof necessitates pudding, let’s serve up some video that talks about the conversion power of all that video:

And just to get chatty, Snapchat has a mere 10 billion video views daily. If video isn’t a marketing trend, I’m a tricycle-riding kitten. And let’s not say that Instagram stole Snapchat’s idea; let’s just say that its Instagram Stories are an homage.

2. Video Consumers Clean Their Plates

In a 2016 HubSpot survey, users said their overall content consumption was up. What was the content they consumed most thoroughly? Video. We all want to see the end of the movie. Forbes asserted that 65 percent of video viewers visited a vendor’s website after watching a video. As far as marketing trends go, that’s a mother.

3. It’s Reducing Bounce Rates

We all know that people, like fruit flies, can be a bit fickle regarding their attention spans. Savvy marketers are now pinning them to their seats right when they arrive. Landing page videos are proving a captivating way to hold tight to a potential customer right at the site door.

4. Your Audience Trusts YouTube . . .

Do you remember Walter Cronkite? Way before the advent of fake news, Cronkite, from his post at CBS News, was known as the “most trusted man in America.” Apparently YouTube has assumed that position among today’s youth: 4 in 10 millennials said they only trust YouTube for causes they care about.

5. . . . And They’d Rather Watch Live Video Than Read

Your brand might be pulled up by its britches by this one: 80 percent of brand audiences would “rather watch live video from a brand than read a blog, and 82 percent prefer live video from a brand to social posts,” according to Livestream.

6. Brevity Is (Not Necessarily) the Soul of Video Success

Historically, there’s been some evidence that you must get your message (or at least a brand experience) out in the first three seconds of a video. That may make you think of the voice-over at the end of medication commercials that lists every wicked side effect in a maniacally fast voice that’s amped out of its lungs. But perhaps images work more smoothly in the mind.

Luckily, for those videos that are just getting their throats cleared in three seconds, there’s some countervailing evidence that long-form videos have a 95 percent completion rate (and that live video pumps high numbers too). We do hope that there’s no evidence that the longer-form videos are actually putting people to sleep and they are no longer conscious behind the keyboard, while their IP addresses sing merrily along.

7. Put Your Money on Social

Facebook is the mack daddy of social ad spending and for good reason: those gazillions of eyeballs like to share what they’re eyeballing. And what better way to share than on a social network? Twitter’s in this playground as well, and with live video streaming increasingly proving to be a thing, more and more networks are going to host brand-built movies.

8. You Need Staying Power

Audiences, oh fickle beasts, can jump on something and then wander off without a moment’s notice. There are still plenty of people playing Pokémon Go, for example, but the initial excitement has dampened.

When you place your videos, you want that place to have staying power. Or growing power. Just one year into Periscope live broadcasts, the format had 200 million videos and 110 years of video watched every day on iOS and Android.

That’s a growth pattern that parallels how the Macarena zoomed through social circles.

What’s the Macarena?

Oh, never mind.

9. You’ve Got to Share

People do like to share and not only about their Tinder swiping—sending videos amongst your peers is definitely hot among marketing trends. Some 2016 Twitter statistics bear this out: videos are six times more likely to be retweeted than photos and three times more likely than GIFs. This is video marketing moving on its earned-media momentum, rather than having a huffing-and-puffing marketer moving it along.

10. Millennials Love Them

Not to make it all about the millennials, but they’re a desirable demographic. And what do they desire? Well, among many things, movies, apparently. What’s in it for video marketing teams? Eighty percent of millennials consider video content when researching a purchase decision. Who’s buying the popcorn?

Sorry, gotta go: I hear there’s a new cat-driving-a-Tesla video. I can’t miss that.

Macarena image attribution:

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The White House on Friday barred news outlets — including CNN, the New York Times, Politico and the Los Angeles Times — from attending an off-camera press briefing held by spokesman Sean Spicer, igniting another controversy concerning the relationship between the Trump administration and the media.

So, WH @PressSec is not holding a press briefing today, instead is holding an off-camera gaggle, and is excluding many major outlets.

— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) February 24, 2017

Breitbart, OANN, Washington Times are all in White House briefing. CNN and NY Times (and LA Times) not allowed in.

— Noah Bierman (@Noahbierman) February 24, 2017

The WH today handpicked which outlets could attend an on record briefing w/ @PressSec. Excluded CNN, NYT among others. AP Time boycotted

— Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) February 24, 2017

The Wall Street Journal, which did participate in the briefing, said in a statement that it was unaware of the exclusions and « had we known at the time, we would not have participated, and we will not participate in such closed briefings in the future. »

The Washington Post did not have a reporter present at the time of the gaggle.

CNN’s Sara Murray went on air to describe what happened:

We lined up. We were told there was a list ahead of time, which is sort of abnormal, but we put our name on a list. And then when we went to enter, I was blocked by a White House staffer, who said we were not on the list for this gaggle today.

Now, normally, if you were going to do something like this — an extended gaggle, off camera — you would have one person from each news outlet. As you know, we have multiple people from CNN here every day. So, if you’re going to do something beyond a pool, which is sort of the smallest group of reporters that then disseminates the information, you would have one person from every news outlet.

That is not what the White House was doing today. What the White House was doing was handpicking the outlets they wanted in for this briefing. So Breitbart, the Washington Times, the One America News Network — news outlets that maybe the White House feels are more favorable were all allowed in, whereas I was blocked from entering, Politico was blocked from entering, the New York Times, the L.A. Times. All of these news outlets were blocked from going to a gaggle.

White House Correspondents’ Association President Jeff Mason called in to CNN to say the organization is “still getting information about” the decision, adding:

They clearly wanted to have a gaggle that was not on camera and was not the full press corps today. We don’t object to there being briefings like that that aren’t always on camera, but we have encouraged them when they want to do something like that … [to] still do it in the press room and do it in a place where all the reporters have a chance to ask questions.

So, we’ve made that clear, and we’re going to continue to have discussions with them about that. And we’re not happy about how this happened today.

The Post’s Executive Editor Marty Baron issued the following statement:

“It’s appalling that the White House would exclude news outlets like the New York Times, CNN, Politico, the Los Angeles Times, and BuzzFeed from its publicly announced briefings. This is an undemocratic path that the administration is traveling. There is nothing to be gained from the White House restricting the public’s access to information. We are currently evaluating what our response will be if this sort of thing happens again.”

White House deputy communications director Raj Shah insisted this was all much ado about nothing.

White House Deputy Comms. Dir. Raj Shah denies reports of a gaggle block against CNN, NYT, Politico and others: pic.twitter.com/XzgfQJ25w3

— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) February 24, 2017

But New York Times Executive Editor Dean Baquet declared that “nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties.”

BuzzFeed editor in chief Ben Smith, whose outlet also was excluded, added this: « While we strongly object to the White House’s apparent attempt to punish news outlets whose coverage it does not like, we won’t let these latest antics distract us from continuing to cover this administration fairly and aggressively. »

Ben Wizner, director of the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union called the White House’s move « yet another disturbing example of the Trump administration’s contempt for the vital role a free press plays in our democracy. »

White House press secretary Sean Spicer himself had previously criticized the idea of limiting media access to the White House. Two months ago, in a panel discussion, he said open access for the media is “what makes a democracy a democracy versus a dictatorship.”

But in recent days, the president has grown increasingly critical of what he calls the « fake news media. Hours before the limited-access gaggle, Trump devoted much of an address at the Conservative Political Action Conference to bashing the media.

“A few days ago, I called the fake news media the enemy of the people, and they are,” the president said. “They are the enemy of the people.”

Fox News anchor Bret Baier quickly discouraged gloating on the right, noting that his network’s rivals showed solidarity when the Obama White House tried to freeze out Fox News eight years ago.

