LIVESTREAMING DIGIDAY | WTF is Livestreaming 01 TABLE OF CONTENTS IP Concerns 04 Origins 11 20 Viewing Habits Early Social Publishers Monetization 12 21 05 Streaming in Live Livestreaming 2.0 Facebook Live Data 06 15 22 Livestreaming Live Events Looking Ahead 09 Goes Mobile 17 24 Platform 10 19 Challenges Glossary Integration 25 DIGIDAY || WTFWTF isis LivestreamingLivestreaming 02 If you’re one of those people who likes to say that “X” is the future of media then it’s time to update your message because the new now is livestreaming. But what is it and why is it on everyone’s lips? (And on their screens? And in their budgets?) This is the age of digital video. Full stop. Moving images on digital screens are the lingua franca of digital media, the clock may already be striking twelve on this much heralded moment in new media. Video is great, but wither the human connection? The drama? The immediacy? In a world of time-shifted viewing where’s the urgency? Enter livestreaming, the natural successor to the video throne. Media brands are spending millions on live programming and live stream broadcasts are racking up millions, and in some cases billions, of views. The truly crazy part? This has all happened before. DIGIDAY | WTF is Livestreaming 03 ORIGINS The first generation of livestreaming relied on these desktop webcams to allow users to capture live video and transmit it over the web. The feature would later become standard on almost every web-enabled device, but in the early days a stationary computer was almost certainly required to stream. The first livestreaming technologies are almost as old as the internet itself, launching in the mid- 1990s, but the first consumer-worthy livestreaming services, the ones that would enable the first livestreaming boom, didn’t hit the market until 1999. DIGIDAY | WTF is Livestreaming 04 EARLY SOCIAL STREAMING individuals at random for an impromptu face-to- face conversation. The platform quickly gained a salacious reputation, but it still points to something important about first generation livestreaming. Broadcasting was no longer a one-way street, it These streamers were was, at least partially, interactive. generally stationary, broadcasting from bedrooms, dorm rooms, and very occasionally from sets constructed for the purpose. JustinTV–which would later be reborn as Twitch–took the concept Further Reading Amazon’s Twitch is a sleeping giant of media mobile for a select few, promoting a crop of “life streamers” who wore often–cumbersome mobile camera apparatuses in order to share every aspect of their daily life. This first class of livestreaming platforms also included novelty acts like Chatroulette, a social platform that matched two webcam-enabled DIGIDAY | WTF is Livestreaming 05 LIVESTREAMING 2.0 Broadcasters used the platform’s screen sharing capabilities, designed for business meetings, to stream themselves playing online games. In 2013, What cash the year Twitch emerged as a leader in the genre, there was came from the world’s oldest internet 126 million Americans spent two or more hours a profession–no, not that one–display advertising. week playing online games. While advertisers were keen to put display next to anything that people were looking at, including The rising popularity of Twitch streamers–many livestreams, interest in more ambitious integrations of whom racked millions of subscribers and views was negligible…until the social streaming service in a few short months–combined with its endemic Twitch. relationship with gaming captured the attention of games manufacturers and other gaming adjacent Livestreaming video has been on a general uptick brands. At it’s height top streamers secured six since its inception–a record 2.5 million Americans figure brand sponsorships and the entire platform tuned in to YouTube streams to watch Hillary was purchased by Amazon for $950 million after Clinton take on Donald Trump in each of the 2016 a competitive bidding war with Google owned presidential debates– a trend driven largely by the YouTube. availability of better cameras, faster processors and more bandwidth. But the second explosion of livestreaming needed something else. Twitch provided it’s defining genre. DIGIDAY | WTF is Livestreaming 06 10 YEARS AGO LIVESTREAMING DESKTOP First generation livestreaming was tethered to the desk, the PC, and the webcam. DIGIDAY || WTFWTF isis LivestreamingLivestreaming 07 LIVESTREAMING GOES MOBILE The service, which relied on a connection to The rise of Twitter’s extensive user base to reach audiences, live platforms like Twitch reintroduced the idea of met a speedy end when the microblogging service must-see events. However nothing has boosted cut its connection to the Twitter API. However the livestreaming like mobile. idea of mobile livestreaming continued to capture attention, and investment. As of 2015, 68 percent of Americans owned at least one internet-enabled mobile device. The increasing Further Reading ubiquity of mobile devices with high quality cameras Where does Meerkat go without Twitter’s