The Frenemy Report: Rekindling the Love with Twitter and Snap

Oh the drama, we love the drama. Media companies are falling back in love with Twitter. And Snap too, as the Gen Z Ghost enlists more publishers to make shows and promotes e-commerce.Logan Paul is backkkkkk ... monetizing his YouTube videos once again, but is "on probation" for 90 days-- so he won't be #trending or pushing notifications to non-subscribers. He may be vlogging, but YouTube as a whole is chillin' on the content creation side-- Bloomberg reports that spending on YouTube's Hollywood expansion is holding flat, even while rivals bulk up-- notably Netflix, with 700 new programs.But Facebook, We Need to Talk (conveniently, also the name of one of the few Watch shows to get renewed). But for real, Facebook played a huge role in the election and now everyone knows it, thanks to BuzzFeed breaking it down in easy-to-understand spicy meme form.New advertising research: Reach is no longer enough [Axios]The study suggests that brands should no longer expect a single, universal moment of greatest engagement from consumers throughout the day and that “traditional reach” metrics falter when they don't take consumer focus and intent into consideration.NBCUniversal adds Refinery29 to its growing list of digital publisher and platform partners [Digiday]Refinery29 has three people dedicated full time to On Her Turf and six more helping part time. The publisher will take the lead on packaging and programming the Instagram account and any other platform On Her Turf expands to. NBC Sports is supplying Refinery29 with its live sports and other sports-related video, including archival footage, and assisting in programming and distribution with the help of its 10-person social team.This Spicy Drama About Facebook CPMs Has People Like "Wahh?" And "Whoaaa" [BuzzFeed]Last week, Wired published a story by a former Facebook employee who worked on the ads algorithm. Basically, he said Trump played the Facebook system like a fiddle and was able to get much cheaper ad rates than Hillary. Trump's more "controversial" posts spread even further than Hillary's ads, for cheaper, because they generated lots of reactions, comments, and shares.YouTube brings ads back to Logan Paul’s channel, but he’s on a 90-day probation [The Verge]During the probation period, Paul will be able to monetize his videos, but they won’t show up in YouTube’s Trending section, and non-subscribers won’t receive notifications when he uploads new videos, according to Polygon.YouTube Holds Spending for TV, Films While Rivals Bulk Up [Bloomberg]YouTube plans to spend a few hundred million dollars on TV shows and movies this year, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing the company’s plans. While that sounds like a lot, a flat budget means the company risks falling further behind Netflix and Amazon.Lawrence Jackson Joins NBC News’ ‘Stay Tuned’ on Snapchat [Variety]NBC News said it had hired former “TRL” host Lawrence Jackson as the newest co-host of “Stay Tuned,” its twice-daily news show on Snapchat, an expansion of the hosts assigned to the program. NBC News launched the short newscast – it lasts just two to three minutes – in July, a bid to stretch its content from linear TV to social media. ‘We Need to Talk’ Becomes the Rare Facebook Watch Show to Get Renewed [Adweek]During its first, 10-episode season, episodes of We Need to Talk –which were four-to-six minutes in length—were viewed between 197,000 and 7.4 million times, with each episode averaging 1.5 million views. However, a Facebook view reflects the number of times people began watching the video, not the average audience per minute that Nielsen measures, and therefore does not provide an accurate comparison to TV ratings.Facebook Named Live Stream Partner for 'The Oscars: All Access' [THR]This is the second year that Facebook and ABC have teamed to distribute All Access, expanding on a multiyear relationship between the social network and the broadcaster.Despite subsidies disappearing, some publishers see hope for Facebook Live post-algorithm change [Digiday]Declining Facebook Reach Squeezes Publishers’ Branded Content Business [Digiday]To some extent, that uptick was driven by growth in branded content, with more content studios producing more campaigns that require more paid distribution. Worldwide spend on branded content totaled $5 billion in 2017, according to estimates from branded content distributor Polar, up from $3.6 billion in 2016. But higher prices played a role, too. Over the past two months, the cost per click publishers pay for Facebook ads grew 16 percent year over year, per Keywee.Snapchat is enlisting more publishers to make video shows [Digiday]While the downside for producers is that Snap isn’t paying for shows, producers retain ownership over the programs, which could help improve the economics of these deals. For instance, as part of Uproxx’s agreement with its production partner STXdigital, the companies will look to expand “Brawler” beyond Snap, whether that’s licensing the program to other platforms at a later date or using the show format to develop a different version for a different buyer down the road.Media buyers: Snapchat is focused on enabling commerce in ads [Digiday]“Now that Snap has built that robust of a commerce capability, it’s an encouraging sign that they are further along than some of the other platforms,” said Goldberg. “Another thing social networks get wrong is that they call themselves commerce engines, but they actually hand you off to someone else at the actual transaction level. This didn’t happen here.” The interesting thing, said Goldberg, is how Snap will expand its capability and let multiple advertisers sell through the platform, potentially turning it into a marketplace of sorts like eBay.Media companies are falling back in love with Twitter [Business Insider]Increasingly, media companies say that Twitter has found a sweet spot as a true programmer with a unique strength in live video. And more important, it's a reliable revenue producer known for making balanced, high-upside revenue deals. That stands in stark contrast with Facebook, which has angered many in the media industry by constantly jerking around partners — or failing to treat content companies as partners at all. Social publisher The Hook pushes further into original content [Digiday]The Hook is expanding further in food and drink content, including mashup videos of new products like Parma Violets-flavored gin and Cadbury’s Caramilk chocolate, to encourage comments from engaged audiences. “Recent Facebook changes will make the playing field around quality rather than gaming the system,” said Fidler. “We’re playing for the long term. Facebook wants publishers with quality content, not just filling up the news feed with junk.”Netflix CFO: We’re Going To Have 700 Original Programs On Our Platform In 2018 [Tubefilter]In an October 2017 letter to shareholders, Netflix said it planned to spend $8 billion on original content in 2018. What does that massive figure buy? According to Netflix CFO David Wells, such spend is good for hundreds of TV shows and movies. Wells, speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference, said his company will have 700 original shows and movies up and running in 2018.