Facebook, Twitter and the BBC’s website were blocked in Russia after the Russian Parliament approved sanctions against foreigners who “infringe on the rights of Russian citizens.” Responded the BBC’s director-general Tim Davie, “Truth is often the first casualty of war.” The BBC temporarily suspended the work of journalists in Russia. “Our BBC News service in Russian will continue to operate from outside Russia,” said Davie. “The safety of our staff is paramount and we are not prepared to expose them to the risk of criminal prosecution simply for doing their jobs.” Said Sir Nick Clegg, VP of global affairs at Facebook, “We will continue to do everything we can to restore our services so they remain available to people to safely and securely express themselves and organise for action.”

Reface, a face-swapping video app from Ukraine, added push notifications to let users know about Russia’s invasion of the country and encourage people to #StandWithUkraine. Videos in the app are now watermarked with the Ukraine flag.

Walmart has launched a clothing try-on feature, “Choose My Model,” that enables online shoppers to build a virtual model to show what clothes would look like on them. The AI-powered feature can match shoppers’ dimensions, body shape and skin tone.

Facebook is shutting down “Campus,” its social network for college students. “Since we launched the Campus pilot, it’s been our mission to help bring college communities closer together. But we’ve learned that the best way to support students is through Facebook Groups,” Facebook told users. The service, launched in 2020, goes dark March 10 and all data will be deleted.

Also coming to an end is Instagram’s standalone IGTV app, as the company focuses on Reels. In-Stream video ads (previously known as IGTV ads) will no longer be supported. Creators that are actively monetizing with In-Stream video ads will receive a temporary monthly payment based on recent earnings. “As part of our efforts to make video as simple as possible to discover and create, we will no longer be supporting our standalone app for IGTV,” said Instagram. “Instead we will focus on having all video on the main Instagram app. We believe this makes it easier for people to have all these features and abilities in the main app, and are excited to continue to simplify and improve video in the main Instagram app over the coming months.”

A “massively interactive” life event, “The Walking Dead: Last Mile” is launching this summer as a Facebook Gaming and Facebook Watch exclusive. Part game, part interactive television show, “TWD:LM” will put the new story and protagonists in the hands of the players as the saga unfolds. “We’re thrilled to unveil this new MILE experience that will take place in ‘The Walking Dead’ universe, where fans can play games and influence this new world and its inhabitants as a community,” said Robert Kirkman, Chairman of Skybound Entertainment and creator of “The Walking Dead.” “We’re excited to collaborate with our partners Genvid and Facebook to bring this pioneering vision to life.”

Gimbal | true[X], a provider of location technology and advanced media technologies, has relaunched as Infillion. The name change signals the unification of the company’s product offerings and data capabilities following Gimbal’s acquisition of adtech CTV company true[X] from Disney in 2020. The name Infillion is intended to convey “the infinite possibilities available to the agencies and brands the company serves as a result of the explosive growth in e-commerce and digital media.”

Following reports that it is throttling the performance of thousands of apps, Samsung said it will release a software update that will enable users to have more control over throttling. “Our priority is to deliver the best mobile experience for consumers,” a Samsung said in an email to TechCrunch. “We value the feedback we receive about our products and after careful consideration, we plan to roll out a software update soon so users can control the performance while running game apps.”

Apple hosts its “Peek Performance” event tomorrow, March 8 at 10a PT. The company is expected to show updated devices and at least one new Mac at the virtual presentation, streamed on Apple.com and YouTube.

ADVERTISING & MEASUREMENT

Last week was a big week for Disney news, including Disney Advertising’s declaration that the company is taking a “multifaceted and vendor-agnostic” approach to measurement. “There is a big difference between currency and measurement and as the industry continues to evolve – the only constant is change,” said Lisa Valentino, EVP, Client Solutions & Addressable Enablement, Disney Advertising. “Disney is not in the business of scoring players. It is our responsibility to deliver the best measurement capabilities for our clients that give them visibility into effectiveness and outcomes across our vast portfolio of premium content.” To that end, in addition to joining the Nielsen ONE pilot program in December, Disney Advertising is expanding its relationship with Samba TV to bring Samba’s True Reach and Frequency currency measurement to agencies and holding companies accessing Disney inventory, and has begun work with Comscore and Omnicom Media Group to help advertisers access insights. All told, Disney is working with nearly 100 providers supporting transparency and accuracy.

