CTV

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

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is by David Levy, CEO at OpenAP. The pandemic boom in streaming TV drove a massive investment in programming. US production companies produced 537 shows last year, up from just 381 the year before – despite the […]

The Media Rating Council (MRC) may have stripped Nielsen of its National and Local TV accreditation last week, but it also made another significant announcement: It is now defining over-the-top as connected TV. The MRC issued final measurement guidelines on August 30 for CTV. The guidelines, first established with the IAB in 2018 in order […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Is The Cart Half Full Or Half Empty? Instacart’s grocery delivery business has slowed, or at best is showing zero sales growth from this time last year. That’s largely because quarantines forced people to order online, and many have returned to in-store shopping. Frankly, […]

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.  Today’s column is by Jean-Christophe Peube, SVP, Analytics & Customer Experience, Smart. Gangsters always follow the money. And today, all roads lead the digital ad fraudsters to the over-the-top (OTT) and connected TV (CTV) space, where prices are high and […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The TV Prize Amazon plans to introduce its own line of smart TVs in the United States, perhaps as early as October, Business Insider reports. On the one hand, it’s surprising Amazon hasn’t released its own television, since it would be a natural extension […]

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is by Frank Sgrizzi, Advisor, Topwater Advisory Group and former EVP of Sales and Client Partnerships at WarnerMedia. “On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is […]

The Media Rating Council stripped Nielsen of its National TV ratings accreditation Wednesday and formally denied its request for a hiatus after the measurement giant underreported viewers during the pandemic. Nielsen asked the MRC last month to put its accreditation on hold in order to address issues with its panels and focus on the development […]

Ad measurement and verification company Method Media Intelligence uncovered a connected TV fraud scheme that it says rakes in $10 million a month in ad revenue. The scheme, dubbed “RapidFire,” feeds counterfeit bid requests into ad exchanges running open auctions for CTV inventory. Like many multimillion video fraud scams, RapidFire targets server-side ad insertion (SSAI) […]

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.  Today’s column is by Lynn Chealander, Director, Product Management, Xandr. Imagine the Air Buddies franchise churns out a 15th movie, and you’re rightly excited to see it on the big screen. But when you get to the theater, you […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Vizionary Vizio Ads made big gains during the recent upfronts negotiations, where Roku has been the CTV champion in recent years. Vizio announced in a press release that it locked in more than $100 million for 2022, quadrupling its total from last year (which […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Under Pressure NBCUniversal is turning the screws on Nielsen as the MRC considers stripping its National TV rating. Nielsen has long dominated TV ratings but is under fire for underreporting viewers and missing visibility into streaming, mobile and desktop. The Olympics on NBC underwhelmed […]

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video.  Today’s column is by Oleg Sokolan, Director of Demand Partnerships at Admixer. Linear TV was on its way out for years, but the pandemic truly accelerated the loss of impressions and the massive consumer switch to connected TV (CTV). […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. BuzzKill As he prepares to take his company public via SPAC, BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti has made concessions to irate shareholder NBCUniversal that could put him in the hot seat, according to The Wall Street Journal. To summarize: NBCU stands to lose money in […]

Nielsen’s potential loss of its accreditation by the Media Rating Council as early as this week could fuel greater adoption of alternative measurement currencies that use advanced data and analytics rather than the traditional panel-based surveys the measurement giant is known for. Nielsen has long been accused of undercounting TV viewership. Recently, networks have expressed […]

The CPG holding company Church & Dwight started 2021 looking for a new kind of licensing partner for its Orajel kids’ toothbrush and toothpaste product lines. “We wanted to complement our traditional characters from shows and movies with more social influencing brands, say, or Netflix-type brands and characters,” said Kevin Sherlock, C&D’s VP of marketing […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Booming Biz The DSP Viant reported a year-over-year revenue increase of 66% to $50.4 million. Viant IPOed in February, part of a recent boom in programmatic companies on the public market. As with most of those companies, Viant is going big on CTV, which […]

