The annual Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is a popular destination for streaming TV publishers and video currency vendors to jumpstart the year’s dealmaking and, to some degree, prepare for the upfronts. Upfront planning seems to start earlier every year.
As the connected TV market consolidates and measurement competition intensifies, streamers and video currencies use CES as a chance to court clients with fancy meetings and flashy product announcements. Take Disney, which now hosts its yearly ad tech dog-and-pony show in Vegas to garner more attention from the fervor of CES.
Disney and other streamers like NBCUniversal and Roku all flocked to CES this past week to compete for advertisers and clients. The same goes for the big alternative currency kahunas (Comscore, VideoAmp, iSpot), all fighting to replace Nielsen.
Let’s dive in.
Dreaming of streaming at CES
It’s not getting any easier to be a broadcaster. Legacy studios are trying to curb their linear losses while trying not to lose market share to pure-play streamers like Netflix, Apple TV and Prime Video.
Disney was especially noisy at CES. On Monday, the Mouse House launched a new ad product to help fight data fragmentation. The next day, it announced biddable live sports deals and an ad certification program for live sports. Then, on Wednesday, Disney held its fifth annual Tech and Data Showcase live at CES. It teased new custom advertising options for the standalone ESPN+ streaming app, launching in the fall, and touted its growing ad-supported streaming scale. Disney now has 157 million global ad-supported subscribers across its streaming portfolio (Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+).
NBCUniversal, another legacy broadcaster with a major streaming platform, directly competes with Disney for advertiser budgets during CES. This week, NBCU launched new ad formats for live events on Peacock. Just about all streamers are scrambling to make live sports a competitive advantage in their quest for ad budgets, which is why NBCU has been touting biddable sports deals for over a year, especially during the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Also this week, NBCU parent company Comcast debuted a self-serve ad platform designed to appeal to small businesses and local advertisers. The new platform, called Universal Ads, is integrated with other studios for supply, including Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery and Roku in addition to NBCU.
Speaking of Roku, let’s not forget about TV distribution platforms, which also have a huge stake in the streaming wars as well as a presence at CES.
This year Roku kicked off CES with an evolution of its clean room, Roku Data Cloud, designed to give buyers more direct access to detailed streaming TV data. Roku also boasted its growing scale – more than 90 million households as of this week – and a new partnership with Innovid for frequency management, one of the biggest pet peeves in CTV ad buying.
The currents of currency
As TV ad measurement sorely lacks standardization, measurement has become an increasingly important competitive differentiator for streamers and a hot topic at CES.
Before measurement standardization can happen, however, alternative video currencies need a bigger market share. And that requires taking clients from Nielsen.
Earlier this week, VideoAmp renewed its contract with Paramount, solidifying its place as the studio’s video currency of choice. While clearly a partnership announcement timed to CES, VideoAmp’s and Paramount’s relationship also represents the next phase of TV measurement infighting – and the importance of using CES to woo media buyers actively hunting down new deals and partnerships.
When the contract between Paramount and Nielsen lapsed in the fall, Paramount blamed Nielsen for its unsustainably pricey services. Then, a few weeks later, Nielsen removed Paramount streaming data from its service that tracks ad transactions, sparking lots of buy-side frustration.
Capitalizing on that frustration, VideoAmp announced on Monday it’s offering brands and buyers access to its national linear content ratings dashboard for free through the end of March. This offer can help the challenger currency win over agencies and advertisers disgruntled with Nielsen.
VideoAmp certainly isn’t the only alt currency vying for buy-in from more agencies. Comscore and iSpot are also at CES this week, and both are likely booking sales meetings and demos with as many buyers as they can.
What I’m wondering is: Will CES change the trajectory of streaming and measurement investments this year?
Let me know what you think. Hit me up at alyssa@adexchanger.com.