Horizon Media is Disney Advertising’s first partner for Disney’s Clean Room platform, announced last October, aimed at helping clients understand the measurement of their ads, and developing audiences for targeting ads. “This is the next step to deliver more efficient and successful media campaigns across the Disney footprint,” said David Campanelli, EVP and chief investment officer at Horizon Media. “As the industry continues to move towards outcome-based buys, it’s paramount to have accurate measurement solutions built with integrity.” Disney also said it plans more investment in activation tools and is rolling out a proprietary, privacy-safe identity graph.

Disney is expanding its Self Service business in a bid to democratize access to streaming inventory across its portfolio of brands. Disney Advertising is opening Self-Serve Platform, known as Hulu Ad Manager, to agencies, and launching an on-demand curriculum to empower underrepresented-owned small businesses. Additionally, advertisers will have turnkey access and seamless setup through the self-serve solution, with a faster time from sign-up-to-launch campaigns.

Xandr, a business unit within AT&T, announced a new end-to-end technology platform solution for political advertising that includes holistic functionality for advertisers and publishers to buy and sell political advertising programmatically while maintaining compliance and unlocking political spend in all 50 states. The platform allows political buyers access to specific, localized political geo targeting, to reach audiences up and down the ballot at scale. “Political advertising has always been a nuanced vertical, which is why both buyers and sellers need a nuanced solution,” said Mike Welch, GM, Xandr. “At Xandr, we continue to significantly invest in a platform purpose-built for political to ensure the critical needs of advertisers are met.”

SpringServe, the TV ad serving platform, is launching BidLink, designed to communicate with a publisher’s primary ad server to send dynamic programmatic demand insights from integrated video SSPs, enabling competition between traditional-direct and programmatic campaigns. Publishers can leverage BidLink’s capabilities regardless of which ad server they use. “We developed BidLink to be the best mechanism for unifying ad decisioning across programmatic and traditional direct-sold deals,” said Joe Hirsch, GM of SpringServe. “BidLink provides publishers with an out-of-the-box, fully transparent integration with over 22 SSPs.”

DoubleVerify products for fraud avoidance for CTV, desktop, mobile we and mobile app ads have been accredited by the Media Rating Council. “Our accreditation of DoubleVerify for these pre-bid services represents the latest demonstration of DV’s commitment to quality and to helping advertisers maximize the value of their ad investments,” said George W. Ivie, Executive Director and CEO of the MRC.

Marketing platform AppLovin has agreed to acquire CTV software provider Wurl for $430 million. “AppLovin brings enormous new demand from advertisers and our partnership will enable current customers to realize even more benefits including expanded ad revenue, new viewers, and enhanced distribution to global CTV audiences,” said Wurl CEO Sean Doherty Sr. “Together, we’ll pursue our mission and dramatically impact the CTV market.”

NBCUniversal has teamed with in-game ad platform Anzu.io to grow NBCUniversal’s capabilities in areas like gaming and esports. “NBCUniversal continues to reach consumers at scale on any platform and on every screen. In addition to streaming, gaming is one of the fastest growing ways to reach young audiences,” said Krishan Bhatia, President & Chief Business Officer at NBCUniversal. “This partnership with Anzu will allow our marketers to engage with an audience of over three billion gamers worldwide, and we’re only getting started.” In addition, NBCUniversal has made a small investment in the ad tech startup.

Sell-side advertising platform Magnite has acquired Carbon, a platform that enables publishers to measure, manage and monetize audiences in real time. The acquisition accelerates Magnite’s seller-first, privacy-focused identity and audience solutions focused around first-party segments.

