Turner Turns On Nielsen; Comeback Time For Net Neutrality?

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Network To Get Work

Turner President David Levy gave an impassioned call for television advertisers to embrace audience targeting and abandon the Nielsen currency standard at the broadcaster’s upfront presentation on Wednesday. Nielsen’s metric “no longer fully captures how to successfully measure an audience in today’s landscape,” Levy said. Turner wants advertisers to use its AudienceNow platform to cohesively buy inventory across its broadcast, mobile and digital properties, MediaPost reports. “The time is now – this upfront – for advertisers to change how they think about the value of their marketing and invest in audience targeting.” More.

Repeal Me Not

The Senate voted narrowly in favor of restoring net neutrality on Wednesday – but supporters shouldn’t get too excited. The Senate’s resolution faces a dubious future, writes Business Insider. Not only does it still need to pass the House, where it has far less support than in the Senate, but it’s got to be signed by President Trump, which isn’t likely to happen. The White House supported the Federal Communications Commission’s move to kill net neutrality in December. But even if this effort to save net neutrality dies on the vine, which is the most probable outcome, advocates have other cards up their sleeve, including challenging the FCC’s repeal in federal court and pushing state-level net neutrality measures.

Traffic Jam

While the rest of the world is focused on Facebook’s data privacy issues, publishers are still suffering from the news feed algorithm change the platform made in January. Traffic from Facebook to Complex Media, an online publisher co-owned by Verizon and Hearst, is down 18-20% over the past 18 months, CEO Rich Antoniello said at LUMA’s digital media summit this week. “I think it’s virtually impossible to launch a new [media brand on Facebook] now,” he said. “What big media brands really want is distribution and some level of stability,” Hearst Digital Media President Troy Young said, according to Business Insider. More. [Read AdExchanger’s coverage of that feisty panel.]

Honor Thy Creator

Ben Grubbs is hoping to turn his experience in online video monetization – he recently left YouTube, where he was global head of top creator partnerships – into a venture capital portfolio. Grubbs raised $50 million to invest in creators with large followings on YouTube, Instagram or Twitch, the Amazon-owned game-streaming site, Bloomberg reports. Creator revenue services have hit a wall as advertising moves to more reliable, brand-safe channels. Grubbs’ plan is less about advertising than capitalizing on audiences in other ways, like by helping beauty influencers launch a fashion line or for popular creators to secure more lucrative deals for movies or educational videos. “We’re identifying business opportunities that build on top of the brand or community they have created,” he says. More.

Prime Directive

Amazon is starting to use Whole Foods as an onboarding point for its Prime loyalty program. Jeff Bezos surprised investors when he disclosed last month that Prime had cleared 100 million member accounts. “Still, analysts think the company has largely saturated wealthier US households, triggering the company to look for additional growth for the program elsewhere,” The Wall Street Journal reports. Forty percent of Whole Foods shoppers aren’t Prime subscribers, according to Morgan Stanley estimates. More.

But Wait, There’s More!