04/20/26: Cynopsis Media Tech Update

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Monday April 20, 2026

TOP MEDIA TECH NEWS

The TV upfront season is just a few short weeks away – and programmers aren’t hesitating to drum up momentum by unveiling fancy new products and partnerships. Other than top-tier TV titles and talent, one trend is clearly emerging as the focus of upfront sales pitches: ad performance. Conversion APIs (CAPIs) are gaining traction as a particularly popular way for streaming platforms to bring more proof of performance to their ad offerings for media buyers and brands. Take Paramount Skydance and DirecTV, for instance. Both companies unveiled new performance-driven products purposely timed for the beginning of this year’s upfront season.
· Timed to the intimate client dinners Paramount is hosting in place of a traditional upfront, Paramount made several announcements as part of its efforts to secure ad commitments for the next broadcast year. Paramount is merging the ad tech stacks powering Paramount+ and Pluto TV, offering more control over ad placements, expanding dynamic ad insertion across livestreamed sports and – last but not least – a new ad performance product called Precision+. The product, aimed at helping buyers and brands create media plans with better odds of driving the intended outcome, will soon also include a CAPI.
· Paramount isn’t the only streaming company touting a CAPI ahead of the upfronts, either. Last week, DirecTV Advertising announced an integration with LiveRamp’s Conversions API Hub to help advertisers connect streaming impressions with business outcomes. Specifically, it hopes to deliver on one of streaming advertisers’ biggest desires: closed-loop measurement.
· The industry’s emphasis on streaming TV acting as a performance marketing channel has kickstarted a rising trend of streaming platforms adopting or launching CAPIs. CAPIs have long been table-stakes for online ad platforms such as Snap, Meta and LinkedIn. But recently, streaming platforms are following suit in their efforts to convince advertisers that streaming campaigns drive measurable results – despite historically trickier attribution models. This trend explains why Netflix and Roku both recently rolled out their own CAPIs, for example.

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BEST OF THE REST

The demand-side platform Viant announced its intentions to acquire TVision, a video ad measurement company, for $40 million. In a nutshell, Viant’s objective is to tie its data set with TVision’s so advertisers can effectively bid on TV and video ad placements based on where their target audience is most likely paying attention. According to Viant, its 2024 acquisition of IRIS.TV, a contextual intelligence company, is what set the stage for the DSP to go after TVision. Viant bought IRIS.TV to bolster ad targeting and measurement, including offering buyers more visibility into show-level information – something they’ve been increasingly requesting from CTV sellers and ad partners over the past few years. Going forward, Viant expects to implement TVision’s data to add attention metrics to its list of ad targeting options.

Netflix kicked off earnings season late last week, unveiling its fiscal numbers for Q1 2026. The company boasts $12.25 billion in quarterly revenue – a 16% spike year-over-year from the first quarter of 2025 – beating the revenue targets that were established when Netflix was still in the running to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. Much of that growth is thanks to Netflix expanding its ads business, both with more ad-supported subscriptions and with more programmatic buying options. Currently, programmatic ad buying accounts for half of non-live ad sales, and Netflix intends to lean further into programmatic sales as part of its efforts to double its advertising revenue again this year, as it did last year.

Digital ad revenue climbed to nearly $300 billion last year, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB)’s 2025 Internet Advertising Revenue Report, conducted by PwC. According to the report, the year 2025 saw roughly $294.6 billion, representing a 13.9% year-over-year increase compared to 2024. Leading the pack of digital ad channels, social media ad revenue jumped 32.6% YOY to $117.7 billion, while video (including connected TV, online video and short-form video) ad revenue rose 25.4% YOY to $78 billion. Streaming video stands to gain more ad spend the more it proves itself as a performance marketing channel, but, according to the report, “this emphasis on performance means marketers will demand that streaming prove true incrementality.”

