This month, Nielsen’s Sports Digital Consultant Jamie Klein was invited by Facebook to present the latest video monetisation trends we’re seeing impact the sports and entertainment landscape. This took place at their London headquarters as part of an internal sharing day.
Jamie delved into the behavioural shifts, the importance of video as part of a commercial media strategy and examples of successful publishers. Here’s a snapshot of the session.
WHAT WE’RE SEEING
With attention spans shortening and space on social media feeds becoming more competitive, it is no surprise that internet ad spend surpassed TV ad spend last year. When measuring the value of media for major brands and rights holders, Nielsen have been able to see the impact of this trend across markets around the world.
Video content across social media platforms continues to be the dominant media type when it comes to views and engagements. It is also rapidly becoming a central ingredient to reaching new audiences and is being prioritised now more than ever before for content strategies. The NBA and MLB are prime examples of this, where close to 90% of media value delivered to sponsors on social last season was through video content. Both the NBA and MLB managed to attain quality and quantity, by collaborating with brands effectively to deliver value, while also ensuring videos were over half of their output on social media.
Jamie also spoke about the prominence of companies who have been built from the ground up by audiences watching video on social media. Jungle Creations, well known for Viral Thread and Twisted, has thrived from creating original video content claiming over 5.5 billion video views each month. Not only have they capitalised on this by working with big name brands to incorporate their products in their videos, they are also experimenting with bridging the online and offline world having created a pop-up bar and a delivery-only restaurant. This level of innovation is attracting the attention of brands industry-wide as they look to reach their target audience.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR RIGHTS HOLDERS
When comparing Sports Leagues on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, Nielsen observed the behavioural differences on each platform. Facebook is the most dominant for publishing video content, Instagram accumulates the most interactions (likes, comments, shares), while Twitter is used most frequently by publishers.
Furthermore, the differences in content topics and themes is also evident, something Nielsen call *Fan Stories™ On Twitter, we saw more statistics, commentary and news content while on Facebook, awards, competitions and archive footage tended to be posted more often. Instagram skewed towards training footage and highlights interestingly.
Measurement is critical in this space, as rights holders need to understand what digital assets they currently have at their disposal and what budget they need to grow or maintain. Blank space analysis is just one service Nielsen provide, and undertaking this sort of analysis can help when building a social strategy, reallocating budgets or in partnership conversations.
OPPORTUNITIES FOR INFLUENCERS
It is impossible to discuss monetisation on social media without saying the ‘i’ word. Influencers are becoming not only useful but necessary across all sorts of different industries. This is a noticeable trend that several brands have adopted. In the case of large-scale events, such as, the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia, influencers were driving 20% of value to sponsors of the tournament.
Nielsen’s methodology to value social media posts considers both passive brand exposure (either in logo form or text) and engagements from a post. The example below of Diddy & Beats shows how even posts without explicit branding are driving value.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Prioritising video as part of a commercial media strategy is critical for publishers, but attaining quality and quantity is a challenge. The more publishers understand the performance of branded and non-branded content through measurement and analysis, the quicker they can make tactical or strategic changes to their content.
Brands, sponsors, and agencies are having to prove the worth of video content more than ever before.
The importance of measuring campaigns across, content series and events is crucial. This value is measurable at a total level. Nielsen can provide deep detail into each location where value has been registered (e.g. a social graphic logo).
In addition to Nielsen’s valuation services, the Digital team also provide supplementary services such as Influencer Identification and Sentiment Analysis.