San Francisco-based TV and video analytics company Samba TV cut a large portion of its workforce on Wednesday. Sources tell AdExchanger that the layoffs represent somewhere between 15% and 20% of the company, although more toward the lower end of that range. Samba confirmed the layoffs but declined to share how many people or what […]
Roku is sitting in a nice position as the streaming wars kick off. The OTT platform reported on Wednesday net revenue growth of 50% year over year to $260.9 million in Q3. And it will benefit from the proliferation of both ad-supported and non-ad-supported services. More high-profile streaming services will drive more engagement on Roku, […]
AT&T rolled out the red carpet for investors Tuesday in true Hollywood fashion – with a flashy event at Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank, California, to unveil its HBO Max streaming service. In a presentation resembling the upfronts, AT&T revealed that HBO Max will launch in the United States in May 2020 with 10,000 hours […]
With Disney+, Apple TV+, HBO Max and Peacock all hitting the market between this November and April 2020, streaming services will spend big on marketing to attract subscribers and compete for share. In this new landscape, networks will have to reevaluate whether to accept tune-in ads from competitive streaming services. TV networks mentioned in this […]
When Roku bought dataxu for $150 million on Tuesday, it said the deal would make it easier for buyers of all sizes to access OTT inventory at scale, and use Roku’s ID off platform. Roku is basically trying to make more inventory, powered with better data, available to advertisers, said Frank Sinton, president and founder […]
Roku’s $150 million purchase of dataxu illustrates the streaming giant’s vision to own and operate an open marketplace for OTT inventory. The deal, announced Tuesday, gives Roku a self-serve buying platform that hooks into both its own and other OTT premium video supply, as well as display and cross-platform media. That positions Roku to operate […]
There was a time when Netflix CEO Reed Hastings was glib when people asked about the competition. He’d point to sleep and video games like Fortnite as the streaming giant’s main rivals for attention. But on Netflix’s third quarter earnings call on Wednesday, Hastings was a lot less flip. “Disney will be a great competitor […]
Despite Xandr’s positioning as the TV platform of the future during its Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara last week, agency buyers want to see more progress toward that goal. Certainly, Xandr has the right assets and strategy to create a programmatic marketplace for TV. Over the past year, Xandr launched a publisher network called Community, […]
NCC Media, the sales consortium owned by Comcast, Cox and Charter, rebranded as Ampersand Monday and released a bunch of new products, including a data-driven linear TV platform. Here’s what you need to know. Data-driven platform TV targets audiences across local and national buys The new platform is designed to collect and anonymize data across […]
Hulu is trying to change how the industry thinks about the TV ad experience. Over the past few years, Hulu has built interactive ad formats to fit consumer viewing behaviors. Earlier this year, for instance, Hulu introduced pause ads, which are served as overlays when a viewer pauses a show. Hulu has also maintained its […]
Xandr’s Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara might be a celebration of data-driven TV’s potential, but legacy business models and competitive interests are preventing advertisers and TV networks from reaching it. Advertisers want to efficiently reach audiences on digital and OTT channels, but the scale just isn’t there without a cross-network measurement or buying platform. “Uniformity, […]
YouTube is doing its damndest to appeal to TV advertisers. On Tuesday, YouTube made its masthead ad format available within the YouTube TV app through an open beta. Ford was an early beta tester. The unit will be generally available on TV screens sometime in Q4. The masthead format already exists for YouTube on the […]
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) could disrupt audience-based TV advertising before it really has a chance to take off. The law, which goes into effect on Jan. 1, 2020 – less than 140 days from now – is chock full of language and requirements that TV broadcasters and their data partners need to pay attention to. […]
CBS and Viacom are (finally) back together, and that will create lots of opportunity for advertisers. On Tuesday, after years of will-they-won’t-they corporate turmoil, the entertainment behemoths agreed to merge in an all-stock deal that values the combined company at around $30 billion, with $28 billion in annual revenue. The new entity will be called […]
As audiences erode on linear TV, supply is shrinking and pricing is going up on scarcity value. Advertisers have already shifted a significant amount of money out of linear TV as audiences flock to digital. According to Zenith, digital will make up more than half of ad spend globally for the first time in 2021, […]
