Spotify is suspending its services in Russia, citing recently enacted legislation making it illegal to discredit the Russian military. The company expects service to be fully suspended by early April.

Meta has partnered with 3D commerce platform Vntana for a tech integration making it easier for brands to employ three-dimensional ads on Facebook and Instagram. Brands can upload 3D models of their products and convert them into ads; users will be able to turn images around to view it from different angles. “3D and AR open a new door of advertising possibilities for retail and ecommerce brands,” said Chris Barbour, Director, Augmented Reality Business Development and Partnerships, Meta Reality Labs.

The European Union passed new antitrust regulations last week. The Digital Markets Act (DMA) rules will apply to “gatekeepers,” or large technology companies like Apple, Meta and Google. “The gatekeepers will now have to comply with a well-defined set of obligations and prohibitions,” said Margrethe Vestager, European Commissioner for Competition. Those include enabling users to unsubscribe from core platform services under similar conditions to subscription; giving sellers access to advertising performance data on the platform; and allowing app developers fair access to the supplementary functionalities of smartphones, among other requirements.

Google announced a pilot program in select countries to explore third-party billing options. “This pilot will allow a small number of participating developers to offer an additional billing option next to Google Play’s billing system and is designed to help us explore ways to offer this choice to users, while maintaining our ability to invest in the ecosystem,” said Sameer Samat, VP, Product Management, in a blog post. “This is a significant milestone and the first on any major app store — whether on mobile, desktop, or game consoles.” The first partner is Spotify, which will introduce Google Play alongside its current billing system.

The Media Rating Council offered an update on the statuses of TV audience measurement companies it is currently reviewing, including Nielsen. “While auditing of certain related areas already has been done, Nielsen’s remediation work will extend into Q2 2022, and therefore a complete audit report is not expected to be delivered to MRC until the end of Q3,” said the MRC. Nielsen’s “Big Data” inputs to its future TV measurements is currently in process, with an audit report expected to be delivered to MRC in the middle of the third quarter. An audit report for Comscore is expected to be delivered to an MRC audit committee in the third quarter.

Apple device-owning Arizona residents will be the first to be able to use their devices to present their IDs, starting at select TSA checkpoints. More states are on the way.

Technology companies generated the most positive coverage around the gender pay gap, led by Microsoft, according to data released by Signal AI analyzing media coverage from January 2021 to January 2022. Amazon came in second, followed by Apple, Alphabet, Johnson & Johnson and Meta. “According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021, ‘it will now take 135.6 years to close the gender gap worldwide,’ jumping up from 99.5 years before the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis,” said Hanna Lindén, Chief People Officer, Signal AI. “This is clearly one of the foremost issues that the business world needs to solve, and this data aims to highlight how leading brands are faring in terms of their efforts to highlight the gender pay gap.”

More than half (54%) of consumers have heard of the metaverse, and 21% say they’ve heard a lot, according to Hub’s “A New Frontier” study. But only 15% said they feel very confident they could explain what it is to someone else. Among gamers, that number rises to 38%. “For something that doesn’t exist yet, consumer awareness of the metaverse is high,” said Jon Giegengack, Hub Founder and Principal. “But few people understand what it is, or more importantly why they should care about it.”

Charter Communications announced the starting speed of its flagship Spectrum Internet service is now 200 Mbps in all markets, matching the availability of the company’s 400 Mbps and gigabit plans across virtually its entire 41-state service area. The company is doubling the starting speed to 200 Mbps in 33 markets comprising nearly 3 million homes.

Verizon, Snap Inc. and Cirque du Soleil debuted an augmented reality Snapchat Lens that transports the “O” performance from Bellagio in Las Vegas to Snapchat via Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband. Using advanced motion capture technology, the surrealism of “O” is recreated in a virtual environment. The three minute experience leverages the increased capacity, low latency and fast speeds of Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband network, which is available in select areas, to intertwine segments of the “O” show for the Snapchat Lens exclusively for Verizon customers with a 5G smartphone on a 5G plan. There’s also a 4G Lens version for those not on Verizon.

Telstra is building and maintaining three new dedicated teleports across Australia to provide satellite gateway services for OneWeb in the Southern Hemisphere. Delivered as part of a 10-year deal, the two companies are combining their resources to provide high-speed, low-latency network connectivity across underserved regions.

Sixty watchdog organizations have banded together to urge Congress to pass new laws that would protect minors, including a ban on serving behaviorally targeted ads to young people. “We are deeply concerned that young people, who are spending more and more time online, are being targeted in unfair ways by online platforms and apps that take advantage of their developmental vulnerabilities,” said the group.

ESPORTS & GAMING BRAND ACTIVATION
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Wednesday, May 4th @ 10:00am ET

This by-invitation-only event is for brands or agencies activating or looking to activate in the highly engaged 18–35-year-old fanbase.

