Mobile Content (Pt.2)

Carrying on from our blog posted last week, we’re continuing with the theme of mobile content and the different strategies that publishers are undertaking, in order to maximise the tool that is mobile monetisation. With that being said, let’s jump right into it and pick up where we left off.

Last week, we began by looking at the latest innovation of mobile content, which is IGTV, and delving deeper into how different publishers were essentially capitalising on the new technology. We identified a few publishers who took the leap on IGTV, and most notably went in depth on the BBC’s strategy. You can have a  read of last week’s blog here.

In this week’s blog, we’ll be going along with the World Cup fever that’s been sweeping the nation, and looking at Telemundo’s live digital viewers on mobile devices

Telemundo

You’d be forgiven in the UK if you haven’t heard of Telemundo, however in the United States it’s the second largest provider of Spanish-language content nationwide.  The NBCUniversal broadcaster, which has Spanish-language rights to air every World Cup game in the U.S., said between 48 and 51 percent of its live digital viewers consistently watch the games on their smartphones. The other half flips between connected TV and desktop streaming, said Peter Blacker, evp of digital media and emerging business for NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises.

By the end of the World Cup’s group stage, which consisted of 48 total matches, Telemundo said its livestreaming coverage had reached 10.7 million unique viewers, 105.3 million total livestreams and more than 1.6 billion total minutes watched. The games averaged 2 million livestreams per match. On average, Telemundo’s digital coverage of the games delivers an additional 15 percent of viewers to its TV-only audience, the company said.

Telemundo, which has more than 500 people on the ground in Russia for its coverage of the monthlong tournament, said its results so far demonstrate how much time U.S. Hispanics spend time on mobile devices — even when it means watching live and long-form programming such as a World Cup game.

“With [the mobile device] group, I would have thought that come the weekends, they might have put the phone down and switched to connected TVs, but they remain die-hard,” Blacker said. “This is different from the Olympics [which Telemundo parent NBCUniversal broadcasts], where there was a much greater variety of folks swimming back and forth.”

Paywall

Next up for Telemundo: educating its own users about authentication with TV Everywhere services. Through the group stage, Telemundo offered its livestreams for free. In the tournament’s elimination rounds, Telemundo will try to get its users to sign in with their cable and satellite account info. A few early tests that Telemundo ran during the group stages beat the broadcaster’s initial expectations, Blacker said, though he declined to provide specific conversion rates.

“Anytime you remove a paywall, you’re going to see a amazing audience growth — we have seen that repeatedly across the board with the streaming services we work with,” said Hui Zhang, chief scientist at streaming video analytics company Conviva. “Conversion rates will be the key parameter, but this was the right move for Telemundo. At a foundational level, consumers are king, and you need to get them to your app first.”