Sam Blake
Sam primarily covers entertainment and media for dot.LA. Previously he was Marjorie Deane Fellow at The Economist, where he wrote for the business and finance sections of the print edition. He has also worked at the XPRIZE Foundation, U.S. Government Accountability Office, KCRW, and MLB Advanced Media (now Disney Streaming Services). He holds an MBA from UCLA Anderson, an MPP from UCLA Luskin and a BA in History from University of Michigan. Email him at samblake@dot.LA and find him on Twitter @hisamblake
Even though most of Snap's potential advertisers have no clue how to use Snapchat, the company forecasts multiple years of 50% revenue growth.
That was the big takeaway from Snap's first ever Investor Day on Tuesday. Following a banner year that saw the company's stock price more than quadruple, the market continues to like what it sees. Snap's shares were up 11% by market close and the company surpassed a $106 billion market cap.
<p>Yet to keep pace with the market's optimism, analysts say Snap's challenge will be in monetizing its 265 million users who check in on the app an average of 30 times a day. And key to that is educating advertisers about how Snapchat works. </p><p>The nine-year-old public company's flagship app is a hit among young people – reaching 90% of 13-24 year-olds in the U.S. – but as its usage declines with age, so does familiarity with how it works.</p><p>"We are selling to an audience oftentimes who don't use Snapchat on a day-to-day basis," said chief business officer Jeremi Gorman in a question and answer session at the tail end of the three-hour virtual event. </p><p>It's helpful that over the past few years Snap has focused on "tightening up the product," said KeyBanc analyst Justin Patterson. That effort has included adding several new features and reorganizing the user experience. </p><p>On Tuesday, chief executive Evan Spiegel said the company's future innovation will now transition into growing around the five "core building blocks" of its Camera, Chat, Stories, Maps and Spotlight features. </p><p>Last summer, Snap added a toolbar on Snapchat to help users navigate across these five features. Numerous executives emphasized Tuesday that these features are at various stages of maturity, and therefore represent different opportunities for the company's growth. </p><p>Explaining Snap's rosy revenue projections, Chief Finance Officer Derek Andersen said the biggest near- and medium-term opportunities are in the Camera (he called AR lenses a "multibillion dollar opportunity") and Stories (the widely copycatted chronological images and videos that Snap pioneered, and which Andersen said includes Snapchat's curated content feature, Discover). </p><p>In the longer term, Andersen said Maps are another "multibillion dollar opportunity" to connect local businesses to users. Spotlight is also in its early stages, as the TikTok-like feature launched just a few months ago. </p><p>Andersen added that Snap's relatively low average revenue per user compared to competitors like Twitter and Facebook offers reason for optimism.</p><p>Furthering the case, Gorman noted that although Snap reaches nearly half of all U.S. smartphone users, it captures less than 2% of the $142 billion U.S. digital advertising market – which, she said, emarketer has forecasted to grow at 14% per year. </p><p>Recognizing that educating advertisers on how Snapchat works is its biggest hurdle, in August the company ran its first business-facing marketing campaign. Chief Marketing Officer Kenny Mitchell said the campaign, alongside Snap's other efforts to train marketers, has resulted in more advertisers completing Snap's business-education certification over the past seven months than in the prior three years combined. </p><p>Still, whether Snap wants to lure more companies to spend money on the six-second unskippable ads that appear in between Stories, set up a listing on Maps or showcase a brand or highlight a sale with an AR lens campaign, the self-styled camera company out of Santa Monica remains in translation mode. </p><p>Toward the end of the event, Gorman walked analysts through a hypothetical example of how her team tries to help advertisers understand how the young people that they're trying to reach use Snapchat. </p><p>"Open your phone," she said. "What apps do you see that you use the most?"</p><p>Most of the time, she said, the response is some combination of messaging, camera and map. </p><p>"For this generation, for 13 to 34," her demo continued, "those things are all together in Snapchat." </p><p>Moving forward, there "is a major [monetization] opportunity for [Snap]," said Piper Sandler analyst Tom Champion. "It just remains to be seen whether or not they can do it."</p>
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Spotify is now matching your music taste to podcasts. The new predictive algorithm is one of a host of new products the Swedish company announced Monday.
It also unveiled a new premium service called HiFi with improved sound and a Snapchat-like feature for artists to share video clips.
