Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference has been set for June 5-9 at Apple Park in Cupertino, including a special day for developers and students on June 5. The event’s keynote and State of the Union will once again be livestreamed.

About 60% of Americans who know TikTok is owned by China-based ByteDance are likely to support a ban on the app, versus 27% who are unaware of TikTok’s connection to China, according to a Pew Research Center survey of Americans age 18+. Overall, 50% support a ban, 22% oppose it and 28% are uncertain. Among TikTok users, only 19% are in favor of a ban.

With the future of TikTok uncertain, ByteDance pushed Lemon8 into the top 10 in Apple’s App Store last week. The photo-sharing app, launched in Japan in 2020, had never before broken into the top 200, and remains among the top 50 free apps.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak are among the tech leaders who signed an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on the development of advanced A.I. systems. Over 1100 signatories urged technology companies to cease training A.I. systems that would be “more powerful than GPT-4,” which is the latest large language processing A.I. developed by San Francisco company OpenAI. The letter cites risks with A.I. systems such as GPT-4 now “becoming human-competitive at general tasks,” with such systems being used to generate misinformation on a massive scale as well as the mass automation of jobs. The letter says that decisions about A.I. “must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders” and that more powerful A.I. systems should only “be developed once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.”

Twitter revoked legacy checkmarks on April 1, and starting April 15, only verified accounts will be eligible to be in Twitter’s “For You” discovery feed. “It’s the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over,” tweeted Elon Musk. “It is otherwise a hopeless losing battle.”

Meanwhile, Twitter rival T2 introduced a new verification process, “Get the Checkmark,” to coincide with Twitter removing legacy verification checkmarks for users who aren’t paying for a Twitter Blue subscription.

YouTube has added YouTube Shorts-related data to its “Total Reach” metric, expanding its Analytics for Artists tool to give artists an overview of how their music is reaching audiences across the platform. “Shorts are the appetizer to the entrée,” wrote Lyor Cohen, YouTube’s Global Head of Music, in a blog post. “They are the entry point, leading fans to discover the depth of an artist’s catalog, including music videos, interviews, live performances, lyric videos, and more.”

Senators are giving another shot to passing a bill that would allow news publishers and broadcasters to jointly negotiate with large online platforms. “Local news is facing an existential crisis, from ad revenues plummeting and newsrooms across the country closing to artificial intelligence tools taking content,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar. “To preserve strong, independent journalism, news organizations must be able to negotiate on a level playing field with the online platforms that dominate news distribution and digital advertising.” The Journalism Competition and Preservation Act would grant an antitrust exemption to news organizations with fewer than 1,500 employees, enabling those groups to hold talks with online platforms that have at least 50 million U.S.-based users. Versions of the bill have been introduced in the past, but not made it to a full Senate vote.

Digital out of home media owner Ocean Outdoor has struck an exclusive partnership with the Web3 engagement platform SmartMedia Technologies enabling Ocean to leverage The SmartMedia Stack, SMT’s self-serve, no-code, drag, drop and distribute studio. Using Ocean Labs’ technology packages and fast wifi connections, outdoor audiences can connect to full motion screens via their mobile phones to access token powered games, either collecting objects in real time or using their handsets to control different objects to receive a branded or personalized NFT, powered by SMT.

Charter Communications announced the availability of Advanced WiFi for Spectrum Business customers across its 41-state service area. Powered by Charter’s latest WiFi technology, Advanced WiFi offers small and medium-sized businesses a connectivity solution with speed, security and coverage enhancements.

Video technology platform The Experience Company announced the launch of AI-driven recommendations and premium video libraries for publishers. The technology leverages AI-based algorithms to find the most contextually relevant video for each article as well as the highest-yielding feed for a webpage. The new capabilities have proven to increase revenue for publishers by 17% on average and drive dwell time on video players by 50%. Growth is also significant in other valuable business areas such as audience engagement, recirculation, and subscriptions.

AR game development company Mirrorscape will collaborate with Qualcomm Technologies to enable Mirrorscape’s ARcana gaming platform on AR glasses. The ARcana platform, which supports tabletop roleplaying games, is a virtual tabletop that integrates mixed reality technology into traditional gameplay.