support? have primed the media space for a livestreaming resurgence. In March of 2015 app developer Life on Air introduced Meerkat, a mobile livestreaming app for iOS and Android, at South by Southwest. The app touched off a new wave of interest in livestreaming by freeing broadcasting from the limitations of desktop cameras or cumbersome and expensive streaming cameras. DIGIDAY | WTF is Livestreaming 08 PLATFORM INTEGRATION It quickly supplanted Meerkat, taking advantage of Twitter’s highly-engaged user networks by allowing broadcasters to quickly connect with an audience. Integration with Twitter meant that users could tap into their existing following on the app to share broadcasts via push notifications. Because it partially solved the problem of audience acquisition, Periscope drew the attention of media outlets who experimented with live broadcasts for the first time, as well as from investors who sank dollars into measuring analytics for the platform and cultivating native influencers. Notably, television personality Al Roker, an early Periscope adopter, launched Al Roker Labs to study the platform and develop metrics and measurement tools for brands and publishers. DIGIDAY | WTF is Livestreaming 9 IP CONCERNS Neither Twitter nor HBO have published statistics about the exact number of streams viewed during the fight, but it was enough for Twitter CEO Dick Costolo to boast that his service had saved With Periscope-equipped phones numerous fans a $100 pay-per-view fee. HBO in-hand it was easy for members of the public to chose not to take the matter to court but the cable livestream any media event they attended. The network did file a formal complaint with Twitter practice threw up major red flags early on for corporate, the first salvo in what many expect will publishers and other content owners concerned be an ongoing battle over intellectual property in the about protecting their intellectual property. streaming space. These concerns quickly found their forum in an “IP is definitely on our minds” says Brad Cotton, unlikely place: the 2015 welterweight bout between general manager of digital sports content for NBC boxers Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. Universal. “Broadcast rights for league games are Billed as one of the premier pay-per-view television costly and with streaming apps on the market it’s events of the decade, the fight became the all too easy for that content to leak in a massive way subject of complaints from HBO after dozens of outside of our [owned] and [operated] channels.” attendees streamed their ringside view on the app, completely bypassing the cabler’s paywall. Despite threatened legal action HBO did not ultimately choose to litigate. DIGIDAY | WTF is Livestreaming 10 PUBLISHERS IN LIVE visited by celebrities, leaders and newsmakers. Live lets us take advantage of that to create something unique and timely for our audience.” The platform racked up 1 billion views over its first 18 months and averaged 30 million unique monthly views at its peak. HuffPost ultimately shuttered HuffPost Live in March of 2016 following parent In 2012 the Huffington post launched HuffPost Live. The mix of company AOL’s acquisition by Verizon. entertainment, interview and editorial content But HuffPost Live’s demise hasn’t deterred other was one of the first owned and operated live video publishers from taking a crack at livestreaming. products to exist outside of a social or steaming Cheddar, a native live media company covering platform. the investment and financial markets, launched in “We saw an opportunity to take advantage of our February of 2016. always-on newsroom to create daily live content,” The service broadcasts two hours of live video says Kirsten Ceislar, global director of digital video per day from the floor of the New York Stock for Huffington Post at AOL. “We’re always covering Exchange. Founded by former Buzzfeed executive the news of the day and our offices are constantly Jon Steinberg, the service is geared toward digital DIGIDAY | WTF is Livestreaming 11 millennials who have turned away from linear television. Like many of its peers, Cheddar operates in direct competition with broadcast and cable networks like CNBC, Bloomberg, and Fox Business. “We saw an opportunity to take advantage of our always-on newsroom to create daily live content.” DIGIDAY | WTF is Livestreaming 12 05 YEARS AGO LIVESTREAMING RESURGENCE Livestreaming receives a shot in the arm from genre-focused social streaming platforms. DIGIDAY || WTFWTF isis LivestreamingLivestreaming 13 FACEBOOK LIVE The social giant has also financed some early experiments with Live offering cash payments to underwrite the efforts of digital media giants like Vox and Buzzfeed, traditional publishers like NPR, as The social giant well as a smattering of influencers and celebrities debuted its live video product, Facebook Live, in from Michael Phelps to Gordon Ramsey. the summer of 2015. The product rolled out slowly; Facebook first made it available to a select group of Results have been decidedly mixed.