Roku isn’t immune to advertiser pullbacks during the pandemic. Platform revenue, which includes advertising, grew 73% year over year in Q1 and now represents almost two-thirds (73%) of Roku’s revenue. But campaign delays and cancelations increased in early March as stay-at-home orders were implemented, especially in hard-hit verticals such as travel, quick-serve restaurants, cinema and […]
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 […]
AT&T said Thursday it will combine TV ad tech division Xandr with WarnerMedia. Xandr Chief Business Officer Kirk McDonald will continue to lead the group and report into WarnerMedia Chief Revenue Officer Gerhard Zeiler. Zeiler reports to John Stankey, AT&T’s new CEO. “Xandr and WarnerMedia have always worked hand-in-hand to benefit our incredible advertising partners,” McDonald said in a statement. […]
Is COVID-19 the beginning of the end for upfronts? Buyers and sellers have long questioned the necessity of flashy presentations, especially as the broadcast TV business declines. Disney chairman Bob Iger recently predicted an end to the antiquated upfront process altogether as a result of the economic crisis. Ad buyers have been pushing to […]
With no live sports on the schedule, AT&T lost nearly 900,000 paid subscribers across its premium TV business, which includes DirecTV, U-verse and AT&T TV. That’s nearly double the number of Q1 2019 paid subscriber losses, which were around 544,000. Total pay TV revenue was $10.5 billion, down 7.2%. Sports have long been considered paid […]
It’s difficult to buy or sell homes when everyone is stuck inside. But instead of staying quiet during the coronavirus pandemic, the online real estate resource Zillow wanted its brand to show up. In a situation “where the market is not moving,” at least at the outset of shelter-in-place orders, Zillow’s CMO Aimee Johnson wanted […]
News flash to no one: The economy is going up in flames … but Netflix is on fire. Millions of people around the world are under stay-at-home orders, and lots of them are signing up for Netflix, which had its biggest quarter for user growth in Q1 with the addition of 15.77 million new paid […]
Most marketers rely on household-level data to target audiences on connected TV. But homes are made up of multiple viewers with different preferences of what they like to watch and buy. So ad-supported streaming platform Tubi has teamed up with TransUnion to understand more about the people watching Tubi within a given home, the companies […]
The six-year-old storage company MakeSpace had plans to go beyond digital marketing and run its first linear TV ads this March. And then the coronavirus pandemic happened. So shortly after starting its linear TV ads, MakeSpace put its plans on hold. “We’re going to completely pause after this week until we can work through the […]
Fox Corporation bought itself a piece of the free ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) action earlier this week with its $440 million acquisition of Tubi. The deal follows Comcast’s acquisition of Xumo in February, reportedly for around $100 million, and Viacom’s (now ViacomCBS’s) $340 million purchase of Pluto TV early last year. There are now […]
For Mike Baker, trekking to the top of a snowy mountain in Colorado and then snowboarding down isn’t all that different from the gumption it takes to found and nurture a startup. “It’s not for everybody, but for people who are crazy enough to enjoy sacrifice and grit, it’s great – the journey is also the […]
Might the TV buyer’s dream of purchasing inventory across networks using the same audience definition finally be coming true? AMC Networks, Disney and WarnerMedia said Wednesday their linear TV inventory will be available through Xandr Invest. Starting mid-April, buyers will be able to log into Xandr Invest, Xandr’s programmatic buying platform, to access linear TV […]
As the local TV market grapples with falling ratings and viewership, it’s getting harder to meet the reach demands of advertisers. “We still hold our stations accountable to their guaranteed ratings,” said Joe Cerone, EVP of local investment at Zenith. “It may take extra spots to make it happen.” Local media sellers are trying to […]
Roku’s platform business is growing like a weed. Platform revenues, which include ad sales, increased 78% year over year in 2019 to $740 million, the company said Thursday in its Q4 2019 earnings report. Platform revenue accounted for 63% of Roku’s total annual revenue, which grew 52% year over year to $1.1 billion. In Q4, […]
You’ve heard of dynamic product placement. So, why not dynamic audio? Spanish-language broadcaster Univision is experimenting with a new advanced TV product that dynamically swaps out the generic sounds in an episode and replaces them with a bit of branded audio. T-Mobile is Univision’s first partner for the initiative, which debuted during the Monday night […]