Basis Technologies, provider of cloud-based workflow automation and business intelligence software for marketing and advertising, announced a capability to use marketers’ first party CRM data to engage existing customers across any digital device. The feature, which helps advertisers overcome signal loss challenges, is automated in the Basis platform through an integration with LiveRamp.

ADVERTISING

Creator marketing platform LTK has debuted a social media advertising solution for brands to further leverage LTK Creator content to drive business outcomes. The new LTK Boost allows brands to amplify creator collaboration content directly from the creator’s social media handles. “Creators are undoubtedly having an impact on consumer shopping behaviors. 92% of Gen Z – a group that will make up the largest consumer segment in a few years – rely on creators to inform their purchases across virtually every category,” said Kristi O’Brien, General Manager of the LTK Brand Platform. “And, creators are the number one most trusted source to help with purchase decisions for Gen Z and Millennials – beating social media ads and celebrities. That’s why we continue to introduce solutions like LTK Media Boosting to help brands to fully harness the power of creators and reach their customers efficiently and effectively,”

Digital media and merchandising platform Cooler Screens announced the launch of “Own the Moment,” a campaign to help CPG brands capture consumer attention and drive engagement. “We are providing CPG brands the ability to capture the hearts and minds of consumers during the most pivotal moments of the year,” said Arsen Avakian, Founder and CEO of Cooler Screens. Own the Moment is similar to a homepage takeover ad. Participating CPG brands can take over Cooler Screens’ entire in-store audience network during key calendar moments, delivering high-resolution, contextually-targeted video ads. Every ad is also delivered right before they make a purchase selection. Additionally, CPGs can track and measure the performance of their Own the Moment campaigns.

Sportradar announced the integration of its ad:s technology into Snapchat, creating a new channel for betting operators to engage and acquire customers using the sports technology company’s paid social media advertising service. Snapchat’s advanced age and location targeting capabilities guarantee that only legally qualified audiences are reached.

Integral Ad Science’s Publisher Optimization Solution is now available within the Amazon Publisher Services Connections Marketplace. APS, a suite of cloud services, helps publishers build, monetize, and grow their digital media business. IAS is now the first verification provider accessible within the APS Connections Marketplace, enabling publishers to activate multiple technology solutions with little or no new development work.

OOH advertising revenue increased 20.7% in 2022 compared to the previous year, with 2022 outpacing the previous record set in 2019, reports the OAAA. A key driver for the year, the digital out of home segment jumped 24.2% compared to 2021. The news aligns with recent research from MAGNA, which showed that OOH produced greater growth than any other core ad medium in the past year.

Moving to 2023, digital ad spend dipped 2% in January and February of this year, according to Standard Media Index. While ad networks/exchanges saw a 2% lift, that wasn’t enough to make up for declines in digital video, search, general content and social media site. Overall US ad spending was down 6.9%.

Omnichannel ad exchange Sharethrough announced the launch of its Carbon Emissions Estimator, a free tool to help educate the advertising industry on the approximate amount of carbon produced by a digital media campaign. Advertisers can input details about a potential campaign, such as number of impressions, type of creative and the type of inventory, and the tool will calculate the estimated number of metric tons of carbon that the campaign will generate.

German cleantech startup Numbat GmbH has selected the Broadsign OOH advertising technology platform to build, power, and scale advertising capabilities for its network of sustainable, high-power electric vehicle charging stations in Europe. The network is expected to reach 600 units in Germany by the end of 2023, and with planned expansion, more than twelve hundred units across Europe in 2024.

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MEASUREMENT

The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement announced the launch of a study focused on assessing the opportunities that exist for enhancing the value of Smart TV data as an input to TV measurement solutions. “Available from tens of millions of households, Smart TV data captures viewing behavior on a second-by-second basis, and can support both content and advertising measurement use cases,” said Jon Watts, Managing Director, CIMM. “However, the ecosystem is fragmented with limited standardization, content identification reference libraries are rarely comprehensive, and measurement vendors have to determine how to deal with unidentified or unmatched fingerprints. Many industry participants believe that there are opportunities to address these issues and we’re excited to work with our members to assess the various options, bringing together networks and programmers, CTV OEMs, agencies, measurement providers and other industry participants in a truly collaborative and inclusive undertaking.”

