#all I'm saying is look at platforms that go all in on ad revenue for their income... and look at their finances... and then you tell me

[daisywords]

if youtube is going to insist on having that many ads, they should at least give me the option to do them all at once at the beginning. interspersing the ads throughout is wrong and evil. So is making them play at the end (if you do this they should be ones that don't have sound. blease.) Anyway this environment is absolutely inhospitable to someone here to listen to ambient music while working (me) or stuff specifically designed to fall asleep to. to, you know, fall asleep to (also me).

[medicinemane]

You know, I think we kinda have to acknowledge that ad based monetization models may not be as viable as everyone likes to pretend

[levyfiles]

is it just me or is this kinda not a good idea?

I think it's a gamble. And like anyone who cares about something deeply, watching it take a high-stakes gamble can be terrifying.

What I think people don't take into consideration is just how flooded their recent youtube videos have been with scammy sponsors and cheap fast-product get-rich-quick scheming vendors. Sure, their writers and producers made it fun by adding some really excellent characters to the mix, but I wouldn't touch a thing like Mistplay if you paid me as much as they paid Watcher for their video. However, the thing is, look around at all the youtubers you know who are up and coming. You can't make it on that platform without advertising trash to your audience.

With the vimeo OTT program, i believe there is a shared revenue and more incentive to promote more simple dedicated engagement; it's not ad sense clicks; it's just clicks. It's a soft start and there are going to be some kinks to work out but if they get to control their brand more and decide what gets made without needing some nu-venture, cash hungry sponsor to look at it, then I think they could change media online for the better.

Having said all that, the execution? Not their best. Watcher--listen, I love them so much--has had a consistent and terminal administrative problem and that means stuff falls through the cracks. From a communicative standpoint, when you're about to take your company in a controversial direction, you should know two things.

The backlash! You gotta get ahead of it. You need your PR team on the go a MONTH before launch

Always soft launch a big move. Get your feelers out for how people react especially if you don't have the kind of shark PR person who would know already that people don't respond well to paying for something they didn't used to pay for.

Watcher is still a baby company in so many forms and I will wholeheartedly support their move to do what they can to keep control of their creative content today and in the future. I'm not in their offices so I can't make as prescriptive a judgement as Twitter feels emboldened to about capitalism and greed or whoever they think their audience is however I can and will say that with any form of growth, the growing pains are going to show. i'll give them grace as they pivot and figure out how best to move forward especially with the volume of vitriol the internet loves to spew when they feel entitled to art forms that used to be free.

I'll say it again. At least we're no longer having garbage peddled at us regardless how much I crave Fabian Sax biblically.

[twopoppies]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.billboard.com/business/streaming/taylor-swift-spotify-streams-how-much-worth-1235524477/amp/

After seeing your post about Snoop not even making 45k for a billion streams, it reminded me of this article. It was written on December 1st, and at that time, T*ylor had 26.1 billion streams, which would amount to around $97 million in music royalties, according to Billboard. Billboard then estimated that by the end of the year, she would most likely reach around 27.2 billion streams, which amounts to around $101 million in music royalties. The article then says that if you add in the publishing revenue, her music will make around $131 million in royalties. Now I know Snoop is only around 1 billion streams compared to T*ylor's estimated $27.2 billion, but the math isn't mathing for me (unless I'm just actually too stupid to figure this out). So, what is going on? And like you said, where is the money going?

And are they giving certain artists special treatment? Like you put your music back on Spotify, which T*ylor took off in 2014 because they weren't valuing her art aka paying her enough money and is a fair complaint/criticism of streaming, and we'll pay you more than we pay other artists. Wouldn't be surprising because of how popular she's always been, even with her "cancellation." Plus, Idk how it works with big artists and streaming services but if they negotiate with big artists like her, someone who had already taken her music off the platform before, it wouldn't surprise me if they do pay her more especially as her popularity and success has reached the highest it's ever been.

I also saw another article. Maybe you or someone else has seen it as well, but isn't Spotify implementing a policy that an artist has to meet certain requirements before they can even get paid? Which is fucking insane.

Yeah, all of that is super fishy to me. And I honestly would not be surprised if they pay some artists more than others. But as you say, “the math isn’t mathing” if you compare what he’s saying versus what they’re saying about her. It’s been clear for a long time that artists don’t make their money off of streaming. but there are tons of people paying for premium subscriptions, and there are tons of advertisers on Spotify… from the calculators below it looks as though when you reach a certain number of streams the percentage of what you earn is a lot greater. 27×5000 isn’t 130 million. But also, it’s not $45K (as Snoop said).

The amount calculated will represent a blended rate of all the tiers offered by the services. So, in the case of Spotify, the rate shown is a blend of its paid tier rate, its ad-supported tier rate, and other tiers; while the Apple rate is also a blend of its various tiers.

The payout totals are based on the subscriber and advertisement fees that Spotify and Apple collect each month and the number of plays. Because those numbers fluctuate, the calculator will be updated on a monthly basis, but usually with a three-month lag, due to when the services information becomes available. Currently, the rates shown are based on reported data from June.

Obviously, Snoop Dogg earns lots of money in many different ways, but if you think about your average artist whose music plays on Spotify, the amount they make is pitiful.

Also, as a caveat, math and business dealings are not my forte by a long shot. So if anyone has better info here, please add on.

In reference to this

[spoekelse]

I joked earlier that Tumblr wasn't founded as some kind of communist alternative to Twitter, and we shouldn't expect it to behave that way, but looking into it, it seems that it was founded to be much closer to that than I'd expected. I'm going to drop a few excerpts from a 2011 interview with Tumblr founder David Karp by TechCrunch that illuminate what I mean.

Tumblr CEO David Karp recently sat down with Chris Dixon for a Founder Stories interview in which explains how he started Tumblr four years ago as a reaction to other blogging tools out there. “All blogs took the same form,” he notes. “I wanted something much more free-form, much less verbose.” People wanted to express themselves and blog, but he felt that the standard blogging platforms available at the time—Wordpress, Blogger, TypePad—were too complicated. “These tools I just don’t think worked for most people. It’s a commitment, you need to sit down for an hour and hammer out a post.”

He is quick to add that “WordPress is the best tool in the world for that” kind of publishing. But for someone like him who “doesn’t enjoy writing,” it was the wrong tool. So he created Tumblr instead, which is designed to help people get their thoughts and images up as quickly as possible, and to lower the barrier to publishing even more.

But don’t Twitter and Facebook lower those barriers even further? They do, but they lack a strong expressive identity, argues Karp. “They are not tools built for creative expression,” he says, adding: “Nobody is proud of their identity on Facebook.” Okay, he’s got a point there. Tumblr, in contrast, is built to be a place you can be proud to call your online home. It’s very design-oriented and you can customize your Tumblr to reflect your personality, but not in a cheesy MySpace way. For Twitter and Facebook, “expression isn’t necessarily something they care about.”

It’s a common criticism of popular Web services that don’t yet make a lot of money: Where’s the business model? That criticism has certainly been lobbed at Tumblr, the short-burst publishing platform all the kids are flocking to these days. Tumblr generates billions of pageviews across its networks and is growing at more than 250 million pageviews per week. “Making money off of Tumblr would be incredibly easy,” CEO David Karp tells Chris Dixon in the Founder Stories video above. A cheap AdSense ad on every member’s dashboard would make Tumblr “wildly profitable.”

So why doesn’t he do that? As he goes onto explain, he’d rather find ways to make money that also “enhance the experience for our users.” Tumblr does charge for things like being featured in its directory or $9 themes users can buy to spruce up their Tumblog. Karp notes that some theme designers are making tens of thousands of dollars month. Still, these seem more like ancillary revenue streams than what will end up being Tumbr’s main revenue source down the line. Fortunately for Karp, he has patient investors and just raised $30 million to keep scaling the service and figure out a more natural business model.

You can watch the full interview here. At about 4 minutes in, he starts talking about Tumblr in relation to Twitter. They talk about how things seem to be designed with the users and community in mind. At around 15 minutes in, they talk about how there's a tension between Karp's vision of Tumblr as a place for self-expression and advertisers and investors.

Here's another article that talks about the monetisation issue.

