AP report: AI is an opportunity for local newsrooms

March 29, 2022/in AI, Digital Publishing, Radio, Television/by Zena

Groundbreaking report surveying hundreds of newsrooms points to the importance of AI.

By Tim Wolff
VP, TV & Digital Publishing Innovation, Futuri Media

What would you choose if someone else could do part of your job? What if, instead of a person, artificial intelligence could do it? And what if it could go beyond just replacing a mundane task to actually creating ways to make your product better?

Newsrooms across America have been wondering about that, and some have actively engaged AI — artificial intelligence. How much a newsroom uses AI has a lot to do with how many resources and how much time a newsroom has to experiment.

That’s according to a new report from the Associated Press, which was part of a project where they interviewed people from hundreds of newsrooms across the U.S. The goal was to learn what newsrooms are using and what newsrooms want, then to chart a plan for getting our newsrooms to that AI future.

Quoting from the AP’s press release:

“Key findings from the report include:

There is a significant gap between large and small news organizations in terms of how widely AI and automation technologies are used.
Despite some concerns about handing off human work to machines, there is nevertheless strong support among local newsrooms for automating tasks that could free journalists for deeper reporting, streamline production or enhance content monetization.
While interest is high, AI technologies are not in wide use at the local level because many news outlets lack the resources or time required to experiment.”

Diving deeper into the report itself, while survey respondents came up with a wide range of uses, there were some areas where nearly everyone agreed there was a need. Finding stories a local market would care about in social media was near the top of the list for newsrooms of every kind (the AP works with newspapers, TV and radio stations, and digital-only newsrooms).

This quote in the report really stood out to me:

“WTAE-TV News Director Jim Parsons said that sometimes events happen in the communities the Pennsylvania station serves, and the reporting team misses it on social media. ‘We don’t have a great system in place, other than keeping our eye on TweetDeck 24/7,’ he said. WTAE-TV relies on manual scouring of local websites and social media that AI may help solve. ‘It would help to have some ‘robotic eyeballs’ trying to find these events.'”

Sure, as the AP’s key findings note, there is some concern among newsrooms respondents about handing human work off to machines. But when resources are finite, aren’t they better spent creating compelling content that sets your brand apart? What’s the harm in letting technology do the busy work?

Reporters in every newsroom are spending a lot of time looking through social, trying to find stories. As anyone who’s spent a lot of time on social can tell you, most of it isn’t newsworthy. Our own research here at Futuri (conducted in partnership with SmithGeiger) shows that social media is the number one way newsrooms get stories today. It’s part of what makes AI-powered TopicPulse ContentAdvantage such an incredible tool. Futuri has been creating cutting-edge AI media tools for more than a decade, and the amount of data processed through a powerful AI is a true difference-maker for newsrooms.

The survey also showed automated writing and automated personalized experiences for users were also near the top of newrooms’ wish list, among about a dozen other key newsroom needs.

The adoption of AI in newsrooms varies, as has the AI knowledge within newsrooms. The AP will begin offering classes to close the knowledge gap next month. And as artificial intelligence in the newsroom is a topic on which I’m passionate, I’ll present the session What News Managers Need Now — spoiler alert! It’s AI — at NAB Show in April (learn more about the session and how to join me by clicking here).

I applaud the Associated Press for calling attention to the benefits of AI for local news. Used correctly, AI stands to change our industry — for the better, meaningfully.

Tim Wolff is Vice President of TV and Digital Publishing Innovation at Futuri. He has 20+ years of experience as a digital and broadcasting leader who’s led top-performing teams across the country at companies including Gannet, Belo, and Cox Media Group Ohio, which includes three daily newspapers, three radio stations, WHIO-TV, and more. Wolff, who holds a Master’s in Journalism from the University of Missouri, also makes a mean green chile stew.

The good reporter who became a bad reporter (and how to be good again)

March 27, 2022/in Digital Publishing, Tech Trends, Television/by Zena

Are you doing the right things to retain your top performers?

