DirecTV

The Trade Desk insists its OS is still coming; TikTok Shop is becoming a grocery store; and for AI studios, bad press is still press.

FreeWheel thinks the best way to simplify streaming video is by fostering more direct connections between buyers and sellers.

Amid shifting habits in media consumption, live sports have demonstrated significant staying power. Over the past five years, the NFL has consistently claimed at least 70 of TV’s top 100 telecasts, and 2024 saw record-setting viewership for major sports events like the Olympics and MLB World Series.

DirecTV expanded its stake in addressable TV ad platform Invidi on Wednesday. It’s now the majority owner.

Why streaming TV might adopt the cloud-usage model for content; MAGNA projects strongest ad market in two decades; and “go woke, go broke” gets proven wrong, again.

Since launch, 82% of advertisers that buy inventory through the Yahoo DSP have tried Backstage at least once. And buyers are seeing lower CPMs from cutting out SSPs.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Disney’s Carriage Ride Disney and Charter resolved their cable carriage dispute on Monday, re-upping Disney-owned networks (namely, ESPN) to Charter’s 15 million subscribers. As part of the deal, Charter’s most popular cable package will include access to the ad-supported tiers of Disney+ and […]

As broadcasters do their best razzle dazzle routines at the upfronts, streamers and MVPDs alike, including Roku and DirecTV, are busy building programmatic ad tech stacks.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Go Big Or Go Home Apple, Amazon and Google (via YouTube) are now presumptive leaders for major sports broadcast deals.  Apple snapped up Major League Soccer and Major League Baseball rights last year, while Amazon and Google had National Football League coups.  These […]

The ad tech industry is one of many on a long list of male-dominated fields. But the status of ad tech as just another brodeo is finally changing.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Leaked Sneak Peek The TV industry waits with bated breath for Netflix’s and Disney’s ad-supported tiers to face off in 2023. In the meantime, Disney’s plans got leaked to Insider. Disney is pushing hard to promote its streaming inventory to advertisers before ads […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Get Connected The coveted prizes in programmatic right now are exclusive CTV contracts.  In Cannes, the crème de la crème for handshakers and lunch-takers is Netflix. Google is meeting with Netflix there, Ad Age reports, and is an obvious choice as Netflix purportedly […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. TikTok Rocks The Boat TikTok ad budgets went from experimental to critical overnight. Brands are ramping up their TikTok budgets – rapidly. It’s why TikTok expects its ad revenue to triple this year to $12 billion. Buy-side platforms are also gearing up for the […]

AT&T dropped a bombshell on Sunday when it announced it would combine the media assets of WarnerMedia with Discovery Inc. to create a new publicly traded company, unwinding the telco’s big bet on its acquisition of Time Warner in 2018. The deal, however, does not include the sale of Xandr, the ad tech division formerly […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Refriended Unilever will resume advertising on Facebook and Instagram in the United States after withdrawing last summer amid a wide scale brand protest over misinformation, The Wall Street Journal reports. The owner of Dove soap, Hellmann’s mayonnaise, and other CPG brands said Thursday that […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Give It The Ol’ Rip And Replace Nielsen recently updated its panel-based currency to include data from smart TVs and set-top boxes – but an even bigger change is on the horizon. According to The Wall Street Journal, Nielsen will completely replace its TV […]

When Xandr launched in 2018, it had a grand vision to be the data-driven platform and ad marketplace for the TV industry. But from the start, industry insiders were skeptical that plan would ever come to fruition, and few were surprised when Xandr announced last week it would fold into WarnerMedia. “We kind of thought […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Google Play Wins Apple and Google have taken heavy flak for their 30% revenue cut for apps downloaded from their respective app stores. But the two powerhouse mobile operators may have won the war last week, when Epic, the game developer behind the megahit […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Let’s Review Big tech companies are going under the microscope for some of their smaller, long-ago acquisitions. The FTC said it would conduct a review of deals that have been approved, particularly targeting low-cap deals that provided vast power in the market. And last […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Satellite Down Little over a week after activist investor Elliott Associates criticized AT&T’s operations, including its $67 billion DirecTV acquisition in 2014, the satellite unit might be on the chopping block. AT&T is considering “parting ways” with DirecTV, according to The Wall Street Journal. […]

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, […]

The trial that will resolve the US Justice Department’s challenge to AT&T’s $85 billion proposed acquisition of Time Warner will begin on Wednesday. The case, the first major US media merger to go to trial in decades, will indicate how the government may oversee telco and media consolidation going forward. If successful, the DOJ’s challenge […]

The US Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against AT&T has thrown a wrench into the $108 billion planned merger between the telco and Time Warner. The complaint, filed late Monday, alleged the merger could “hinder [AT&T’s] rivals by forcing them to pay hundreds of millions of dollars more per year for Time Warner’s networks.” The filing […]

Addressable TV has earned a rep for being expensive and not all that scalable. But for early adopters like Conagra Brands, the channel does have its perks. Advertisers that invest in addressable TV alongside their larger broadcast buys view the format as a vessel for reducing waste by being able to more effectively zero in […]

Dish’s streaming TV service, Sling TV, which reportedly topped 1 million subscribers last fall, is now focused on monetizing its audience cross-platform. Connecting the pipes for programmatic monetization across Sling TV, Dish and Dish Anywhere didn’t happen overnight, but Adam Lowy, GM of advanced TV, said years of work are paying off. Dish has been “quietly […]

By Kelly Liyakasa, Sarah Sluis and Allison Schiff Update: AT&T has reached a deal to acquire Time Warner for $85.4 billion. The move gives the telco some seriously premium media assets, including HBO, Warner Bros., CNN, Turner Broadcasting and DC Comics. Yes, AT&T will own Batman. While the telco got a distribution outlet when it merged with DirecTV […]

AT&T, which completed a $49 billion merger with DirecTV last July, is relatively behind competitive carrier Verizon in acquiring (or building) an ad stack and monetizing its mobile data set. AT&T has been largely silent on the mobile data front following its shift away from building a mobile ad network in 2013 in order to prioritize […]

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 […]

Unlike earned digital media, which is reinventing political campaigns, presidential candidates tend to view digital video as support for their flashy TV advertising. “The hope for digital, in my opinion,” said John Randall, VP of digital at the right-leaning agency CRAFT, “is that by 2020 we don’t even see a difference between TV and online or mobile video ads. But […]

AT&T’s plans to acquire satellite and pay TV provider DirecTV for an estimated sum of $49 billion, revealed Sunday, gives the carrier more reach – but it also could help the carrier scale its addressable TV initiatives. “AT&T and DirecTV combined will have a massive base of customers to market to, and that is a […]