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Monday May 17, 2021

Apple announced it stopped more than $1.5 billion in potentially fraudulent transactions last year, keeping nearly a million risky apps out of the hands of users. While many apps were rejected because they didn’t function properly or didn’t have a sufficient mechanism for moderating user-generated content, Apple said its App Review team rejected more than 48,000 apps “for containing hidden or undocumented features,” and more than 150,000 because they were found to be spam, copycats, or misleading to users in ways such as manipulating them into making a purchase.

Google has partnered with Western Union and Wise to enable Google Pay users in the US to send money to users in India and Singapore. Both companies have integrated their services into Google Pay, for a payments feature expected to expand worldwide by the end of 2021.

By year’s end, TikTok will clock more Gen Z users in the US than Instagram (37.3 million versus 33.3 million), reports eMarketer, and will have more total users than Snapchat by 2023. “Instagram’s user base is steadily aging,” said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence. “This year, its fastest-growing age group will be ages 35 to 44 [up 7.2%], while gains will be much slower among teens 12 to 17 [0.7%] and young adults 18 to 24 [2.0%]. However, Gen Z will still make up nearly three in 10 users on Instagram [28.0%] this year, so advertisers can still find them on the platform.”

In more TikTok news, the app’s Safety Center has been revised to include a section for parents that shows them how to use TikTok and its safety features, and offers details on privacy and tools, and resources for bully education and prevention.

NBCUniversal has launched new ad formats and products, among them augmented reality shopping experiences and “choose your own adventure” journeys, designed to drive interactive viewing experiences across the company’s global One Platform. “Our Content and Commercial Innovations are an ongoing opportunity for NBCUniversal to completely reimagine the viewer experience, while creating new ways for our marketing partners to propel their business forward,” said Josh Feldman, CMO, NBCUniversal Advertising & Partnerships. Other offerings include:
· Look Live, empowering advertisers to evolve their stories to match the day’s trending conversations.
· Stay in Show, tapping into the native canvasses within a show to create new advertising opportunities that spotlight a brand’s creative all within the viewing experience itself.
· Interactive Scripted Commercial Launch, creating a smooth transition between showtime and commercial break with 2D and 3D technology integrating both the brand within the show, and the show within the brand to retain consumers’ focus.
· Take:15, offering brands an opening act led by NBCUniversal talent ahead of their commercial spot.

PREMION
LEADING THE EVOLUTION IN LOCAL OTT & CTV ADVERTISING

WINNER: 2021 TECH LEADERSHIP AWARD
Best OTT & Streaming Technology
WINNER: 2020 CYNOPSIS ADTECH AWARD
Outstanding Local Advertising Solution

TAG CERTIFIED AGAINST AD FRAUD

125+ Leading TV & Media Brands, Audience Targeting, Closed-Loop Attribution
LEARN MORE AT PREMION.COM

Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings are now available for purchasing inventory on Samsung TV Plus, Samsung’s FAST service. “Nielsen’s advanced TV measurement is a critical currency, and we believe this integration will support the continued growth of Samsung TV Plus, providing consistent ways for advertisers to measure and plan campaigns for the service,” said Tom Fochetta, SVP, Samsung Ads. “As a pioneer in advanced and connected TV products and inventory, we know it’s essential to remove barriers to entry and simplify the ad buying and campaign management process.” Nielsen DAR will be available to advertisers that purchase media via Direct I/O or through Samsung’s Private Marketplace.

Money talks. The YouTube Shorts Fund, a $100 million pot of money the platform aims to distribute to creators of the most engaging clips on its new TikTok-style feature, kicks off this fall. The feature has been hot out of the gate. During its Q1 earnings call, parent Google/Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said YouTube Shorts had 6.5 billion daily views in March, up from 3.5 billion at the end of 2020.

Hear this: Charter Communications announced the availability of Spectrum Voice ID, an optional service that gives customers the ability to use their voice to provide greater account security when contacting Charter. The company is also accelerating the use of other digital technologies, artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies as part of an initiative to make it easier and more convenient for subscribers to manage their Spectrum services.

Veritone, creator of AI operating system aiWARE, announced the launch of Veritone MARVEL.ai, an end-to-end Voice-as-a-Service solution that enables media companies, brands, marketers, celebrities and influencers to create, manage, license and monetize hyper-realistic synthetic voices. Veritone MARVEL.ai supports both text-to-speech and speech-to-speech processes and offers an end-to-end suite of voice capabilities and features including creation and usage; management; production workflows; licensing, compliance and clearance; and monetization.

Programmatic video platform Tremor Video’s UnrulyEQ emotional and psychographic intelligence offering is now available to clients in the US and Canada. Designed to maximize audience engagement and optimize campaign performance for advertisers across CTV and video, the suite of data-driven audience and content testing solutions leverages a blend of facial coding and survey-based techniques.

Consumer optimism in the US is on the rise as the pandemic appears to be getting under control – especially in states where restrictions have been lifted. In April, Microsoft Advertising compared trend data for the state with the fewest remaining lockdown restrictions, Iowa, against the state with the largest remaining amount of lockdown restrictions, Virginia. In one example, they found searches for “wedding supply and equipment rentals” in Iowa rose 74%, versus 41% for Virginia.

