A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM PREMION

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TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew endured a fierce grilling during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on Thursday, but found support on the platform from users who criticized the lawmakers for unfair questions and a lack of tech literacy. “We love our vibrant creator community, and have been overwhelmed and humbled by their support for TikTok and for Shou,” said TikTok Spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter. “It seems clear that much of America did not experience the hearing the same way many political insiders and reporters did.” On Friday, Chew posted a video thanking users for their support, saying TikTok would continue its efforts to protect teens, store American data on US soil, maintain freedom of expression on the platform and use third-parties to ensure transparency. The hearing took place after the Biden administration demanded that the Chinese-owned parent company of TikTok sell its shares or risk getting banned in the United States.

While TikTok supporters had a point about the posturing, combativeness and apparent ignorance of some members of Congress, valid questions were raised. Data was a main concern – where user data is sold, and how it can securely be moved to the US. Chew said he would “get back” to Congress about data.

Proprietary source code for Twitter’s platform and internal tools were leaked online, according to court filings. The company issued a subpoena on March 24 to the software collaboration platform GitHub in an attempt to identify the person responsible for sharing the code. The source code may have been public for several months before being removed, according to The New York Times.

In more Twitter news, Elon Musk sent an email to employees on Friday saying the company is worth about $20 billion, down from the $44 billion he paid for it in October. The email announced a new stock compensation program that will award stock in X Corporation, the holding company Musk used to buy Twitter. “Twitter s being reshaped rapidly,” he told employees, adding that he believed Twitter could someday be worth $250 billion.

Google Play prevented over $2 billion in fraudulent and abusive transactions last year, reported Google developers in a blog post. “Bad actors looking to carry out abuse on apps implement an array of strategies across both one-time purchases as well as auto-renewing payments,” said the post. “Preventing such fraud and abuse requires a comprehensive approach, consisting of automated solutions and an array of internal monitoring tools combined with human expertise.”

OpenAI is rolling out plugins in ChatGPT in order to study their real-world use. The plugins, which grant it access to third-party knowledge sources and databases, including the web, are available in alpha to ChatGPT users and developers on the waitlist.

Snap is launching AR Enterprise Services, offering Lenses and Filters to businesses to help draw and serve new customers. Snap’s Shopping Suite SaaS offers AR try-on to virtually try new styles; a 3D viewer to explore products; fit and sizing recommendation tech; and enterprise manager to host and manage digital assets, create AR experiences using Snap’s SDK and look at performance analytics. “Over the last decade, we’ve been hard at work bringing fun and personal AR experiences to Snapchatters,” said Jill Popelka, Head of AR Enterprise Services at Snap. “In the next decade, we’re excited to take our world-class AR technology to business’ websites and apps. We look forward to making the shopping experience more delightful for consumers and transforming businesses around the world with AR Enterprise Services,”

Microsoft has introduced a generative image creation feature to Bing and Microsoft Edge, using OpenAI’s DALL-E to create text-prompted images. The new tool will allow users to generate images using their own words. “By typing in a description of an image, providing additional context like location or activity, and choosing an art style, Image Creator will generate an image from your own imagination. It’s like your creative copilot,” said a company blog post. “Just type something like draw an image’ or ‘create an image’ as a prompt in chat to get creating a visual for a newsletter to friends or as inspiration for redecorating your living room.”

Sales of Amazon’s Fire TV streaming devices and smart TVs have topped 200 million units, following a milestone of 150 million Fire TV devices announced in January of last year. Amazon is expanding its offerings to include three new sizes of the Fire TV Omni QLED Series lineup as well as its lowest-priced HDTV to date, the Fire TV 2-Series, which starts at $200 for the 32-inch model.

Imagine Communications has partnered with Vizrt, integrating its Viz Vectar Plus cloud live production solution with the Imagine Aviator Make TV cloud playout solution. “The demand for cloud-based production and playout continues to grow,” said Brendon Mills, GM of Networking and Playout at Imagine. “By partnering with Vizrt, we’re making it easier than ever for our mutual customers to leverage the flexibility and agility of the cloud to quickly respond to evolving market demands.”

