CTV

Comcast’s advertising business is gearing up to run campaigns with Blockgraph, a data-sharing product that uses blockchain technology to allow advertisers to target TV audiences using first-party data. Comcast first mentioned its blockchain advertising ambitions in 2017 at Cannes, and since then the initiative has been incubated by Comcast’s FreeWheel ad tech subsidiary. On Thursday, […]

The tsunami of data surging into TV introduces a massive amount of complexity and fragmentation into what used to be a simple media buy. “It’s really complex to buy, and that’s spooking a lot of buyers off,” said Tracey Scheppach, who buys addressable connected TV (CTV) with her agency Matter More Media. CTV, which is […]

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 […]

“The Sell Sider” is a column written for the sell side of the digital media community.  Today’s column is written by Ben Dixon, CEO at Adslot. The traditional TV ecosystem still attracts immense money in advertising – an estimated $69.2 billion in 2019 – despite the continued proliferation of cord cutters, who shun content that can’t […]

Disney has been at the center of some of the most important recent shakeups in digital media. It officially closed its $71.3 billion deal for 21st Century Fox in March. And late last year, moved from Comcast’s FreeWheel ad server to the Google Ad Manager platform, a vendor switch with huge implications as TV networks […]

AT&T’s ad unit Xandr on Tuesday unveiled a publisher network called Community, which lets advertisers use Xandr data on video inventory across WarnerMedia’s O&O properties as well as a selection of outside publishers. The WarnerMedia properties include CNN, TNT, TBS, truTV, B/R Live, Otter Media and Warner Brothers, and the video partner publishers include VICE, […]

Hulu now lives in the mouse house. The Walt Disney Company said Tuesday it will gain full operational control of Hulu as part of a “put/call” agreement with Comcast, under which Comcast can require Disney to buy NBCU’s 33% Hulu stake at its fair market value as early as January 2024. The future value of […]

Telaria has more than tripled its stock price since Mark Zagorski took over as CEO almost two years ago. Telaria’s Q1 revenue increased 42% year-over-year to $13.8 million, according to the company’s quarterly earnings report on Thursday. Recently, the video ad tech company has been riding the tailwinds of connected TV (CTV) and OTT app […]

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

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 […]

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Scott Swanson, CEO at Aki Technologies. Apple’s move into streaming TV is a significant milestone in the already-in-progress, cord-cutting revolution. It should serve as an important nudge for marketers: Yes, it’s time to get […]

Travel is a personal experience, and travel marketing should be too, according to Sheila Schottland, senior director of brand marketing at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. “People travel for different reasons – family, business, leisure – and they have different needs,” she said. “Because these moments are relatable, we make sure that our media mix follows suit, […]

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Steve Carbone, chief digital and investment officer at MediaCom US. With another NewFronts upon us, there are, as always, a number of key trends, themes and questions that have emerged. Among those that have […]

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 […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Agent Amazon Amazon is on a charm offensive to bring in more agencies and non-endemic brands, like financial services companies or auto manufacturers that don’t sell on its platform today. Amazon is doing a roadshow pitching its data and OTT chops to help create […]

When DISH Media hired Dave Antonelli from the AI startup Cognitiv to lead its advertising strategy and sales, a key reason was his experience in startups around new tech. “When you work at a startup, you have to think and move quickly in a dynamic market, and that’s no different than what we are doing […]

Gamut President Rachel Williamson has two words to describe local over-the-top (OTT) ad buying: “It’s hard.” Inventory is scattered. Data is fragmented. And advertisers need different strategies to hit different demos based on geography. A buyer might want to reach 34-year-old moms, for example, but that can mean one thing in Birmingham, Ala., and another […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Remember Oath? Verizon Media Group, the company formerly known as Oath, is shrinking as the telco shifts its focus and most of its resources to 5G. The media group, which is made up of Verizon’s acquisition and merger of AOL and Yahoo, saw revenues […]

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 […]

Many broadcasters spent the past decade on a quest for scale, with a major spike in local station M&A last year. Now it’s time to start thinking about monetization, and broadcasters know it. “Once you own a lot of stations, the next logical thing to do is ask, ‘How are we going to monetize these […]

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 […]

Television advertising is getting smarter. And the smartest companies in digital advertising are coming for TV. That means a royal rumble is playing out over who controls the ad serving for data-driven TV campaigns. AdExchanger looked at the TV and video ad serving landscape, where broadcasters and digital ad platforms like Google and Amazon fiercely […]

At AdExchanger’s Programmatic I/O conference in San Francisco on April 30, Laura Nelson, Disney’s SVP of advertising solutions and performance advertising, will share how it’s selling connected TV as consumer habits and advertising preferences change. Disney is on a mission to unify its inventory across platforms and offer buyers alluring scale against much smaller audience […]

“Let it go, let it go” is the theme song for any advertisers who might’ve had their hearts set on an ad-supported option for Disney+. There won’t be one, Disney revealed during an investor day event on Thursday in Los Angeles. Disney’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming service, slated to launch in the United States on Nov. […]

People love to hate on third-party data, but it’s got at least one fan out there. “It’s incumbent on all of us to understand how data is used and to stop the idea that third-party data is bad or dead or dying,” said Matt Spiegel, TransUnion’s EVP of digital marketing solutions, speaking at a Tru […]

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 […]

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…