The streaming wars are heating up, and Roku is on a tear. On Wednesday, Roku posted its best second quarter results since going public, with overall revenue up 59% year over year to $250.1 million, and 1.4 million new subscribers since last quarter. Active accounts now stand at 30.5 million. Average revenue per user was […]
Over the past two years, connected TV (CTV) has gone from a niche rounding out linear TV audiences to a core component of premium video publisher’s inventory supply. That evolution has paid off for supply-side platform (SSP) Telaria, which recently shifted its focus away from desktop and mobile video to enable publishers to monetize their […]
Kroger is spending more on connected TV and it’s just a “natural evolution,” says Kendra Clune, associate media director at the grocery retailer. “Ratings are dwindling on traditional television, and where are those viewers going?” she said. “We saw that our buys were skewing older and older, and we knew we needed to capture more […]
Holding your breath on ads coming to Netflix? Time to let it out. There will be no advertising on Netflix anytime soon if ever, the company said in a letter to shareholders on Wednesday in advance of its second quarter earnings call. “We, like HBO, are advertising free. That remains a deep part of our […]
WarnerMedia’s announcement Wednesday that three of its top sales executives would leave as part of a reorg reflects changing times in the business of network TV. Donna Speciale, president of ad sales, Dan Riess, EVP of Turner Ignite, and Frank Sgrizzi, EVP of portfolio sales and client partnerships, are leaving WarnerMedia one year after its […]
Updated 8:00 PM EST to reflect a statement from WarnerMedia CRO Gerhard Zeiler WarnerMedia’s president of ad sales, Donna Speciale, is leaving the company as part of a broader ad sales reorg. The Information first reported the development. Speciale, who has been president of Turner’s ad sales business for seven years, took on the role […]
You are what you watch. On Tuesday, smart TV data company TVadSync, which uses visual automatic content recognition (ACR) technology to track viewing behavior, released a planning and analytics tool that creates clusters of viewers based on the TV and video content they consume. “If you move beyond demographics and genre, you can make people’s […]
Streamers don’t browse – at least not on streaming services. Although the majority of households either own a smart TV and/or have a subscription-video-on-demand service (SVOD), most people (58%) still gravitate back to traditional TV channels when they’re not sure what they want to watch, according to Nielsen’s total audience report for Q1, released Monday. […]
Two years ago, Disney’s presence at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity focused on social inventory within the Disney Digital Network. This year, Disney has a lot more to pitch, with its refined data strategy, audiences available across all of its different properties, theme parks included, the acquisitions of Fox assets like National Geographic […]
Simulmedia, one of the OGs of data-driven TV, raised $29 million in Series E funding Wednesday. The funding will go toward research and development as Simulmedia connects to more inventory sources beyond national linear advertising, including local advertising and OTT from authenticated apps from broadcast and cable companies. The cash will also put the profitable […]
Xandr is making AT&T data available to buyers across all media types through AppNexus’s demand-side platform (DSP), which it has rebranded as Xandr Invest. Xandr Invest launched Monday and allows advertisers to layer AT&T’s first-party data when buying inventory available through the AppNexus exchange as well as inventory from Xandr’s premium video network, Community. Advertisers […]
Roku has spent the past few years showing advertisers the incremental reach they can gain by buying over-the-top TV (OTT). On Wednesday, the smart TV operating system launched Activation Insights, an OTT planning tool that helps buyers plan OTT buys by understanding how much budget to shift from linear TV to maximize returns. Brands know […]
On Wednesday, Comcast Technology Solutions (CTS), a division of Comcast Cable, rolled out a self-serve platform that automates the complex process of connecting a media plan to the creative workflow and also unifies linear and digital ad management. The CTS ad suite ingests an advertiser’s media buy – which could include hundreds or even thousands of […]
Roku is reaping the benefits of cord cutting. The connected TV platform’s revenues grew 51% year over year in Q1 to $206.7 million. Roku surpassed Samsung as the number one smart TV OS in the United States, where more than one in three smart TVs sold had Roku software embedded, said CEO Anthony Wood on […]
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A man walks into a bar after seeing a TV ad … but there’s no way for the advertiser to prove it ever happened. On Tuesday, TV data company Alphonso inked a partnership with PlaceIQ to use the latter’s location data as a bridge between sitting on the […]