"I thought I could totally beat the system and have this cool product that I would never need to raise money for, I would never need to sell out, because [Tumblr] would bring all the attention to this [consultancy] business where people would ask us to build them a website," he says. And it worked – for a few months. Karp kept up his consultancy gig until Tumblr began doubling its number of users every few weeks. "Our clients eventually got more and more pissed off because I wasn't returning their calls and at that point I was just totally fucking it up. Clearly they could see Tumblr was my one and only and they were getting shafted."

It was time for Karp and Tumblr to grow up. Investors were circling, but Karp's youthful defiance prevented the internet firm being shipped across to the startup factory of Silicon Valley. Karp did sell 25% of his one-year-old company as part of a $4.5m funding round from Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital in late 2008. But he repeatedly turned down offers to move the company to the "hyper-competitive" West Coast, where he says entrepreneurs spend their time worrying whether Apple, Google or Facebook are going to steal their most talented engineers. New York is a more supportive city for startups, Karp argues, even if it does not have the obvious allure of Silicon Valley.

In conversation, Karp could evangelise on the force of creativity for hours. At times he will suddenly pause, before retracing his steps and continuing with animated zeal. Karp says he loves Twitter, is lukewarm on Google+ ("I don't see any tools for creativity in there") and is not the biggest fan of Facebook "as a product". And YouTube? "The only real tools for expression these days are YouTube, which turns my stomach," he says. "They take your creative works – your film that you poured hours and hours of energy into – and they put ads on top of it. They make it as gross an experience to watch your film as possible. I'm sure it will contribute to Google's bottom line; I'm not sure it will inspire any creators."

No doubt Google would disagree, arguing that a significant chunk of the 60 hours of video uploaded to the site each minute – an increase of 30% in the last three months – contains or inspires some form of originality.

But Karp is unconvinced. YouTube, he says, "was the opportunity to tell every aspiring filmmaker that if they worked really hard and really went for quality they could create great stuff. The stuff YouTube is incentivising is: build a huge subscriber base, put out a lot of videos, do the math and get as big a cheque as possible."

Google recently did the math and found that YouTube pulls in about 4bn views a day – and has now boosted promotion of its "Partner" programme in a bid to increase the quality of videos. "YouTube offers the opportunity but they sacrifice the tools in such a major way now," Karp continues. "YouTube is one of the most amazing creative tools in the world and I think it's gotten a lot worse for creators." No doubt the point is that Tumblr can close the gap.

Like many of the hottest internet firms, Tumblr has no proven business model. The company's "lack of revenue" prevented some major Silicon Valley venture capital firms from participating in its latest $85m funding round in September last year, according to the Wall Street Journal. John Maloney, the president of Tumblr, who is the business foil to Karp's user-led brain, indicated in a recent interview that the company needs to attract "hundreds of millions" more subscribers on its route to profitability.

For his part, Karp describes technology journalism's obsession with funding as "turpitudal" and insists his company is not in a financial arms race with Facebook, Twitter or other internet sites.

Nor is Tumblr about to be acquired by a multinational media firm, he says. In 2008, when Karp became $750,000 richer by virtue of selling a 25% stake in the firm, the fresh-faced founder laid his intentions bare. "We would really rather not be gobbled up by a big media company," he spat, in an interview with the New York Observer.

Unlike most other hot internet companies, Tumblr has not been plagued by buyout rumours – but that does not mean there have been no offers. Four years on, is Karp still adamant? "We were constantly tested along the way," he admits. "Particularly in the first three years, there were a lot of [mergers and acquisitions] people who would pull you aside and you'd think 'Well, shit, I could be a pretty rich 23-year-old with very little effort'". But he held firm. "We stuck it out. I won't say I really knew why."

All these articles are old, they're relics of the past. But it's an interesting angle.

It's interesting. Karp seems to be a genuinely decent person- he works at Planned Parenthood now, and when he was still CEO of Tumblr, he tried to use it to promote Planned Parenthood.

I'd like to see Tumblr go back to its roots. I'd like to see it stop trying to be Tiktok or Instagram. I'd like it to be fully functional, with all the gimmicky quirks staff keeps introducing but none of the weird algorithms and promotion of Tumblr Live. I'd like it to invite NSFW back onto the platform in a way safe for artists.

[sootonthecarpet]

hate how just looking at things online is like an inherently loaded economic and political choice now. do I want to familiarize myself with what the bigots that endanger my country are saying by checking out primary sources? I'm giving them 'clicks', boosting their ratings and potentially encouraging an algorithm to share their content more widely.

if I go to watch them speak on youtube they may make money directly off of this. if I download an ad blocker to get around this, I am taking away money from small time marginalized creators if I watch any of their videos without disabling it. if I want to read a news article that implies people like me are less than human, I have to accept that I am giving them the positive feedback of my engagement JUST by clicking on the link. depending how I am serviced this link (such as through an automated rec feed that came bundled with a default web browser) I run the risk of reinforcing to my personal device that I would like to be served more links from news sites that run stories implying people like me are less than human, rather than that every few months I will grudgingly observe bigotry with the intention of better guarding myself against it in the future.

every decision I make to look at or avoid something on most major websites, especially news, video platforms, and any social media site but tumblr, has to take into account not just "do I want to have seen this" but "do I want to concretely make this thing more popular and/or leave a trail of stored information registering me as somebody who wants to observe this thing?" I'm not on tiktok (I don't even log in to youtube) but the way the algorithm there works, prioritizing content you spend the most time looking at (or perhaps unable to look away from?) rather than content you mark yourself as 'liking', is something right out of one of my paranoid delusions.

the push for a more profitable internet is one of the driving forces behind our online panopticon and I've seen very little discussion about how this like. automatically makes the very basic act of trying to get context on the way bigots who want you dead are drumming up support into an action of direct support for bigots. yes, I know there are adblocks and archived page versions and all kinds of clever little workarounds. but when did we need a workaround to be able to see with our eyes without funding nazis? I could, let's say, walk into a library and pull a copy of mein kampf off the shelf and skim through it where I stood without having at any point provided money, validation, or a 'boost' in publicity to nazis active in my country, and potentially without anyone else becoming aware that I am reading a copy of mein kampf. if I wanna read a fox article because I know they're a wildly popular news network that has been on the cutting edge of american bigotry my whole life? I have validated fox news's siterunners with my pageview, left an enormous digital paper trail, potentially encouraged my device to show me more fox news articles, and potentially provided fox news with ad revenue they can use to more efficiently spread their dangerous lies and half-truths.

faced with meaningful and legitimate calls to de-platform hateful voices on an immediate interpersonal level, and sentiments like 'here are screenshots/wayback links, please don't give them the clicks' as the only pushback against this constant tracking and leveraging of our viewership (to say nothing of how often content creators rely on widespread outrage and hatewatching to gain engagement that their fans alone could never provide, and the subsequent pleas to avoid watching any bigoted content whatsoever lest you fall prey to their outrage marketing), the logical choice in the absence of someone else offering an easy workaround begins to look like self imposed ignorance and isolation; unless we have a great degree of computer literacy, or hacker friends with the same who can handhold us through our entire online presence, we are forced to either resort to knowingly funding bigots (and potentially marking ourselves as one), or to refusing to arm ourselves with knowledge altogether. YEAUGHHH 💢

[my-mt-heart]

In answer to @retiredkat's ask:

AMC wants to become a streaming platform, so it's more about throwing things at the wall to see what sticks and multiple offerings increase the odds. Isle of the Dead is a 6-episode limited series, which is basically minimum investment for the studio (ie. they're not confident), and it will probably be used as a springboard for introducing characters that will spawn another show. (TWDU is like a virus.) AMC also cares about licensing fees and other revenue from the international markets, which are a sizable chunk of income.

That said, the people wanting a Negan spinoff are a small vocal subset of the fandom. A Negan solo show is even less likely to be a runaway hit than a Daryl solo one. (Note that I'm referring to the characters here, not the actors.) AMC is hoping to boost numbers by adding Maggie, but the shock value conceit isn't going to draw a big crowd or one that stays long term. The show is a drunken hookup (potentially leaving a present), not a lifetime marriage.

(Where's Herschel supposed to be in all this? Back at the ranch in Carol's orphanage for abandoned children?)