By Tim Wolff, Futuri’s VP, TV and Digital Publishing Innovation

The full article lives on RTDNA.com, the website of the Radio Television Digital News Association

How do you use your best people?

I’ve learned a lot over the years in news management. One of the earliest and most profound lessons was what happens when managers think their job is to plug people in where they can operationally succeed that day.

Let me explain what mean and how I learned this. Early in my career, when I was a news producer, we had an incredible reporter. He enterprised lead stories every day, was brilliant covering breaking news, and often left extra packages for later shows. He could also dive in to tricky stories and make them make sense, all with a positive, willing attitude.

The editorial decision-makers knew this, of course. So every day, the other reporters got the easy, no enterprise needed stories, while he had to come up with his own lead stories and take on the toughest stories of the day. And then he’d get pulled for big breaking news first, while other reporters just did their one easy package and left.

This went on for probably close to two years. Then one day, I noticed his package and live shot were just ok; not horrible, but not up to his standards. And the next day he had no story ideas, and again seemed to mail in his package and live shot. I wasn’t a manager then, but I knew something was up. I pulled him aside the next day and asked him how he was.

He seemed surprised for a second, then exhaled and said something like, “I guess it’s obvious, right?”

Click here to read the full article on RTDNA.com.

Tim Wolff is Vice President of TV and Digital Publishing Innovation at Futuri. He has 20+ years of experience as a digital and broadcasting leader who’s led top-performing teams across the country at companies including Gannet, Belo, and Cox Media Group Ohio, which includes three daily newspapers, three radio stations, WHIO-TV, and more. Wolff, who holds a Master’s in Journalism from the University of Missouri, also makes a mean green chile stew. You can see his live presentation “What News Managers Need Now” at the upcoming NAB conference. To learn more or continue the conversation, email him at timwolff@futurimedia.com or message him on Linkedin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/timwolff1/.

Prospect Conversions – Don’t Sell Yourself Short

January 27, 2022/in Digital Publishing, Radio, Sales Trends, Tech Trends, Television, Webinar/by lindy

At the beginning of each year, we think about improving ourselves. Some make resolutions while others pick up a new planner or organizational tool for work or personal life. Many find themselves reading a self-help book, like Stephen Covey’s timeless classic, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey wrote that one should seek first to understand, then to be understood. A straightforward tip that’s helpful in one’s personal life and an essential strategy for sales professionals. In our recent webinar, The Broadcast Sales Executive’s Guide to Crushing It in 2022, what we covered is a living example of Covey’s game-winning strategy. Especially for Account Executives and Sales Managers seeking to increase prospect conversions and get more out of their biggest clients.

Walk a Mile in The Prospect’s Shoes

Many SDRs arm themselves with a well-crafted value proposition and create a plan for how they’ll woo the prospect or client into understanding why they should be buying what they’re selling. This is the classic goal-driven best practice for creating a sales pitch. It’s also in need of an overhaul.

What if, instead of creating your plan based on wanting the customer to understand the value of your product, you took a step back, took some time to get to know your prospects and clients? This sounds easier said than done. How would you do it, and where would you start?

Thankfully, there are tools that can help you understand your clients better. Having a true sense of a prospect or client’s personality is essential. It’s cornerstone of how you’ll tell the story about your product fulfilling their needs.

At Futuri, we specialize in providing account executives and sales managers with a sales intelligence tool designed to convert prospects while shortening the sales cycle so you can close more deals. TopLine was created to help your sales team understand prospects and clients better on a more personal level and keep you up to speed on the most important news in your client’s industry and help create rock star sales presentations.

The Right Tools for the Right Job

TopLine equips you to speak the lingo of their industry so you can communicate like an expert in their business category. TopLine Individual Personality Profiles are the secret tools in your arsenal. They help you prepare for the meeting, craft the perfect email, or make a warm phone call. Prospects and clients will remember the connection you made.

