Issue 37  13th November 2015

A YouTube video that claims Facebook is 'stealing billions of views' is going viral

YouTube creators are annoyed that their content gets reuploaded to Facebook and they don't get any renumeration, that Facebook is weighted to favour these "stolen" videos over the original YouTube source, and that reporting copyright infringement takes far too long. It's not the first time these issues have come into the spotlight, and in the past year Facebook have issued responses saying that they "absolutely do care" and take IP rights "very seriously."

Now that Facebook are trialling their own video platform they'll need to woo creators eventually if they ever want original online content, or if they ever want to be considered a partner.

Some of the points mentioned in the video:

In the first quarter of 2015, 725 of the 1,000 most-viewed videos on Facebook were "stolen" from the original content creators and re-uploaded to Facebook's native video player.

The video says "freebooting," the stealing of videos is happening more and more often. It's bad for content creators as they receive next to no exposure or revenue for their videos at all — "only the thief and Facebook profit."

The internet advertising industry's standard for a viewable video impression is that at least 50% of the video is in-view for 2 consecutive seconds or more — so Facebook is actually ahead of the industry, by one second at least.)

How the Mad Men lost the plot

The arrival of Facebook and Twitter appeared to threaten the advertising industry’s very existence. So what happened next?

This is a very interesting read on the growing cynicism within the advertising industry towards digital marketing, the reasons why algorithmically targeted marketing is not all that great (you don't increase market share by advertising to customers you already have), and how TV ads remain as powerful and important as ever.

How do you get into your customer's head? You do it through emotional stories that connect and resonate with them. Video is the best medium for this, hence the current moves by big digital brands towards video and TV, both for advertising and for content.

At the risk of being labelled Luddite, they suggested that although the internet has changed how the game is played, it has not changed its fundamental rules: mass marketing works; fame works; emotion works — and “legacy media”, especially TV, still do all of this better than the new.

A senior marketer at the drinks company Diageo put it to me bluntly. “After 10 or 15 years of f***ing around with digital we’ve realised that people don’t want to ‘engage’ with brands, because they don’t care about them.’

They found that “the most effective advertisements of all [UK campaigns of the past 30 years] are those with little or no rational content”, and that TV is the emotional medium par excellence. An online banner ad, however smartly targeted, is unlikely to make anyone grin, gasp or weep.

Eurosport drops 'ring of stars' from logo in dramatic rebrand

US giant Discovery is “heralding a new era” with the makeover to shed the “baggage” of the old Eurosport. - Peter Hutton, Chief Executive, Eurosport

Discovery has brought in a sea of change, as the new owner of Eurosport, with a new logo, a rights push for exclusive sports content, and improvements to production quality, with the aim of breathing new life into the sports channel. The channel comes with the stigma of airing mediocre content as a pay TV channel but Discovery acquired the “jewels in the crown” of sports content - the Olympics - to give the audience a reason to return.

On the subject of the Premier League, it seems that Chief Executive Hatton is wise to the potential perils of the golden goose.

There are [perhaps] some battles that are not worth winning,” he says diplomatically.