MT and I already talked about AMC underestimating the way Carol resonates with the general audience. (That was on the blog, right? It's been a long week lol) In mainstream media, she's the character most likely to be brought up when talking about the actual content of TWD. Her character development is unique and comparable to iconic characters like Ellen Ripley (who incidentally was written as gender neutral in the sense that she was given the same trajectory as a male character would) and Sarah Connor.

Yes, there might be a segment of the audience who watches TWD for Daryl arm porn, but that's not sustainable viewership. He's a reactive character and won't be able to carry a show of his own. French Byways with Daryl Dixon will need a lot of innards spilling all over the place and things to go BOOM in a science-experiment-gone-wrong kind of way to distract from the fact that there will be no substance to the storytelling and a regression or a complete retcon of the character. He needs other characters to come into his own, so if you want plot, either you have to change his personality or have other main cast to play him off of.

(How is Daryl going to talk to French people? Pretty sure he isn't Cajun. Does the CW Public Library have a Berlitz language course he can stuff into his back pocket?)

I'm pretty sure all of these things make AMC nervous, but the show sounds like a one-and-done. Daryl goes on an adventure to find Rick. Once he reunites with his wayward brother, the whole premise of the show will be over. Just like the Maggie and Negan spinoff, AMC is making a minimal financial commitment. It will close out Rick's story (the movies are NOT happening) and expand the universe, which makes it worth the investment and it's also the very reason, like MT says, that we have been handed this rainbow sprinkled turd of a spinoff.

Tales of TWD is the show that's most likely to have better viewership. It's an anthology show so the studio can experiment with different modes and genres. You don't have to watch in order or even all of the episodes. If something is popular, AMC can create a new offering out of that. It's fertile grow ground and doesn't have to attract a massive audience. Like the others, it's just a 6-episode order.

The original concept for the Caryl show was a comedy. A completely different offering for the franchise, catering to a different crowd: those who'd watch for character development and smaller (ie. cheaper to produce) slice of post-apocalyptic life stories with a human interest bent. AMC wasn't looking for a huge audience, they wanted longevity for this show. It was supposed to be the connective tissue between shows, able to spawn new ones and the anchor of the franchise.

If you have a revolving cast by virtue of the concept itself, you have a more economically sustainable business model because there won't be as much inflation of the production cost. (TV shows get more expensive to produce the longer they run.) Carylers are loyal viewers and a large group of people, ranging from fans engaging online and those going to conventions, to general audience who watch specifically for these characters, to more casual viewers who enjoy this added element to their genre show.

What about "Diverged," then, right? It wasn't a well-received episode. No, but there were reasons for that which don't have anything to do with the MMB+NR combo being able to carry a show. As a storyteller, you enter a covenant with your audience where you have to make good on any promises you've made upfront. If you're producing a horror show, the viewer expects that when they tune in. They don't expect an episode of mostly physical comedy with an extremely limited cast, and an episode featuring nothing but Carol and Daryl will also depend on the chemistry between those characters. If 90% of the episode is spent apart, you're obviously losing that magic and like I said before, to best showcase Daryl, you need other characters with him.

It wasn't a bad episode and it carried important emotional beats, progressing both character arcs, but "Diverged" didn't fit the tone of the larger show. You have to meet the expectations you've set and this episode, which was mostly introspective relationship drama, was too different and slow-paced for people who watch for the walkers or villains or, really, the main concept of the show. Compare it to Connie and Virgil's closed-room episode, which functioned within the parameters established by the show. Mutated humanoid creatures vs. a rat as the main villain.

I hope this answers your questions somewhat. I'm not an AMC studio executive, so I don't have direct access to their market research, but I'm looking at what would be red flags to me based on my experience (which is about twenty years) in the industry, and they have to have concerns. I can see that they're limiting their expenditure by only ordering 6 episodes and that they don't expect more than a season of any one of these shows. They've learned their lesson from TWD:BW.

This answered some of my questions that I didn't even know I had. Ty for taking the time as always <3

[incarnateirony]

In a previous post you said "what you’re looking at is how long the CW itself survives as an entity on its current trajectory." I was wondering if you could elaborate on that. It often feels to me like the CW can't possibly be making a lot of money since every time I see their ratings I'm surprised by how low they are compared to shows on other networks. It's also just weird to me how they often refuse to cancel shows even when the ratings are abysmally low. I mean that can't be a good business decision right? I've seen networks cancel shows with more than twice the ratings and support some CW shows get, saying the show just wasn't making enough money to justify keeping it on air. But then how is the CW able to fund these shows only for them to get such low ratings? Am I missing something? Do CW shows just make more money or are they so cheap to make that it just doesn't matter? And then there's the fact that they're having to spend even more money starting up new shows like that god awful powerpuff girls reboot everyone already hates since they've lost a lot of their most popular shows. To me it just seems like a recipe for bankruptcy but then again I don't really know much about this stuff so I was curious about your thoughts on it. Do you think the CW is close to its end? How much longer do you predict it'll survive?

Unless something dramatically changes, CW won’t make it past 2024-2025 season, and that’s being generous.

They get away with the low ratings, especially on CBS shows, by CBS as a parent company bankrolling them to air stuff long enough for syndication and to make enough streaming content for it to be profitable to CBS. However, if shows continue losing their streaming value, that’s bad enough. But it’ll also continue to need ad revenue, and CW has already been struggling to sell that for several years much less the noticeable drop in its value even within this given TV season (even calculating for the normal annual drop, I’m talking about within a single season/year). 

Broadcast TV and cable are already a struggling environment with the rise of digital and the drop of ratings. CW is further down in the descent and the largescale value drop doesn’t help. CW’s streaming platform for live isn’t worth crap. They’re already shoveling product out to HBO Max instead of, say, Netflix, to try to build the WB streaming network if you will. CW’s lost its netflix deal and netflix isn’t buying up their properties the same as it used to.

Eventually, CBS is going to see diminishing returns with better avenues (like CBS All Access or HBO Max with the cross deal) and stop bankrolling CW. Eventually, WB’s other far more successful platforms will become more relevant. Eventually, their ad space will be worth so little it won’t be worth keeping the classic lights on. Eventually, CW as a digital body will be overshadowed by the parent digital bodies.

Classic TV is already going to go belly up by the end of the decade. But CW isn’t positioned to be a holding in any major transition. Its parent company’s digital extensions are. As a delivery vehicle it’s going to be moot and at-best some extension/wing of a larger thing like a branch you can search on HBO Max. Branding, rather than being an actual existing product.

If fandom pulls its shit together and re-enforces wave 2 of boycotting all products live and digital, they can probably speed up its inevitable heat death by a year or two. It won’t be instant, that’s a long hauler thing. But rather than letting up and going back to streaming, just convince a new friend to join every day, and teach them to do the same.

[babbushka]

is it bad of me to find it funny that TLD flopped at the box office for opening weekend?

Lol I literally just saw my good friend @safarigirlsp get an ask about the box office results and I went to go look it up myself -- OOF!

I know you guys know I don't like the film, but I think it's actually a very interesting thing to look at the box office numbers and determine why or how certain numbers come into play.

Firstly, I think something good to think about is the ratio of cost:profit with a film. In TLD's case, it cost roughly 100m to make, which in all honesty, is not out of this world for big historical epics. As an example, Gladiator another Ridley Scott movie, had a budget of 103m. But unlike Gladiator, who brought home 460m in box office revenue (earning almost 5 times what it cost), TLD brought home.........5m.

Another thing that I think is good to think about, is the conversation around "does high box office = good movie?" Avatar was record breaking with almost 3B in box office revenue, and yet, there are memes about how completely forgettable it is as a movie.

But all of that aside, why did TLD fail? Because by all accounts, when you spend 100,000,000$ and only make back 5m, that is a failure -- but a failure on whose part? Is it a bad movie? Or was it marketed poorly and given a bad distribution deal?

I haven't actually seen the film, so I can't speak on whether or not it's good, but I can absolutely say it was marketed badly and the distribution deal was almost set up to fail. I happen to be in a lot of groups/communities within the industry where there are people who actually see movies because they want to see a movie, and not just for Adam Driver (I know, crazy lol), and everyone I keep seeing is talking about how they had no idea the movie was even out.