<p>The moves are part of Spotify's ongoing effort to expand beyond music and become the primary platform for all audio creators and consumers. </p><p>The company has been on an acquisition spree over the past several years, which has included podcast content studios The Ringer, Parcast and Gimlet and podcast creation services like Anchor and Megaphone. </p><p>And it's about to release more original podcasts as it expands partnerships, including "Batman Unburied," created with Warner Bros. and DC; a new project from Ava Duvernay and a program featuring Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen. </p><p>"The creative economy is exploding," said chief executive officer Daniel Ek. "So far, that explosion has been largely taking shape across video, with companies of all sizes focused there, and new ones entering the market all the time…(But) rather than focusing where everyone else is, we decided to go all-in on audio."</p><p>Monday raised the stakes on that bet. Here's a rundown of some of the more notable announcements:</p><h2>New Products</h2><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube">
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1abf7607e4183fb2106656d3ef8fefaf"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/W07MvWbuWkI?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Stream On: The power of HiFi - Billie Eilish & Finneas</small>
</p><p><strong>New Subscription Tier</strong>: Spotify HiFi will provide subscribers a more refined, "high-end" audio experience. The new tier will roll out in select markets later this year, and will ostensibly compete with other premium streaming services like Tidal and Amazon Music HD.<br/></p><p><strong>Spotify Clips</strong>: Building on the company's incremental incorporation of video onto its platform, Spotify announced the launch of "Clips," a new feature for artists to share short videos. Described by Chief Content Officer Dawn Ostroff as a way to "give many of our most popular artists a new way to connect with their fans," Spotify Clips looks similar to the Stories feature that Snap pioneered and which subsequently became a staple of Instagram. <strong></strong></p><p><strong>New Artist Marketing Tools</strong>: Over 1 million artists use Spotify's suite of artist marketing and data analytics tools each month, said Head of Marketplace Charlie Hellman. "Spotify for Artists" will be made available in 25 additional languages. Among those tools is Canvas, which allows artists to upload visual material to complement their music. Described by music star Halsey as the modern form of album art, Canvas will now be available to all artists following a limited run. Marquee, another artist tool that allows musicians and their teams to sponsor music recommendations, will also be expanding later this year.</p><p><strong>More Personalized Playlists</strong>: Spotify's chief R&D officer Gustav Söderström underscored the abundance of content on the platform by noting that if someone wanted to listen to the over-50,000 hours of music and podcasts uploaded to Spotify every single day, it would take them over five years. To help users navigate this ocean and discover new music, the company has invested into algorithms that use a combination of machine learning and human curation to build playlists. More of these are coming, with Söderström highlighting that soon the platform's "Daily Mix" franchise, which offers playlists tied to topics like specific genres and decades, will be updated daily.</p><h2>Podcasting Plans</h2><p class="shortcode-media shortcode-media-youtube">
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="920c0ce3aa9428095cfb1c60f9b45f40"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/BAeIskxCnSc?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>
<small class="image-media media-caption" placeholder="Add Photo Caption...">Renegades: Born in the USA | A Spotify Original Podcast | From Higher Ground</small>
</p><p><strong>WordPress Partnership</strong>: Podcast creators using Spotify's Anchor platform will now be able to "quickly and easily turn written content directly into podcasts," said Sara Lerner, Spotify's head of strategy for podcast formats. "We think this is going to empower a whole new group of creators, people who have historically been more focused on the written word."<br/></p><p><strong>Interactive Podcasts</strong>: Podcasters will be able to incorporate polls and Q&As in real time to interact with their listeners. </p><p><strong>New Podcast Content</strong>: Spotify announced a variety of new podcast series, including "Renegades: Born in the USA" hosted by Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen, "Batman Unburied" in partnership with Warner Bros. and DC, and a new project from Ava Duvernay. </p><p><strong>Podcast Discovery</strong>: Spotify will soon be unleashing its recommendation algorithms to power podcast discovery. This will include using predictive algorithms to recommend podcasts based on users' musical tastes and allowing users to search for podcasts by theme and topic, based on a machine-learning analysis of episode content. </p><p><strong>Growing Podcast Monetization</strong>: Spotify's big bet on podcasts comes with an expectation that the still small podcasting market will grow. Ostroff pointed out that although the terrestrial and satellite radio market is about $30 billion, it remains plagued by limited data for advertisers to target listeners with precision. That murky data has carried over into podcasts but, she said, Spotify has been able to change the game here by switching the mode of podcast access from downloads to streaming. To build on that and help marketers reach podcast listeners with targeted ads, Spotify will be launching Spotify Audience Network, a new marketplace for advertisers to buy ads on podcasts. The company also announced that Ad Studio, another channel for marketers, will begin being beta-tested for podcasts. Finally, the company is going to begin testing letting podcasters charge for paid subscriptions.</p><h2>Expansion Plans </h2><p><strong>Eighty-five new markets, 36 new languages</strong>: Already available in 93 markets, where it reaches 345 million users and hosts content from over 8 million creators, Spotify will be expanding over the next few days into new markets across Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe and Latin America. This, Ek said, will make Spotify accessible to over 1 billion new potential customers. The company will also nearly double the number of languages in which it's available, to over 60. </p>
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Big moves in L.A.'s gaming industry Thursday, as mobile gaming platform Artie closes its seed round of funding and gaming/ lifestyle organization FaZe Clan lands a new CFO. Sign up for our newsletter and follow dot.LA on Twitter for more updates.
