Thursday, May 2, 2019

NewFronts day 4: Meredith, Target and YouTube cap the week | Advertising Age

We’re in the home stretch of the Digital Content NewFronts. We’ll start the day with Meredith in its first NewFronts presentation since selling off Fortune and Time. (In April, Meredith took Money magazine off the market and discontinued its print edition. Sports Illustrated is still up for sale.) The publisher will host two back-to-back presentations this morning at its offices in downtown New York City.

Target is presenting this afternoon. The big-box retailer, which is making its first foray into the NewFronts, has kept its plans hush-hush. On Wednesday, rival Walmart unveiled a new video ad network that it claims will reach half of U.S. households.

And capping the week is YouTube, which once again enters the NewFronts saddled with questions surrounding brand safety. This year the digital video platform found itself in hot water after it was discovered that sexual predators were leaving comments on some YouTube videos.

On the content side, it’s expected YouTube will focus less on costly originals and more on videos from its most popular stars. This year the company shifted away from its subscription strategy for original content and said it would offer originals for free.

As with our previous live-blog installments, today’s series of dispatches come to you from Ad Age’s Jeanine Poggi, Ilyse Liffreing and Garett Sloane.

11:15 a.m. ET Meredith teams up with #SeeHer

Meredith has a new partnership with #SeeHer, and all brands in the Meredith portfolio will have #SeeHer content, including a series called #SeeHerStory, an interview series with journalist Katie Couric. —I.L.

11 a.m. ET IGTV ramp up

IGTV is a big focus for Meredith in 2019, with plans for 20 news series on the platform. People who follow Meredith properties open Instagram 30 times a day, the company says, and IGTV has generated 20 million views in the past three months already. —I.L. 

10:52 a.m. Meredith's reality TV ambitions

Lyndsey Rodrigues is the host of PeopleTV’s new free reality TV show “Reality Check,” which launches on May 13 on People.com and IGTV. Reality TV is one of the three top areas, in addition to red carpets and covering the royals, that Meredith is focusing on for 2019. —I.L. 

[from http://bit.ly/2VwvxLm]

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