CTV

Social data is emerging as a way for traditional TV players to start moving beyond age and gender targeting. For a recent movie release, Turner ran a month-long ad campaign during shows where an audience segment built from social media behavior was predicted to appear in high numbers. That audience segment, built by cross-screen data […]

Looks like Samsung has joined the TV race for ad tech. The electronics manufacturer has confirmed its acquisition of AdGear, a Canadian demand-side platform and ad server with roots in agency-serving tools. “Samsung has acquired Quebec-based AdGear Technologies Inc., a leading digital advertising technology company that provides software and services to media agencies, publishers and […]

With TV upfront negotiations underway, digital tactics are wielding more influence as networks court buyers with cross-platform guarantees and enhanced data products. “You can still invest client dollars in proven media, but upfronts are now about online video partnerships you can make long-term investments in,” said Maureen Bosetti, the chief investment officer for Interpublic Group’s […]

As more brands and publishers seek to reach millennial audiences, FOX’s video ad platform True[X] is eyeing tech like chat bots and messaging apps that are trendy with teens and 20-somethings. In a partnership with messaging app Kik, revealed Wednesday, True[X] will begin to integrate 15-second interactive video ads that allow Kik users to exchange […]

Bell Media, the broadcasting and radio subsidiary of Canadian communications company Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE), is bulking up on programmatic for its linear, streaming video and mobile platforms. Using Videology, Bell Media is building an audience indexing and delivery tool for advertisers to plan and execute cross-platform campaigns. The first phase of the integration will go […]

Custom content was all the rage even as early as 2007, when entrepreneur and actor RJ Williams founded celebrity and lifestyle site Young Hollywood. The millennial-focused publisher claims it averages 150 million monthly video views across desktop, mobile, OTT and social today. Young Hollywood evolved from content partnerships with portals like AOL, Yahoo and YouTube, […]

GroupM’s 25-person advanced TV team, Modi Media, is investing three times the amount it did in connected TV this year over last, driven mostly by exploding consumer demand and growth in media availability. To support its growing investment, Modi will use interactive video ad server Innovid to aggregate audience and measure ad views across 25 […]

A new Snapchat campaign from 20th Century Fox for “X-Men: Apocalypse” will drive awareness and ticket sales for the movie’s Friday premier. Snapchat has run plenty of branding-oriented campaigns, but this new effort is one of very few forays that include a direct-response component (in the form of a Fandango e-commerce call to action), a […]

The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Monday that formalized its opposition to the FCC’s proposed set-top box rules. Under the proposed rules, companies such as Google and TiVo who manufacture their own set-top boxes could access content from multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) without having to […]

TV or digital? Birchbox is still making up its mind. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, of course, but the online beauty retailer has decided to press pause on its TV advertising efforts while it tests out the effectiveness of a targeted social-first brand campaign. “We turned off TV in February to make sure that we […]

Many agree there’s a great need for holding companies to integrate their media buying structure “horizontally”: to collaborate rather than compete across groups. Is it possible the obstacle lies not with the agency, but with the client? Executives from Dentsu Aegis, IPG, Havas, Omnicom and WPP took up the question at the Modern Marketing Summit […]

In a significant expansion of its video ad offering, Facebook will bring video ad formats to its Instant Articles platform and to the external apps and sites in its Audience Network, the company announced Monday. It’s the first time the company will deliver video ads beyond its owned-and-operated properties – excluding its LiveRail video sell-side […]

At face value, AwesomenessTV looks like your average YouTube multichannel network (MCN). Except it’s not, according to Paul Kelly, AwesomenessTV’s chief partnerships officer. AwesomenessTV has amassed 160 million total subscribers and now boasts nearly a billion monthly video views across platforms. A network of creators helps support its shows, but the company is also a […]

Comcast’s acquisition of French video supply-side platform StickyAds on Monday will give its video ad tech division a serious boost. Comcast’s video ad server FreeWheel will be able to streamline the way big TV broadcasters allocate inventory by embedding StickyAds’ private exchange tech into its own video ad server. The capability will let FreeWheel’s TV […]

Updated with comment from FreeWheel’s CEO. Comcast has acquired StickyAds.tv, a French video ad tech startup focused on publishers. Re/code first reported the news Sunday night, and Comcast confirmed it Monday morning. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Business Insider claimed the deal was an all-cash transaction and worth “at least $100 million.” […]

