Ahead of its Worldwide Developers Conference, kicking off today at 10a PT, Apple updated its Apple Developer App. Developers can watch the schedule of each day’s videos, and access Digital Lounge activities and Coding and Design challenges. A new webpage, Beyond WWDC, lists events related to WWDC.

The number of downloads needed for an app to hit #1 on Apple’s iPhone App Store in the US has jumped by 37% since 2019, according to Sensor Tower. An app now requires approximately 156,000 downloads on a given day to reach the top, up from 114,000 daily downloads in 2019.

Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg is leaving Meta after 14 years with the company. Chief Growth Officer Javier Olivan will step into the role, which has been reimagined with Sandberg’s departure. “It will be a more traditional COO role where Javi will be focused internally and operationally, building on his strong track record of making our execution more efficient and rigorous,” wrote Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a post. As for Sandberg, “When Sheryl joined me in 2008, I was only 23 years old and I barely knew anything about running a company,” wrote Zuckerberg. “We’d built a great product — the Facebook website — but we didn’t yet have a profitable business and we were struggling to transition from a small startup to a real organization. Sheryl architected our ads business, hired great people, forged our management culture, and taught me how to run a company. She created opportunities for millions of people around the world, and she deserves the credit for so much of what Meta is today.”

YouTube is rolling out a new feature that lets users easily synchronize their Android or iOS phone to their TV. “With this launch, your phone becomes your all-purpose, interactive device and unlocks the ability to do more in this space,” YouTube chief product officer Neal Mohan wrote in a blog post.

Google said will soon make its Play Points usable for items in apps and games at checkout. Google Play Points lets users earn points and rewards for the way they use Google Play. Also on the way from Google are custom text stickers, allowing Android Gboard users to type what they want to say, then select a design and share their message.

In an effort to help prevent shortages and price gouging, Amazon is launching an invite-based ordering experience for products that are in high demand and short supply. With the ordering option, customers can request an invitation to purchase in-demand products from the product detail page. Amazon will remove bot-like submissions, and send invitations to remaining verified customers.

Instagram has launched AMBER Alerts on its app to help find missing children. Alerts will appear to users in designated areas, with details about nearby abductions.

Snapchat unveiled a “Shared Stories” feature that allows users to create a story and add friends to view and contribute to it. Snaps sent to a Shared Story are deleted after 24 hours. “With this next generation Story, we’re hoping to help Snapchatters turn shared moments into shared memories,” said Snap in a blog post.

Gracenote, the content solutions pillar of Nielsen, introduced Distribution Dynamics and Program Availability Archive, new datasets to help content owners and buyers optimize program licensing and acquisition strategies. The syndicated datasets provide the content marketplace insights into characteristics of programming that drives consumption and historical availability enabling data-driven decision-making.

Nifty’s and Warner Bros. Consumer Products are launching a story-driven blockchain program to engage Looney Tunes fans. “Looney Tunes: What’s Up Block?” will use digital art as a medium for storytelling, creating a new narrative for the franchise, revealed through NFTs. The program will offer fans access to participate in activities and games as the story unfolds, both digital and “in real life,” while earning rewards along the way – including special access, discounts on Looney Tunes merchandise, new NFT drops, and more.

Twitter has been ordered to pay a $150 million settlement for violating user data privacy. The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice accused the social platform of giving advertisers access to users’ contact information without their consent. The suit will also require the company to implement more “robust compliance measures to protect users’ data privacy,” the DOJ announced.

Video software provider Synamedia has acquired Utelly, a UK-based content discovery platform provider with products targeted at the entertainment industry. Its offerings include metadata aggregation, search and recommendations, as well as content management and a content promotion engine. Utelly’s solution simplifies the complexity of users’ content discovery across TV channels, on demand and multiple streaming services. Its SaaS-based technology is already pre-integrated with the Synamedia Go video platform and will now be embedded in the Go.Aggregate add-on pack.