I myself only saw one commercial for the film in theaters, and once while watching the new Muppet's Halloween special (that ad was in Spanish, which I thought was interesting), but...that's about it. And you have to remember, the majority of people seeing this movie are not Adam stans, who do not follow update accounts or fandom creators and worship the ground that he walks on. They're average folks who, in recent times, really have to be convinced to get out of their houses and show up to theaters, which...they just aren't doing.

Which leads me to the fact that marketing -- or lack thereof -- aside, this was a really shitty distribution deal for everyone involved. I'm sure the intentions were good to have it be theater-only, and not up on any of the multitude of streaming platforms, but the fact is, people are not going to the theaters in the same way that they did before COVID. Even for people who are fully vaccinated, we're seeing ticket sale numbers drop all over the place. What would have been smart, considering the current film climate, would be to do a theater-streaming package deal -- except that would never happen, because technically the film is owned by Disney, and there's no way Disney+ would host that movie on its site (that's an HBO or Netflix type of movie).

So what you're left with, is a movie about an incredibly not-family friendly rape plot, written primarily by two men with strong ties to a prominent and infamous rapist in the industry, released with no marketing, no distribution deal, in the tail end of a global pandemic, on the same weekend as a Halloween movie in October.

Of course it was going to flop, lol.

And no, I don't think it's bad of you to find that funny. I mean just look at the costume design, I'd hope it would flop from that alone.

[kendrixtermina]

(Fe3h discourse incoming) So I'm not sure if this is still around but I remember some people calling characters "racist" due to how they initially view the Almyrans and it just annoys me? If you lived in basically medieval times and all you knew about a group of people was that they invaded your homeland and are good fighters it makes sense you'd be wary about them. The fact that we see them easily discard any initial opinions to work with them in VW shows the opposite and how accepting they are

Part of this does probably come from this purity culture sentiment that there is one obvious right answer that should be apparent to anyone not evil when we’re really all to an extent limited by the knowledge we can access. 

This is something I feel strongly about precisely because I know how much I don’t know and how much ppl have been wrong in the past - so much BS is still widely believed these days like Diet culture or counter-evidential beliefs about economy. So that makes me be careful to claim we have the truth now. As my grandfather used to say, “the middle ages will step on us”, that is as long as our time isn’t barbarism free it will come to be considered barbaric times eventually. 

In the middle ages people used to give their children mercury and bankrupt themselves as someone might for real medicine. Emotionally to the mammal brain it’s the same. That’s why knowledge is power cause it helps you know the real consequences of your action. Otherwise you get what seems like caring parents wondering if they're harming their children by not doing barbaric stuff like physical beating or fgm. One can notice by oneself that it’s wrong and causes suffering but someone who only believes their own ideas and never takes outside data into account would be either mad or an arrogant jerk. At some point you need to consider outside data unless you can discover all of science and psychology by yourself. 

So to put it short no one is immune to propaganda and the closest thing to a cure is self-awareness and self-questioning, no one is born with all the answers; instrict, thinking, emotion and intuition can all lead you astray. 

Though the correct word here would be xenophobia. (generic distrust/prejudice about foreigners)

‘Racism’ is a very specific early modernity variant of it with pseudoscience mixed in, or maybe it could be thought of as an ideology meant to keep xenophobic-like distrust going in a mixed society. Normally that sort of prejudice desintegrates as people interact more (a big plot point here actually) - or rather, communication & interaction changes how people define in group and out group, which is ultimately arbitrary. A lot of what is thought of today as countries or races used to be considered wildly different peoples when the reach of communication reached further. 

But if you spread some ideology that leads people to be artificially segregated, or indirectly causes that through economic disadvantages, bam, you can keep prejudice alive & well for centuries and whatever institutions you built on it, like colonial resource extraction gigs or political hegemony. 

That said tho, certain lines there are definitely written to evoke rl xenophobic comments as people commonly experience them, and to tell people who recognize this & might have charged responses because of their own backstories that their lying eyes deceive them because you like those characters is not good.  “Oh but they’re a good person with a bright future” is exactly how this behavior fails to get recognized in real life. So to that extent I’d disagree with you.

At least their past incarnations at the point that they said those lines they were “xenophobes”, that is, fulfilled all criteria of the definition & engaged in typical behavior as people affected by xenophobia experience it. 

Hilda, for all her good qualities (and don’t get me wrong I love her to bits) is still sort of a frivolous rich girl. Sylvain for example did take the time to inform himself ‘bout the neighbors (See that lost item that’s info about sreng) though his family also holds a border territory & much depends on its defense. The system isn’t an universal brainwash, the truth is that both system and individual responses matter and dynamically influence each other.

But note that that’s all I’m talking about: Recognition, sober reasonable acknowledgement of bad behavior. You can’t talk about bad behavior if you don’t show anyone doing it and if it was only irredeemable monsters that did it, it wouldn’t make ppl question themselves. 

To acknowledge that they acted xenophobically (adverb) isn’t to say that they’re an embodiment of all xenophobia ever (noun) and that you’ve got to hate them now. But as long as they don’t hate at you for liking them ppl affected by xenophobia are allowed to vent & use a story as a projection space for it because that’s how everyone uses stories - the same story can in fact mean different things to people without either being “wrong”

Also, scale. Hilda making one or two not even especially malicious comments is on a whole different level than Ingrid actually cheering for destruction. Neither of them compares to the various unrepentant antagonists who never change their views when confronted with evidence cause it benefits them. 

Some of that distinction is lost if you just slap the same label on all and demand they be reacted to the same way, or that ppl add a disclaimer each time they want to talk about a character they like. We don’t make everyone who likes Jeritza say “mass murder is bad” first. 

But also context: After all a big plot here is that the system these characters live in encourages and cultivates such attitudes  - that’s why the various leader figures you can choose to back all want to change it it different ways.

That’s why Winston in 1984 starts the story very paranoid, repressed & full of violent fantasies, to show the effect the dystopia has on people. 

  (important point imho, a lot of ppl look at atrocities and judge that human nature is just bad but actually human nature is programmable. Evil can be engineered as much as civilization and education can foster good)

It’s generally the problem with Purity culture (wether it wears a right or left wing hat) that it’s more focussed on applying loaded, out of context labels (which are then treated as static) than constructive solutions focussed on promoting the desired end goals. 

The labeling tactic is probably appropriate sometimes (active, unrepentant nazis, that you thereby deprive of big dollar platforms or ad revenue) but no tool/tactic is ever a silver bullet. 

tl;Dr I agree with you that labeling/purity culture doesn’t have the right approach to it,  but ppl should be able to call a spade a spade and say & respond to depictions of xenophobia because to say otherwise would be tantamount to saying that victims of xenophobia or racism aren’t allowed to have feelings or engage with media. 

Obsly the characters can’t be reduced to that & you’re right about that & the importance of context, but if just stating/acknowledging that they at one point fulfilled the criteria for xenophobia feels like bashing to you I’d work on decoupling those emotions to see clearer. 

People can have done something wrong at some point & still be interesting people - especially in a media context where they’re as imaginary as their victims, it’s not like you’re giving money to real unrepentant perps. 

I’d ease up on real ppl too if they repent simply because then they stop being a problem and solving it so it stops harming RL ppl takes precedent over cathartic punishment that makes you feel good, the goal should be always to stop the harm (at the root, if possible) because it’s intolerable for ppl to be harmed

Or that’s my 2cents anyways. 

[uncloseted]

This is going to be a weird question, but what do you assume is the pay of someone who makes YouTube videos every week which avg around 800k-1 mil views? And is that money something you can live off of for the foreseeable future? There's this youtuber i like who's been on a hiatus for the past few months, and she used to upload once a week (which became once a month, then bi-monthly..) but she lives in cali and she (pt 1)

(pt2) recently moved into quite a fancy-looking apartment (this was after her uploads turned very erratic) so I'm wondering how she has the money lol

Someone who's averaging 800,000-1 million views a week is probably making somewhere between $3,498 and $7,241 a month from YouTube ad revenue, or somewhere between $41,976 and $86,892 a year. It could be less, if her views are demonetized or if the majority of her viewers skip the ads.