TopLine’s Business Acumen and Instant Insights help you connect in more meaningful and relevant ways. When you sound knowledgeable about what’s happening in their business and use the same terminology and catchphrases, you grow trust. A significant factor in getting the sale.

A great way to glimpse how TopLine can help you identify prospects is our weekly Top 3 Categories infographic, posted every Monday on our LinkedIn page. You’ll see the category, why we think it’s an excellent prospecting opportunity, data to back it up, and prospecting questions to kick start your creative approach. It’s 100% free and clear for you to use when you follow Futuri on LinkedIn.

We created these features in TopLine for every seller who has experienced that moment in a meeting when your prospect or client seemed to be keeping your ideas and product at arm’s length while they struggled to see how it could help their business.

That’s where TopLine starts. Our entire suite of features, including meeting prep, client research, custom-built presentations, co-op reports, and TopLine’s newly added client Digital Analysis reports, all come together in a single sales intelligence platform.

We’ll help you walk a mile in their shoes, help you understand why they bought them, and make them excited to buy another pair from you.

Cut to the Front of the Line

If you’re ready to take the next step and learn how TopLine can maximize prospect conversions, grow your client list, land more new business all while shortening your sales cycle, send us a note, and we’ll be in touch soon.

In the meantime, you can check out our recent webinar here.

From all of us at Futuri, here’s to crushing your sales goals in 2022!

Will your newsroom be ready when social media transparency becomes regulated?

January 6, 2022/in Digital Publishing, Radio, Tech Trends, Television/by Zena

Social media transparency is about to get regulated: here’s what it means for your newsroom.

By Tim Wolff, Futuri’s VP, TV and Digital Publishing Innovation

The talk–and there’s been a lot of it in recent years–is becoming more than talk. Bipartisan bills have been introduced; the public wants action. Even the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, says, “The place where we have the best chance at progress is legislating a certain amount of transparency.”

The main driver, of course, is that so many people use social media and that there is little clarity or consistency around how each social platform chooses the content we see. Toss in a dash of global election interference and warnings that addictive social media is harming our psyche, and you can see where transparency regulation sounds good for consumers.

But what about newsrooms?

An accurate and in-the-moment understanding of the topics and stories people are sharing and seeing on social media has enormous benefits for newsrooms, who are, after all, trying to report and create content about what interests the most people. As the news events of 2022 unfold in a year that will mark the dawn of social media’s legislated transparency, newsroom strategies for monitoring social media will shift as access to more and different social data becomes available.

It’s foggy at best how social platforms will evolve data sharing in post-regulation. For now, newsrooms need to be careful not to put all their eggs into one basket. A reliance on data coming solely from the social media company itself could become disruptive if the company stops or changes how and what it shares, which currently would be an entirely legal decision on their part.

Consider, for example, CrowdTangle. They were launched as an independent, free-to-use social monitoring tool bought by Facebook in 2016. CrowdTangle is used in almost every newsroom in the U.S. Journalists log in using their personal Facebook account to access a depth of data culled from public Facebook Pages and Groups, Instagram accounts, and the most popular subreddits. But that can all change in a hurry.

This week, news came out that the co-founder of CrowdTangle, Brandon Silverman, left Facebook and is now working with a bipartisan group of U.S. senators to shape laws intended to make social media more transparent. Silverman also told the New York Times that the CrowdTangle team was disbanded last fall, and the product was being moved under Facebook’s integrity team. He also says it became an annoyance within Facebook, making it unclear how long Facebook will support it.

That’s one reason we have always focused on a much broader range of data here at Futuri. With TopicPulse, the most advanced AI-driven social data tool, we track data from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and over 100,000 news publishers. Because we monitor all these different sources and publishers, our partners are covered and won’t be disrupted by one social company shutting something down.

We also include real people as part of the mix, helping monitor and manage the artificial intelligence that brings real-time, live demographic data and predictive analysis to thousands of stories every minute.

