NEW YORK, NY --(Marketwired - January 26, 2016) - MEC, a leading global media agency, today announced a global partnership with NowThis, the leading producer and distributor of short-form social video. The partnership gives the agency and its clients access to the creative services team of NowThis Studios, along with access to its massively growing millennial audience.
Founded in 2012 by Huffington Post co-founder Kenneth Lerer and former Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau, NowThis has become a dominant force in the social content space, surpassing more than 4.9 billion video views in 2015, and more than 930M monthly video views in December alone. NowThis and MEC will work to produce original branded video concepts that engage the 'always-on' consumer where they live -- the social feed.
Commenting on the partnership, Shenan Reed, President, Digital, MEC North America, said. "In today's highly energized new media climate, content has emerged as one of the most critical assets within our client's marketing portfolio. As the next generation of audiences embrace mobile and social platforms, it becomes more important than ever to craft quality stories that are both highly engaging and culturally-relevant. This announcement underscores our continued investment in finding partners that can deliver on both the art and science of content creation to design brand experiences that put the consumer journey at the heart of the client's story."
Athan Stephanopoulos, SVP of Strategy + Partnerships, said, "This could not be a more exciting time for NowThis, especially as we near 1 billion video views a month. We have developed a unique approach, style and voice to producing short-form videos meant for consumption on the social feed -- and our growth this past year is a testament to how engaged our audience has become. Partnering with MEC affords us the opportunity to extend our unique approach to social video creation to its global client roster."
MEC's suite of social and content partners include SimpleReach, Mashable Velocity, and Knotch.
About MEC MEC is committed to growth. Growth for our people, our clients and our industry. MEC pushes the boundaries of what's possible in order to thrive in ~ Ad Ops ~ Analytics ~ Brand Partnerships ~ Content Marketing ~ Data ~ Insight ~ Integrated Planning ~ Mobile ~ Multi-cultural ~ Performance Marketing ~ Planning & Buying ~ Programmatic ~ Search ~ Social ~ Sport, Entertainment & Cause Marketing. Our 5,000 highly talented and motivated people work with category leading advertisers in 93 countries and we are a founding partner of GroupM. To find out more, visit us at www.mecglobal.com #dontjustlivethrive
About NowThis NowThis is the leader of the "Distributed Media Model," by producing and distributing video natively to the social feed where it is consumed. The company produces 60+ pieces of video content on daily basis, which are then shared directly to more than 25 platforms. The approach is to produce platform appropriate content - providing audiences timely and relevant information in a format that that is visually conducive to the platform.
NowThis key statistics:
- Averages 930M video views across all platforms monthly
- ~10x growth in monthly views from January 2015
- Over 4.9 billion video views in 2015
- 74% of audience is under 34; 68% is between 18-34
PR Contact: Lindsey Yoselevitz MEC North America, Corporate Comms 212-474-0542 Lindsey.yoselevitz@mecglobal.com