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IAB Tech Lab announced the launch of Global Privacy Platform, a single protocol that enables advertisers, publishers and technology vendors in the digital advertising industry to adapt to regulatory demands across markets.

Warner Bros. Discovery is launching two new streaming advertising products with CTV company BrightLine. Click-to-Contact and Viewer’s Choice will be available on discovery+ beginning in 4Q22 and will be offered to clients in the 2022-23 Upfront season. “By offering more advanced advertising options to our partners, including these two new products with BrightLine, we are able to drive brand awareness by offering choices to ad-receptive, engaged consumers,” said Jim Keller, EVP of Digital Ad Sales and Advanced Advertising, Warner Bros. Discovery.

Hootsuite partnered with TikTok to optimize content and advertising opportunities. In a survey conducted with Hootsuite customers, 38.5% said they actively use the app as part of their social media strategy. Customers will now be able to schedule and publish content directly within the Hootsuite platform and can gain insights on post performance and user engagement.

Mirriad announced its latest campaigns with Lexus to drive brand awareness among multicultural and LGBTQIA+ audiences. The in-content advertising company will create campaigns with Lexus through in-content music video activations. Signage, video and virtual products can be placed in post-production with Mirriad’s AI technology.

Google is introducing Google Audiences for CTV inventory in Display & Video 360, which will work across Hulu, Peacock, YouTube and most other ad-supported CTV apps. “In a few months, you’ll be able to power your CTV campaigns with the same affinity, in-market and demographic audiences you’ve been using for your digital ads for years,” wrote Jake Jolly, Project Manager, Display & Video, in a blog post, noting that demographics and in-market segments will be available on CTV devices by the end of this quarter. Some affinity audiences are already available and more are coming later this summer.

Clinch has partnered with Neustar, a TransUnion Company to offer advertisers more complete view of attribution across their campaign footprint. Neustar’s Marketing Attribution solution can now be activated directly within the Clinch UI. “Clinch’s creative personalization platform has an ambitious SaaS agenda, meaning integrations are prioritized based on their ability to enable automation and ease of use for brands and agencies within the Clinch UI,” said Raz Peter, CTO and Co-founder at Clinch. “The ability to activate Neustar Attribution across any campaign with a single click brings an entirely unparalleled degree of accessibility to advertisers and saves countless hours in set-up and eliminates human error.”

Integral Ad announced enhancements to IAS Signal that will incorporate the Total Visibility solution via a new and improved dashboard. Clients can now access critical insights into their supply paths in one reporting platform. “Brands and agencies want more visibility into their programmatic buys to understand what optimizations can improve campaign performance and drive high-quality supply paths,” said Lisa Utzschneider, CEO at Integral Ad Science. “Leveraging IAS’s QPO solution and metrics like qCPM will allow advertisers to identify the most effective channels for purchasing high-quality inventory at the most efficient cost.”

Cadent, an independent platform for advanced TV advertising, introduced a new feature within Cadent Aperture Platform which will enable programmatic guaranteed bidding for addressable TV and CTV across set top boxes, smart TVs, mobile devices, and desktop applications on inventory distributed by publishers. This solution increases both demand and flexibility, while facilitating the TV ecosystem’s migration manual direct sales processes toward a self-service marketplace for advertisers.

SHOPPABLE

The frequency of shoppable media has been “growing at speed,” according to a study from the World Federation of Advertisers and Dentsu International. “The trend to making traditional ‘push’ online ad formats more ‘shoppable’ in order to increase immediate conversion within the ad format or media owner app itself, is one that has been growing at speed in the past 12-24 months,” said the study, citing examples like YouTube’s “True View for Action” video and format, and Facebook’s “Commerce Manager.” “We expect more brands to adopt this mechanic…. An increase in collaboration and integration of creative and media efforts will be required to make the most of the opportunity, however,” noted the report.