YouTube reaches more 18- to 49-year-olds on mobile alone than any cable network or broadcaster, said Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, during Google’s glitzy Brandcast event Thursday night in New York City. She cited MAGNA Global’s $250 million upfront commitment to Google Preferred as evidence of the shift of brand TV dollars to digital. YouTube […]

Pandora’s Q1 2016 call on Thursday revealed that programmatic sales of display inventory drove increased sell-through rates. In an earnings release, Pandora claimed the buying method is “starting to contribute meaningfully” to advertising revenue per 1,000 ad-supported listener hours, which grew 19% year over year to $45.47, and take pressure off ad loads. Pandora made […]

Intuit has hired Mike Zeman, an architect of Netflix’s programmatic trading desk, to help grow its Mint personal finance brand. Zeman will serve as director of marketing and business development for Intuit’s Consumer Ecosystem Group, reporting to SVP Albert Ko. During his three years at Netflix, Zeman led digital marketing during a period of dramatic […]

CNN is signing on with comScore’s syndicated measurement service Xmedia, a competitive offering to Nielsen’s Total Audience measurement. Xmedia is designed to help media companies understand their cross-platform audiences by tracking unduplicated reach across TV, digital, set-top box and mobile properties. CNN now claims to have a total unduplicated audience of 174 million across TV, […]

Updated with statement from Amazon. Amazon’s forthcoming $8.99-a-month subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) service offers strong new competition to Netflix and Hulu. Will it include advertising as well? Not at first, but there is an internal debate at Amazon around the proper role of ads in its video offering. According to one source with knowledge of Amazon’s […]

AOL rolled out a programmatic self-serve platform for TV buyers on Monday, and Omnicom Group is the first agency partner to test-drive it. While some competing solutions only enable planning, AOL said its platform also handles execution and reporting. AOL thinks its developing device graph under Verizon gives it a competitive advantage in omnichannel media […]

Sky Media, the advertising sales arm for British telecom and broadcaster Sky, sits at the crossroads of technology and strategic investment. A new partnership with multiscreen ad-delivery tool Yospace, unveiled last Wednesday, will support dynamic ad insertions in linear streams like sports, news and entertainment on both IP and OTT devices alongside Sky’s ad server, […]

AT&T has officially entered the programmatic TV fray. The carrier on Thursday revealed the launch of a private marketplace called the Video Inventory Platform (“VIP” for short), which Jason Brown, AT&T AdWorks’ VP of national advertising sales, told AdExchanger was a “data-optimized TV and video planning tool.” The product will be generally available in Q3 […]

When Apple baked tvOS into its fourth-generation set-top box, the next-gen operating system also opened the floodgates to third-party apps. It was a pivotal moment for app and game developers, who could for the first time tap into Apple’s emerging TV ecosystem via a new software development kit (SDK). And for large and mid-tier publishers, the new […]

If you hail from the northeastern United States, you’re probably accustomed to the slightly bitter bite of broccoli rabe common in many Italian dishes. It’s the population beyond New York and other big cities – as well as health-conscious millennials – to whom Salinas, Calif., grower Andy Boy wanted to appeal. But Andy Boy had […]

That day when data rewrites all TV business rules is not far off, said Joan Gillman, EVP and COO for Time Warner Cable’s media services. A cultural shift is already underway at sales houses as cable companies pitch TV 2.0 products to advertiser clients. Traditionally, buyers only got historic measurements and reporting for campaigns that […]

How about this for a premiere? Beginning this fall, all NBCUniversal inventory will be available for sale programmatically via the network’s private exchange NBCUx. Ahead of the upfronts, NBCUniversal has rolled out an offering called NBCUx for Linear TV, which will put additional data and automation in the hands of media planners to apply to […]

The extreme fragmentation of digital media is tougher on national political campaigns than on brand advertisers. Because political campaigns must fight for every vote (at least once the primaries are done), discrete audiences that a brand marketer might dismiss as too difficult or small are essential to the political advertiser. The 3% of American adults that still connect […]

Twentieth Century Fox’s new flick “Deadpool” shattered box office records over Valentine’s and President’s Day weekend, banking $135 million in the three days since its premiere. Although a popular Marvel comic (and actor Ryan Reynolds) certainly inspired that turnout, a week-long multiplatform activation from Viacom preceding the film’s launch helped generate awareness. Throughout the campaign’s […]

It may not be master over how its software is used, but that isn’t stopping Google from ruling its Play store with an iron first. It appears that some ad-blocking apps are not welcome. Taking a page out of Apple’s playbook, Samsung on Sunday rolled out support for content blocking within the default browser that […]