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 […]
For YouTube, it’s all about the big TV screen. At least, that was the messaging the Google-owned video platform pushed during its Brandcast event Thursday evening at Radio City Music Hall, where CEO Susan Wojcicki trotted out the stats. “The 2 billion users who log into YouTube each month are watching their favorite content […]
Video tech startup VideoAmp is on a hiring spree, thanks to a $70 million cash infusion. The round, announced Wednesday, was led by investment bank The Raine Group, which kicked in $50 million. Ankona Capital contributed the rest, bringing VideoAmp’s total funding to just over $100 million since 2014. VideoAmp isn’t taking any money off […]
Keep calm and … develop automated systems for advanced TV ad buying? A question mark loomed over OpenAP when founding member WarnerMedia announced its sudden departure last week from the targeted TV advertising consortium it helped create in 2017. But the group’s remaining members – NBCU, Viacom and Fox – are forging ahead with the […]
The two minutes of television inventory sold by multichannel video players (MVPDs) – which can be made addressable by targeting through the set-top box – has historically been fragmented across providers, making it complex for a national advertiser to run addressable campaigns at scale. Today, MVPDs are jockeying to sell each other’s addressable TV supply, […]
WarnerMedia’s farewell to the OpenAP Consortium Friday was inevitable. The writing has been on the wall since February, when AT&T’s $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner was finalized. “It makes sense to pull out now [that] they’re owned by a company that has one of the largest data sets available,” said Tracey Scheppach, CEO and […]
WarnerMedia has exited the OpenAP Consortium. It’s a major blow to the TV industry’s attempt to jointly promote audience-based buying on television by creating standardized segments and measurement across their networks. Turner was one of the consortium’s original members in 2017, along with Fox and Viacom. NBCU joined the following year. But now that WarnerMedia […]
TV dollars are following eyeballs and shifting to over-the-top. Magna said Friday that its 2018 forecast for US OTT ad revenues came in short. The agency predicted OTT ad revenues would hit $2 billion in 2018, but they actually hit $2.7 billion at a 54% year over year growth rate. As a result, Magna is […]
Automation is coming to the upfronts, slowly but surely. What’s been the holdup? Healthy skepticism and reticence to change, more than anything else, according to Jay Prasad, chief strategy and business officer at VideoAmp. The video ad startup has recently partnered with a slate of programmers and OTT distributors, including A&E Networks, AMC Networks, Tubi […]
NBC Universal and Sky, both owned by Comcast, announced this week that they’re combining inventory and targeting tools. The hope is to help global advertisers expand their reach to international markets across TV and digital. Audience Studio, NBCU’s data-driven media offering, is merging with Sky’s ad tech offering, AdSmart. The combined entity will be called […]
It’s out with the old and in with the new at Nielsen. Revenue for Nielsen’s Watch segment decreased 3.5% to $881 million in Q4, while Buy segment revenue declined 8.4% to $777 million. But freshly minted CEO David Kenny has a plan. Kenny, who joined Nielsen from IBM Watson in November 2018, wants to bring Nielsen’s […]
Targeting on TV with the same precision as digital is becoming a reality. Hulu, Roku and other over-the-top (OTT) providers offer advanced audience and behavioral targeting capabilities like CRM onboarding, while companies such as Xandr and NCC Media are applying unique data sets to make the linear TV landscape more addressable. But just because marketers […]
Facebook wants that upfront money. On Tuesday, Facebook said it will start letting TV buyers purchase inventory in specific programs hosted on Watch. This offering, called Showcase, resembles an upfront buy, as the inventory will be priced against Nielsen-validated demos and sold in advance at fixed prices. This content includes programs like “Sorry For Your […]
If Xandr wants to live up to its promise and create a programmatic marketplace for the TV industry, it’s going to have to convince agencies to buy what it’s offering. The AT&T-owned company recently hired Jay Askinasi for the job, and he joined Xandr in early February as VP, head of digital and agency partnerships. […]
Connected TV: Intuit is getting into it. But the financial software company is not giving up on television’s biggest tentpoles. “We’re doing the blocking and tackling of strong reach and awareness building, but we’re mixing it with more experiential and digital,” said Lauren Stafford Webb, Intuit’s VP of brand marketing. A balance between traditional and […]