She may also be getting ad revenue from ads that are running on videos she previously uploaded if people are watching those. You can get an estimate of how much money she's making off of ad revenue here, but it's typically not enough money to live off of without working.

But that's not the only way that YouTubers make money. They may have sponsorships in their videos, affiliate links for products in their videos, their own brand or merch that their followers purchase from, or a Patreon, all of which provide additional revenue. They may also be making money off of other social media platforms like Twitch, Instagram, and TikTok.

Finally, if they've been popular for a while, they may have made some investments that allow them to collect money from dividends. It's probably not a lot of money, but it could be supplementing their income.

YouTuber Hannah Witton talks about her income breakdown here. Social Blade says she got 616k views in the past 30 days, which is an average of 154,224 views a week or 22,032 views a day. Based on Youtube's typical revenue per 1000 ad views, which is between $1.36 and $3.40, we can estimate that she'll make between $10,920.80 and $27,302.00 in ad revenue this year. So let's split the difference and say that she's making $19,000 from ad revenue.

Based on that breakdown, if we assume she's making around $19,000 in ad revenue a year, she's probably making around $148,437 a year in total. About $85,945 comes from brand deals, $15,140 of that comes from affiliate marketing, $13,656 comes from her book and other writing, $9,203 comes from Patreon, $2,968 comes from media appearances and $148 comes from merch.

[gabypeterstunesoftime]

Adele Shatters Spotify Record For Most Global Streams

Adele's fourth studio album, and first in six years, is projected to hit record numbers as her lead single "Easy On Me" broke the Spotify record for most global streams in a day. This highly anticipated album was "bloody hard to make" says Adele who recently split from her ex-husband. While artists like Taylor Swift get criticism for basing their music on breakups, her album has been highly anticipated by fans all over the world. This track is the 5th song in 2021 to gain more than 50 million U.S streams in one week. Other songs include Olivia Rodrigos "Drivers License" "good 4 you," and Drakes "Way 2 Sexy."

Not only is Adeles single the most-played in a debut week, it is also the most-added single with over 450 radio stations adding it to their playlist. Her last Hot 100 No. 1 was "Hello" which held the top position for 10 weeks between 2015-2016. She broke the record for the biggest jump to No. 1 which is followed by Taylor Swifts "Look What You Made Me Do" in 2017. Unsurprisingly, she had a higher ranking in Digital Song Sales and Streaming Songs than Radio Songs coming in at number 10. Her past three albums have had a number 1 single on Billboard's Hot 100 with "Easy on Me," "Hello," and "Rolling in the Deep." I'm interested to see how many weeks Adele is able to hold onto the No. 1 spot given that the most recent No. 1 songs have also been viral on TikTok.

Labels have been known to pay famous TikTokers to dance to their music, or, engineering songs to be easy to make a viral dance for. The Guardian published an article recently quoting Mark Mulligan, an analyst at Midia Research who said that "about 10% of the almost $22bn in global streaming revenues in 2020 came via licensing revenues from listening on platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc." Music streaming turned the music industries luck around, however, social media platforms are also a large opportunity for growth within the music industry. Currently, Adele's song has over 260,000 TikTok's made to her sound. That being said, artists such as Adele are going to have to heavily promote their music through social platforms to gain even more exposure. Staying in the No.1 spot is going to require airplay on multiple different formats, social media being a new but important player.

[sbnkalny]

flaffer: https://41.media.tumblr.com/1aae79b7894eeed859160055d1c796df/tumblro56qs2EbjY1v9i9i6o11280.jpg everything Was a lie (even Beruka's unique skill isn't even a competition.Seymour butts

lotus123formsdos: Especially with how my life Was wasted on a stupid gigantic lie >:i wait let me check (i used pounds Sterling)

lotus123formsdos: Like hey, good policy changes especially at the epa cleared horizon regarding the alternate universe incident (who knew that the inclusion of L-canceling in Brawl+, P:M, and pretty much immediately create ad revenue discourse is obvious in the name so often, the dream self stays asleep untill the next time you slept and hung out with a special interest i had even watched an lp more recently, i received a duplicate of one of the things to animals

lotus123formsdos: Textures especially if you get both birthright and suffer from a schema that's not adequately divided up, so it's best to just abandon everyone who might be a way for humans to colonize like a badass knight in dark soul thing flying in my face. draco comforted me. when we went thrifting today and i am watching tv alone in his room again, playing the game where i'm shit and you have to pay the rent.

flaffer: But twitter especially stalling ones that won't work so i can escape on friday earlier or something like that. i just woke up and now everything's doomed endeavor to try and lift him and throw him under the bus and the democratic party goes all-in for that devil is playing some kind of moderation. Inside out, his colon oozing as black blood down my pallid face. draco comforted me. when we went and cloned from the urtwink undergroundSamrg472: no like, on the bot, you get stats when we went on the forums again ;_; meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow lotus123formsdos meow meow meow meow meow meow meow sbnkalny meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow MEOWMEOWMEOWMEOW meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meow meo

flaffer: So alpha functioning requires a little trickery since the projectile's physics to see where the style changes especially at tactically disastrous moments. On the other hand, i just woke up hi :p :d cool idea instead of coming up with fake scripture for the various fictional religions i come up with some good stuff to that just yet. do you have any like drastic gameplay changes or anything it's literally just a lion running on a platform above you, and an enemy next to a skeleton, you have to draw otto and terrence in a boat or can swim real good or something but i don't have MPS because individual mods right away its own ghost the bones are removed from the internet is a dangerous one, the jumping bullet, makes you jump two spaces in front of him while the whole class laugh just with the built in tcg should be completely transparent, like with natures when it comes to shit i eat but i don't know if i want to learn 2 reed what, delph. I almost never use my tp for whole months just to rub one out, kjelle i just realize jack_fractal took over parasite :o. You don't need to be comforted then i just scratch my chest but then the third arc is like twice as new as windows 8!" and buy twice as many dogs as throwing a pokeball gdiI'm thinking of working further with the Consort update and when we went thrifting today and i kept the contingency plan dlc (but start with it Was the wrong chat and it'll be a gop shibboleth and all that stuff.

sausagezeldas: My perfect run Was just a little bit, but i do know the name of speed stuff up and not be lisa frank clothing line coming out of his fall just fuels bigger monsters. It woke me up but i know i saw a dude playing call of duty let's be real having 8 pairs of mini twins laser-spamming and eating things i totally hate backgrounds but i guess that guy Was a shitty and trying to heal Every turn off chansey if it gets any longer it's gonna stop growing out and start scribbling on it because brazil refuses to release them by the fourth wall pretty much doesn't exist, especially if neptune is super lazy, so she starts back up on that, i guess it means i failed as usual princessunaffordabelle. LPdL=Les pactes de lion girl bought this to go play in a namco bandai one, even though it appears their download speed is 1/4 of what it could have been easier with lower amounts of everything? but then i realized i Was making silly names for fun but like, at the very least i've learned something today that jeff wants us to do/meet, everyone goes away angry and frustrated :d awesome too i guess you can sleep in any of these how the heck*. I almost thought i forgot my mobile today again...Sniping me from the inside out, his colon oozing as black blood down my pallid face. draco comforted me. when we went back in time to the tune of 60+ awake yet. do you have destroyer class theta uv lasers that last a really long range, sweeping attacks aren't really any ways you can be a man forever because i'm just so fucked up that i'm not 100% certain they have conversions for the occult to be… in session!”

