Tuesday January 16, 2024

Startup Telly previewed its new voice assistant powered by ChatGPT, along with new advertising capabilities and data on usage. After exiting a two year stealth period in May of 2023, Telly delivered its free 55” dual screen TVs to thousands of homes across more than forty states in the second half of the year. At CES, the company shared new insights into consumer usage and advertiser engagement,. “Usage rates are far outpacing our expectations and are more than twice the national average for household living room TV viewing time,” said Ilya Pozin, Telly CEO and Founder. “It’s clear Telly is used as the primary TV in the home and that it is used for a lot more than just watching TV. Just as the iPhone’s use cases go beyond the ‘phone’ on the go, Telly consumers use the device beyond TV in the home.”

Hundreds of Google employees were laid off late Wednesday night as the company seeks to cut costs. “Throughout the second half of 2023, a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, and to align their resources to their biggest product priorities,” said a Google spokesperson in a statement. “Some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally.” The Google hardware, core engineering and Google Assistant teams were impacted.

Meta is rolling out new tools and resources to protect teens on Instagram and Facebook, including enforcing more restrictive content control settings, and limiting teens from accessing related recommendations of self-harm content across Reels, Explore, Feed and Stories, and prompting them to check their safety and privacy settings. “If teens choose to ‘Turn on recommended settings,’ we will automatically change their settings to restrict who can repost their content, tag or mention them, or include their content in Reels Remixes,” said the company. “We’ll also ensure only their followers can message them and help hide offensive comments.”

Apple’s Vision Pro will be available in the US starting February 2. The spatial computing device will cost $3500.

Fox Corp. has teamed with Polygon Labs to release an open source protocol called Verify, designed to let media companies register content and grant usage rights to AI platforms, and to allow consumers to verify content is authentic. The first Verify application, the Verify Tool enables consumers to authenticate online content purporting to be from Fox sources.

MRI-Simmons, provider of insights on the American consumer, and Deep Labs, an AI platform company, announced the launch of a data enrichment solution for the payment industry. Powered by DeepDecision®, the advanced signals intelligence solution from Deep Labs, the new solution leverages generative AI to map payment transaction data to MRI-Simmons’ database of consumer interests, psychographics, demographics, and more. The partnership will provide clients with advanced consumer profiling capabilities designed to generate accurate and targeted marketing messages, promotions, and other content for specific merchant categories or locations. “By leaning into our partnership with Deep Labs, we can leverage cutting edge artificial intelligence and machine learning that is purpose built for the payments space,” said Joshua Pisano, SVP Product Strategy and Business Development at MRI-Simmons. “With no personal information needed, this allows for our rich consumer insights to be seamlessly blended with payment transactions enabling data to move into our planning systems or out to our customer first-party data environments in a privacy compliant manner.”

Total Traffic & Weather Network and MyRadar struck a multi-year partnership to deliver a traffic and weather television graphics solution throughout the US. As part of the partnership, TTWN will enhance its T3 Graphics Solution by layering MyRadar’s weather data as a standard offering with its real-time traffic incident and flow data, featuring street-level data, integrated video, dynamic full-screen options and 3D modeling. This integration offers television broadcasters a tool for delivering traffic and weather information.

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FedEx announced fdx, the first data-driven commerce platform that connects the entire customer journey. “FedEx is transforming into a digitally-led business powered by our extensive physical transportation network, leveraging our scale and insights from moving 15 million packages per day,” said FedEx Corp. President and CEO Raj Subramaniam. “Through fdx, we will enhance our longstanding relationships with merchants of all sizes to help them optimize and grow their businesses through digital intelligence.” Fdx is currently in private preview mode.

Walmart took to the CES stage to showcase how technology is changing their shoppers’ experience. Walmart shared:
· A new GenAI-powered search experience now available to iOS customers. The enhanced search experience allows customers to now search by specific use cases and generates relevant, cross-category results.
· Walmart InHome Replenishment, which uses AI and Walmart’s replenishment expertise to ensure customers’ online shopping carts are filled with the right items at the right time and delivered into a refrigerator in a kitchen or garage.
· A beta social commerce platform called Shop with Friends that enables customers to share the virtual outfits they create with friends and get feedback on their finds.“

While omnichannel retail has been around for decades, this new type of retail – adaptive retail – takes it a step further,” said Suresh Kumar, Global Chief Technology Oficer and Chief Development Officer, Walmart Inc. “It’s retail that is not only eCommerce or in-store, but a single, unified retail experience that seamlessly blends the best aspects of all channels.”

Disney has launched a beta program for its first native streaming shoppable ad format. With Gateway Shop, viewers will receive personalized prompts for products that are sent directly to their phones via push notifications or email. Advertisers including Unilever are part of the limited beta, aimed at driving awareness and conversion without disrupting the viewer experience. “Our goal is to help audiences connect with the brands they love with the least amount of friction, without disrupting the content they’re streaming,” said Jamie Power, SVP, Addressable Sales, Disney Advertising.

