Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign-up here.
TV’s Rising Star
Facebook is developing a streaming video app for OTT devices, notably Apple TV, according to anonymous Wall Street Journal sources. With ad loads maxed out, Facebook has limited options for rapid growth. The two biggest are expansion into China and investment in television, where the vast majority of advertising budgets are found. The Journal also reports Facebook is “in discussions with media companies to license long-form, TV-quality programming.” More.
Little League
Digital media’s next frontier? High school sports. Apparently, there’s a “rabid fanbase” of people who stream the 2.5 million school sports events played each year, according to sports streaming network PlayOn! Sports. As for targeting, “This is an audience that you know likes playing sports or is in the market for athletic equipment,” said Vasu Kulkarni, CEO of sports software company Krossover. “You can’t say that about the average NBA fan.” Interested media companies include Monumental Sports Network (partly owned by NBC) and Pluto TV. Others are hesitant. “It’s such a hyper local endeavor that it is really difficult to build a business,” said Kyle McDoniel, head of Yahoo’s Rivals.com. Reuters has more.
Parasitic
Publishers rely on platforms to distribute their content, and platforms rely on content to remain relevant. But pubs come up short monetizing on the platforms that feed off their content. Troy Young, president of Hearst magazines digital media, calls this imbalance “the new media war.” Pressure is on pubs to create the expensive, high-quality content that platforms want. And as the number of platforms proliferate from Facebook and Google to home devices like the Echo, publishers have to spend more time curating the right piece for each platform. As platforms listen to publisher concerns and build out teams to help with curation and monetization, publishers are demanding a larger slice of the pie. “What you’re seeing is a little bit of boldness to say we deserve a bigger piece of revenue,” Young said. More at Digiday.
A Little Good
Can ad tech platforms act as public servants? AppNexus is giving it a go via a partnership with the Federation for Internet Alerts, which has a database of official weather hazards. Since December, AppNexus has activated almost 15,000 real-time alerts on inventory across the web where it would normally serve ads, claiming to have served 471.8 million weather-related impressions this year. It’s not the only one. The liberal ad tech outfit DSPolitical stepped in to run a PSA campaign promoting health care enrollment when President Trump pulled the media plan. Also, PSAs are commonly served as a control group for ad impact studies. More at The Drum.
But Wait, There’s More!
- With Streaming, Apple’s Music Business Is Growing Again – eMarketer
- WPP Wins Walgreens Global Account, Launches Dedicated Team – Ad Age
- Global Digital Marketing Group Launches Programmatic Buying – release
- Euclid Analytics Launches In-Store Targeting Solution – release
- How Social Networks Empowered Mass Protests Against Trump – NYT
- Mobile Agency Fetch Named AOR For Mozilla – release
- Top Japanese Court Rejects ‘Right To Be Forgotten’ – The Japan Times
- Taptica Enters Japanese Market – release
- Mobile Games Hit $40B In 2016, Matching World Box Office Numbers – VentureBeat
- Sizmek Announces DMP Integration To Enrich Programmatic Inventory – release
- Pandora Launches A Branded Podcast – blog
- Google Cozies Up To Republicans As It Protests Trump – Business Insider
- New York Sues Charter For Slow Internet Speeds – Recode
You’re Hired!
- IMM Promotes Gina Lee To COO – release
- MediaBrix Taps David Cohn To Lead East Coast Sales – release
- Unlockd Expands Leadership Team With Two New Executive Positions – blog
- Marketo Names Greg Wolfe Chief Operating Officer – release