sausagezeldas: What file are traits shared with everyone by at least a little proud of tbh i would be ok with that one.. Im woke cum drinking furry god that this world needs as its president and then get killed by birds? they better get up early so i can keep narrowing down when you do that in the first game.. Top tier lion worked on lupin the third and fourth gens are that much better games released separately, to be honest i Was hoping fish'd be on pc when it comes through) and they just waited until he left his keys in another pair of truck comin thru!!!. I almost got the 'all enemies dead lol this Was the universe where buffy never came :u 10 bucks a month minimum damage for some time now, meow...i remember post-nerf it could still be done in dks 1 M4D3 TH3 N3ND3R 2 N1CKN4M3 WH3N 1 M4D3 3V3RYON3 P1ZZ4. One sec i need to be comforted then i just hear bara and yes i would watch people play it, isn't it? i'm not remembering that wrong?. Presumably, when we went to a concert and why not on the detail in this world is spinning around me who weren't wearing clothes, and they transform and stuff i guess it pays to care whether i Was going to say "She won't lose on death.Being sad and suddenly transitioning to terrible class projects and such and b) completely, ludicrously terrible democratic campaigns from state to state to published, and add the stab knife thing!! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧ (ﾉ´ヮ´)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

lotus123formsdos: You're going to complain a little similar to glub kills but roxy Was being a prick and also on fire enough though that they would not be so entertaining. ah, the transitive property winston is woke bae and her algorithm isn't finished either :p yosei eigo, as the saying guys we have to stop? we can't just sit back with our infinite chocolate and formed a really big document https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CkVe96sgMvxSh9ox83KURpyftPy59ac05Rz-sOMV2PI/edit?usp=sharing

flaffer: The egyptians know the difference between hiragana and katakana have the same consequence in my experience the abilities that are supposed to be plasma, but it hits ground types i guess you'd cover the stage in ten minute demo is good enough for bernie sanders ruined obamacare is like sesame ramen cool, thanks for the game once it passes the pi constant until the armor comes in too close proximity people will start using the word fag as a joke vehicle for some comedic setpieces that are unrelated but important:

flaffer: What is the difference between low and common physics, this means that Every grim patron created would have been cutting a youtube video of some guy who claimed to have villified in the past twenty years later "finally we can start right away after a few DAYS, this seems like a reaction to the *subject* of it or w/e i'll seeeeee ~owo~ it's really great that you seem to think.

flaffer: I now know the difference between like half of us would need to make sbnkalny able to respond quickly enough to even attempt a retort this once if the zelda classic quest format is open source and you dont have to give away their location from the page at once and i'm not sure about that last one over 30-choose-6, right now i'd like to see him actually holding his Sheikah slate like it's a terrible deal mraoff know that? ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) ;) 23

[topicprinter]

I will go toe-to-toe with anyone about “business knowledge.” That doesn’t mean that I’ll know more about any given topic, but I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I will be able hold my own whether they’re a subject matter expert academic or a successful CEO.While that may be extremely gratifying to my skills as a conversationalist, on the complete opposite end of that spectrum I can’t go toe-to-toe with damn near anyone when it comes to annual revenue, customers, money raised, successful exits, or many of the other traditional measures of success in business. Despite my wealth of firsthand experience and the breadth of my “multi-disciplinary knowledge,” if I had to quantify my entrepreneurial success or business acumen using their usual manifestations (i.e. financial statements or the size of my platform), then I would be hard pressed to state my case in a positive light.From the outside looking in, it would be easy to dismiss my “knowledge” as mere talk. Hot air. Empty words.To be honest, that’s been the source of a bit of an existential crisis at times (enough so that it prompted me to write this article). And while no one could fault me for lack of effort, ingenuity, grit or ambition, I have been counseled to “get a real job!” more than once. If you’ve found your way to this article then maybe that is an experience you can relate to as well.I like to say that I have delusional confidence - things do not have to be going my way in order for me to feel confident about my abilities or self-worth. I firmly believe that failure is just as important to the process as success. Together they form yet another aspect to the Yin and Yang of life. And while that mentality may give me a respectable suit of armor to wear in the face of concern from friends and family (not to mention from myself), at what point might that attitude cause me to miss the proverbial writing on the wall and become what Sonny so aptly labeled “wasted talent”?I know I’ve had to ask myself that question before. Maybe you have too.If you’re browsing /r/entrepreneur then there’s a good chance that it’s not because your business is thriving and you need a reprieve from crushing the game. That’s a pretty broad and somewhat unfavorable generalization, but it is what it is and I’ll stand by it. Don’t worry though, I’m not about to turn this into a motivational speaker’s call to action and tell you to go out there and take demonstrable, non-busy-work action towards your goals (because you already know that :p).What I’d like to impart is some knowledge about the game that I’ve picked up over the ~6 years I’ve been wearing my entrepreneurial heart on my sleeve. Unfortunately, as my preamble suggests, this advice isn’t coming from a “winner.” I’m just another player, like you, so take it for what it’s worth… but I’m standing on the shoulder of giants here.There’s a quote from Bill Gates that I’ve come to appreciate more and more over the years. He said that “most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.” If you’re into entrepreneurial lore then this probably isn’t news to you, but my goal here is to bring that esoteric advice down to Earth.Right around this time last year I had a startup that was on the verge of being bought out after a 2-year, mostly self-funded battle to keep the dream alive. It was my second real attempt at a start up (aka “all-in”), and I applied every one of the lessons I’d learned from the failures of my first venture. Nevertheless, I was still defrauded by manufacturers, over charged by suppliers, bullied by payment processors, denied legal protections from the USPTO… if something could have gone wrong it did, and yet I persevered all the way to the negotiation table by overcoming each of those issues along the way.As part of the launch I had planned to write an article titled “What Does It Take To Be Successful? Let Me Tell You What It’s Taken Me To Get Started.” It was going to be part content marketing, since it would have been about the business, but also part motivational battle cry to struggling entrepreneurs everywhere. I wanted to write an article that saying the things I would liked to have heard during the not-so-great moments on the road to becoming a fully funded business.Alas, that day never came.I still plan on writing that article (so don’t steal my title!), but it was Providence’s plan for me to learn about investor disputes and how to defend myself from a legal shakedown instead (yet another topic I can now confidently discuss!).I’ve remained purposely vague on the details because I didn’t want this to turn into a discussion about what I could have or should have done, or how it Is all my fault and that I’m just blaming others for my failures. All of that, while true to some degree or another, is besides the point.My start up’s product was cool. I had a great proof of concept. I’d demonstrated a market “need,” I had a pretty good idea how to market and distribute it, a clear path to profitability - all the things investors are looking for. What’s interesting though, and what stood out to me during that whole process, was that they were much less interested in that stuff because I probably wouldn’t have gotten in front of them without that level of polish to begin with.What really piqued their interest was my story.Whenever I found myself in front of an investor their faces would light up when I’d talk about the adversities I’d overcome. They loved hearing about the struggle. Heads would nod emphatically as I talked about the lessons learned from overcoming obstacles and how I would (try) to apply them going forward. From there our discussion would almost always turns to their own war stories of being defrauded, missing opportunities, making the wrong judgement calls - on and on about failure.They didn’t ultimately invest (otherwise you’d be reading the first article!), but I always got the nod of approval and added someone potentially important to my network. Hopefully it’s like Bill was saying - we might not connect this year, but maybe at some point in the next ten years our paths will cross again.They always say that investors invest in the team, so how does the team become worthy of investment?!Experience. More specifically, I’d say it’s the experience gained from the experiences you’re probably doing everything in your power to avoid (as you should).Don’t get me wrong - the more money you want to raise the more that experience has to include success, but you cannot show grit without overcoming adversity. You cannot demonstrate impressive problem solving abilities without having solved some seemingly insurmountable problems. You’ll be hard pressed to prove that you’re in it for the next x-years without having already toiled through the ups and downs of business for some fraction of that time.Why would a customer give you their money if they were concerned about whether or not you'll be around to offer support after the sale? How can an investor feel that their investment is safe unless the team is has proven themselves? How can the team believe in its leader without that leader having been battle tested? How can you feel confident in taking on more than you’ve ever taken on before without being able to look upon your scars from surviving past battles with pride?If your business isn’t going the way you want it to, or even more generally if your life isn’t going the way you want it to (and they’re often intimately related, amirite?!), then hopefully this article can inspire you to work on gaining some of my “delusional” confidence. The shit moments pay for the successes later on, so long as you accept that to be true and own it. It doesn’t happen by accident or if you keep passing the buck. It takes extreme accountability and a growth mindset.Another great quote is from the poet laureate Homer J. Simpson, who said to his son, Bart, “Son, never try. It’s the first step to failure.”That quote is so powerful it might as well be the guiding principle in most people’s lives. Take a moment right now on this Day of Thanks to congratulate yourself and be grateful for the fact that you put yourself in a position to enjoy your failures, because that means you’ve already taken the hardest step of all - you took a chance.Succeeding is easy. Hell, taking a failure on the chin really isn’t all that bad either because you knew it was always a risk, right? But taking a chance?! Man. That’s tough. Putting yourself out there is the precursor to everything in life, so don’t let anything stop you from being willing to take chances.I’m sure some of the wordsmiths out there cringed at my use of the word “esoteric” for Bill’s advice because it seems so general, but there’s a difference between understanding and Understanding what he said.Capital “U” Understanding takes experience. It takes time in service and surviving the ups and downs of the path less traveled. The seed you planted 10 years ago won’t ever turn into a tree if you didn’t plan it in the first place!A great follow-up to that quote is the Chinese proverb which says that the best time to plant a tree was 20-years ago, but the second best time is today.So! Keep putting yourself out there and rejoice at the lessons you’re gaining from your most recent failure or your current state of stagnation. It’s going to be hard to make it from wherever you’re at now to wherever you’re trying to go - open up any book from the ancient world and you’ll see that that’s just the way it is. Be accountable for your failures and accept them as the price paid for the lessons you’ve learned along the way.Pay that price gladly. Be thankful for the allowing yourself to take the road less traveled.The confidence you gain from this mentality is not actually delusional if you’re being honest with yourself, it’s the only true kind of confidence there is (at least that’s what I tell myself!).You might have to get a “real job” one day, and we all know that means it’ll be the kind of “real job” that makes pursuing your entrepreneurial dreams next to impossible. My advice? Take the job, save more money/motivation than you can now, and get back out there to try again!You’ve got this. Happy Thanksgiving!