A partnership between C-store retail media network Axonet and retail media platform Zitcha offers a new channel for convenience store retailers and CPG brands to connect with convenience store shopper audiences. Axonet will provide insights across its first-party data and shopper audiences, integrating with Zitcha’s Retail Media Platform. “This is still an evolving ecosystem, but partnering with Axonet, we are pushing the boundaries, while simplifying this space,” said Zitcha CEO Troy Townsend. “Together we will offer the ability for C-Store retailers across the US to see immediate value participating in Retail media meanwhile fully automating the experience for CPG to buy across the category.”

Delivery service Instacart is expanding its in-store retail media program with a pilot program that features digital ads on its AI-powered smart carts. The new initiative will test the ads on Caper Carts at Bristol Farms supermarkets in Southern California, with a rollout in more stores in the coming months. CPG partners Del Monte Foods, Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream, and General Mills will kick off the effort. In addition to highlighting new products and brands, deals, and seasonal promotions, the ads will offer personalized product recommendations based on products customers purchase in real time. “If a customer adds ice cream cones, they might see a complementary item recommendation, like Dreyer’s ice cream,” said the company. The carts use AI-powered computer vision to enable customers to place items into the cart; when shopping is complete, customers can check out directly from the cart.

X announced a new partnership with Shopify, offering more opportunities for Shopify merchants to promote their products in the platform. The new deal, being developed by both X and Shopify, is aimed at boosting exposure for Shopify sellers. “A determining factor in the success of your business is the ability to reach customers wherever they are,” said Harley Finkelstein, President of Shopify. “More platforms, more choice, more entrepreneurship. More details to come.”

ADVERTISING

GroupM announced a collaboration between GroupM Nexus, the performance marketing organization, and Amazon Ads, to co-develop and launch the Amazon Marketing Cloud Maturity Framework. The offering for GroupM clients will assess marketers’ maturity level with Amazon Marketing Cloud to align their business needs with the most suitable Amazon Marketing Cloud solutions. “Amazon Ads robust product suite can return the best benefit for brands when there is a clear path forward that can be easily navigated,” said Amy Armstrong, Director of Global Customer Development at Amazon Ads. “Working with GroupM Nexus to unlock the power of Amazon Marketing Cloud (AMC) will give brands an in-depth understanding of where they’re at in their AMC maturity, and that’s the first step in building tailored programs that work.”

Disney has expanded its roster of cloud services powering Clean Room interoperability to include Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. The additional services will allow brands and advertisers that natively host their data with AWS Clean Rooms or BigQuery to seamlessly activate within Disney’s Clean Room in a privacy-focused way. “No other Clean Room can activate against a decade’s worth of proprietary first-party data like Disney’s,” said Dana McGraw, SVP of Audience Modeling and Data Science. “Through these intentional expansions and partnerships, we’re bridging the gap even further between consumers and advertisers, while delivering actionable results.” Additionally, Disney and Habu have introduced a dedicated portal that simplifies the way clients stand up a Clean Room, creating a seamless template for the process with an easily reproduced workflow required to activate using first- and third-party data.

The initial report from FreeWheel’s Viewer Experience Lab identified three factors that make up viewer experience: quality, quantity, and relevance. According to the study:
· Ad breaks of two minutes or less can improve brand impact and ad experience.
· Grouping consistent ad lengths within individual pods can improve ad sentiment and make breaks feel shorter.
· Capping the frequency of each ad at two to three per program can positively impact ad recognition and brand purchase intent.

As Google phases out cookies, how do consumers feel about alternatives? According to a survey from Adlook released at CES, while 58% of respondents were positively influenced in their purchasing decisions by relevant ads, they were skeptical about exchanging email addresses for more targeted content. Forty-eight percent were not in favor of sharing their emails, with 30% prioritizing privacy and 18% considering it unlikely yet possible. Discounts were another matter, with 62% showing interest, 37% conditional on significant discounts and 25% always open to such offers “Many in our industry see hashed email as a cookie solution, yet consumers remain reluctant to trade emails for ads,” said Patrick Gut, VP of US at Adlook. “Email addresses are becoming more difficult to manage given PII concerns, dummy accounts, and beyond. To that end, AI offers a more long-term solution, with a focus on delivering, not just on cookie-less, but identity-less advertising.”

X has a new offer for advertisers enabling them to target premium subscribers when setting up their campaigns. That’s according to a post from Technical Operations Manager of Ads Product Nate Esparza, who posted a screenshot of a new box in the ad-creation process.