Speaking of performance, the performance advertising company Moloco launched a product called Moloco Ads for Performance CTV. The tool uses the same AI technology behind Moloco’s mobile advertising business, and connects ad impressions to business outcomes with attribution available through an advertiser’s preferred mobile measurement partner. Ideally, app marketers should see increased app installs and return on investment by running campaigns across both mobile and streaming video and optimizing them in near-real time based on how the ads are performing.

Nielsen released its February Gauge report, meant to serve as a snapshot of total TV viewing across the US. According to the report, YouTube maintained its streaming dominance with 12.7% of TV viewing hours in February. That’s a slight increase from YouTube’s lead at 12.5% of TV hours in January. Netflix remains in second place at 8.4% of TV viewing hours in February, which is a slight drop from 8.8% of TV hours the month prior. Other streamers also saw slight dips in viewing hours. Prime Video scored 3.9% of viewing hours in February compared to 4.1% in January. Warner Bros. Discovery saw a slight dip from 1.4% to 1.3% in the same time period. Streamers are seeking more information to figure out how much of the dip in streaming viewership can be chalked up to Nielsen’s incorporation of the Advertising Research Foundation’s DASH TV Universe study.

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Sticking with Nielsen, NBCUniversal ad executive Mark Marshall publicly criticized the measurement company for inconsistent and inaccurate measurement. Nielsen initially delayed releasing its February Gauge report due to concerns from streaming providers about disruption from incorporating the ARF’s data. But now, traditional TV execs including Marshall are voicing skepticism that Nielsen is overestimating streaming. Although Nielsen’s Gauge report isn’t used as the direct basis of buying and measuring media, Marshall argues that Nielsen’s Gauge reports should be based on the same data and methodology as Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel service, which is its core measurement and currency offering comprising legacy panels and larger viewing data sets.

AMC Global Media is partnering with the sell-side ad platform Magnite to make its full content portfolio available to buy programmatically as well as directly. AMC’s ad supply will be available within ClearLine, Magnite’s direct-to-buyer product that Magnite pitches as an activation and curation solution. The objective of this collaboration is to make it easier for marketers to access and activate their desired inventory without the silos that still separate many traditional TV and digital programmatic buying teams. Applying programmatic pipes to linear TV inventory can be tricky, but AMC wouldn’t be the first traditional media company to attempt it.

Local TV ad platform Locality is integrating Nielsen’s Media Data Engine into its broadcast advertising infrastructure. The integration gives Locality access to audience demographic and ad delivery data across all 210 designated market areas in the US – and thus speeds up reporting to within four days of an ad airing. Previously, this process took weeks. The announcement is a testament to the industry’s efforts to digitize and modernize local broadcast TV advertising, particularly by bolstering measurement reporting and campaign optimization, which boosts ad performance.

Creative drives the majority of advertising performance, but almost nobody is optimizing it, according to the “Creative Optimization Gap” report from Perion and EMARKETER. Among the report’s findings:
· 89.2% of marketers surveyed say creative is important for campaign performance – but only 3.6% say it is well understood and actively optimized today.
· Nearly half (48.7%) of marketers expect real-time creative optimization to unlock performance gains of 11–30%. One in four believe the upside exceeds 20%.
· 53.2% of marketers report creative insights arrive slower than media optimization signals.
· 72.1% wait for a performance decline before making creative changes.
· 54.1% plan to invest in AI-powered creative systems within the next 12 months.

Mediavine, a full-serve ad management platform, announced an expanded partnership with the supply-side platform Index Exchange. Mediavine is making its curated audience segments available within the SSP’s Index Marketplaces offering. Mediavine’s audience segments are built with first-party and contextual data as well as identity data integrations, including with Unified ID 2.0. Paired with Index Exchange’s publisher data and inventory access, the collaboration aims to increase the value of publishers’ supply and audiences while making it easier for advertisers to buy premium inventory that should reach their intended audiences.

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Lynn Leahey
Editorial Director
lleahey@accessintel.com

Dave Colford
SVP, Media
dcolford@accessintel.com

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Kelly Mahoney
Group Director, Sales
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Kerry Smith
Division President
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