The Advertising Research Foundation has called for a “gradual migration” away from “TV households” to “TV-accessible (TVA) households” as the basis of TV measurement, to account for shifts in viewing dynamics driven by broadband access and mobile devices. The group based its recommendation on data from its TV universe study, DASH, that showed a rise in penetration of broadband only households from 25% to 31% in the last year, and the ubiquity of mobile devices with high-quality screens. “This trend towards devices also holds true for audiences that do have a television set in the household – across age and marital status demographics,” said Paul Donato, Chief Research Officer at the ARF. “Forty-one percent of consumers with television sets reported watching professionally produced programming on a device the previous day. These dynamics highlight the problems with cross-device measurement today. This finding in particular dilutes the ‘representativeness’ of ACR streams and makes calibration with a reference standard like DASH essential for effective measurement.”

Calling all measurement and data industry experts! We’re looking for judges for Cynopsis’ inaugural Measure Up! Awards. Email Carley Ashley by April 17th to find out more, and check out our website to find out what the event is all about (or enter yourself!).

Comscore announced the expansion of “Pulse,” which provides agencies, brands, and media companies with 48-hour TV measurement nationally and in all 210 US media markets. Comscore describes the expanded offering as the first-of-its-kind; previously the industry only had access to timely reporting from the top 60 media markets, 35 of which now also receive advertising campaign pacing or demo-viewing levels. “Our measurement is now the only solution to report viewing in 48 hours for every local TV market, and nationally with the same single source methodology regardless of the market,” said Comscore CRO Carol Hinnant.

STREAMING

Eighty-seven percent of US internet households have at least one OTT subscription, according to a survey from Parks Associates OTT Video Market Tracker online service for 2022, and 40% of households share or use shared credentials, up from 27% in 2019. But linear TV is still alive. “Despite the dominance of subscription over-the-top (OTT) services, 44% of households continue to watch some form of pay TV, indicating that there is still interest in live/linear and ad-supported forms of content,” said Jennifer Kent, VP of Research at Parks Associates. “As consumers examine their finances out of fear of a recession, free streaming television continues to gain popularity. Savvy, ad-tolerant customers will view advertisements in return for cheaper solutions.”

Another streaming survey, this one from Reviews.org, found that one in three Americans have canceled a streaming subscription in the past six months. Top reasons for canceling included cutting back on monthly expenses (44%), not watching enough (37%) and using a different streaming service more often (9%). On the flip side, 55% of Americans joined a new streaming service in the past six months.

There were 41.3 additions across subscription VOD platforms in 3Q22, up from 34.8 million in the year-earlier period, according to Antenna. But there were also 33.8 million cancellations in the quarter, versus 21.7 million dropped subs. Peacock saw the biggest gain (+37%), followed by Paramount+ (+23%), HBO Max (+15%), Apple TV+ (+12%), Discovery+ (+7%), Showtime (+3%); Disney+ (+2%), and Starz (+1%).

Synamedia’s Synamedia Go Experience Manager is now powering an enhanced smart TV user experience on the yes+ premium streaming service. yes, the pay-TV subsidiary of Israeli telco Bezeq, also released a new range of yes+ smart TV applications developed by 3 Screen Solutions in partnership with Synamedia.

Arts net Ovation struck a strategic partnership with SpringServe, the independent ad serving platform now part of Magnite. Ovation will utilize the SpringServe ad server for its suite of streaming products, which include digital channel JOURNY and its Ovation NOW.

Peacock is adding livestreams of MSBC’s “Morning Joe” and CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” The shows will be part of a Morning News Live collection for Peacock Premium subscribers.

TuneIn and CNN announced a multiyear extension of their partnership, which has included audio simulcasts of CNN, CNN International, CNN en Español, HLN and a commercial-free CNN station available to TuneIn Premium subscribers. The new deal includes an expanded offering with the launch of a 24/7 CNN Originals station, which is available as an ad-supported station for all subscribers, as well as commercial-free exclusively for Premium subscribers coming shortly.

Frontier Communications is making YouTube TV its main video offering, integrating billing for the service on users’ telco bill and offering customers discounts for the first year. Frontier will continue to provide other video services but YouTube TV will serve as its main offering for new customers.

Cynopsis Team