04 Feb 2022 | The Media Leader Staff

100% Media Roundup: 31 January – 4 February

Introducing today’s round-up of stories from around the media world, updated by the Mediatel News team, to ensure you’re 100% up-to-date.

Friday, 4 February

Streaming drives ‘once-in-a-generation growth’ in film and TV production

The BFI’s Research and Statistics Unit found there was increased spend on both high-end TV (HETV) production and film production in the UK last year reaching £5.64bn.

Read more on this story here.

Samsung takes over 3D DOOH for Galaxy Unpacked launch and Lunar New Year

Samsung has launched a 3D billboard campaign “Tiger in the City” in cities across the world ahead of its Galaxy Unpacked 2022 launch event.

A 3D tiger will “roar to life” in London’s Piccadilly, New York, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur and Seoul from today until 8 February to showcase Samsung’s advanced low-light photography.

The campaign also ties in with Lunar New Year bringing in the year of the Tiger which is being celebrated around the world this week.

There will be a livestream of the billboards at 3pm on 9 February on Samsung’s YouTube channel for the Galaxy Unpacked 2022 launch.

News Corp hit by cyber attack

A limited number of individuals at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp have reported their email accounts were hacked raising concerns about keeping journalists’ confidential sources anonymous.

It is believed this includes select employees at News UK, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post and it formed part of an espionage operation linked to China.

HBO Max to launch in 15 new European markets next month

WarnerMedia’s latest expansion of its streaming service, HBO Max, will bring its total number of territories in Europe and the Americas to 61.

Disney+ to launch across 42 countries in ambitious expansion

Major markets the streaming service will expand to include Turkey, Poland, UAE and South Africa.

Streaming drives ‘once-in-a-generation growth’ in film and TV production

Demand for streaming content is driving a UK production boom exceeding pre-pandemic levels, according to latest British Film Institute (BFI) figures.

Read more on this story here.

Amazon reports advertising sales for first time

Amazon has reported its advertising sales for the first time in its latest financials.

The company has listed advertising sales going back to Q3 2020 with $9.7bn sales for the latest quarter and $31.2bn for the full year last year.

This marked a 32% year-on-year increase.

In the release, Amazon specified these “advertising services” included sales of advertising services to sellers, vendors, publishers, authors, and others, through programs such as sponsored ads, display, and video advertising.

Pinterest reports 20% Q4 revenue growth year-on-year

Pinterest reported its Q4 revenue grew 20% year over year to $847 million in its latest quarterly results.

The report also found global monthly active Users decreased 6% year over year to 431 million from 459 million.

“We took important steps in 2021 with the launch of our foundational technology to deliver a video-first publishing platform. And, I’m proud to say that for the first time, we surpassed $2 billion in revenue for the year — growing 52% over the previous year — and reached our first full year of GAAP profitability,” said Ben Silbermann, CEO and co-founder, Pinterest.

Pinterest said it expected Q1 revenue to grow “in the high teens percentage range” year over year with a focus on creator-led and inspirational content, shopping, Pinner experience, and advertiser success.

News Corp reports highest quarterly revenue since separation

News Corp, owner of The Sun, The Times, The Sunday Times and News UK in the UK alongside other news and publishing businesses in the US and Australia reported total quarterly revenues of $2.72bn.

This is compared to $2.41bn in the same period the previous year, a 13% increase and the highest quarterly revenue since separation.

In its news media business, the report found revenues for the quarter increased $65 million, or 11%, compared to the previous year with 1% positive foreign currency fluctuation, and put this down to the continued recovery of the advertising market from the pandemic combined with higher circulation and subscription revenues.

It specified that within these figures, revenues at News Corp Australia and News UK increased 14% and 7% each.

News Corp chief executive Robert Thomson said: “The landmark agreements with Big Tech continued to benefit our journalism and our bottom line. In addition to the substantial deals with Google and Facebook, we expanded our multi-year global agreement with Apple, which is expected to be an important source of subscriptions and of advertising revenue for our news sites around the world.”

In case you missed it

Yesterday was a big day for radio industry as Rajar returned with quarterly comparisons for digital listening, national channels and breakfast shows.

Read our coverage of the latest audience reach report for radio brands.

Thursday, 3 February

Channel 4 appoints head of creative diversity

Channel 4 has appointed Naomi Sesay as head of creative diversity.

Sesay (pictured, above) was previously an interim head of creative diversity for Channel 4 in 2019.

She will report to director of commissioning operations, Emma Hardy, and is set to start in early February.