Hulu viewers will soon start seeing ads when they hit pause on a show. Coca-Cola and Charmin are on tap to test the so-called pause ads, which allow advertisers to run static display ads on screen when viewers take a break. The ads, in development for most of 2018, will roll out with beta advertisers […]
When AT&T bought Time Warner in June to create a programmatic exchange for the TV industry, many looked to Verizon’s purchases of AOL and Yahoo as a comparison. But the two telco’s strategies “could not be any more different,” said Xandr CEO Brian Lesser on stage at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview last Thursday. “Oath, I think, […]
Cords are getting cut left and right, but TV still works … right? “We all know that TV does drive ROI, but there haven’t really been any proof points like there has been in digital,” said Donna Speciale, Turner’s president of advertising sales, at AdExchanger’s Industry Preview event in New York City on Wednesday. That’s […]
Attention, broadcasters, SVOD services and tech companies in the midst of launching a streaming subscription service (or thinking about it): Netflix doesn’t consider you to be competition. “We compete so broadly with all of these different providers that any one provider entering only makes a difference on the margin,” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said Thursday […]
The best-laid media plans of mice, men, buyers and sellers often go awry. On Tuesday, advertising data automation company PremiumMedia360 launched a solution that reduces revenue leakage, payment issues and general reconciliation-related agita for broadcast advertising buyers and sellers. Ad tech middlemen and agencies know the pain of slow payment. They place ads for their […]
Advertiser interest in over-the-top is picking up steam and dollars – but cross-platform measurement is lagging behind. Data and analytics company Samba TV hopes to speed the process with the acquisition Thursday of Amsterdam-based cross-device graph provider Screen6. Ashwin Navin, Samba’s CEO and co-founder, declined to share the deal price, but noted that the company used a […]
When Nexstar Media Inc. acquired local TV giant Tribune Media Co. Monday for $4.1 billion – outbidding private equity firm Apollo Global Management, LLC with an all-cash offer – it gained new status as the largest local TV operator in the country. Nexstar now has the opportunity to reach millions of customers with more sophisticated […]
The Walt Disney Company has found its happily ever after with Google, not Comcast-owned FreeWheel. After months of speculation, Google said in a blog post that Disney would implement its ad platform across its brands, including Disney, ABC, ESPN, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars. The relationship will span all of Disney’s video and display inventory. […]
Nielsen’s hire of IBM Watson honcho David Kenny as CEO, first reported on Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal, is a major bet for the measurement company as it rises to meet new competitive challenges and prepares for a possible sale of the business. Kenny oversaw IBM’s artificial intelligence initiatives, using machine learning to support enterprise […]
Of the $70 billion in national TV ad spend, Roku’s Q3 cut was $100 million. But the over-the-top (OTT) platform and device manufacturer is gunning for more, using its relatively new measurement program to convince advertisers to divert linear spend to OTT. Roku touted that $100 million milestone on Wednesday, noting that its platform business, […]
An actor, AI expert and the former head of digital at CNBC walk into a bar. They create an analytics startup. There’s no punchline here – that really happened. (Maybe not the bar part.) Ed Norton, Daniel Nadler and Kevin Krim’s new company EDO announced Thursday it raised $12 million in Series A funding. The […]
CBS is reaping the benefits of a politically-charged midterm election season. The broadcast titan told investors Thursday it exceeded its Q3 earnings forecasts. Total revenue increased 3% to $3.26 billion and quarterly earnings increased $1.24 per share, up from $1.11 per share in Q3 2017. This marks the fourth consecutive quarter in which CBS has […]
Political advertising has been good to Comcast. Comcast’s cable advertising revenue increased 15.2% to $684 million in Q3, but that bump would have been just 0.6% without political advertising, the company disclosed Thursday. Meanwhile ad revenue at media division NBCUniversal was up (4.2% for its cable networks, 9.2% for broadcast). The increase was attributed to […]
The CEO of TripAdvisor, Steve Kaufer, has a motto: “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth measuring.” Which is why TV had to prove itself before earning a spot on the travel review site’s media plan. Until 2013, TripAdvisor spent most of its budget on digital, mainly because of its measurability. There’s a lack of “direct, […]
