OTT Ad Space Is Opening Up; Verizon May Have Its Eye On CBS

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Cord Cutter’s Delight

More ad space is opening up on over-the-top (OTT) TV, and advertisers are buying in. According to Pivotal Research, OTT viewership spiked 62% over the past year to account for 8.1% of all US adults ages 18-49. And ad volume is rising dramatically. Innovid said the share of connected TV ads delivered by its platform quadrupled this year. But who’s got the supply? ”Right now, some OTT ad inventory is sold as part of big upfront TV packages alongside traditional cable and broadcast ad time,” writes Mike Shields of The Wall Street Journal. “Some is sold by companies like Roku or ad tech middlemen. And in a few cases, these ads are purchased programmatically.” More.

Diversify Or Die

With Viacom out of the running for a CBS merger, Verizon may have its eyes on the broadcast network, anonymous sources told the New York Post. Verizon has cleaned up in the digital media space with its acquisitions of AOL and Yahoo. A broadcast asset would be a clear retort to rival AT&T’s pending $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. “An acquisition of CBS by Verizon will give control over both high-quality content and distribution medium,” writes Zacks Equity Research in a post for Nasdaq. More.

Clash Of The Titans

Speaking of telco mergers, as AT&T prepares for the regulatory review of its Time Warner deal, The New York Times has an op-ed arguing that concerns over cable/media monopolies are naive in a world defined by Google and Facebook. Academic Jonathan Taplin writes that “an enormous reallocation of revenue of perhaps $50 billion a year has taken place, with economic value moving from creators of content to owners of monopoly platforms.” Google/Facebook have flipped the equation so middlemen outearn the media source in many categories (news, music and, perhaps, TV). “The rise of these digital giants is directly connected to the fall of the creative industries of our country.” More.

Prospecting

Twitter will retire its lead-gen ad format, introduced in 2013 to let brands prompt users for their names and email addresses. The reason? Could be neglect. In the wake of Twitter’s innovative feature, Facebook raised the ante in 2015 with “lead ads,” which expanded the user data on the table to include phone numbers, ZIP codes, country of residence, company name and job title. Tim Peterson of Marketing Land writes, “As Facebook was building on Twitter’s product, Twitter did little, if anything, to keep pace.” More.

But Wait, There’s More!