Now that the WarnerMedia-Discovery deal has closed, two top streaming apps will be under its roof: HBO Max and Discovery+. Eventually, the two apps will be combined.
We’d mention a third app, except the early intel about CNN+ is not great. Three weeks in, the $300 million app (in terms of production and marketing costs) is averaging 10,000 or so daily viewers, according to some sources. CNN averages 773,000 daily viewers on cable. But they already have the channel.
Getting new viewers to fork over credit card info is proving more difficult than expected. 10,000 viewers is a rounding error compared to the two million subscribers CNN+ benchmarked for year one.
Buyers should pay attention as these parent companies concentrate power. While the web’s value prop has been to harness the long tail by overlaying audience data, CTV isn’t the land of bloggers (unless you count vloggers on YouTube viewed in the living room) but individual apps with massive user bases.
The 10 largest CTV app developers capture 82% of programmatic CTV spend, according to Jounce Media. In contrast, the 10 largest web publishers earn 49% of programmatic web spend. And the 10 largest mobile app developers have 70% share of in-app programmatic spend.
If a handful of sellers control most of the inventory, we’ll tell you who’s calling the shots: the publishers.
Plus: We cover how retail media companies large and small are building, buying and partnering with ad tech companies to sell ads in their fast-growing ad businesses.