Ad verification and measurement provider Integral Ad Science held its first earnings call after going public just over a month ago. Revenue increased 55% to $75.1 million year-over-year. That growth was largely fueled by programmatic revenue, which jumped 94% to $31.8 million compared to the same period last year. Programmatic accounts for 42% of total Q2 revenue, as […]

Ad verification company DoubleVerify recently shut down a new type of scheme in connected TV that uses screensavers to hijack streaming devices in order to generate fake ad impressions – even when the screen is off. DoubleVerify estimates that the scam, dubbed “SmokeScreen,” is bilking advertisers out of more than $6 million a month and […]

Streaming networks and programmers are eager to secure more ad inventory as CTV demand surges. But they’re hesitant to include more ad breaks, since that means some users will change channels. Enter the picture-in-picture (PIP) ad. Major broadcasters with sports rights deals have already used this strategy for years, but the streaming ad platform Transmit […]

TV measurement company VideoAmp is bringing on Tony Fagan, a former Google VP of ads data science and engineering, as its first chief technology officer. Fagan joins a number of other C-level hires over the past year, as VideoAmp plots an expansion after a $75 million funding round in May. Since 2020, former Comscore COO […]

“On TV & Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is by Andre Swanston, CEO and Co-Founder of Tru Optik, a TransUnion company. We’re in a golden era of streaming. More US broadband households now subscribe to over-the-top (OTT) than a pay-TV service. Digitization has shepherded in […]

The Trade Desk earned $280 million in Q2 2021, doubling its total from the same time last year, the company reported in quarterly earnings on Monday. Its profitability jumped from $25 million a year ago to almost $48 million. The Trade Desk’s crazy year-over-year growth comes with a familiar asterisk during this earnings period: Q2 […]

The arms race to acquire subscribers for streaming services is well underway. ViacomCBS’s total streaming subscribers jumped 6.5 million, for a total of 42 million subscribers across Pluto TV, Showtime OTT, BET Plus and Paramount Plus, which launched an ad-supported version in June. ViacomCBS has a goal of reaching 65 million to 75 million global […]

Roku saw viewership decline in Q2 as pandemic restrictions eased. Streaming hours dropped a billion hours from Q1 to 17.4 billion hours in Q2, and the company’s stock was down 9% on Thursday. While Roku’s streaming hours declined sequentially, they still increased 19% from the previous year, during the early days of lockdown. It added […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Video Killed The TV Star Comcast’s and Google’s earnings calls last week mark two converging trends in brand advertising and the decline of linear TV. NBC is haggling with advertisers of the Olympics because ratings are down – 42% down – at the halfway […]

Fresh off its IPO in April, ad verification provider DoubleVerify saw its revenue increase 44% to $76.5 million year-over-year in Q2, fueled by the growth of programmatic. DoubleVerify took in $37.9 million in programmatic revenue in Q2 – a 57% increase from the same period last year – largely driven by its Authentic Brand Safety […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Tunnel Vizio-n Vizio will remove many DSPs from its Inscape smart TV data service, Business Insider reports. Inscape was a popular way to retarget CTV audiences using online advertising IDs, working with DSPs such as The Trade Desk, VideoAmp, Engine Group, MediaMath and Cadent. […]

Connected TV has arrived – a bit earlier than programmers may have expected. The pandemic-related boom in streaming, along with record TV upfronts, means there’s going to be a “wild Q4” ahead as programmatic buyers scramble for access to streaming inventory. One key issue is that CTV measurement capabilities aren’t developed enough yet, noted Kelly […]

Comcast-owned NBCUniversal’s ad-supported streaming service Peacock hit 54 million subscribers and more than 20 million monthly active users in the second quarter of 2021. During the company’s Q2 earnings call Thursday, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts said the number of subscribers grew 50% over 90 days, driven in large part by the Olympics, the release of […]