Total ad spend in OTT reached nearly $1.3 billion in 2021. On average, OTT represents only 3% of total digital spend per month, but the market growing considerably, notes MediaRadar in a new report. Findings include:
* In Q4 2021, discovery+, HBO Max, Hulu, Paramount+, and Peacock accounted for 65% of total tracked OTT spend (nearly $438m).
* In 2021, 5,530 total advertisers ran ads across these five platforms. Across this set of advertisers, there were almost 500,000 ads being placed in the second half of 2021.
* There was an increase of 22% digital spend in Q4 from Q3. Q3 went slightly down to -2% from Q2. Q2 was up 14% from Q1.“
Advertisers are increasingly enhancing their ad buys with OTT,” said Todd Krizelman, CEO & Co-Founder, MediaRadar. “The rise in viewership coupled with limited advertising per show is a great place for brands to get noticed and not be lost among many ad messages.”

Helixa is launching an updated, data-driven audience intelligence platform that incorporates customer feedback and enables users to access more granular insights for US and Global audiences, with enhanced speed. The new Discovery platform is an enhancement to Helixa’s SaaS audience intelligence platform, which allows marketers, media, brands and agencies to use social data to provide research insights into audiences’ demographics and psychographics engagements and behaviors, as well as segmentation.

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DEALS

TV measurement company iSpot has acquired Tunity, the TV-viewing solutions and analytics company that measures consumer viewing habits in public locations. “The existing ratings models have proven to woefully misrepresent viewership in public spaces, which has an impact on the business models for the buy and sell side,” said Sean Muller, CEO and founder at iSpot. “iSpot’s acquisition of Tunity will enable us to meet a massive demand in the marketplace with a more unified, independent measurement system that tracks audience consumption of ads and programming on a second-by-second basis, across platforms and viewing experiences.”

CTV advertising delivery and measurement platform Innovid has completed its previously announced acquisition of TVSquared, a measurement and attribution platform for converged TV. “We believe the combination of independent global ad serving and cross-platform measurement sits at the heart of solving TV measurement’s biggest challenges,” said Zvika Netter CEO and Co-founder, Innovid. “We’ve spent over a decade building foundational ad delivery and personalization technology to power TV across channels and devices. Now, together with TVSquared by Innovid, we provide advertisers a complete view of the total TV and digital universe through a scalable, currency-grade measurement platform.”

Nielsen has expanded its data agreement with Experian for the Nielsen Identity System. The deal “immediately enriches Nielsen’s Identity System in the US, and showcases our commitment to independent measurement and marketplace interoperability,” said Mainak Mazumdar, Chief Data and rResearch Officer, Nielsen. “This is an important milestone as we continue to evolve our technologies and methodologies as we move toward Nielsen One, underpinning a strong digital measurement capability which helps with the vision of a true cross-platform that measures across all screens.”

In a $72 million deal, Netflix will purchase Next Games, the Finnish games developer whose credits include the mobile game “Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales.” The company has approximately 120 employees, and 95 percent of its revenues are generated from in-game purchases.

Digital data pioneer Datonics and Atedra, provider of digital advertising solutions, have partnered to release a new CTV data offering aimed at advertisers looking to reach audiences through streaming media. The new CTV data within the Atedra platform offers advertisers greater scale, improved accuracy, and more segments for CTV ad campaigns.

Blockchain-based rights-tracking platform Ikast.io, owned by Getblocks, has chosen NPAW as its strategic video analytics technology partner to reinforce its data management capacities. Ikast.io is designed to track viewership history in real time and enable dynamic, transparent, and accurate real-time reporting and insights into the authenticity of content to detect its unauthorized use and distribution

STREAMING

Disney+ will introduce an ad-supported subscription in addition to its option without ads, beginning in the US in late 2022. “Expanding access to Disney+ to a broader audience at a lower price point is a win for everyone – consumers, advertisers, and our storytellers,” said Kareem Daniel, Chairman, Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution. “More consumers will be able to access our amazing content. Advertisers will be able to reach a wider audience, and our storytellers will be able to share their incredible work with more fans and families.”

