The House of Highlights Instagram account has now sold 21 campaigns to advertisers like Under Armour, Gatorade and Taco Bell after parent company Bleacher Report "decided to turn on the monetization tap this year," according to Lucia Moses of DIGIDAY. Most advertisers were "existing Bleacher Report clients," but potato chip brand Takis and Paramount were "new to the company." House of Highlights benefits from Bleacher Report via "various shared services," but even accounting for that, House of Highlights GM Doug Bernstein said that the account "turned a profit earlier this year on the branded content deal." Bernstein "wouldn’t say how much money the business is making, but it’s enough to give the company confidence to plan on doubling the staff by the end of the year." It is "tricky to introduce branded content to any publication in a natural way." Bleacher Report’s "polished branded videos wouldn’t work on House of Highlights, which has a raw and relatable quality." So House of Highlights has "shown videos with people wearing Under Armour clothes or carrying bottles of Gatorade." But there "hasn’t been much pushback from fans to the encroachment of advertising." Meanwhile, to keep growing, House of Highlights has had to "expand beyond Instagram" and is now "planting seeds on YouTube and Twitter, which are appealing for their ability to monetize and build community (YouTube) and promote live viewing (Twitter)" (DIGIDAY.com, 7/31).
MOVING UP: FAST COMPANY's Cale Weissman notes House of Highlights has "hit a big milestone: 10 million Instagram followers," and the company is "surely thrilled" about the accomplishment. Bernstein said, "I think 10 million, on the surface, when you say that number, kind of immediately stops people." He said the account is now "seeing growth in the 15,000 to 20,000 neighborhood a day." Bernstein: "We had a prolonged period growing at the peak of NBA finals during the month of June. We were growing 25,000 to 30,000 new followers a day, which is something that we had never experienced before. I kind of was like, 'Did Instagram do something?' And I went around and looked at all of our competitors to see if everybody was experiencing this same bump, and I did not see that." Bernstein said of integrating ads into the account, "The coolest thing I would say about working with brands ... is the fact that our work with brands performs equally, if not better, than the organic content." He noted House of Highlights has done three videos with YouTuber Mark Phillips for Adidas, which "averaged about 1.5-1.6 million views" and have "performed better than the videos that he’s done organically for the account" (FASTCOMPANY.com, 7/31).
