CTV

Years ago, TV buyers didn’t bother with connected TV (CTV) because it offered little benefit for a lot of hassle. “Digital players were the earliest adopters. Because it was TV-like, everyone wanted to get into the video game.” said Gibbs Haljun, total US investment lead at Mindshare. But young viewers leaving linear TV changes that […]

Jim Wilson is a big believer in the blockchain. As president of Premion, the over-the-top ad buying platform of local TV broadcaster TEGNA, he helped ink a deal with blockchain startup MadHive in early March to cut off the potential for ad fraud in the OTT space. He also sits on the board of the […]

FreeWheel, the Comcast-owned video ad tech company, hosted its first television upfront on Wednesday and is mounting a campaign to expand its buy-side business. The marketer outreach centers on new attribution features and the launch of FreeWheel Media, which formalizes its buy-side accounts and ad-serving business into a cohesive offering, CRO Brian Wallach told AdExchanger. […]

Zach Rodgers and Allison Schiff contributed. Comcast is looking to enhance its targeted advertising business by acquiring more ad tech assets, and is evaluating a group of companies that includes Cadent and dataxu, AdExchanger has learned. Comcast is motivated by a range of factors, including stiffer competition from AT&T and its Xandr ad unit as […]

The Trade Desk shocked many observers last May when shares jumped from around $50 to $90, and then again in August when the stock leapt to about $130. Now shares are trading at almost $200. But what’s behind The Trade Desk’s monumental growth in the past year? The company benefits from a smaller field of […]

Ad buyers need to be on the lookout for a new problem called “declaration fraud,” where buyers paying for full-screen mobile video ads instead get itty-bitty versions that take up less than 5% of the screen. The trick takes advantage of the same loophole sellers used to spoof domains prior to ads.txt. Here’s how it […]

The programmatic video ad tech provider Telaria earned $55.2 million in 2018, up 26% from the year before, with total profits up 20% to $16.8 million, the company disclosed in its earnings report on Tuesday. Telaria shares were up more than a third during the day and have now recovered from the company’s earnings report […]

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 […]

The Trade Desk’s growth streak shows no sign of diminishing, with revenue of $477 million in 2018, a 55% increase from the year before, according to the company’s earnings report on Thursday. Shares of The Trade Desk were up more than 10% in after-hours trading. The company raised eyebrows last year when its stock went […]

Marketers were slow to move their advertising dollars from desktop to mobile, but they are transitioning to connected TV more quickly, according to Roku CEO Anthony Wood. Advertisers’ quick adoption of connected TV contributed to its $151 million in Q4 platform revenue.Total revenue totaled $275.7 million. Next year, Roku expects more than $1 billion in […]

Nielsen’s move into addressable TV planning and measurement starts with the smart TV. About a week after Nielsen bought Sorenson Media for $11.25 million in a bankruptcy auction, the measurement company has formally launched a new unit: the Nielsen Advanced Video Advertising Group. That group consists of Gracenote, which was acquired in 2016 for $560 […]

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 […]

LiveRamp has added connected TV IDs to IdentityLink, its cross-device identity graph, the company said during its Monday Q4 2018 earnings report. Connected TV IDs are tied to a home IP address, and are used to distinguish households by companies that serve ads over smart TVs or OTT services, including some smart TV manufacturers, multichannel […]

NBCU did something it had never done before: transacted on a TV advertising campaign based on business outcomes. The campaign for the STXfilms movie “The Upside” was guaranteed based on ticket sales and, secondarily, show time searches, the broadcast giant said Friday. Comscore will measure viewership data and tie it to ticket sales from Fandango, […]

Carving out a spot in the ever-crowded direct-to-consumer streaming market is an expensive proposition – and Disney is ready to spend. DTC is “a bet on the future of this business,” Disney CEO Bob Iger told investors on Tuesday, the equivalent of pouring money into building a theme park. “We are deploying capital so that the […]

Google still brings in the big bucks, but its costs are skyrocketing as well as the digital media giant pushes its way into TV advertising. First, the basics. Alphabet brought in $39.3 billion in Q4 2018, up 23% from the same period the year before, the company disclosed in its quarterly earnings report on Monday. […]

Taptica will acquire RhythmOne for $176 million in an all-stock deal, the companies said Monday. The mobile ad tech firm also gets a matryoshka doll of assets along with RhythmOne, including assets from the latter’s previous acquisitions of YuMe, Burst Media and parts of RadiumOne. Taptica characterized the deal as a bid for connected televison […]

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 […]

Traditional broadcasters might soon bridge linear and digital ad buying. But first, baby steps. Before anyone reaches that holy grail, it helps if the ad inventory is trafficked through the same system. So in the spirit of unification, the video ad server FreeWheel said Wednesday that it will handle decisioning for NBCUniversal’s digital and linear […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Down, But Still Substantial Verizon’s media biz dropped 5.8% YoY in Q4 2018 – bringing it to “only” $2.1 billion in the quarter. Verizon Media (née Oath) has disappointed this year. “Certainly, when you see -6.9% revenue growth in 3Q and -5.8% in 4Q, […]

Marketers have a lot to contend with in 2019. Heads are spinning with thoughts of consumer-driven privacy concerns, different regulations in different regions, Apple blocking third-party tracking on Safari and how to buy TV in a world of digital delivery. At AdExchanger’s Industry Preview conference Thursday, Google’s vice president of ad platforms Sean Downey considered […]

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 […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Up The Funnel Amazon is giving marketers buying its Sponsored Brand Ads on its platform more insight into the consumers purchasing their products. Amazon released metrics this month that allow marketers to see how many Amazon purchases were made by people who had never […]

Remember when Hulu opened its automated private marketplace at the beginning of 2019? Turns out Telaria is the vendor that’s powering it. As part of a two-year deal, Hulu will use Telaria’s tech to enable its PMP for advertising across all screens, the video ad platform said Wednesday – from the big one in the […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Viacom Nabs Pluto Viacom will acquire free, ad-supported streaming service Pluto TV for $340 million. The standalone app, which reaches 12 million monthly users primarily on connected TVs, will give Viacom a new audience to sell and a distribution channel for its content library. […]

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Brian Lee, director of programmatic strategy at Cadreon. I’m a digital guy and I will be the first to admit that TV is very powerful and should be the foundation of the marketing plan […]

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 […]

As Twitter’s video ad business grows, so does the amount of user-generated content on its platform. The challenge for Twitter, and brands that advertise on it, is to keep brands safe from, well, the Internet. In April 2018, 50% of Twitter’s business came from video advertising – and that still holds true today. In Q1 […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Snap Safety Some marketers have complained about Snapchat brand safety issues now that it’s transitioned to a self-serve ad platform. Last week, an ad directed to a fake news story about Chrissy Teigen promoting weight loss pills, Digiday reports. And last year, an ad […]

NBCU is not getting left in the dust as competitors like Amazon, AT&T and Disney plan their direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming services. On Monday, the broadcast titan said it will launch its yet-to-be-named streaming service in early 2020. The service will provide ad-supported content to pay-TV subscribers, including 90 million Comcast-connected homes in the United States […]