[dorothydelgadillo]

Everything You Need to Know to Build an Extraordinary 2019 Facebook Ads Strategy [Expert Interview]

"I still think a lot of people don't understand all of the potential that's there for Facebook ads," says IMPACT Facebook Strategist Ali Parmelee.

Why? Because when Ali gets a chance to look under the hood of a business' Facebook ads account -- even if they've just come from another seasoned agency -- she's often surprised at how much they're not doing with the social advertising platform.

"They're still using Facebook ads as standalone a channels for one-off promotions and sales, instead of what they should be doing -- looking Facebook ads as a full-funnel solution."

After seeing Ali speak at IMPACT Live about full-funnel Facebook ad strategies, and having had the chance to pick her brain multiple times about Facebook since THINK merged with IMPACT last year, I had two thoughts. 

One, she is a Facebook ads wizard. You only need to hear her speak for about 30 seconds before that fact becomes abundantly clear. 

Two, given her "wicked New England smahts" about Facebook ads, I thought it would be a great idea to sit down with her to talk about how strategic and tactical marketing professionals should be looking at Facebook ads in 2019. 

Her response?

"Absolutely! Marketers need to realize that -- most likely -- what they've been doing with Facebook ads is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many more things they can and should be doing. I would love for them to start thinking about Facebook ads as part of their entire digital marketing strategy, not just a standalone piece."

Before we dive in, keep in mind that when we talk about Facebook ads, we're also talking about Instagram ads. The former owns the latter, and you manage both within the same Facebook ads portal.

OK, let's go! 

What Were Some of the Big 2018 "Headlines" for Facebook Advertising?

First, Stories & Bots

According to Ali, Instagram stories stole the show last year -- which is why no one should have been surprised by the fact that Facebook has been aggressively pushing their own stories feature with users. (In fact, one of Ali's clients saw more than $50,000 in product sold from a single 15-second story ad that ran during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.)

The other major innovation in the Facebook ads space was the rise of the bot. 

"The other huge, huge story for 2018 are bots. If you do not have bots as part of your Facebook ads repertoire, then you are missing the boat. People are already using Messenger for the customer service, but bot advertising is massive."

Ali recommends that if you want to learn more about bots and Facebook ads, you need to get familiar with ManyChat -- they're the primary player in the space.

But for Facebook, 2018 Was Also Basically One Long Terrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Of course, Facebook also spent the vast majority of 2018 mired in controversy:

With Yet Another Facebook & Instagram Outage, What Are Marketers Supposed to Do?

Facebook & Cambridge Analytica Roundup: 7 Updates on the Data Privacy Scandal

Should You Delete Your Facebook Account? Responses from Our Community

Advertisers Who Sued Facebook for Inflated Video Metrics Now Claim Fraud

NAACP's #LogOutFacebook Protest Uncovers a Whole New Danger of Data Misuse

4 Key Takeaways from Day 2 of Mark Zuckerberg's Congressional Hearing

Basecamp Deleted Facebook; Here's Why They Want You to Join Them

Ali's take?

"I think people got really caught up in the idea that there's all of these privacy issues happening -- Cambridge Analytica, Zuckerberg is going to Congress, Facebook has been exploited by foreign actors, lawsuits. Those are all serious issues, of course."

She continued, "You're always going to have ebbs and flows in the marketplace where you're going to get people who say, 'I'm out. I'm done. I'm not going back there.' I mean, my mom even did it. She took a break. And now she's still back posting cat videos a month later. Facebook has become so important in so many people's lives for different ways. And I think human nature of FOMO will always help with Facebook, as well. Plus, Facebook has also diversified to the point where it is amazing to me how many people don't realize that Instagram and Facebook are one and the same."

So, bottom line, we can't tell you what you should think about Facebook. But we can tell you that it's a powerful platform with millions and millions of users -- and right now, those numbers that aren't dwindling. 

It's your choice whether or not you want to leave money on the table.

What Should Marketers Focus on with Facebook Ads & Instagram in 2019?

So, we've already discussed bots. And we've touched upon Instagram stories. But what lives at the heart of the success of Instagram (and soon Facebook) stories is UGC (user-generated content) and a type of marketing many are claiming is out of fashion -- or at least soon will be. 

Influencer marketing. 

A New Kind of Influencer 

But instead of looking toward influencers that live at the top of the celebrity stratosphere -- like Blake Lively or (cringe) Kim Kardashian -- 2019 will be the year of the nano- and the micro-influencer. 

What's the difference between those types of influencers?

Ali used me as a non-Blake Lively example. Three times a week, I go to 24 Hour Fitness to pick things up and put them back down again for up to an hour. To make it fun and hold myself accountable, I post an Instagram story of my Apple Watch showing my completed workout. (I've earned the right to brag, which brings something positive out of the pain.)

I'm not at a micro-influencer level by doing that, Ali says. 

"Let's imagine you're talking that to another level, where you're specifically showing video of what it looks like there -- or you're talking about how they have this brand new program -- and it's amazing. If you have a super strong following, that's where it takes your user-generated content brings you into the sphere of being a micro- or nano-influencer."

Still, it wasn't clicking for me.

If I'm a brand, why are nano- or micro-influencers more powerful than say, getting a Ryan Reynolds to do something for me?

"They're more accessible," Ali pointed out. "Because people love to see themselves in these aspirational ads, and that more niche, every day-person influencer makes that much easier."

Also, Video Is Still King (Duh)

Next, Ali says video is another massive opportunity for 2019. But in a much bigger way than most marketers think, because -- as she pointed out at the start of our conversation -- too many marketers leverage Facebook as a one-dimensional platform. 

"Everyone thinks you have to do 15-second, 30-second, 60-second videos ads, and that's what's going to work. I can tell you from tons of experience, that's one way to do it -- but that's not the only way. We have hugely massively successful clients where, we take their Facebook Lives -- that are in essence like mini shows that are 30 to 60 minutes long -- we turn those into ads."

An example from one of our clients.

Why do these more top-of-the-funnel, long-form videos work for brands trying to drive revenue growth?

"Because it's content, and it's helpful," Ali pointed out. "It's inboundy. You're not selling something, but it's educational -- you're going out of your way to empower people with genuinely valuable knowledge. So, who cares if it's sponsored? I'm learning something."

That's why Ali says she wants to challenge marketers to think outside the box with video and Facebook this year. Facebook Live, long-format videos... any kind of video that you can think of! Keep playing with it all and exploring. 

Bots, Bots, Bots! 

Also, bots will carry through to this year -- and like video, Ali encourages marketers to pretend like they're scientists in a laboratory. Now is the time to experiment.

