CTV

Since introducing ads two years ago, Netflix’s ad team has clashed with streaming management and studio execs. Plus, “brat” summer is over; “demure” autumn might be next.

Sensodyne wanted to do more than just get a sense of whether people were paying attention to its TV ads – it also wanted to optimize for attention.

In today’s newsletter: Walmart’s hottest growth drivers are ads and subscriptions; why The Trade Desk’s UID 2.0 could be regulators’ next target; and how the growth of CTV content fortresses is preventing breakout streaming hits.

The partnership makes MFA-blocking tools more accessible to mid-size buyers. Plus, AdLib can block MFA regardless of whether a DSP is willing to proactively filter it.

In today’s newsletter: How membership bundles are creating new forms of consumer-facing partnerships; typically unflappable platforms leap to action when billionaires are harmed by bad ads; and X’s GARM lawsuit helped politicize brand safety.

The trajectory of digital advertising remains unchanged. There are plenty of signs that the investments advertisers have made in cookie alternatives are already paying off.

Hope you weren’t waiting to shop for Super Bowl ads – they’re almost sold out. Plus, Apple might be the ad tech dark horse.

The SSP revised its full year outlook down by $10 million, due to a DSP partner adopting first-price auctions and weakness in key ad verticals. But it highlighted mobile in-app as a new key revenue stream.

Disney and Netflix report streaming profitability, while WBD continues to suffer revenue losses. What Disney and WBD have in common, however, is a desire to copy Netflix.

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.

Although the full revenue impact of Magnite’s exclusive SSP partnership with Netflix hasn’t hit yet, simply announcing the deal “created significant momentum for our business,” Magnite President and CEO Michael Barrett told investors.

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.

In today’s newsletter: Netflix drops its ad prices to slightly less outrageous levels; X sues GARM, alleging it led an ad boycott for ideological reasons, not brand safety concerns; and how TV manufacturers have laid the groundwork to take ad dollars from streamers and cable.

It’s anyone’s guess how CTV advertising will eventually look. But, today, there are no rigid standards, writes Operative’s Mike Pollard.

In today’s newsletter: US rules Google has a monopoly in search, but not search ads; Nvidia’s unreleased AI has been scraping online video from YouTube, Netflix and others; and streaming app Max debuts a new personalized home page.

Recent moves by major ad tech players prove the industry doesn’t actually need cookies. But Chrome’s cookie pivot doesn’t clarify what will happen to the 1% of its audience that’s already cookieless or what will become of plans to deprecate the Android Ad ID on mobile.

In today’s newsletter: The DOJ sues TikTok alleging COPPA violations; Disney wraps a competitive upfronts season as it faces stiller competition for streaming ad budgets; and more than $107 million was spent on ads for AI products in the first half of this year.

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.

TV measurement platform Innovid has a new frequency management product that manages frequency caps across connected TV, mobile and desktop, including display and audio.

Investor, industry veteran and former SpotX CEO Mike Shehan returns from the ad tech sidelines to join the C-suite at Telly, a startup that gives away free TVs in exchange for viewer data.

During Q1 this year, Viant reported that streaming audio and CTV combined represented more than half of the total ad spend on its platform.

In today’s newsletter: Spotify surges on strong Q2; how Gen Z media preferences are transforming the Olympics; and QSR companies ditch subscription services after first-party data gains fail to materialize.

Some brands are turning away from larger media agencies in favor of smaller, independently run shops. Plus, licensing sports content is Reddit’s next revenue diversification play.

Netflix grew its overall revenue by 17% year over year – a huge jump from Q2 last year, when that number was just 3%. Now that the platform’s ads plan is hitting a certain level of scale, ad revenue is becoming a source of profit.

Toyota is dipping its toes into home screen ads on Vizio TVs with a recent campaign for the new hybrid 2025 Camry model in hopes of reaching younger consumers.

The next Google Search core update is expected in “the coming weeks.” Plus, The TV industry moves slowly, but it’s going FAST now.