Seventeen Magazine
- Post Facebook's News Feed change, Hearst has been focusing on producing premium, longer-form episodic video series on YouTube.
- The publisher of Seventeen, Harper's Bazaar, Elle and Cosmopolitan has created more than 34 new web shows, and plans to launch six more in the upcoming weeks.
- The move is a bid to create a diversified distribution strategy that doesn't rely too much on one platform and also develop a loyal audience in the long run.
Still reeling from Facebook's dramatic News Feed shake-up earlier this year, publishers have been in the search of new sustainable ways to build their video businesses.
Some, like NowThis, have turned back the spotlight on their websites. Others, like Condé Nast and Refinery29, have started to take aim at over-the-top (OTT) streaming. And many, have even started to pay more attention to Twitter and Snapchat.
For Hearst, the publisher behind magazines like Cosmopolitan and Seventeen among others, the focus has been on ramping up on premium, longer-form episodic video series, with a sharp focus on YouTube over the past six months.
The publisher has created more than 34 new episodic video series across four of its brands alone - including Seventeen, Harper's Bazaar, Elle and Cosmopolitan - and has plans to launch six more in the upcoming weeks.
"The biggest factor behind our push is our steadfast belief that a diversified video strategy is best for the long-term vitality of the business," said Todd Haskell, SVP and chief revenue officer at Hearst. "Having diverse distribution channels reduces risk, so when there is inevitable disruption, it doesn't overly impact our business."
One example is Harper's Bazaar's "Food Diaries" for instance, which highlights what celebrities eat in a day. Another is Elle's "Online, IRL," which features Style Director Nikki Ogunnaike trying on looks from top e-commerce retailers like ASOS, Boohoo and Pretty Little Things, to see how they fit in real life.
The content of these shows, Hearst says, has been created specifically for YouTube and keeping the platform's audience in mind - though it also lives on other platforms and on Hearst's own owned and operated sites.
"We took a birds-eye view of how we had been creating content across platforms over the past three years, and realized we needed to focus on creating bespoke series tailored to each specific one," said Anna Jimenez, head of editorial video at Hearst. "That meant getting Snapchat-specific, Instagram-specific and YouTube-specific."
Hearst's YouTube shows are designed as appointment programming - where viewers can expect to tune into a new episode on the same day and time every week. They're also longer-format, with videos averaging between 10-20 minutes per episode.
"Our challenge is not to create a one-hit wonder, it's to build loyalty and create a culture where the audience gets used to expecting something at a certain time," said Kate Lewis, svp and editorial director at Hearst Magazines Digital
Consequently, the metrics that the publisher uses to track how the shows are performing are also more longer-term. Instead of engagement metrics such as likes and shares, Hearst says it places more emphasis on watch-time, that is how far into the episode users watch the shows, as well as return viewers, or whether viewers come back to watch the series. It also tracks how much individual shows contribute to the channel's growth.
Since September 2017, all four channels including Seventeen, Harper's Bazaar, Elle and Cosmopolitan have seen "exponential growth" in views, new subscribers and watch time, according to Hearst. Seventeen, for example, has boosted new subscribers by over 3,000%, while Harper's Bazaar and Elle's watch times have both increased 484% and 364% respectively. Cosmopolitan's views, meanwhile, have jumped by 252%.
Publishers aren't spending more time and resources on YouTube for nothing. Unlike Facebook, where many media companies have struggled to make money from video despite building up sizable audiences, YouTube has a well established ad model centered on pre-roll
YouTube creators share a hefty cut of ad revenue with Google. In this case, publishers the size of Hearst (minimum 1.5 million "monetizable views") can direct-sell against their YouTube channels, shows and videos.
"Brands can run adjacent ads, integrated ads or a combination of both - they can even do sponsorships," said Haskell. "In a world where there is a ton of anxiety about brand safety and adjacency, our brand content is seen as a safe harbor in an otherwise turbulent ocean."
Of course, YouTube is a crowded place, and there's no guarantee that publishers will be able to consistently attract audiences that are large enough for advertisers to care about - especially when they can just buy ads across YouTube.
However, given YouTube's ongoing issues with brand safety, more big advertisers are looking for premium (safe) web content, said Jeremy Sigel, global svp of content and innovation at Essence. He said it was a huge growth area for the agency, across its clients.
"Aligning yourself with premium publisher content that leverages top talent goes a long way," he said. "Brands are essentially engaging culture through known IP."