Some at CNN NYT stood w/FOX News when the Obama admin attacked us tried 2 exclude us-a WH gaggle should be open to all credentialed orgs https://t.co/8Vjcs0KCPR

— Bret Baier (@BretBaier) February 24, 2017

In 2009, the Obama administration attempted to exclude Fox News from a round of TV interviews with “pay czar” Kenneth Feinberg. Jake Tapper (then of ABC, now of CNN) stood up for one of his network’s “sister organizations” during a press briefing.

“Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one?” Tapper asked Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary at the time.

Rival networks refused to conduct interviews with Feinberg unless Fox News was granted one, too.

Fox Business Network told The Post that one of its reporters, Blake Burman, also was blocked from participating in the gaggle. Fox News chief White House correspondent John Roberts said on air that his network will join others in protesting the exclusion of certain outlets.

Facebook just upped their video sharing game, and it’s sunshine and roses for real estate marketing.

Earlier this year, Facebook released a slew of improvements to the platform, many of which directly impact the video sector. With the new updates, you can expect better client targeting, clearer analytics, and more ways to share your content. And real estate professionals everywhere are seeing green.

Get ready to empower your video marketing strategy like never before:

A Detailed Look at Facebook’s New Video Features

Facebook has long outgrown its days of a peer-fueled networking site. Having found popularity as both a business and consumer outpost, the social media giant continues to develop and enhance its features with both camps in mind. Take a closer look at what the platform’s most recent updates can mean for your video marketing strategy:

Facebook’s algorithm got a face lift.

Facebook continues to make waves in providing users with content that matters to them with their newest algorithm update. Included in this latest revision are the goal to better identify and authenticate content, and make predictions and rankings in real time to provide more relevant posts.

Facebook cares about cutting down on the spam that has encroached on the platform, but does not want to largely affect how your content is already being distributed. So your live open houses, drone footage, or client success stories will still permeate the news feed, but hopefully to a more targeted audience.

Say hello to the video-only news feed.

Video continues to surge through Facebook news feed everywhere, so much so that mobile users can now toggle to a videos-only news feed.

In this exclusive feed, Facebook displays suggested videos based on the what the user has Liked in the past and what Facebook thinks will boost relevance to each individual. Videos will still show in the main feed, but having a completely separate feed shows two clear advantages:

1. Users must purposefully visit the feed, which means they probably already have an interest in videos. They are actively searching and willing to watch video content, which could potentially boost your chances of viewership and engagement.
2. Your videos are no longer engulfed in status updates, family vacation photos, and political drama. The video feed helps give the user some breathing room from the typical clutter and potentially heightens your visibility.

This feed has been a long time coming, and as video popularity continues to soar, so will the way the user can view and interact.

Dress up a boring ad with a GIF.

Now you can add a GIF (Graphics Interchange Format), or short animated clip of images or video instead of a single image or long video to your boosted post.

The strongest selling point about a GIF is its short-but-sweet factor. It offers enough motion to get attention but doesn’t force the user into a lengthy viewing. As a realtor, your visual-rich industry offers plenty of opportunities to create unique GIFs, like a brief slideshow of featured properties. Or to save time, visit a site like GIPHY, where all the hard work is already done.

Gain additional insight into your video marketing efforts.

In addition to Facebook’s former suite of video analytics, the platform has rolled out a few new data tools that can help you make every millisecond count:

• View the total number of minutes your video has been watched
• See who is watching with sound on vs. sound off
• Discover how many times the video was viewed up to 10 seconds

While these specific metrics may not fit into your current data needs, it does show that Facebook recognizes the prevalence and need for increased video analytics, which they more than likely will continue growing and developing.

If you haven’t yet pulled the trigger on using video to reach your audience, there’s never been a better time to start, especially since you won’t need an entire film crew to create your content. Facebook long ago estimated that video would one day rule the platform. And with users watching over 100 million hours of video on Facebook each day, that day may come sooner rather than later.

Every company wants to create a viral video, but I’ve got some bad news for you. Even the best videos have no guarantee they’ll ever be as popular as the kid who got bit by Charlie, Dollar Shave Club or those gangster hamsters driving a Kia.

