CTV

Amazon gets a taste of its own AI medicine; LinkedIn continues its pivot to video; and YouTube and Fox are on a fight.

Magnite is making a play for pause ads. On Tuesday, the advertising platform announced the introduction of pause ads into its SSP.

CTV advertising platforms often try to sell small businesses on how closely the channel resembles the digital marketing avenues they’re used to working with, like paid social. For Wildgrain, a DTC subscription service for artisan breads and other grain-based foods, this argument proved to be very compelling.

For all of Ad Tech Land’s excitement about new and emerging CTV-specific ad formats, many commercial brands are still hesitant to try some of these new formats for themselves.

The IAB Tech Lab video classification updates introduced much-needed clarity. But valuable inventory, now categorized differently, is being deprioritized or rejected, even though its performance hasn’t changed.

The competitive set has shifted and it’s stacked against independent DSPs. But, instead of chasing what competitors already own, TTD can own what they can’t: trust.

According to Adam Paul, executive director of media alliances at LiveRamp, the old-school programmatic ads – the ones bought across multiple platforms without regard to context or audience – are underperforming on CTV these days.

Alphonso co-founder Lampros Kalampoukas is suing Kroll for allegedly undervaluing the company by nearly $100 million to aid LG Electronics in a shareholder dispute.

Television advertising has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years, with connected TV (CTV) emerging as a powerful channel for marketers seeking the impact of traditional television with the precision of digital targeting.

I didn’t attend WWE’s “Monday Night RAW” event in Brooklyn for love of wrestling. No, I was there to check out the ad content – to the point where I set up a brand-new ad-supported Netflix account from my phone to see where and when the ad breaks actually start.

Enjoy this weekly comic from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem … 

OpenX filed a lawsuit against Google over its anticompetitive practices. And HyphaMetrics claimed victory against Nielsen in court over a patent lawsuit.

After a recent expansion, Porter Airlines partnered with Samsung Ads Canada to reach new customers with timely and relatable ads.

The SSP is betting on the DOJ’s antitrust remedies, plus closer relationships with agencies, DSPs and mid-sized advertisers, to help it eat some of Google’s lunch.

Ever open the Disney+ app and experience cognitive dissonance when shows like “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” appear in the recommendations? Well, expect more of that in the future.

Too bad actor Ryan Reynolds didn’t join CTV ad platform MNTN’s first-ever earnings call on Tuesday. It would’ve been fun hearing Deadpool answer questions from investors.

Late last week, a federal jury in Delaware found in favor of HyphaMetrics, a measurement startup Nielsen was suing for allegedly infringing on two of its patents.

CleanTap, an ad tech startup launched by the founder of Method Media Intelligence, wants to separate the wheat from the chaff in CTV by serving as a curation layer between DSPs and SSPs.

As the quality of answer engines improves, people will click through to publisher websites less often. The solution isn’t to wage war against AI. It’s time to build a sustainable future for all stakeholders.

Change can be bumpy. From The Trade Desk’s Solimar-to-Kokai transition to Nielsen’s transition to its Big Data + Panel offering, we go inside customers’ challenges with these two transforming platforms.

My YouTube creator obsession has me fascinated by an ongoing trend I’ve noticed in the CTV industry: A lot of companies that produce free ad-supported channels rely on content that already exists on YouTube.

Roku’s video advertising business has really been booming lately, as CEO Anthony Wood shared on a call with investors Thursday evening.

NBCU’s streaming losses were down to $100 million in Q2 from $348 million year-over-year, representing significant progress as the platform nears break-even.

Now that upfront negotiations are almost over, the industry appears to have settled back into its default position of being mad at Nielsen – which is likely good news for its currency competitors, but not so great for everyone else in the meantime.

SaaS companies are abandoning interoperability in search of more revenue; Spotify’s ad business is growing slower than expected; and sports is an upfronts winner for Disney and NBCU.

Ride-hailing app company Curb Mobility is bringing TikTok’s user-generated content to Taxi TV, its network of more than 15,000 in-taxi screens across 65 US markets.

Into every generation, a universally hated children’s television character is born. This, of course, poses a unique problem in a world of smart TV operating systems and content recommendation engines.

Brands spend millions activating around Coachella. Then they spend the next three months trying to figure out if any of it actually worked. It’s a reflection of our industry’s broken approach to measuring media effectiveness.

Most social platform spending comes from small businesses. And TV tech companies have been busy trying to make it easier for small businesses to apply the same tools – like data matching – they use on social media.

Netflix cracks Nielsen’s top 3 channels, but YouTube is still tops; CTV is maturing as a marketing channel, but it comes with zits; and Google rolls out another core update for search.