Today:
- Artie Closes Seed Round at $10 Million
- FaZe Clan Brings on a New CFO
<ul class="ee-ul"></ul>
Artie Closes Seed Round at $10 Million
<img lazy-loadable="true" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vbWVkaWEucmJsLm1zL2ltYWdlP3U9JTJGY29udGVudCUyRjVlZDE1ZDQyODVjNzE3NGJiNDU4NmQ4MyUyRjE1OTI0MjAwMTQxOTQtNktLT1BRMjRSWExVNUoxM002S0klMkZhcnRpZWxvZ29fYmxhY2sucG5nJTNGZm9ybWF0JTNEMTUwMHclMjZjb250ZW50LXR5cGUlM0RpbWFnZSUyRnBuZyZobz1odHRwcyUzQSUyRiUyRmltYWdlcy5zcXVhcmVzcGFjZS1jZG4uY29tJnM9MzE4Jmg9MDUzZTlhZWRkNWM2NDhjMzA4OGE4OTUzNGNkMWZhZmQzNmY1OTBkYzZjZGRlY2ViYmQ5MjFjMmZiMWY4MTZhZCZzaXplPTk4MHgmYz0zNTUzMTAyMzAwIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NTE5ODQxOH0.9rhWJ2lsZW1ROB7H5ywiclYOxACKXELeuiocn4oitnQ/img.jpg" id="7994e" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="ee4179c6afc05780213b3b8c58c72868" alt="Artie" /><p><a href="https://www.artie.com" target="_blank">Artie</a>, the L.A.-based startup aiming to change how mobile games are accessed and distributed, has completed <a href="https://dot.la/artie-2647773915.html" target="_self">the seed round that it reopened in September</a>, closing at $10 million. Investors include mobile-games giant Zynga founder Mark Pincus, NBA star Kevin Durant, Scooter Braun's Raised In Space investment firm and the Winklevoss twins.</p><p>Mobile games are the biggest segment of a growing gaming market, and Artie's tech aims to change how players and creators connect through those games. The goal is to reduce friction by allowing gamers to open games directly from online platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and Facebook rather than force them to log in through the Apple or Google app stores. Circumventing the app stores also means game creators and developers would not have to pay the 30% fees those platforms charge.</p><p>Artie plans to release its first round of games later this year, and eventually to allow other developers to use its technology as a distribution platform. Its self-published games will be free to play; Artie will make money through in-game purchases. Once it opens to other developers via a software development kit, it will charge a fee, which chief executive Ryan Horrigan said will likely be 12%.</p>Amit Baraj Takes Over as FaZe Clan CFO
<img lazy-loadable="true" data-runner-src="https://dot.la/media-library/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTY2MjMyNy9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY2MzU5NjgzNH0.r-bMQdsKcmyBMeDedE-9NhQRpC41BGbrBouFDxzpelk/image.jpg?width=2000&coordinates=0%2C139%2C0%2C1619&height=1500" id="ad393" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="3be7eff120cab45bee19bd9ddf5c957a" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Amit Baraj, FaZe Clan CFO" data-width="2000" data-height="1500" />Amit Baraj is FaZe Clan's new chief financial officer.
<p><a href="https://dot.la/faze-clan-2646120733.html" target="_self">FaZe Clan, the L.A.-based gaming brand that spans esports, content and lifestyle apparel</a>, announced Thursday that it has a new chief financial officer.</p><p>Amit Baraj, most recently chief executive officer at 3-on-3 basketball league BIG3, will be responsible for overseeing FaZe Clan's finance, strategy and corporate development. Baraj was formerly an investment banker at Centerview Partners, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Bear, Stearns & Co.</p><p>"FaZe Clan has evolved from an esports organization to a true global media and lifestyle brand with tremendous potential. I'm looking forward to partnering with (CEO) Lee (Trink) and the team to execute on the vision and grow the business," Baraj said in a statement.</p><p>FaZe Clan was valued around $250 million as of its $40 million Series A round last April, led by music mogul Jimmy Iovine, Trink previously told dot.LA. </p>From Your Site Articles
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