As part of the role, Sesay will develop Channel 4’s diversity strategy in its commissioning, employee training and mentoring and existing relationships with the UK’s “culturally and ethnically diverse creative communities”.

Most recently, she has been a keynote speaker at APS Intelligence and Swiipe and was head of innovation and diversity at Media Trust.

Yahoo promotes two to leadership team

Yahoo has appointed Josh Partridge as head of EMEA and Steven Mchenry as country manager for the UK.

Partridge (pictured, below right) previously led Yahoo’s UK & Nordics business from July 2020.

Prior to Yahoo, he held senior positions at Verizon Media and Flipboard, and worked for Shazam during its acquisition by Apple, shifting from Shazam’s VP of commercial EMEA, LatAM & Canada to being Apple’s client partner for Shazam.

Mchenry (pictured, below left) was promoted from head of UK sales to country manager UK.

He will now lead agency account and strategy teams and work on ad tech platforms.

Mchenry started his career at Virgin Media before moving to the Walt Disney Company before a five year stint at Yahoo before taking on UK trading or sales roles at Oath and then Verizon Media.

Both are based in Yahoo’s London office in MidCity Place, Holborn.

JCDecaux announces ‘Community Channel’ initiative

JCDecaux will give select community and charity projects without media budgets access to digital out-of-home locations.

The Community Channel will select new projects every month and creative agency The Raised Eyebrow Society, School of Communication Arts and CALM have run creative posters to launch the scheme (pictured, below).

Ocean Outdoor brings Olympic Winter Games highlights to digital out-of-home screens

Ocean Outdoor will show daily highlights from Discovery/Eurosport from the Olympic Winter Games starting tomorrow.

The highlights will run across 36 large format full-motion digital screens in Manchester (Print Works pictured, below), Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Norwich, Nottingham, Bournemouth and across eight locations in Westfield Stratford City, Westfield London and Canary Wharf.

This continues Ocean Outdoor’s agreement with Discovery from Tokyo 2020 as well as Ocean’s eight year long media partnership with Team GB.

Havas Media Group opens applications for diverse media initiative Havas Boost

Havas Media Group has opened applications to its initiative Havas Boost to support and fund start-ups founded by underrepresented groups.

The media group is inviting Black, Asian and minority-ethnic entrepreneurs to apply to receive up to £150,000 worth of resources which can be cash, media spend or free rent for storage or office space.

The programme is spearheaded by Gerald Appau-Bonsu and Havas Media Group’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee.

Havas Boost has been developed with investment management specialist CEG Investment Group, also co-founded by Appau-Bonsu.

Meta shares plummet after first user fall in history

Daily active users were down quarter-on-quarter for the first time in the history of Meta (previously known as Facebook) – from 1.93 billion to 1.929 billion.

Share prices in the tech giant slumped by 20% in after-hours trading in New York. Company founder Mark Zuckerberg cited increasing social media competition.

Meta reported $33.67bn revenue in the three months up to December 31, 2021, a 20% increase on the same period last year.

Advertising revenue was $32.64bn for the quarter and $114.93bn for the full year contributing to $117.93bn total revenue for the full year.

Meta predicted its first quarter 2022 total revenue to be in the range of $27bn to $29bn, representing 3-11% year-over-year growth.

Spotify ad-supported revenue reaches 15%

Spotify’s ad-supported revenue reached $394m, 15% of its total revenue in Q4 2021.

The streaming platform reported total revenue for the three months up to December 31, 2021 as $2.68bn, a 24% increase year-on-year and an 8% increase quarter-on-quarter.

Monthly active users grew 18% compared to the previous year to 406 million in Q4 2021.

Premium subscribers grew 16% year-on-year to 180 million in the quarter.

Spotify Founder Daniel Ek wants advertising to make up 20% of the company’s total revenue.

Publicis Groupe reports 10% organic growth for 2021

Media and advertising agency owner Publicis Groupe reported 10% organic growth for 2021 with the fourth quarter at +9.3%.

Full year net revenue was €10.49bn and quarterly net revenue was €2.94bn. These figures exclude the impact of acquisitions, disposals and currencies.

Publicis predicted 2022 organic growth to be between +4% and +5%.

BT agrees two strategic deals

BT is pursuing talks with Discovery to create a joint venture in the UK and Ireland and has also extended a reciprocal channel supply deal with Sky until 2030.

Wednesday, 2 February

Indeed agrees sponsorship deal with E4

Job site Indeed will sponsor E4 in its first UK television partnership.

