How Twitter lets Aussie brands take flight worldwide
As Twitter scales its mission to be the go-to source for long-form sport and entertainment videos, Mumbrella examines how Australia's television networks are using the social platform to take local content across the globe.
For a World Cup that promised so much, the Socceroos’ performance in Moscow felt like another damp squib. On the pitch, Australia slumped to a 2-1 defeat to France; recorded a lacklustre draw against Denmark and finally sleepwalked their way out of the tournament with a 2-0 loss to Peru.
Full-time.
Australia 0 Peru 2.
What did you make of the campaign? #AUSPER #WorldCup pic.twitter.com/oy9ltYSoCU
— SBS – The World Game (@TheWorldGame) June 26, 2018
However, off the pitch, there was nothing lacklustre about the online hype: Twitter was alight with discussion, predictions and all-out chanting from fans and media commentators. Leading the commentary in Australia was national broadcaster SBS, which, in perhaps an indication of things to come, signed a deal with Twitter to broadcast a live highlights show each match day. Entitled #WorldGameLIVE and hosted by pundits Lucy Zelić and Craig Foster, the live Twitter program generated a total of 1.5 million views across 23 shows.
The audience came on top of the 9.1 million who tuned into SBS, giving them access to a broader, younger audience more likely to watch on their phones than TVs. It’s a sign of how much times have changed and how much things will continue to change in consumers’ viewing behaviour.
Over the past 10 years, the words ‘media fragmentation’ rarely fail to make an appearance when it comes to the state of play for traditional broadcasters. The rise of YouTube, subscription video-on-demand behemoths like Netflix and streaming services like Twitch have given networks such as SBS, Seven and Nine cause for concern when it comes to both reaching the audiences they once had and commanding the same advertising revenue. Latest figures from Deloitte’s Media Consumer Survey suggest 32% of Australians now have SVOD subscriptions. More pertinently, a fifth of online entertainment time was spent on social media.
This trend was not lost on Seven West Media, as its head of commercial product, Jonathan Munschi, explains.
“We started investing in social video some years ago,” he says. “Media was becoming more fragmented. Instead of suffering from that fragmentation, the business strategy has been to drive that fragmentation with our own content to potentially benefit from it.”
Rekindling has won the 2017 @emirates #MelbourneCup for Joseph O’Brien and the Williams family for the second consecutive year pic.twitter.com/SDrb1Zbf2a
— Racing Victoria (@RacingInsider) November 7, 2017
It was two years ago when Twitter first started live streaming the Melbourne Cup – one of Australia’s biggest national sporting events. Although not forming part of any rights deal, the partnership has remained strong between the two parties, with Twitter renewing its deal to carry on airing the live event this year.
The companies have also worked closely together on to publish highlights from major sporting events like the 2018 Winter Olympics and the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.
“It’s not just about reaching people; it’s about engaging with Premium content, and often that extends beyond just Live Sports,” Munschi says. “There’s a lifestyle element to it, too. And that was an angle we could explore better and bring to life on Twitter.
“We want to make events like the Winter Olympics and Commonwealth Games as big as possible so there was a strong rationale to bringing this to Twitter. And that’s because people use Twitter based on their passion points; my personal feed is full of media and digital news because I’m passionate about that. So you know you have the potential to reach out to all the Live Sport communities across the globe.”
What perhaps sets Twitter apart more in Australia from its social competitors are the lengths it has gone to get networks such as SBS, Seven and even publishers such as Bloomberg on its side of the fence. Global video ad sales are Twitter’s fastest growing ad product on the platform, and the company has worked with partners like Seven to increase engagement and view rates for advertisers.
As Angus Keene, Twitter’s sales director for Australia, says: “The market is fragmented. Broadcasters have competition from many different angles and are looking to take content that’s not geo-restricted and take it to global audiences.
“In Australia, video content is still the number one entertainment choice for audiences. The change has just been in the delivery method and the platform they are viewing on. Live sport is still obviously massive on traditional TV, but it’s looking where possible to take it global.
“We’re now seeing a lot of demand for long-form video content from consumers and advertisers, and this is where partnerships with these broadcasters come in. We’ve structured our team in Australia to be an extension of our key partners’ sales teams and as a result, we’re seeing our content partners increase their reach and revenue, while taking local content to global audiences.”
Beyond extending audience reach, Twitter has helped partners like Seven and SBS open new monetisation opportunities. Seven worked closely with Twitter to develop commercial packages during the Commonwealth Games and Winter Olympics for brands including Allianz, Toyota, McDonalds, and Optus.
And during this year’s World Cup, six advertisers came on board, including Visa, Apple, NAB, Tabcorp, DFR and Uber Eats. This provided brands with more opportunities to reach audiences at a time when they were highly engaged. The World Cup was also the first time Australian content was monetised with globally located advertisers on Twitter, pointing to growing demand Twitter is seeing with other markets wanting to align with premium, publisher content in Australia.
The platform has also demonstrated it is far from limiting itself to just broadcasting sporting events, by signing another deal with SBS to broadcast Australia’s LBGT festival Mardi Gras last March. Globally, Twitter signed more than 50 live content deals in the second quarter of 2018.
Most recently, BuzzFeed Australia became the latest media owner to launch a video series on Twitter in the form of a politics show #OzPolLive. Broadcasting events from the Australian Parliament House press gallery, and a special live show after the #SuperSaturday by-elections, the show is yet another indication that all content, whether it’s sport, entertainment or politics, is inevitably drawn to the power of social media.
And looking ahead for Seven? How will the network leverage its content across social platforms into the future?
“We will continue to benefit from what we have done in the last couple of years, understand where the eyeballs are and capitalise on the engagement our content delivers to grow our communities and create commercial opportunities for our partners,” says Munschi. “What’s interesting now for a broadcaster is to tap into the global capabilities of Twitter to deliver a strategy based on the consumer behaviour, and help craft commercial products that are completely aligned.”