We believe in data, we believe in transparency, and we believe in constantly improving the best tools that help newsrooms spend less time unraveling the data behind trending stories so they can concentrate on serving their communities.

Here are our top pro tips to help your newsroom track social media for content:

Have a broad scope of data sources
Choose information that can be widely accessed in your newsroom; if only one or two people have access, that’s a significant risk for you
Track more than just your brand(s) social media and your competitors; after all, that’s only a tiny portion of the average consumer’s social media activity
Remember, it’s not a zero-sum game between you and the other TV/Radio/Newspapers in town. Social and digital are virtually unlimited, and you have endless opportunities to grow your brand
Keep a healthy skepticism about any self-reporting platform
Track trending news topics outside of your news team’s comfort zone (we tend to live in similar areas, follow similar social media, and only reflect a portion of our communities)
Ask for (or demand) transparency whenever possible, just as we should be as transparent as possible with our news consumers
Ask your news team how much time they spend mining social media for news and tips. Then have them track it to get the actual number
Look for tools that can save your news team time and get them the essential information they need (you’ll need AI, and you’ll see an immediate positive impact on your team and your news)
Take a look at what personal data your news team has had to share to get access to tech or social media data; journalists are under fire as never before, and it’s a good idea to have a cybersecurity expert review the risks journalists have taken in exposing private information to tech and social media companies
Stay up to date on changes in social, AI, and media technology by following on LinkedIn, Twitter, or your platform of choice

Tim Wolff is Vice President of TV and Digital Publishing Innovation at Futuri. He has 20+ years of experience as a digital and broadcasting leader who’s led top-performing teams across the country at companies including Gannet, Belo, and Cox Media Group Ohio, which includes three daily newspapers, three radio stations, WHIO-TV, and more. Wolff, who holds a Master’s in Journalism from the University of Missouri, also makes a mean green chile stew.

Build a Better Broadcast

November 12, 2021/in Digital Publishing, Radio, Television/by jesse

With the rise of listeners consuming more content through devices other than their traditional AM/FM dials, your radio station is going to need to figure out how to keep engaging audiences in the increasingly competitive market you may find yourself working in.

As if you didn’t already know the unique challenges that your media brand is facing and weren’t constantly looking for new solutions and approaches to the behemoth competition you face every day!

Well, it sounds like your station is going to need to build a better broadcast! One that the modern audience not only tolerates but embraces.

At Futuri, we recently partnered again with our colleagues at Nielsen in order to learn more about how our POST’s audio solutions can help your station achieve success by taking an on-demand broadcast audio (ODBA) approach to radio in today’s cutthroat media market.

In fact, we even produced a study on ODBA with Nielsen that you can download with all the nitty-gritty on how POST’s proprietary and unique interface, integration into broadcast audio systems, and integration into social and digital platforms yields uniquely positive results compared to other systems and approaches to ODBA.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

While you could read up on why ODBA is a game-changing solution for your station’s success, you probably already have a lot of questions about how producing ODBA isn’t just extra busywork where you’re reproducing what you already do well with traditional broadcast mediums.

Maybe it sounds like producing time-shifted content is just a matter of reinventing the wheel. You may feel like you can only take a new approach to content, thinking you can only be a successful radio executive or a really great director of a podcast syndicate network.

With POST’s audio solutions, you can have it both ways!

Don’t get trapped in an either/or mindset. When your station adopts an ODBA approach to success, you can be both a successful media executive and a superb podcast producer all in the same day.

Don’t Go Back to the Drawing Board

You’re probably tired of always going back to the drawing board, trying to come up with a new solution to all the problems your station is finding itself in.

However, we at Futuri have done all of the research and have developed a proven, patented product that will be a game-changer for how your station can adopt an OBDA solution to the issues currently facing the radio industry.

Futuri’s POST audio solutions serve as a highly effective way to edit, package, and publish your station’s content and engage audiences with your brand across multiple platforms. POST will help your station get more people involved with your brand and increase your station’s ROI — all without having to add a whole department’s worth of staff!