The good news? Just like in high school, popularity doesn’t always equal success. Luckily for you, successful videos do happen to have a couple things in common. To learn what those things are, check out the infographic below by Explainify. The advice is rooted in neuroscience, psychology and our personal experience working with hundreds of companies. With it, you’ll learn what your video should include so that you can drive maximum engagement and grow your business.

Who knows? Maybe there’s even a possibility of your video going viral.

Eric Hinson

Eric Hinson was tired of businesses missing the point and overcomplicating their story. In 2011, he founded Explainify to take complicated messages and make them simple through short videos. Today, Explainify is a market leader for explaine…

Read more

Looping video app Vine may be gone as a standalone offering, but the super short video format it helped popularize is only picking up more traction with both big brands and social platforms.

Video messaging app Snapchat, for example, serves much of its advertising as quick Stories units lasting no more than 10 seconds and YouTube, a veteran of the social video space, launched a six-second « Bumper » format last year. 

Procter Gamble, the world’s largest advertiser, has similarly suggested that video shorter than the typical 30- or 60-second spots is becoming essential to its marketing strategy. “We’re […] increasingly using five-second to six-second formats that quickly convey the brand and the benefit, given the ad-skipping behavior that we know happens quite frequently,” the company’s Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard said in November, as reported by the Cincinnati Business Journal.

As consumer attention spans shrink — some research suggests they last eight seconds on average, shorter than that of a goldfish — marketers must figure out ways not only to attract eyeballs in a short period of time but also create a lasting impression thereafter.   

« Super short videos have disrupted the world of video marketing and will continue to play a pivotal role throughout 2017, » said Jaclyn Rose, digital marketing lead at G2 Crowd. « The 10-seconds-or-less video format has capitalized on today’s increasingly short attention spans.

« It’s the hook, the foot-in-the-door, the branding and awareness play that will turn video viewers into interested buyers, » she said. 

Video’s ‘elevator pitch’

Video is quickly becoming the dominant content type for digital marketers and its penetration is most apparent on mobile devices, especially among young demographic groups.

But while some platforms including Facebook and Snapchat have begun to focus on longer-form, premium video content offerings, short videos can serve as a sort of « elevator pitch » intended to interest an audience in continuing to learn about what a brand has to offer, according to Rose.

“On social media, we make ads work in literally two seconds to three seconds, recognizing that people are whipping through their news feeds, » Pritchard said in the Cincinnati Business Journal report. « We are optimizing medium mix by following consumer behavior to advertise based on when, where and how much time consumers spend engaging with ads on various media platforms.”

Speaking to Pritchard’s point, Snapchat users watch video ads for less than three seconds on average, according to recent estimates by the company. Being able to both engage and communicate a clear brand message in such a short period of time — that elevator’s only really going up one floor — amounts to an immense but not insurmountable challenge that can be bested with a smart approach to strategy, according to experts. 

Keep it off-the-cuff

One way to hook viewers quickly is to go for an off-the-cuff creative approach. Super-short video advertisements are at their best when they appear somewhat unpolished, according to Rose and Sarah Ware, CEO of influencer marketing platform Markerly. 

This tactic is reflected in Snapchat ads that appear in style and aesthetic to mimic a user story but slowly reveal themselves to have a branded component. 

“Improv works best in terms of producing content that is enjoyed and engaged with by the viewer, » said Ware. « It should include real people, have minimal scripting and be lighthearted in a way that makes someone smile or laugh. » 

For longer 10-second ads — the time ceiling usually assigned to this type of brand storytelling — there should be more of a premium put on production value. The more time users spend in an ad, the bigger chance any seams will show through.

A key point of difference would be influencer campaigns based around shorter video ads, where less heavily-edited creative is desirable, communicating a genuine feel as opposed to a studio-quality spot.

« Customers now demand transparency and authenticity — two major trends that these super short videos address, » said Rose. « In a way, the planning and production required of longer videos defeats the purpose of these shorter ones.