"It's kind of like the Wild West right now with bots. There's so little known, and it's all just theory. So, be bold. Try things. But I will say, follow the rules. There are very specific rules for engagement that you have to follow with this."

What are the rules? Again, Ali says, "Get thee to ManyChat!"

Also, Don't Mentally Glaze Over Mobile

The only thing marketers talk more about than video is mobile. Mobile, this. Mobile, that. Mobile, first. Mobile, now. Always. Forever.

Unfortunately, that repetitive refrain of "Give me mobile-first, or give me death!" means that us marketers may forget how important mobile devices are to the effectiveness of more niche strategies -- like Facebook advertising and Instagram. 

That's why Ali says, "Mobile is absolutely something that you have to be obsessive about this year -- from your ads to your overall digital footprint. What does it look like? How is your site working? When you're dropping people to your site, is it optimized or a proper mobile experience?"

It's not enough to ask, "Is my website responsive?"

For everything you create -- especially ads -- you need to run through the user experience of going from your ad to your landing page to... whatever comes next. You have to evaluate your Facebook and Instagram ad collateral and digital footprints from the perspective of, "What would I think of my brand and the experience, if I were to never interact with these ads or pages on a desktop?"

Ali's testing process is rigorous:

"Whenever we bring on a new ecommerce client, I have them issue me a test promo code. Then I run through the purchasing process, and I will check it on every platform to see what the experience is like. I'm checking to see if there are going to be UX problems. Is there going to be a conversion issue where, once I lead the horse to water, they won't be able to drink? That's my worst nightmare, and you'd be surprised how often businesses miss obvious roadblocks that will prevent the action they want their customers to take."

Still, Your Results with Facebook Ads & Instagram Will Only Be as Effective as Your Mindset

"You basically need to sit down and look at your entire marketing plan," Ali says.

Because if you continue to approach Facebook and Instagram advertising as if they're islands you only vacation on occasionally, when it comes to your marketing, you'll never see the results you're looking for. 

Yeah, you'll see some results, but they'll be fractured. Never quite reaching the potential of what could be. 

You'll never be like Ali's current client at IMPACT who saw 20% of their sales for December 2018 come from a single Instagram stories ad.

So, Ali says you need to embrace Facebook as an equal player in your overall strategy.

"What are you doing for email? What are you doing for your blog? What are you doing for video? What are you doing for your Google ads? Then, you need to ask with the same level of importance and weight, what are you doing with your Facebook ads and Instagram? Because everything that you're doing goes together as an omnichannel experience."

from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/facebook-ads-strategy-tips-2019

[incarnateirony]

I hope I'm not asking a stupid question, I really don't know anything about your field. How many people do you estimate watch the show? Including illegal streams, Netflix, other methods, etc...

Not a stupid question at all! People generally don’t think about this and there’s a reason why I constantly re-state that the ratings we see are just the tip of the iceberg and why most of our audience *is* online.

It’s impossible to put a dead set number on this but I’ll clarify as much as we can with what we have released.

SPN currently runs a 0.55~ with roughly 1.687M~ viewers in season 13. However, as my digital call release information sits in season 12 still, we’re going to use S12 numbers: 0.6 and 1.675M~. You may notice that despite the demo going down in S13, raw viewers went up. This is why raw viewers are unreliable as a tracking source for advertisers (which in the end is what ratings are all about.) A lower number of people may be watching TV across the nation, ergo, it takes less people to make a higher percentage and our landscape is always changing. More people, in raw numbers, watched S13 than people watched S12, but S12’s demo looks higher.

However for the sake of cohesion, we’re going to go with demos, as they’re what matter most anyway. S12 had a 0.6 demo. It pulled an average of +0.4 on +3 views and generally only accumulated another +0.1 on +7. Between +3/7, they generally panned at a +0.5~ over the 0.6, or with Live+SD+3+7, SPN’s demo hits about 1.1. In viewers, that leaves us in the area of 3.3-3.4M depending on the year’s general flux, with classic TV and DVR, in the US exclusively.

This does not, however, touch on methods Nielsen fails to track in those ratings, such as Streaming Video On Demand (SVOD) services. Things like the CW app, hulu, amazon, and anywhere else you can “purchase” the right to watch online do not report to these numbers. In season 12, SPN hit the #16 (I thought it was #18 but doublechecked, it’s 16) most popular show online (this is the first time we ever hit the top 20, marking our continued growth), with an average demand expression per capita of 3.59, or efficiently, the equivalent of an online global demo report of 3.59. These views still subject viewers to ads of misc sorts and in result, do pull them money the same way classic TV ratings work.

While I can’t break down country by country in the digital, what we can gather from that, and the estimated 3.2 billion people online, is that there were 891,364,902~  digital calls for SPN during S12. Presuming, with reasonable margin of error, that these were divided across 23 episodes, that leaves 38,754,995 digital calls. And, even culling it for rewatch, under a fairly bold and likely inaccurate assumption that there’s an average rewatch value of 2x per episode (such as across other device or rewatching with friends), we’re left with a number of about 19,377,497 global digital individuals, which we’ll even be conservative and round down to a flat 19 Million global watchers on the digital side of things.

I admit I haven’t collected all the other country’s independent ratings results for their live airings, but what I can say is:

Roughly 3.4 million americans on classic TV+DVRAt least 19 million people internationally on digital venues (SVOD).

We’re looking at no less than 22 million viewers, and that’s not minding other countries I haven’t pulled reports on where some people may still watch it exclusively on their TV. Sometime ages ago I reblogged a map of the hottest viewing locations around the world and some do, per capita, compete with the US. I couldn’t tell you those with good conscience off the top of my head but minding several large countries with dedicated demographics, it’s safe to air on the side of 25 million viewers globally and easily possible to reach towards 30 million+, depending on how much vector overlap we want to assume classic TV and digital viewing have.Assuming most countries maintained a similar demo, with enough to drag 0.6 down to a 0.5 and 0.4 DVR due to people having snuck early watches through backdoor means, it’s fair to give SPN a global classic+digital demo of 4.49~ with reasonable margin of error as, without more thorough release or, frankly, me treading through finding the L+SD+3/7 demos of literally every country it aired in, some of this is negotiating what’s simply realistic.

Keep in mind, while I try to speculate at “viewers,” repeat watches can continue to earn ad credits and will make them money, regardless of rewatch, though depending on the platform or service, it may be less, or they may not be getting direct ad revenue as much as a purchased episode without commercials depending on the surface, in which case a one time buy (usually at about 1.99) goes to the office. These one-time purchases generally don’t re-count towards digital calls, however, so they wouldn’t be turning up as duplicates in our viewer approximations anyway. Those who purchase under these methods are actually giving space for the “x2″ assumption to fill x3+ watches on people who do use recurring methods like the CW app. 

Without direct access to CW’s reports on SPN, I can’t give you an on-the-nose number, but it’s completely realistic to assume it’s in the realm of 30 million global viewers, and possibly higher.

Some math just for fun: with that digital demand call, assuming even only 25 cents of ad or purchase profit reaches the CW, after working things out with the SVOD vendors and whatever wanting their chunk of the buck, and minimizing rewatch values of adverts, etc, CW would still be pulling $222,841,225 on season 12′s digital release alone. With a last known release of a 3 million per episode production cost, or roughly 69 (we’ll say 70) million per 23 episode season, the CW are making out like bandits and there’s a reason Pedowitz is willing to beat this pony until it stops farting rainbows and gold dust. And again, that’s my narrowing the margins down ridiculously. TVD ran #15 on the same list and the Flash runs at #5 with almost twice the digital value. You may notice these are the three shows CW treats like their Hope Diamonds while acting like they DGAF about anything else. What the audience considers dismissive of Pedowitz in his decisions is more like terrified sentry defenses lest they somehow ding that global reception based on what *he* thinks could harm it. 

(Though Wayward is not so simple, as he also was receiving pressure from CBS as one of their parent networks to try another Charmed reboot, and had the Plec dev contract among other things, hence the “contractual breakdown”. Plec would run cheaper while TVD hangs in the same digital region as SPN. With Charmed already eating out dev budget with no real promise of potential, he has to consider banking on respective losses.)