With a solution like this, why would you ever want to go back to the drawing board when trying to come up with a plan for how to adopt an ODBA approach to success for your brand?

The Blueprint for Success

Lucky for media executives like you, we at Futuri developed the blueprint for success and put it to work with our now-patented POST production/on-demand system so that you too can start building in the neighborhood of on-demand broadcast audio.

I would encourage you to check out this blueprint so that you can know how to best achieve success with an ODBA approach at your highly regarded media company.

Where did all my listeners go?

November 4, 2021/in Digital Publishing, Radio/by jesse

At Futuri, we recently partnered with Nielsen to produce yet another study on the Growing Audience with On-Demand Broadcast Audio study. After a quick two year break, we are back after a raging pandemic with updated information on why on-demand broadcast audio is a prime opportunity for your radio station even more now that it already was back in 2019.

The traditional media landscape in radio has been shaken up pretty good lately. High-quality competitors are around every degree of the radio dial – if you still have one of those analog ones! Consumers now want more digital and social content in terms of radio. Now listeners are listening around the clock at any given time of the day and not just during the typical morning and evening hours.

With our new study we produced with Nielsen, you’re definitely going to learn some new things about why On-Demand Broadcast Audio is hugely important for your brand and we’ll even offer some suggestions for how you can break into this new, exciting opportunity for your brand.

It’s Not Them. It’s You.

Sounds great! But where’s the catch?

You’re right. If creating time-shifted content was easy, everybody would be doing it. However, that is not the case.

Americans are now willing to pay around $40 or $50 per month for subscription streaming services, so that means that if your station just keeps producing a bunch of middle bar level content, then that’s not going to cut it any longer. People are willing to pay for quality and don’t just want to turn on the free radio dial any more.

Also, with less people commuting and more people still working from home, traditional radio has taken a serious hit. Add to that the fact that most people’s audio speakers at home don’t come with built-in AM/FM receivers. They’re connecting those devices to their favorite streaming services and not giving an ounce of thought to radio at that point.

How to Win Them Back

With all the listeners leaving their traditional AM/FM dials for streaming services, your media brand is going to need a solution fast to help you implement more on-demand broadcast audio.

Luckily, we at Futuri have a solution called POST that can help your station publish shows in a podcast format across multiple platforms.

Instead of starting from scratch, with POST your existing content can be repurposed from what would be listened to by audiences on the way to work into content they can listen to while working from home or while making dinner in the evening.

With POST, your station can measure up to the competitors in the battle to have the best premium content. In fact, stations using POST were over 5x more likely than non-POST stations to have on-demand PPM broadcast audio minutes captured by Nielsen.

Also, listeners don’t just want original podcasts. They actually want on-demand channels where they are still interacting with their favorite on-air personalities in a time-shifted format, not just a bunch of random podcasts completely separate from everything else going on at the station. POST can help in this area tremendously.

Baby, Come Back

With POST, you’ll never find yourself having to beg lost listeners to come back on board.

POST’s unique, patented technology, specifically designed for easy, fast, and efficient editing, packaging, and publishing, can help stations capture opportunities uncovered in our research with SmithGeiger Group and validated in our studies with Nielsen, without needing to add a new department’s worth of new staff.

Please visit futurimedia.com/podcast21 for the full study and to register for our November 11th webinate.

Good Morning, New Normal!

November 2, 2021/in Digital Publishing, Radio, Television/by jesse

In the last eighteen months, media consumers’ habits have shifted greatly. This has impacted so many parts of their lives from the time they wake up to the time they go to sleep. Major disruptions to everyone’s lives such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the related reordering of how we do things have changed our morning routines and media habits greatly.

What does this mean for your media company, radio or television company?

Thankfully, the new Future of Audience and Revenue Study from Futuri and our partners at SmithGeiger unveiled a lot of information about today’s media consumers and how you can advertise and market to listeners and viewers better.

