Twitter's Video Move; Facebook Offers Topic Data

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Twitter’s Live Video Bet

Twitter dropped a little less than $100 million for Periscope, a startup that’s been developing a live-video streaming app, according to The Wall Street Journal. The deal was first reported by Business Insider and was quietly finalized a month ago. The purported price tag would make this one of Twitter’s most expensive acquisitions. The buy bolsters Twitter’s video offering. Commented Ben Rubin, founder of Periscope live-streaming competitor Meerkat, “I think Twitter is a smart company and they know what they’re doing. It’s great for the space.” More.

Moar Facebook Data

Unlike Twitter, Facebook has always posed a “social listening” challenge, since a large chunk of activity is locked up in password-protected news feeds. A new offering called Topic Data will alleviate that challenge by letting marketers link conversations surrounding events, brands and activities back to their businesses. Powered by DataSift, also a Twitter partner, the data is only available in aggregate and advertisers can’t use it to target ads. “While this type of data has been available from third parties before, the sample size was often too small to be significant and determining demographics was nearly impossible,” Facebook explained in a blog post. “With topic data, we’ve grouped data and stripped personal information from Facebook activity (not including Messenger) to offer insights on all the activity around a topic.”

Content Is King. Agencies, Queens

Speaking to Adweek, Peter Minnium, IAB’s head of digital brand initiatives, predicts that native advertising, or what he calls content advertising, will win more budget. But there will be casualties on the publisher side. “We will absolutely begin to see a shakeout over the next year to 18 months as traditional agencies begin to learn [native advertising] skills and bring them in house,” he said. “We’re seeing interesting models now: Grey, DigitasLBi and Starcom MediaVest have groups. I think we’re going to see a shakeout as publishers who are rushing into this space begin to realize how hard creative services is. Brand agencies have years of understanding how to optimize the process. As we move forward, brands are going to be more selective.”

Adobe-Accenture Alliance

Adobe has expanded partnership with Accenture with the launch of a managed service tool called Accenture Customer Engagement. Debuted at its annual Digital Marketing conference in Salt Lake City, the offering aims to simplify digital marketing development, deployment and measurement. The firms are betting on a need for speed – marketing deployment speed, that is – in light of a recent Accenture survey that suggests 43% of CMOs think their organization’s tech is too slow. Read the release.

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