The sponsorship started yesterday and will include 25 channel sponsorship idents broadcast daily and idents on E4 content on All4 until the end of this year.

Indeed will also be able to call itself the “Proud Sponsor of E4” off air.

The deal was brokered by MediaCom and 4Sales and creative is by Indeed’s in-house team.

BBC puts out new ad: ‘This is our BBC’

The BBC has put out a new ad on social with the strapline “The BBC is something that belongs to all of us.”

The ad was made by the BBC’s in-house creative agency, BBC Creative, and Academy Films featuring historical footage and famous BBC figures and commissions.

This comes as the government debated the future of the licence fee last month and BBC Three relaunched on linear TV last night.

NOW READ:

BBC and New York Times are tackling same problem in different but creative ways

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Crisis appoints The Kite Factory to handle media

The UK’s national charity for homelessness, Crisis UK, has appointed independent media agency The Kite Factory to develop both its online and offline media planning and buying strategy.

The Kite Factory, which also won Crisis UK’s digital account last July, will deliver a media planning and buying strategy to drive growth for Crisis to help meet its goal of ending homelessness. There will be a particular focus on helping the landmark Crisis at Christmas Campaign retain its market leadership in charitable giving during the festive period.

The Kite Factory, which won the business after a competitive pitch, is tasked with developing new ways to future-proof the programme and expanding the year-round campaign with new tactics to maximise media effectiveness.

Talon Outdoor hires chief sales and marketing officer

Talon Outdoor has appointed Sarah Parkes in its newly created role of chief sales and marketing officer.

Parkes starts immediately and reports to Barry Cupples, Talon Group CEO.

She will be responsible for corporate sales and marketing across the out of home group.

Parkes is a member of WACL and had previous roles at Global, Primesight and Airport Media.

Electronic Arts reports ‘largest quarter’ in company history

Electronic Arts (EA)’s total net revenue, or net bookings, for the last three months of 2021, was $2.58bn.

For the twelve months up to December 31, 2021 was $7.25bn, up 22% compared to 2020.

The financial results also reported the EA Player Network has grown to more than 540 million unique active accounts and that players spent nearly 20% more time in its games than the previous year.

“Q3 was the largest quarter in the company’s history for net bookings, underlying profitability and cash generation,” said CFO Blake Jorgensen.

Google Q4 revenue up 32% year on year

Google reported fourth quarter revenues of $75.33bn, up 32% compared to the previous year.

Advertising revenue from a combination of Google search, YouTube ads, and Google network made up $61.24bn of that quarterly revenue.

It also reported total full year revenue as $257.64bn which was up 41% compared to 2020.

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, said: “Q4 saw ongoing strong growth in our advertising business, which helped millions of businesses thrive and find new customers, a quarterly sales record for our Pixel phones despite supply constraints, and our Cloud business continuing to grow strongly.”

READ THE EDITOR’S COLUMN: Expect Google and Facebook to tell very different stories this week

Tuesday, 1 February

PHD UK makes two promotions to UK leadership team

PHD UK has appointed Sarah Nugent (below left) as London managing director and Toby Nettle (below right) as chief client officer.

Both were previously managing partners of the agency and will report to CEO Ali Reed.

Nugent joined PHD UK eight years ago from Walker Media (now Spark Foundry), where she had worked for seven years.

Nettle joined PHD in 2003 and has been responsible for key clients such as Volkswagen Group.

Sony buys Bungie for $3.6bn

Sony Interactive Entertainment has bought video game-maker Bungie for $3.6bn.

Bungie developed the first-person shooter games Halo and Destiny. The company was acquired by Microsoft in 2000 and then separated from them in 2007 with Halo remaining under Microsoft management.

This comes as Microsoft purchased Activision Blizzard, maker of Call of Duty, Diablo and World of Warcraft, for $68.7bn and Take-Two bought Zynga, creator of Farmville, for around $12.7bn in January.

Pinterest expands shoppable AR experience

Pinterest has announced a new try before buy AR technology on its Pinterest Lens camera.

Try On for Home Decor builds on Try On for lipstick and eyeshadow and allows users to virtually place items in their homes before purchasing.

There will be 80,000 shoppable pins for home decor from US retailers Crate & Barrel, CB2, Walmart, West Elm and Wayfair.

BBC Three returns to linear screens tonight with new commissions

BBC Three returns to linear TV screens from 7pm tonight after six years online.

Read more on this story here.

Ebiquity buys Forde and Semple

Ebiquity, the media investment analysis company, has announced it has acquired the largest independently owned and operated media auditing company in the Canadian market.