With this white paper, you will be feeling like you have a new morning routine so that your company can wake up to success at work every morning in this new normal we currently find ourselves in.

The New Morning Routine for Your Media Brand

Make your brand more than just a show: think omnichannel!

Just think of all the different things you have to do in order to get ready in the morning.

Similarly, media consumers are always doing a variety of different things and interacting with different media devices and ways of interacting with your company’s brand!

For example, morning shows can use social media such as Facebook to interact with their viewers as soon as they wake up and check their phones. Or perhaps they could post in the afternoon to show their audiences what their hosts are working on in the afternoon to get ready for the next day’s show!

Today’s successful media brands – morning show or not – take an omnichannel approach with different options such as videos, podcasts, blogs, websites, social media, and mobile apps in order to achieve highly in competitive markets.

In fact, Futuri offers some solutions that your company can use in order to take an omnichannel approach to engaging with your audience.

POST by Futuri is the podcasting, audio on-demand, and video system that maximizes your content ROI.

Futuri Mobile offers apps that are customizable, engaging, and highly monetizable.

Location, location, location: use localized content to give your listener context

Consumers don’t want to listen to talk about the same old shows as their Aunt Irma in Missouri or their cousins watch in Iowa.

Listeners want local content about what is happening in their area. They want to hear about the unusual happenings, business activities, or local media production in their area, not necessarily what happened on The Bachelor or some other national show that aired the night before.

Leaning into local content isn’t just something nice you should do in order to appease your audience’s preferences.

The Future of Audience and Revenue Report found that consumers are becoming more willing to pay for local information from digital publishers, and they’re already dwelling to pay for audio and video subscriptions for that localized content.

This could mean huge gains for your media company if you adopt this localized content strategy that the study is suggesting.

Wake up to the potential for serious revenue growth and increased ROI

Wake up and watch the sunrise full of new opportunities. In particular, the sun is shining bright rays of revenue in terms of media consumers’ newly demonstrated activity in the area of paid subscription services.

Did you know that for example that The New York Times made more money in subscriptions, rather than advertising, in the year 2020?

In fact, people are willing to spend around 40 or 50 dollars per month depending on their age group on streaming video and audio services!

Not only are media consumers spending money on subscriptions services, but they are poised to also make major purchases which is great news for advertising.

About 41% of media consumers are ready to spend more on travel and vacations. 28% are ready to buy new furniture for their homes.

“…But I’m not a morning person!”

Whether or not you’re a media executive involved with morning shows, we’re all finding ourselves waking up to the next normal in the media industry.

Be ready for whatever is coming next and equip yourself with the useful knowledge from the recent Future of Audience and Revenue Study that we conducted with our partners at SmithGeiger.

Even if you don’t consider yourself a morning person, you will definitely find it useful!

More Thoughts on Connecting with Younger Audiences

October 29, 2021/in Digital Publishing, Radio, Tech Trends, Television/by jesse

Young people have a lot going on in their lives at any given time. Getting their attention means competing against many other factors.

Futuri recently hosted a webinar that addressed exactly this topic of how brands like yours can become not just relevant, but essential to younger audiences. You can see for yourself with our on-demand webinar led by Futuri’s Charlie Maxx and Sabrina Carlo.

After seeing a high level of interest in reaching younger audiences and low level of confidence in the ability to do so, this webinar was intended for media executives and others who wanted to see what could be done in this area of engaging younger audiences and making your brand essential to them.

Here are a few key takeaways from the webinar, many of which are discussed at length in Furuti’s Future of Audience and Revenue Study 2021.

Declining Trust in Media

In general, young people no longer have very much trust in large institutions anymore. This lack of trust in large organizations extends to the mediasphere as well.

The Future of Audience and Revenue study surveyed different age groups on the credibility of major TV outlets. While the other age groups scored the major TV outlets at a rate of 30-50% credibility, the younger audience scored the credibility at only in the mid-20%.