« Super short videos are intended to provide a real-time, on-the-fly, behind-the-scenes look, » she said. « You can’t fake authenticity and shouldn’t try. Plan the concept and have an idea of what you want the final product to look like, but don’t stage a video that’s meant to be improvised. »

Effective deployment 

While much of the discussion around extra-short video content marketing is centered on consumer-facing brands, it’s not necessarily limited to that space.

“I’ve seen B2B marketers use this video format to not only showcase their products and services, but also to promote their brand, » said Rose. « Product teasers, snippets of company culture, behind-the-scenes footage and employee takeovers are all examples of how marketers can and should be using this. »

Since short videos aren’t meant to be meticulously edited, the tone should be similarly raw and real or funny. This is particularly true for spots aimed at the under-30 audience that tends to dominate platforms like Snapchat and Instagram, which are especially well-suited to this type of brand storytelling.

As for how to deploy super short videos, Ware suggested running them back-to-back, especially for lifestyle brands.

« If you’re putting this together, you should have about five back-to-back videos for Snapchat and about three for Instagram, for a total viewership around one minute,” said Ware. 

« Snapchat automatically limits your video to 10 seconds, which allows you to easily create back-to-back videos. However, on Instagram choose to limit yourself, » she added. « It’s better to stop each video at 10 [to] 15 seconds for three back-to-back videos, for example, than to produce one 40-second video. »

A demonstrator at a marijuana legalization rally in Washington, D.C., on Inauguration Day 2017.

Theo Wargo/Getty Images

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A demonstrator at a marijuana legalization rally in Washington, D.C., on Inauguration Day 2017.

Theo Wargo/Getty Images

The Justice Department may step up enforcement of federal marijuana laws in states that have voted to legalize its recreational use, according to White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

« I do believe think you’ll see greater enforcement of it, » Spicer said, during his daily press briefing. He added that the Department of Justice will be looking into the issue further.

Spicer’s comments offer an indication of how the Trump administration may approach the nation’s fast-growing cannabis industry. New Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been less direct when asked about marijuana, saying during his confirmation hearings that he would « review and evaluate » existing policies.

Roughly 1 in 5 Americans now live in a state where non-medical marijuana is legal for adults and that number may be growing. Lawmakers in Maryland have recently proposed bills allowing recreational use. Medical use of cannabis is allowed in 28 states and the District of Columbia.

Spicer differentiated between medical and recreational use of the plant, saying Trump « understands the pain and suffering that many people go through who are facing especially terminal diseases and the comfort that some of these drugs, including medical marijuana can bring them. »

Recreational marijuana, he said, is a « very, very different subject. »

The majority of Americans support marijuana legalization, according to a new poll by Quinnipiac University. It also found that 71 percent of voters believe the government should not enforce federal laws against marijuana in states that have legalized it.

« The vast majority of Americans agree that the federal government has no business interfering in state marijuana laws, » said Mason Tvert, the communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project, in a statement. « This administration is claiming that it values states’ rights, so we hope they will respect the rights of states to determine their own marijuana policies. »

There has been a growing uncertainty in the multi-billion dollar marijuana industry about how the Trump administration would approach enforcement of federal drug laws.

Regulated marijuana sales totaled $6.7 billion in 2016, according to Arcview Market Research, and it’s projected to grow to an estimated $20.2 billion by 2021. But marijuana is still illegal under federal law. The industry has been growing under the auspices of the so-called Cole Memo, put in place by the Obama administration in 2013. That memo said federal prosecutors would not intervene in state’s marijuana laws as long as cannabis didn’t cross state lines and the states followed a set of guidelines.

There’s been concern since the election that Trump could move to undo that memo. As a candidate, Trump said that recreational marijuana should be a state issue. Attorney General Sessions has said as early as last year that « good people don’t smoke pot. »

Washington state’s attorney general, Bob Ferguson, who led the lawsuit against Trump’s travel ban, has already said that he would oppose any moves by the administration to interfere with his state’s marijuana laws. In a letter to Sessions, he wrote: « My office will use every tool at our disposal to ensure that the federal government does not undermine Washington’s successful, unified system for regulation recreational and medical marijuana. »