Misinformation on TikTok and the emergence of streaming’s dual-revenue stream

In this week's Media Briefing, available exclusively to Digiday+ members, senior media editor Tim Peterson and media editor Kayleigh Barber look at how news publishers are using TikTok to cover Russia's invasion of Ukraine. 

In this week's Future of TV Briefing, available exclusively to Digiday+ members, senior media editor Tim Peterson looks at how subscriptions plus advertising have become the streaming equivalent to traditional TV’s dual-revenue model of advertising plus carriage fees.

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Media Briefing: How news publishers are covering the Ukraine-Russia conflict on TikTok

By Tim Peterson and Kayleigh Barber

As of last Thursday, many users’ TikTok “For You” pages (homepages on the platform tailored to individual users’ interest) may have looked noticeably different than they did a day prior. Videos of bombings and missile attacks on Ukraine were circulating the web at warp speed as Russia began an invasion of its western neighbor in a violent and unwarranted attack. TIkTok users around the world were given a first-hand look at the beginning stages of war.

News outlets, including CBS News, The Washington Post and Vice News, have been using TikTok to cover the conflict and have recorded the platform’s audience of 1 billion peoplebe receptive to that coverage.

“Gen Z cares deeply about current affairs in the world and they have proven time and time again that they want and deserve quality, original journalism that feels authentic to the platform where they consume it,” said Christina Capatides, vp of social media and trending content at CBS News. “It’s a gross misunderstanding of younger audiences to assume that news content needs to be somehow dumbed down to be made palatable to them.” 

TikTok is not a friend to breaking news 

TikTok’s algorithm does not always favor breaking news. That can help to explain why the publishers aren’t necessarily racing to post videos on TikTok that cover the Russia-Ukraine news as it breaks. Instead, they’re focusing on second-day analysis and humanitarian stories from the ground.

Unlike Twitter, TikTok’s algorithm is more interest-based than chronological, so it’s not uncommon for users to see a video that was originally posted a week prior by the time they come across it. Because of that, being the first news outlet to post a breaking video of a missile attack or a family attempting to flee their home is not likely to matter much in the grand scheme of the algorithm.

“The unique platform trait of TikTok is you really can’t rely on the content that you post today to be seen today,” said Nick Cicero, vp of strategy at streaming and social intelligence company Conviva. 

Where tweets on Twitter see upwards of 90% of engagements within the first 72 hours of being posted, he said TikTok will continually serve users videos that were posted days or weeks ago.

Subscribe to Digiday+ below to access the full briefing. 

Future of TV Briefing: Disney+ ad plan underscores the emergence of streaming’s dual-revenue stream

By Tim Peterson

Traditional TV’s dual-revenue stream has posed a dilemma for TV network owners shifting their businesses to streaming. But streaming has been developing its own dual-revenue stream, as most recently evinced by Disney’s announcement that Disney+ will roll out an ad-supported tier later this year.

“There’s always been multiple revenue models in the television business,” said Scott Schiller, a former NBCUniversal ad sales executive and global chief commercial officer at media and marketing services firm Engine.

That’s true of traditional TV. But streaming’s dual-revenue stream is a somewhat more recent phenomenon. For much of the past decade, streaming services’ revenue models largely split between subscriptions a la Netflix and Amazon Prime Video or advertising a la Pluto TV and Tubi. But then there was Hulu, which struck a balance between the two by operating a subscription-based, ad-supported tier. As seems to be commonly the case, Hulu’s is the model that the traditional TV network owners are now aping.

Discovery’s Discovery+ and NBCUniversal’s Peacock launched with subscription-based, ad-supported tiers. WarnerMedia’s HBO Max added one last year, as did Paramount’s Paramount+ (though technically Paramount+’s previous incarnation, CBS All Access, had already operated a subscription-based, ad-supported tier). And now Disney, which owns Hulu, will join the mix with its flagship streamer and seal the dual-revenue model’s imprint on the industry.

The reasons for companies to co-opt Hulu’s dual-revenue model are twofold and fairly straightforward. Those reasons basically boil down to traditional TV’s dual-revenue stream is dwindling and companies stand to make more money in streaming from a combination of subscriptions and advertising.

“Media owners will always maximize revenue models and be creative, especially as their most traditional, legacy models are challenged,” Schiller said.

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Further reading

• ‘Misinformation on TikTok is a whole different beast’: How publishers are tackling the Ukraine-Russia war disinformation problem on TikTok 
  Misinformation ricochets around the internet during any world event or political conflict — that’s nothing new — but TikTok poses new challenges, thanks to an algorithm that doesn’t favor breaking news and how it limits users’ interactions with each other. So when misleading videos or false accounts of what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine get posted as the war with Russia unfolds, they can circulate quickly thanks to their shock value and go unchecked indefinitely. 

• How The Daily Beast is making money from potential subscribers before the point of conversion
  After nearly four years of launching and honing a subscription strategy, The Daily Beast is ready to take a more nuanced approach to subscriber acquisition that the publisher believes will monetize the readers earlier and more efficiently.

• How Disney is using its audience data and Hulu’s ad tech to compete with Google, Meta and Amazon
  Many media companies, for years, have been talking about trying to compete with the likes of Google and Meta for advertisers’ dollars. Those media and tech companies have remained set apart in terms of audience size to the amount of data they have from those audiences. However, Disney is among the few media companies actually in a position to narrow that gap, if not close it.