Thursday, November 23, 2017

Selective

One year into the BBC News push on vertical video (for those who can't get the knack of twisting their mobiles), there's been a briefing on progress to Digiday.

We are told the number of visitors coming to the news app (vertical available from July 2017) to watch video has risen 30 percent, while the number of videos viewed per user has grown by 20 percent. And those who watch vertical video typically visit three times more frequently than those who don’t. You'll note these figures don't include absolute numbers. Apparently 20 people work on creating, sourcing and formatting the 'Videos of the Day', reduced from the original plan of 'Ten-to-watch' to seven items, none much longer than 90 seconds, all watchable without sound thanks to subtitles.

Many competitors (and other BBC departments) would raise eyebrows at the size of the team; you might guess at annual running costs around a couple of million. There's a mild question or two about the editorial focus: this morning's seven are "The $60 coffee" (from BBC News Online two days ago); "Tampon Tax"; "North Korean soldier defects" (from yesterday); "Mladic jailed for life" (from 0900 yesterday); "How do you teach a car to drive ?"; "Naked Dining in Paris" (restaurant opened on November 4th); "Red carpet corgis" (from Tuesday night). It sort of suggests there's no 24-hour working in the unit. Yesterday we had equally vital pieces about Victoria's Secret underwear show in China, and X-Factor rapper of last year, Honey G.

BBC.com is allowed to place ads with the vertical videos. One might wonder if the briefing was a little defensive, as BBC News looks for £80m cuts over the coming years. Certainly it would be helpful to know some absolute numbers.

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