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM PREMION

PREMION

Viewers are as Dynamic as the Content they Watch.
Leverage the Power of Persona-Based Targeting with
PREMION AUDIENCE FIRST

LEADING THE EVOLUTION IN LOCAL OTT & CTV ADVERTISING
TAG CERTIFIED AGAINST AD FRAUD
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ADVERTISING

NBCUniversal Checkout, part of NBCU’s One Platform Commerce Suite, is now powering the NBC Today shopping experience for “Jill’s Steals & Deals.” During the live broadcast show, Jill Martin offers a curated selection of products; viewers can scan the on-screen QR code with their mobile devices to purchase the products directly on a “Today” webpage. “After 13 years of sharing the best products across style, beauty, and home, enabling NBCUniversal Checkout as our shopping cart platform for Steals & Deals not only preserves the seamless viewing experience, but demonstrates the power of NBCUniversal’s properties and technologies,” said Ashley Parrish, SVP, NBC News Group Commerce.

Advanced media buying platform Infillion announced the launch of InfillionX, a digital advertising product that builds and executes campaigns across the Infillion platform. As the first full-funnel media product delivering against any KPI combination, InfillionX aims to optimize any campaign with sequential messaging, custom targeting and guaranteed attention while also leveraging geolocation and store visit data. InfillionX comes one year after Infillion was created out of the merger of TrueX, Gimbal, and live fan and digital OOH company InStadium.

Mobile marketing analytics suite Adjust has unveiled Pulse, a monitoring and alerting solution that offers insights enabling marketers to know when to optimize their mobile campaign performance. “The sheer amount of data available and the constant stream of updates mobile marketers have to wade through can be overwhelming when running multiple campaigns simultaneously. It’s easy to miss essential updates amidst all the noise,” said Katie Madding, Chief Product Officer at Adjust. “Pulse is a direct result of our ongoing dialogue with our customers who want freedom and flexibility to focus on what matters.”

The same ad yields twice the attention on low-clutter vs. high-clutter pages, according to new research from Magna in partnership with eyeo titled “Reaching & Influencing Ad-Filtering Users.” Ad-filtering users are more likely to influence purchase decisions, across tech (81% ad-filtering users vs 74% non-filtering users); grocery (78% vs. 75%); financial services (74% vs. 64%) and auto (69% vs 64%). “There is a growing audience of young consumers who advertisers should be paying close attention to – consumers who are opting for an ad filtered-online experience,” said Kara Manatt, EVP, Managing Director, Intelligence Solutions, MAGNA. “Interestingly, they don’t flat out reject ads but rather want to avoid intrusive formats and ad clutter on the web pages they visit. GenZ and Millennial audiences are not only a critical customer base for many industry verticals, but the reduced number of ads on webpages creates a premium environment for any advertiser, with better awareness, favorability, impact and sustainability metrics.”

Young women are an overlooked opportunity when it comes to in-game marketing. According to Kantar’s US Monitor Youth Spotlight report, 85% of Gen Z women who play video games play at least once a week vs. 93% of Gen Z men who play video games. Other findings include:
· 55% of young women and 40% of young men gamers say the amount of pressure they put on themselves is “a lot.”
· “It’s fun,” “something to do with friends,” “escapism,” and to “relax” are considered the top 4 most important parts of young women gamers’ gaming hobby.
· Gender-based harassment detracts from the joy of gaming, with 53% of young women gamers and 42% of young men gamers saying they have been either bullied, harassed, or shamed online.

OOH media agency Talon has acquired Novus Media Canada. “The addition of Novus Canada marks another important step in our growth strategy,” said Talon Group CEO Barry Cupples. “We’re delivering best-in-class services, data and technologies that enable brands to take advantage of a resurgent Out of Home market.”

DoubleVerify announced that DV’s measurement solutions are now available for all Netflix advertisers, enabling them to ensure that their video ads are safe from fraud and invalid traffic and are fully viewable by real people. “Our partnership ensures that campaigns on Netflix fulfill essential quality standards that drive optimal outcomes,” said Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify. The integration was announced in October.

Netflix is also getting a hand from Integral Ad Science, which launched Viewability and Invalid Traffic verification for the streamer’s ad-supported plan. “Marketers now have powerful new tools to ensure that the ads they run on Netflix are engaging viewers,” said Lisa Utzschneider, CEO, IAS. “By launching this partnership, advertisers can invest with confidence as they look to expand their media strategies to Netflix’s premium inventory.”

Daasity, the ELT+ data solution built for omnichannel consumer brands, has expanded attribution functionality to give merchants deeper insight into how their marketing tactics are performing. Using Daasity’s attribution models, marketers are better able to assess which touchpoints and channels should receive credit for a conversion and how their team can best optimize spend. Merchants can choose from 8 attribution models in order to compare the performance of ad and marketing channels.

Marketing technology platform Mobvista has launched XMP to address the growing complexity of managing user acquisition across multiple channels. Designed for app marketers, XMP offers a cross-channel dashboard, a reporting solution with multi-dimensional and visual data analysis, and creative management capabilities. App marketers can create campaigns, upload new assets and automatically manage campaigns top media platforms as well as multiple SDK Ad networks.

