streaming

On Wednesday, Roku became the latest streaming company to unveil a self-serve ad platform. Roku Ads Manager, as it’s called, is part of Roku’s bid to reach new CTV buyer demand.

While there are plenty of reasons for political ad buyers to be cautious about CTV, streaming media has one major selling point: programmatic targeting.

Netflix netted a 150% increase in ad sales during upfront negotiations this year compared to last year – a good sign for its programmatic ambitions.

Woe is linear. Paramount is writing down its cable TV business by $6 billion and laying off 15% of its US workforce in advance of the Skydance merger.

The vast majority (90%) of programmatic Olympics ad sales on Peacock are coming from brands that are new to the Games, according to data NBCU shared with AdExchanger earlier this week. And agencies are seeing good results.

WBD’s overall revenue fell 5% year-over-year to $9.7 billion, continuing a recent decline and missing investor expectations, according to its earnings report on Wednesday. WBD shares dropped 8% during after-hours trading.

Last quarter, Disney’s combined streaming portfolio – Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ – turned a profit for the first time, bringing in $47 million from April through June. It’s quite the bounceback from last year, when Disney’s media and entertainment segment lost $512 million.

Athletes aren’t the only ones competing during the Paris Olympics. Advertisers are bidding to reach tens of millions of viewers during the first programmatic Olympic Games.

Hyundai returns to the Olympics as a national advertiser and the presenting sponsor of the USA women’s soccer team – with a new ad campaign to show for it.

Roku announced an integration with The Trade Desk’s UID 2.0 identifier to attract new buyers and “increase monetization per account” by improving ad targeting, said Roku CEO Anthony Wood during the company’s earnings call Thursday.