Industry News
NEWS AND UPDATES FROM THE MEDIA INDUSTRY
“Sports is the best and most valuable content to do what you want to do for traditional and disruptive media”
Despite sports being “the oldest media business in the world,” we are in the midst of yet another boom in sports media. The number of new sports leagues in the U.S. has coincided with the additional media “shelf space” from streaming, with the social media outreach of sports figures, and with the legalization of gambling. John Skipper, the former ESPN head and sports business deep thinker, details why this is so. He spoke with Semafor Media's Ben Smith and Nayeema Raza in an extended interview. Some highlights:
- Fragmentation of media is a financial positive for making money in sports media, since all media companies want a piece of it
- “Sports is to this decade what celebrity was to the 90s.”
- Expansion of the market to include women as players, fans and sports media consumers is critical and is not going away
- American tackle football is loved by American media because it demonstrates “American Exceptionalism” while being a perfect thing to broadcast: lots of breaks, lots of time for commentary, showing the plays multiple times, in case you got up to go to the frig
More from Semafor Media Podcast, Mixed Signals here and here.
#managementconsulting, #sportsmedia, #consulting
How Well Can AI Protect Brand Safety?
A new report from digital watchdog Adalytics shows hundreds of brands’ ads appearing next to unsafe content on UGC sites despite using AI tools to prevent exactly that from happening.
- More than a dozen advertisers are raising questions about whether the AI tech is working as it should
- Some ads are appearing next to racial slurs and sexual references
- The fear is that brand safety vendors are overpromising and under delivering
- Sources are asking for more transparency about how the AI model works
More from Digiday here.
#managemenconsulting #brandsafety #consulting
Head swivel: News Re-Pivot to Video
Aggregate data from 47 countries shows all the growth in platform news use coming from video or video-led networks. This is happening after an expensive investment in video delivery for many news organizations 7 or 8 years ago didn’t pay out.
- Growth in platform news use is coming from YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, with Facebook on the decline.
- The shift to video is most notable outside the US and Europe as the price to consumers for data falls
- YouTube is used for news by almost 31% of Reuters’ global research sample weekly.
- These changes in audience consumption patterns by platform may make this video shift more permanent and significant than in the past
Read more from Reuters’ Digital News Report 2024 here: https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/06/is-the-news-industry-ready-for-another-pivot-to-video/
