Morning Update: alcohol brands target Snapchat; Facebook Live and police shootings; Uber’s surge pricing under investigation
Malibu rum’s sponsored Snapchat lens Credit: Pernod Ricard
Ad Age: Booze Brands Rush to Snapchat While Contending With Age Risks
Here is the surest sign yet that Snapchat is growing up: Alcohol brands are starting to advertise on the mobile app in significant numbers after overcoming fears of marketing on the teen-friendly platform.
Anheuser-Busch InBev broke the seal in May 2015 when it ran ads in Snapchat’s ‘Stories’ section that were tied to a Bud Light-branded event. And the pace of alcohol advertising has accelerated in recent months as marketers gain more confidence in Snapchat’s ability to keep content away from users who are under age 21.
Ad Age: How Facebook Is Dealing With Live Videos of Police Shootings
When Mark Zuckerberg introduced Facebook live-streaming in April, it was with a cheery video from the launch room in which he talked about the great things people were already doing with the service. There was a stream of baby bald eagles and a guy who went live while he got a haircut.
The mundane could become the suspenseful, Mr. Zuckerberg said, because viewers wouldn’t know what would happen next. In the months since, Facebook has celebrated go-live successes that include a watermelon exploding under rubber bands and a mom howling with laughter while wearing a Chewbacca mask.
The Verge: How Uber secretly investigated its legal foes — and got caught
When a young labor lawyer named Andrew Schmidt first filed suit against Uber in December of last year, he couldn’t have predicted it would make him a target. Schmidt’s suit was a legal long shot, alleging that Uber CEO Travis Kalanick coordinated surge pricing in violation of anti-trust laws — but those legal arguments would soon be overshadowed by something much stranger.
A few weeks after the case was filed, Schmidt found out he was being investigated. According to a court declaration made by Schmidt and his colleagues, someone had called one of Schmidt’s lawyer friends in Colorado to ask some strange questions, claiming it was for a project “profiling up-and-coming labor lawyers in the US.”
Ad Week: Twitter Will Livestream CBS News’ Coverage of the Republican and Democratic Conventions
Twitter and CBS News are planning to livestream the Republican and Democratic National Conventions later this month.
The companies announced plans today to run “gavel-to-gavel” coverage of each party’s four-day event. First will be the RNC in Cleveland from July 18-21 and then the DNCin Philadelphia from July 25-28. Coverage also will be enhanced with convention-related tweets.
Poynter: How The Atlantic is bringing its ‘real-time magazine’ approach to political coverage
Debate nights are by now a familiar ritual for political journalists at The Atlantic. As the network lights come up in an auditorium somewhere in America, the magazine’s campaign corps begins typing away.
The result? Thousands and thousands of words of debate recap and analysis, filed in real-time, timestamped and arranged in reverse chronological order.
Ad Age: Charter Sued by Univision Over Programming Fees
Univision Holdings has sued Charter Communications and accused the cable company of attempting to shortchange it on programming fees after acquiring Time Warner Cable, in a case that highlights the tension between programmers and distributors as pay-TV subscribers decline.
Charter is claiming it’s entitled to pay lower programming rates under a long-term contract between Time Warner Cable and Univision that runs through June 2022, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in New York state court Friday.