This is bad news for major TV outlets, however not so much for local radio, television, and newspaper brands. In fact, local radio and local newspaper brands ranked highly with respect to clarity and facts. So while it would seem that young audiences no longer trust the media in general, the problem is a lot more nuanced than this.

In particular, younger audiences distrust large, national media brands, but are more likely to trust their preferred local radio, television and newspaper brands.

The Younger Audience Has Defined Media Preferences

When you’re trying to market your brand to younger audiences, it is important to take into account what kinds of content they are actively seeking. The most sought-after kind of content for 18 to 24-year-olds, the Future of Audience and Revenue study found, was… scary content. Spooky, right?

Emotional and sad content was also reported to be popular with 18 to 24-year-olds.

On the flip side, it’s important to make sure that you don’t market your brand based on the types of content that young people aren’t interested in or actively avoiding. Surprisingly, The Future of Audience and Revenue Study found that informative, current events, and dramatic content just weren’t as popular with 18 to 24-year-olds.

It would seem to me that the media preferences of young people involve more emotional and scary content, rather than factual information about important, timely matters in society. By knowing the content preferences of young people, your brand can be better marketed towards them.

Vital to Long-Term Health of Media Companies

By now you’re starting to feel better informed about how younger audiences trust smaller, local news organizations rather than major media networks and prefer more emotionally stimulating content over cold, hard, factual information content. This is all great to know, but after learning so much about younger audiences, you might be wondering how all of this connects to the success of your company.

The young audience of today become the patrons of tomorrow. If you connect with them now and build loyalty and trust — two things that are hard to win with this age group — your company will be in a great place as far as long-term health goes.

Takeaways and More Ideas

Knowing how to engage with younger audiences is critical if you want your media brand to survive in the current landscape of media.

Still hungry for more on how you can make your brand essential to younger audiences? If so, we would highly encourage you to request the white paper from our website so that you can read up on the study for yourself and be sure to check out the on-demand webinar.

eSports: Opportunities that are No Game

October 22, 2021/in Digital Publishing, eSports, Industry News, Radio/by jesse

Following the launch of TopicPulse SportsEdge, a version of our real-time, AI-powered story discovery and social content system customized for eSports, betting, VR, and fantasy content, we’re digging back into our recent study on The Future of Audience and Revenue from Futuri and the SmithGeiger Group to look at eSports and how they present a major opportunity for your company.

In particular, today we want to continue unpacking this study by looking at a prime opportunity for media companies to leverage the recent uptick in eSports activity in order to be more successful.

Three Opportunities for Your Business with eSports

eSports is a Blue Ocean

Right now, eSports is a blue ocean space in the media industry: it’s unexplored and full of promise (with less competition). Our study uncovered astounding growth and viewership statistics you can learn more about right here, and all the numbers tell the same story: eSports is primed to experience explosive growth.

This means it’s time to claim your space in this ocean as soon as possible. If you’re a first mover into the eSports world, you have a chance to reap significant rewards.

Why keep fighting all the old competition in the same old places, when you can go be an early player in the eSports media game?

Marketing Potential

The opportunities for marketing products in eSports media are not only numerous, but they also present ways to advertise brands in ways that can’t be done in other forms of media.

For example, we’re all familiar with advertising with product placement. eSports takes this idea one step further by allowing the product to be placed inside a game, much like Epic does with Fortnite.

Also, streamers can be great for marketing, too. They’re being watched closely by a niche market of young people for hours on end, and their “followers” develop trusting relationships with them. Products they use or recommend to their audience are instantly vaulted into consideration for the audience’s shopping concerns.

Advertising Potential

eSports also has what it takes to be a strong force for advertising your company’s products.

You already know how the strong connection between streamers and audiences can be used to market your company’s brand. Taking this one step further, specific products or offerings can be advertised through eSports.