Innovid announced a partnership to power more personalized ad creative for Walmart DSP, the demand-side platform for the omnichannel retail media business Walmart Connect. In addition to creative personalization, optimization and interactive experiences for placements like CTV, Innovid will also offer ad delivery services. “Through this partnership, our customers will be able to create even more personalized and relevant ad campaigns that drive better results, while maintaining a seamless, efficient workflow,” said Krista Panoff, SVP Global Enterprise Development, Innovid.

MEASUREMENT

Google’s YouTube has been invited to participate in the video measurement JIC formed to certify new cross-media advertising vendors/currencies for premium video advertising. “The JIC’s initial focus is on long-form video and while we believe content quality and brand safety matters, it does not present a barrier for any platform to participate in the JIC,” said the group in a statement. “The JIC has officially extended an invite to Google, and continues to have ongoing conversations with several media companies and streaming platforms who have all proactively reached out to add their voice to the conversation as we define the future of video measurement. The perspective of every supplier of long-form video should be involved, and we welcome all of their active participation.”

Warner Bros. Discovery has partnered with Comscore and VideoAmp to enable alternative currencies for national advertisers transacting across its linear inventory and data-driven advanced advertising solutions in the 2023-2024 Upfront. “Optionality has always been a key part of our approach to measurement and currency, and we are excited to operationalize against multiple currencies at scale and unlock more value for our partners this Upfront season,” said Andrea Zapata, EVP, Head of Ad Sales Research, Measurement and Insights at WBD.

PubMatic and Proximic by Comscore announced the integration of Proximic by Comscore’s Predictive Audiences and Content Targeting solutions into the PubMatic platform. Data from Proximic by Comscore is now available to media buyers via PubMatic’s Connect platform, enabling PubMatic’s clients to leverage new targeting options to reach key audiences in premium, brand safe environments across desktop, mobile, and CTV.
 

STREAMING

Tubi, Fox Corporation’s ad-supported video-on-demand service, announced new planning tools and partnerships at its Tubi Connect event in NYC. The new features include integration with VideoAmp’s Premium Video Planning Tool; LiveRamp TV Activation; alternative audience measurement; and pause ads, launching later this year with messaging presented when viewers pause what they’re watching.

Fubo is adding MLV.TV to its lineup of live baseball coverage, ahead of Major League Baseball’s Opening Day on March 30. YouTube TV recently dropped MLB.TV and MLB Network carriage.

Demand Africa has expanded the distribution of its FAST channel to Amazon Freevee in the US. “DA’s new agreement with Freevee and overall expansion efforts reflects the increased demand for diverse stories from Black voices worldwide,” said Chris Eckman, SVP Operations & OTT Services, The Africa Channel. “With this increased distribution, Demand Africa stands ready to meet that rising demand and reinforce its commitment to supporting and celebrating partners in the Black content creation community by sharing their stories worldwide.”

When it comes to streaming habits, both the general market and diverse audiences show no preference for SVOD or AVOD apps, according to App Science’s “2023 US Audience Trends report: Life of a Streamer.” All groups have an even distribution of both SVOD and AVOD apps in their top streaming apps. Additional findings include:
· Streamers continue to access linear-first content and channels through streaming platforms across CTV and mobile devices. Top 10 linear channels skew broadcast channels on CTV and cable network channels on mobile.
· There’s a strong likelihood that SVOD viewers are also AVOD viewers, but the opposite is less likely. In a comparison of AVOD and SVOD viewers, the SVOD group and their top choices were more likely to over index, which means they were more likely to use certain apps than AVOD viewers. In turn, AVOD viewers had fewer top indexed apps and their top choices were more on par with the SVOD group.
· The AVOD viewer is likely to be more budget conscious in their purchasing habits. They highly index on ad-free supported platforms and apps and are also likely to use cost-free services.
· The SVOD viewer is more likely than the AVOD viewer to pay for membership payment models, such as other SVOD subscriptions and membership programs. They’re also more likely to travel with loyalty and credit card programs.

Nextologies LIMITED, focused on broadcast video and streaming solutions, is using its solution set to serve the live event market with the launch of a new company: 10TX. By leveraging the Nextologies IP distribution solution, 10TX is offering live events the first-to-market solution delivers in several modalities, including satellite, fiber, and public internet, allowing event producers to evolve their workflows securely and to get more value out of their transmission budgets.

Cynopsis Team