Evergent, the provider of revenue and customer-lifecycle management solutions, announced its support for the Amazon Web Services for Media & Entertainment Initiatives. Through the collaboration, Evergent will leverage AWS capabilities and services to improve customer management and monetization solutions. AWS for Media & Entertainment was built specifically for content creators, rights holders, producers, broadcasters, and distributors, aimed at simplifying the process of building, deploying, and reinventing industry workloads by aligning AWS and AWS Partner capabilities.

How will smartphones figure into viewing the Summer Olympics? AdColony conducted a study on mobile users’ plans for the Games, and 46% of respondents said they would watch on their smartphones or tablets. The majority of viewers will be multitasking on their mobile devices, with 47% texting, 47% browsing social media apps, 37% looking up Olympics content – and 29% playing mobile games while watching.

AI-powered transcription platform Verbit announced the acquisition of VITAC, a provider of captioning products and solutions. The combined company’s enhanced transcription and captioning platform will feature industry experts, AI-based tools, established integrations with video cloud platforms, and support to translate transcription into any language. “This opportunity allows us to expand our offerings for the media vertical and provide advanced transcription capabilities to our current education, legal, and corporate customers,” said Tom Livne, CEO and Founder of Verbit.

AT&T’s advanced advertising platform, Xandr, is making TiVo’s ad-supported CTV inventory available to buyers in the Xandr Marketplace. “By integrating with Xandr’s advanced technology platform, TiVo is furthering our commitment to providing advertising partners with the tools they need to effectively and efficiently communicate their marketing messages, at scale,” said Walt Horstman, SVP of Monetization at TiVo. “Xandr’s end-to-end platform enables a direct and streamlined exchange with buyers, providing unique and heightened value as the CTV ecosystem grows in complexity.”

CatapultX announced the official launch of its On-Stream video monetization and contextual artificial intelligence platform. The CatapultX On-Stream platform harnesses AI to power contextually relevant and non-interruptive video ads integrated directly within video content so that promotions don’t interrupt the audience experience. For advertisers, the AI-powered placements and unskippable format delivers brand messages in a privacy-safe way.

People-based marketing platform LiveIntent announced the launch of LiveIntent Native Ad Blueprints, a scaled native email advertising solution for publishers. LiveIntent’s new technology allows publishers to streamline ad serving and campaign operations for native ads in email while maintaining the overall newsletter design. With a one-time tag placement, the publisher can either fill the inventory with direct sold demand or from demand from LiveIntent’s demand-side platform or third-party DSPs.

Cuebiq is partnering with the Ad Council and COVID Collaborative to measure the COVID-19 Vaccine Education Initiative “It’s Up to You” campaign to measure the effectiveness of the campaigns in driving exposed audiences to vaccination centers. Cuebiq will calculate visit lift, the change in percentage of visitation to vaccine centers between those exposed to PSAs versus an unexposed control group. “We are very proud to be part of such a vital campaign to increase education and awareness of the COVID-19 vaccines,” said Antonio Tomarchio, Founder and CEO at Cuebiq. “We believe that mobility data has the power to transform the way we understand the impact of pandemic mitigation measures.”

Alphonso – recently rebranded as LG Ads – announced it has prevailed in a patent dispute with Samba TV regarding the use of TV audience data for targeting TV viewers on digital devices. A suit filed by Samba TV against Alphonso in 2015 asserted that Alphonso infringed upon Samba’s patent for “Targeting with Television Audience Data Across Multiple Screens.” In 2018, the United States District Court for Northern District of California ruled that Alphonso did not infringe on this patent. On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit determined that the case should have been dismissed before ever reaching the infringement arguments, because the Samba patent is invalid.

Customer data platform Zoetap announced the launch of Predictive Audiences as part of its Customer Intelligence Platform, designed to reduce the process of creating and activating machine learned segments. “We’ve seen the story time and time again: marketers want to use customer data in order to drive more impactful campaigns, but they get stuck when they need Data Science support. Predictive Audiences is designed to solve this problem,” said Daniel Heer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Zeotap. “By putting the power of machine learning into the hands of the marketer, Predictive Audiences makes it easy to quickly boost the success of marketing efforts with just a few clicks – a game-changer for the data-driven team.”

STREAMING

Rotten Tomatoes is ripening. The home of the Tomatometer rating scores, owned by NBCU’s Fandango, is launching linear streaming service The Rotten Tomatoes Channel. The OTT streaming outlet initially will debut on The Roku Channel and then expand to NBCU’s Peacock platform and Comcast-owned Xumo.

Factual streaming service CuriosityStream acquired One Day University, which provides access to more than 500 engaging talks and lectures from professors at more than 150 colleges and universities in the US.

Law&Crime is now available on The Roku Channel. The legal and true crime network features series including “Trial File”, “Law&Crime Daily” and “Prime Crime” and recently concluded its coverage of the Derek Chauvin trial in the death of George Floyd.