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 […]
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, […]