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MEASUREMENT

NBCU will offer iSpot.tv data as its official cross-platform “currency partner” starting with the May upfront. “Now is the time to embrace change,” said Kelly Abcarian, EVP of Measurement & Impact for NBCU, at the company’s One22 event. “We’re heading to Radio City, and this year’s upfront, ready to activate against iSpot’s cross-platform audience.” NBCU has certified eight more companies for audience measurement and audience verification. That said, “Our certifications aren’t permanent or set in stone,” noted Abcarian. “In a space as dynamic as measurement, companies must keep pace with consumer behavior.”

605 announced the availability of Advanced Audiences delivered through 605 EXCHAN6E. Advanced Audiences, the first road-mapped deliverable from 605’s new media trading currency, will be available to customers using Xandr’s sell-side and buy-side advanced TV platforms, Monetize TV and Invest TV, to transact on data-driven linear campaigns. “We announced 605 EXCHAN6E in December 2021 with the intention of bringing features to the market throughout 2022,” said 605 Founder and CEO Kristin Dolan. “The launch of Advanced Audiences is a testament to our efforts and marks the first of many industry-leading measurement solutions we have in store.”

Fox Corporation unveiled ATLAS, a new proprietary technology solution bringing contextual alignment to digital video, at the company’s Content Drives Commerce Brand Partnership Summit on Wednesday. Developed by the Fox Ad Technology unit, the video intelligence platform enables enhanced contextual targeting and provides advertisers the ability to connect with relevant content in the right environment in real-time. “ATLAS is another illustration of Fox’s commitment to providing solutions that deliver the necessary impact and outcomes for our ad partners,” said Jeff Collins, EVP of Ad Sales, Fox News Media. “Contextual targeting will continue to grow in importance as third party data targeting options continue to decline.”

Upwave, the analytics platform for brand advertising, announced the continuation of their collaboration with the Ad Council, partnering with the organization to measure impact on public service campaigns. “Our partnership with Upwave provides us with a cross-media measurement solution to understand the effectiveness of our ads in resonating with target audiences,” said Anne Deo, SVP of Analytics, Ad Council. “Upwave’s team and platform were a valued part of our capabilities on behalf of the COVID-19 Vaccine Education initiative. We look forward to continuing our work together on future social impact campaigns.”

ADVERTISING

DoubleVerify announced the discovery of an ad fraud scheme that attempts to steal over $8 million per month in ad spend across CTV and mobile video. ViperBot strips the code that verifies ad impressions from providers, then conceals and redirects the code through real devices to hide the fraudulent activity. ViperBot is “one of the most sophisticated” fraud schemes ever identified by DoubleVerify, said CEO Mark Zagorski. DoubleVerify said its clients are protected from the fraud.

Audiencerate, the identity hub enabling compliant data-driven advertising, has partnered with people-based marketing technology platform LiveIntent to bring advertisers and marketers audiences built in email and delivered to the web. The partnership will allow marketers to access LiveIntent’s full audience taxonomy in the DV360 open marketplace for programmatic campaign activation via the Audiencerate proprietary data onboarding platform.

Clinch has teamed with OUTFRONT Media as its dynamic creative optimization partner, enabling advertisers to leverage Clinch’s personalization platform to execute and manage contextually relevant advertiser campaigns across OUTFRONT’s US-based digital-out-of-home boards. “Digital-out-of-home is growing, but often regarded as having a high barrier to entry given the varying screen sizes, complex distribution methods, and cumbersome creative production process,” said Oz Etzioni, CEO and Co-founder, Clinch. “Through our partnership with OUTFRONT we are developing industry standards for DCO in digital-out-of-home through our first-to-market personalization capabilities, and the ability to plan and scale DOOH campaigns from one unified platform.”

Ad tech company TripleLift acquired first-party data activation platform 1plusX with the aim of bolstering its ability to help publishers and advertisers address their audiences with privacy-centric solutions.

STREAMING

Fox News Media’s subscription streaming service Fox Nation is now available on DirecTV as a premium add-on, with plans to expand availability to DirecTV Stream this summer. Additionally, FAST weather service Fox Weather is scheduled to make its debut on DirecTV Stream beginning March 29.

Kids streamer Sensical has struck licensing deals for content from existing partners including Cyber Group Studios’ “Gigantosaurus,” and WildBrain’s “Strawberry Shortcake’s Berry Bitty Adventures.” New digital-first video content creators and studios alliances are Edutainment’s “Super Geek Heroes,” “Little Smart Planet” and “Sir Linkalot”; Goes To Eleven Media’s “In A World Music Kids” series; Hammershark Media’s “Twenty Trucks” and “Truck Tunes” videos; “History For Humans”; “Look, Listen & Learn”; Simple Alien Inc.’s “FoodTeenies”; “The Wise Channel”; along with nature shorts from Marty Calabrese and Valji Varia; and videos from art teacher Bethany Thiele.

Cynopsis Team