NBCUniversal offered details on the full-scale launch of its One Platform Total Audience. The company’s AI-driven planning and activation technology will leverage new investments in automation and data to provide brands unduplicated reach through a single media buy across linear and streaming. NBCUniversal also announced it will transact 50% of its business on strategic audiences in 2024. “From day one, NBCUniversal has evolved its business to connect with consumers where they are, while giving advertisers a seat at the table,” said Mark Marshall, Chairman, NBCUniversal Global Advertising & Partnerships. “2024 will be a watershed year for change. Seismic shifts in measurement will throw everyone’s media mix models up in the air, presenting a singular opportunity to transact on strategic audiences and measure real KPIs for marketers. With One Platform Total Audience, we are empowering our clients to supercharge their media schedules in a whole new way and maximize the effectiveness of their ad dollars to achieve their business goals.”

The majority of ad dollars in the AI/ML marketplace are going to text-based generative AI tools (39%) and performance-optimization tools (37%), outpacing image-based generative AI (29%), according to an analysis from Advertiser Perceptions. The study found that larger advertisers are planning to spend more on average on text-based generative AI, while smaller advertisers will spend more on performance tools. Still, brand suitability concerns remain, as three in four advertisers agree that AI-generated content can result in the rapid spread of false but persuasively written information. They’re more comfortable when brand suitability can be verified, as two in three advertisers are willing to advertise within AI-generated content in this context.

While US consumers felt more informed about privacy in 2023 compared to previous years – 47% responded that they are either fairly or very well informed about online privacy, versus about 40% both in 2022 and 2021 – there has been an increase in the overall level of concern about privacy. According to the sixth annual ARF Privacy Study, 50% of respondents were either “Concerned” or “Very concerned” about the use of their online data, an increase from 42% in 2022. Those with higher levels of education and Democrats were more likely to report being both more informed and more concerned about online privacy. The findings underscore the increased polarization of the concept of trust, said Paul Donato, Chief Research Officer at the ARF. “A possible fix for institutions is to proactively share privacy policy information with consumers, as respondents also indicated a strong desire for providers to do so across internet, cable TV, mobile, and social media,” he added. “As the industry has long said, transparency is the way forward.”

The study from ARF also covered ad relevance. In that survey, 15 to 20% of respondents consent to sharing data if it gives them more relevant ads, but most still favor the choice to opt-in. When asked what their concerns were regarding sharing data, people most commonly indicated that they were concerned about data being used for purposes other than advertising. Similar to 2022, the percentage of people willing to share specific information in exchange for more relevant advertising increased by between 18% and 34%. That margin is the largest for personal contact information, such as home address, landline number, mobile number and email address, for which the number of people selecting “Willing to share if more relevant advertising” is more than 30% in each case.

MEASUREMENT

iSpot.tv announced it is building on its Unified Measurement platform with the launch of a dedicated streaming measurement offering and new suite of metrics including on-target delivery; deduplicated, unique audience identification; transparent co-viewing; CTV verification; and a streaming competitive dashboard. “As the market moves towards streaming and increased fragmentation grows, brands need accuracy, consistency, scale and transparency to manage media investments,” said Sean Muller, CEO and Founder, iSpot. “The addition of these new metrics provides a foundation for new currencies and the insights to help drive efficiency and return on investment for both sides of a transaction.”

CES SPOTLIGHT

Advertisers will be able to buy spots across both Hulu and Disney+ in a single campaign, announced Disney Global Advertising President Rita Ferro at CES. The capability is made possible by the company’s unified technology stack. Fero also announced Disney’s Magic Words, a contextual advertising format using advanced data. The technology allows Disney to analyze scenes and visuals across its library, to capture a mood or moment, to help advertisers personalize their messaging specifically around that emotion.

Netflix’s ad-supported tier has topped 23 million monthly active users, reported the streamer’s President of Advertising, Amy Reinhard, at CES. “We know there’s a lot of work to do on our side, but we’re all about learning and iterating and working with our advertising partners to figure out, ‘How do we grow this business in a meaningful way?’”, said Reinhard. Netflix Basic with Ads launched in the US and 11 other countries in November 2022.

Panasonic announced a global collaboration with Amazon that will introduce new Panasonic smart TVs that carry Fire TV as its operating system starting this year. The company unveiled two new flagship OLED TVs for 2024, the Z95A (65 inches and 55 inches) and Z93A (77 inches) smart TVs with Fire TV built in. The new OLEDs are the first from Panasonic to feature far-field voice control with Alexa.

Siemens is integrating Amazon Bedrock, a service that offers a choice of foundation models from AI companies via a single API, along with security, privacy, and responsible AI capabilities, with Mendix, the low-code platform that is part of the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio. The move will allow more customers to build, scale, and supercharge existing applications with the power of generative AI on AWS. Customers can select the generative AI model that best suits their specific use case.

Listeners to TuneIn can now stream audio content on VIZIO. The TuneIn app’s complete catalog of over 90,000 global radio stations, podcasts, audiobooks and more is now available on-demand. “As the TV is the focal point of the home, VIZIO users can continue to enhance their streaming experience by accessing music, sports, news, podcasts and more through services like TuneIn,” said Seta Goldstein, Senior Director of Business Development and Partnerships at VIZIO.

Cynopsis Team