Verizon customers will have exclusive access to +play, a platform enabling users to discover, purchase and manage subscriptions across entertainment, audio, gaming, fitness, music, lifestyle and more. Through new partnerships with Netflix, Peloton, Live Nation’s Veeps and featuring services like Disney+, discovery+, A+E Networks, AMC+ and others, the hub will give Verizon customers a simpler way to access and take advantage of deals for content services.

NBCUniversal is terminating its next-day streaming deal with Hulu, a move that will go into effect with the new TV season in September – and strengthen NBCU streamer Peacock. Shows including “Saturday Night Live” and “The Voice,” along with the rest of NBCU’s broadcast and cable lineup for next season, won’t be available to stream on Hulu, although Hulu will still have rights to catalog content. Comcast has 33% ownership of Hulu, but Disney has operational control; it’s expected that Comcast will sell that ownership stake.

Three Fox FAST channels, LiveNOW from Fox, Fox Soul and the previously announced Fox Weather, are now available on the Amazon news app on Fire TV. The agreement is Fox’s first representing its full portfolio of network-based FAST and AVOD content.

UK game show “Taskmaster” has launched an SVOD service aimed at viewers in the US and Canada, who would be able to see all seasons of the British show as well as international versions and specials. Local versions have aired in Sweden, Finland, Norway, Belgium, Spain and New Zealand; season 13 of the UK version premieres this spring.

It’s not just about TikTok for Gen Z. Seventy-eight percent of 13- to 24-year-olds stream TV content (TV shows, movies, sports, etc.) weekly, versus 79% who stream short-form content, according to Horowitz Research’s State of Gen Z 2021 study. And while almost all of Gen Z use their smartphone every day, 66% also use a TV set. “It’s important for marketers to keep in mind that media consumption among Gen Z is not about absolutes; it’s not true that they ‘never’ watch long-form TV content, that they ‘never’ use a screen other than their phones, or that they ‘never’ watch live TV,” said Adriana Waterston, Chief Revenue Officer and Insights & Strategy Lead at Horowitz. “Understanding that there are nuances of Gen Z’s media habits gives marketers and media brands the opportunity to increase engagement and create unique experiences for this generation of digital natives across multiple platforms and through a variety of formats.”

Allen Media Group’s free streaming platform Local Now is the new home of PBS Digital Studios’ content. PBS Digital Studios’ original series and short-form programming including “Be Smart,” “Eons” and “Sound Field” average 29 million users and 50 million views monthly on YouTube. Local Now offers more than 420 free streaming channels.

Kantar and fuboTV have partnered to leverage Kantar’s media effectiveness product Brand Lift Insights, allowing advertisers and marketers running campaigns on fuboTV to better understand the effectiveness of their CTV advertising and benchmark their performance against that of their competitors. “Our research shows that streaming is a category that continues to grow, not just in terms of active viewers but also ad receptivity, meaning consumers are interested in advertising featured on video streaming services,” said Marco Parente, SVP of Product at Kantar. “We know marketing campaigns are seven times more impactful among a receptive audience and leveraging the medium in the right way is crucial for a campaign’s success. That’s why partnerships like the one we have with fuboTV are critical in helping marketers evaluate and understand how to get the full value from their investments on CTV.”

Funimation Global Group content has moved to Crunchyroll, making good on the promise to anime fans that the merger of Funimation and Crunchyroll would bring together the previously separate services into a single subscription. Crunchyroll’s pricing remains unchanged. “When we brought Funimation and Crunchyroll together last year, our top priority was to put fans first,” said Colin Decker, CEO of Crunchyroll. “Unifying all of our brands and services under the Crunchyroll brand globally enables us to offer more value than ever before as we combine subs, dubs, simulcasts, library, music, movies, manga—all into one subscription.”

POLARIS, the 100% black-owned television, digital and social media platform and VIZIO announced that a record number of viewers tuned in to the POLARIS channel for curated content celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Black History Month and content leading up to the Super Bowl. Highlights include average session times increased 2x for the channel during the Martin Luther King Jr. marathon; 6.5x month-over-month increase in sessions and a 13.5x increase in viewing minutes over the same period (December 2021- February 2022); and Big Game-related content on POLARIS increased average audience and average viewership minutes by 2x in February.

Cynopsis Team