DPG Media-Telenet: the "Flemish Netflix" on track

Aiming at a deployment in fall 2020, DPG Media and Telenet are about to set up a joint venture. The objective is to launch a wide streaming offering, covering local and international content. The project will unifiy the contents coming from DPG Media (primarily Flemish fiction) and those proposed by Telenet, local (SBS/Woestijnvis/Play) and international. This streaming content should be available through a paid-for application. The foundations of this "Flemish Netflix" are the current Play and Play More brands from Telenet (400.000 clients according to Telenet itself) and the VTM GO proposal (monthly reach of ± 366.000, according to CIM Internet in the last 3 months).

The Belgian Competition Authority still must authorize the new company owned at 50% each by Telenet and DPG. Both say they are open to other partners and everyone thinks of VRT to participate.

Friends of Search Belgium : Technical and inspiring

Space attended the very first Friends of Search conference usually hosted in Amsterdam, but now, for the first time in Belgium. It is the unmissable congress for SEO and SEA marketers. We highly recommend this conference if you are interested in this area for two reasons: First, the level of expertise is very high and you get hands one tips and tricks you can apply immediately. Second, the international speakers have a huge expertise and will inspire you for sure to get your hands dirty.

Our SEA team was present and has taken some great ideas which will be discussed with our clients but here are some key take-aways from the day:

Brad Geddes from Adalysis, and Gianluca Binelli from Boosterbox both presented how the changing match type structure from Google as an impact on account structures and search terms. Especially the close variant can create chaos but is manageable with either scripts or by trying to incorporate these variants in an adapted campaign structure.  With some fun excel calculation we can measure the dispersion index on campaign/ad groups and act on that if necessary.

Martin Röttgerding from Bloofusion Germany presented the interesting idea of conditional ads which are special way to use ad customization. Instead of feeding the ads through the feed, they actually use the feed as a condition. If a certain condition is met, than the ad will be active. This gives more possibilities like time, location or weather based optimizations but is also beneficial to reporting since ads have more data than the customization feed.

Last but not least came Frederick Vallaeys from Optmyzr, a CPC guru who recently published the book: Digital Marketing in an AI World. He showcased the fact that current technologies like AI and machine learning are great tools but only in combination with a human mind. This way, he ensured that we will still keep our jobs in the future.

We thank Friends of Search and their partners for this great event and you want to hear more about these topics, don’t hesitate to contact your search expert.

Onderdak at Mediahuis

While the fair Batibouw was about to start Mediahuis has announced the launch of a monthly (10/year) supplement on housing: Onderdak. The supplement will be available to the readers of all the newspapers published by Mediahuis: De Standaard, Het Nieuwsblad, Gazet van Antwerpen  and Het Belang van Limburg. The content will be about building, transforming and design. Objective is also to focus on stories of readers in their projects. 

All together, paper & digital versions of newspapers from Mediahuis reach 2,3 million individuals aged 12+ (CIM NRS 2018-2019) with a cumulated daily (paper) circulation of 438.970 copies.

Proximus Pickx almost complete

RTL Belgium (RTL-TVI, Club RTL, Plug RTL, Bel RTL as well as Radio Contact), has announced an agreement with Proximus when it comes to the distribution of their channels on the digital platform Pickx from Proximus. Initially seen as a threat by many content publishers, the aggregation platform of Proximus now seems to to have given enough guarantees to broadcasters. The VOD platform of RTL, RTL Play is reported to be directly visible on Pickx, as the Auvio solution from RTBF when the new decoder V7 is implemented 

To date, only DPG Media has not reached an agreement with Proximus. VRT, RTBF and now RTL have. Initially Belgian broadcasters complained about Pickx as the new platform was said to work "à la Netflix" with a thematic interface and a recommendation algorithm that publishers regarded as a threat for their own content structure. It seems that the amended version of Pickx is closer to their wishes.

Video and TV ratings combined on CIM.be

CIM public data for TV now combine "first" and "other" screens with ratings that aggregate Television Audience Measurement (TAM) data and audience information on streaming the same programmes on any device (in that case coming from CIM Internet traffic measurement). Is it something actionable for advertisers ? Not really, for the following reasons:

- reporting is limited to content, ie programmes: advertising performances are not part of it

- it combines information measured at individual level (TAM) and data streams captured at browser level

- obviously these data are not profiled: peoplementer data cover all individuals 4+ and stream data are machine-based figures

- online surpluses are very limited: for the latest top 20 programmes, the online "bonus" represented 0.9% for Flemish programmes and 0.3% for French-speaking programmes.