There are a few great examples of this. For one, Star Wars released an exclusive look at The Rise of Skywalker within Fortnite. Another example is how Riot Games made Valorant only playable by popular streams prior to its release. This was a great way to advertise the upcoming game—future players were introduced to it by the streamers they so admire.

Not only is the advertising potential strong with eSports, it also offers great ROAS potential compared to more traditional outlets, which we’d be happy to explain further.

Don’t Save and Quit

There’s too much potential with eSports for you to just save your game progress and walk away. Instead, you need to plug in and get into this action for yourself!

If you’re ready to make that leap, visit TopicPulseSportsEdge.com.

And if any of this, keep your eyes on the Futuri blog and LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for more insight about sports betting, fantasy, e-sports and VR coming very soon!

Get Serious Clout with Sports Betting and eSports Audiences

October 19, 2021/in Digital Publishing, eSports, Radio, Television/by jesse

We are always looking for new ways to help you to engage with your audiences through our POST and TopicPulse lines of products, so when our team heard about the recent rise of sports betting and eSports, we knew it was a huge opportunity and we could help new customers!

That’s what led to TopicPulse SportsEdge, a version of our real-time, AI-powered story discovery and social content system customized for eSports, betting, VR, and fantasy content.

To show you how powerful SportsEdge could be for our business, let’s unpack some results from The Future of Audience and Revenue 2021, done with SmithGieger.

The Findings and Ways They Can Help YOU!

Demographics of Sports Bettors

The recent Futuri + Geiger study shone a light on what kind of people are ready for sports betting to make its way into the mainstream. 7 out of 10 sports bettors are men. Most are employed full-time and earn more than $75,000 each year. About half of all sports bettors are in their mid 20’s to mid 40’s.

So what? Why should your media company market to this segment? Are these people really still listening to the radio and watching television if most of their time is spent betting on sports online?

Yes, they are! Sports bettors are still using the radio and television, as well as web media just like everyone else. It would be a missed opportunity not to engage with this demographic on these forums. 4 out of 10 sports bettors enjoy listening to sports talk. 1 out of 4 enjoy listening to newscasts.

According to the Futuri + SmithGeigerGroup study, half of the survey takers said that they bet on season games, playoffs, and big events like the Super Bowl and March Madness. 4 out of 10 of the survey takers said they would see it as a positive if local news programs were to offer odds, betting lines, and best bets in their sports reports

Wouldn’t it be great to engage with sports bettors and always have engaging content to keep them coming back? SportsEdge can help you accomplish exactly that!

eSports Viewership on the Rise

Sports betters are a big market, but what about eSports viewers as well?

We can answer that with a resounding YES.

The numbers are astounding and represent a wide market: there are slightly more men than women playing video games. 3 out of every 4 children play video games. The median age of the video gamer is 31, so half of all gamers are older than 31 and the other half is younger. Half of all video game players play seven or more hours a week, but still have time for life’s other activities and traditional mainstream media consumption.

Best of all, 227 million US consumers played video games in 2021, an increase from the 214 million who played in 2020. Furthermore, there were 26.6 million monthly eSports viewers in the US in 2021. That number is projected to grow to 31.4 million in 2023.

That’s a lot of people, but what about the money? There is $1.8 BILLION anticipated eSports revenue by 2022. 69% of this eSports revenue will come from sponsors or ads. Media rights, ticket sales, and merchandise will account for only the other 31% of eSports revenue.

Particularly with eSports, there are unique opportunities for advertising such as appealing to a niche audience, but best of all having a large audience for a long time period at a low cost. That sounds like a winning equation to me!

With such a growing interest in eSports and revenue to be gained in this area, why would you want your company to get left out of all the action?

Sports Betting and eSports: Key Takeaways

Now you know why sports betting and eSports are two key audiences in advertising that need to be capitalized on by your company.

If you’re ready to take advantage of this, we’re ready to help.

If you’re read to elevate your game with TopicPulse SportsEdge, visit TopicPulseSportsEdge.com.