Forde and Semple’s team and clients will help Ebiquity expand its services and launch Ebiquity Canada.

New York Times acquires Wordle for seven figure sum

The New York Times has bought the viral word game Wordle for an undisclosed seven-figure sum, the publisher announced yesterday.

The game gives players six guesses to determine a five-letter word that changes on a daily basis and was created by software engineer Josh Wardle and launched in October.

Monday, 31 January

Sky Sports News receives carbon neutral status

Sky Sports News has received accreditation for its carbon neutral sustainable production by Albert, the UK TV and film industry body campaigning to stop climate change.

The sports news channel has been previously recognised by Albert for its Transfer Deadline Day broadcast since October 2020, and has since made efforts to reduce its wider environmental impact across the channel which it says now hits “the highest standards of sustainability set by Albert”.

Sky Sports UK Host Broadcasts, Sky Original productions and Sky News have also received Albert’s carbon neutral certification.

What’s Possible Group makes three senior appointments

What’s Possible Group announced it has made three hires to its leadership team.

Karl Weaver (pictured, below middle) joins What’s Possible Group as chief commercial officer, Donia Baddou (below left) will become managing director connections and Ian Maynard (below right) will be managing partner connections.

Weaver will report to CEO Martin Woolley and has previous roles including CEO of Publicis Groupe’s Data Practice, CEO of Dentsu’s Isobar and CEO of Data2Decisions.

Baddou co-founded Growth Lab and was managing director, UK, and then chief commercial officer EMEA for MOBKOI, part of The Brandtech Group.

Maynard joins from Royal Mail where he was a member of the Royal Mail Letters board and director of marketing, strategy, research and planning. Previously he had senior roles at Omnicom agency RAPP UK and was MD of media at Proximity London.

Immediate Media hires UK chief revenue officer

Immediate Media has appointed Julian Lloyd Evans as chief revenue officer in its UK advertising team.

Lloyd Evans (pictured, below)will start in the role in April 2022 and report to Immediate’s Platforms CEO Sean Cornwell.

He will replace Duncan Tickell who has been promoted to chief revenue officer of parent group BurdaInternational.

Evans’ focus will be on accelerating digital revenue growth and he previously worked at Dennis Publishing before selling to Future Plc in 2021 for £300m.

He currently is chair of The Big Issue’s Publishing Board.

Andrew Neil in talks with Channel 4 about political series

Andrew Neil is reportedly in talks with Channel 4 to host a weekly political series.

Broadcast first reported the journalist’s discussions with director of programmes Ian Katz and director of news and current affairs Louisa Compton about a Sunday evening show.

Neil is currently chair of The Spectator magazine and was last year the face of newly-launched GB News.

This comes as he hosted documentary Boris Johnson: Has He Run Out of Road? which aired on Channel 4 and All4 last night at 6.45pm.

Channel 4 declined to comment.

Goodstuff wins Naked Wines account after competitive pitch

Online wine retailer Naked Wines has appointed Goodstuff as its UK media planning and buying agency.

Goodstuff won the competitive pitch process against three undisclosed agencies.

Its brief is to focus on UK consumers reappraising the brand through above-the-line advertising to “future-proof” its growth.

Capital Breakfast launches multichannel campaign with stars ‘auditioning’ for the show

Global launched a multiplatform campaign for its Capital Breakfast show on Saturday.

The campaign was planned by agency PHD and will run for the next three months across TV, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

The 30-second ad first aired on ITV and social media at 7.45pm on Saturday during The Masked Singer

In creative by Mr Independent, Capital Breakfast hosts Roman Kemp, Sonny Jay and Siân Welby audition Ed Sheeran, Olly Alexander, Becky Hill Joel Corry, KSI, Lil Nas X and Anne-Marie to join the show.

Spotify adds content advisories to podcasts discussing Covid-19

The streaming platform has announced it will add a content advisory to any podcast episode that discusses Covid-19 which will direct listeners to a dedicated Covid-19 hub.

In a letter on Sunday, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek laid out new plans to tackle accusations of spreading misinformation on the platform as artist Neil Young gave Spotify an ultimatum about streaming his music while also hosting The Joe Rogan Experience.

Ek said the content advisory will roll out in the coming days and give listeners a resource with “data-driven facts, up-to-date information as shared by scientists, physicians, academics and public health authorities around the world”.

It has also updated its platform rules for musicians, podcasters and contributors related to dangerous, deceptive, sensitive or illegal content.