Corporate siblings WarnerMedia and Xandr are full steam ahead on data-driven TV sales. Just look at this year’s upfront, where the AT&T subsidiaries will go to market together for the first time. The companies have been inching their way toward a joint offering over the past year and a half in an effort to sell […]
Ampersand, the sales consortium owned by Comcast, Cox and Charter, wants to simplify advanced TV ad buying by pooling the fragmented inventory across networks and cable operators across the United States. So it launched the AND platform Thursday, an interface where ad buyers can buy, plan and measure advanced TV inventory across Ampersand’s 85 million […]
Taking in the sprawl of CES in Las Vegas, one thing is clear: “There’s a ton of focus on streaming – it’s front and center,” according to Jay Prasad. The same can be said of Prasad’s new employer. Prasad joined LiveRamp in January after five years as chief strategy and business officer at video tech startup […]
Swapping out ads on linear TV to target audiences just got a bit more real. Project OAR (“Open, Addressable, Ready”), a consortium backed by smart TV maker Vizio, said Monday at CES it has finalized open specifications for dynamic ad insertion on linear TV and integrated with major ad decisioning engines including FreeWheel, Google Ad […]
AMC Networks – like the TV industry as a whole – is stepping up its efforts to make TV more data-driven. And a large part of that initiative means making its data across all AMC brands – including IFC, BBC America, SundanceTV and We TV – available to advertisers. In late December, it brought on […]
Cadent said it acquired ad tech company 4INFO on Thursday to help buyers to better allocate spend across channels and platforms as TV viewing fragments. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Cadent works with buyers and sellers to execute addressable and data-driven linear TV buys. It will gain access to OTT and CTV inventory […]
The 2010s was a decade of tectonic shifts for the TV industry. Linear TV networks can no longer avoid the digital revolution. As eyeballs shift to streaming platforms and buyers demand more automation and better measurement, new players, like Hulu and Roku, have risen as prime media sellers, while broadcasters evolve their businesses to capture […]
Using advanced TV to get incremental reach is all the rage among advertisers. Dish Media is launching Reach Booster in January of next year. The product uses its addressable TV tech and data so linear TV buyers can drive incremental reach across the Dish and Sling TV footprint. Advertisers can also show additional ads to […]
The advertising industry has a problem: People don’t want to be interrupted by commercials anymore. Hulu is trying to fix that by offering new ad units that are less disruptive. On Thursday, the streaming service released an advertising experience designed to lighten ad loads for people watching multiple episodes of a show in a row. […]
When a Toyota commercial airs, Vinay Shahani, the company’s North America VP of integrated marketing operations, knows that most people who see it aren’t in market for a car. So the company looks at search activity to assess the value of its TV ad spend. Using data and analytics company EDO, Toyota can measure web […]
CBS joined OpenAP, the companies said Monday. The move comes less than a week after CBS’ merger with OpenAP founding member Viacom closed. With CBS joining, OpenAP’s members together represent the majority of national TV ad spend, as well as 92% of all US audiences watching TV. “We heard from buyers that they wanted to […]
Coke, Chevrolet, Casio, Burger King, Reebok, Adidas, Old Navy. Netflix content including “Stranger Things,” “GLOW,” “El Camino” and the animated Christmas film “Klaus” are increasingly fertile ground for in-show product placements and brand tie-ins. Originals serve as the inspiration for new consumer products. But most of those deals are struck directly between Netflix and the […]
It’s been a year of breakneck user growth for Pluto TV. Monthly active users hit 20 million in November, a 70% increase since January, when Viacom acquired the free ad-supported streaming service for $340 million. That’s nearly 8 million new users in less than a year. So, how did Pluto do it? Its growth is […]
Newly-minted Comscore CEO Bill Livek’s top challenge is also his first order of business. “It’s not easy communicating that all of the bad stuff that happened in the past is, well, in the past,” said Livek, who took over as chief exec in early November from interim CEO Dale Fuller. Livek helmed Rentrak for nearly […]
Snip, snip, whoosh. Hear that? It’s the sound of cords being cut followed by an inexorable decline in TV ad spending. The share of TV ad spend in the United States is set to drop below 30% of total ad spending for the first time this year, according to eMarketer research released on Wednesday. By […]