Tubular Labs announced that its Tubular Consumer Insights product, which already provides data correlating social video behavior to Amazon shopping data, now connects the dots between views and shopping behavior for Walmart. “With social commerce exploding, Tubular’s Consumer Insights really collapses the funnel for marketers and draws that direct line — from reach and engagement through conversion,” said Josh Schmiesing, Chief Marketing Officer, Tubular Labs.

Shoppable TV is entering a new era – technical innovations now enable engaging, interactive, and streamlined shopping experiences for consumers. From QR codes to AR stores, we’ll look the latest tools that help drive viewers from TV to commerce, scoring wins for both networks and brands, at the Cynopsis Big TV Conference, September 29-30 in NYC. It’s just one of the hot topics we’ll be tackling – register here to jump into the discussions.

STREAMING

Castify.ai, an omnichannel content distribution and monetization platform, says it’s seen a year over year rise of 170 percent in viewership with an increase of 230 percent in average time spent on customer OTT applications. Castify.ai’s data shows that as streaming subscription costs rise, viewers are more likely to explore free content that comes on their connected televisions. “This shift towards exploring new channels via Smart TV applications is occurring across various platforms as viewership trends move away from the crowded streaming landscape,” said Gal Turjeman, CEO of Castify.ai.

NESN, longtime cable home of MLB’s Boston Red Sox and the NHL’s Boston Bruins, is the first regional sports network to offer viewers streaming access to live games without a pay-TV subscription. NESN 360, the new outlet, carries a $30/month fee and is available only in New England.

FOX Weather, News Media’s free ad-supported streaming television weather service, is partnering with the Tennis Channel to provide weather forecasts for three tournaments this summer: The French Open, the Western & Southern Open and US Open.

Pixalate released the Q1 2022 Global Connected TV (CTV) Ad Supply Chain Trends Report, a comprehensive analysis of the state of open programmatic CTV advertising through H1 2021. Among the key findings: a 32% increase in global programmatic ad spend in CTV from Q1 2021 to Q1 2022; 92% of U.S. households now being reachable via CTV programmatic advertising, up 11% year-over year. More than 20% of open programmatic CTV advertising was invalid traffic in Q1 2022, the third straight quarter over 20%. In addition, 47% of open programmatic ad spend in CTV went to Roku devices.

“Stranger Things” season 4 broke the all-time Netflix viewership record in its premiere weekend. Volume 1 of the series logged the biggest premiere weekend ever for a Netflix original series, with 286.79 million hours viewed, lifting the previous seasons of the drama with it. This is the first season of the drama show to reach #1 in 83 countries, setting another record.

Vice FAST will launch on Fox’s streaming platform Tubi. Vice Distribution struck a deal for the free, ad-supported streaming channel to include 200 hours of programming, now available on Tubi for the first time. Vice FAST features programs such as culture, entertainment, tech, food and sports documentaries.

Penthera, provider of video streaming solutions for OTT providers, announced the release of PlayAssure. The software product builds a more extensive real-time buffer of video on streaming devices during playback to improve video quality and reduce or eliminate rebuffering due to unreliable networks. “Video engagement means one thing for subscription services: customers watch my content and I live another day,” said Brian Kline, President of Penthera. “For AVODs, if you have a rebuffer before your ad pods, you may lose revenue. You can keep the session going with the right technology and this quality of experience helps drive revenue for ad-supported services.”

24i launched a new personalization and content recommendations service, 24iQ, powered by the integration of 24i’s existing data team with that of UK-based company The Filter, which was acquired by 24i in April 2022. The 24iQ service is based on the same capabilities that have enabled some of The Filter’s customers to increase engagement by as much as 300 percent.

Crackle Plus is set to launch five FAST channels on Local Now, Allen Media Group’s free streaming platform for local news and entertainment. Crackle Plus FAST channels include Crackle, Crackle Classics, its newly launched Chicken Soup for the Soul streaming service, Popcornflix and Truli.

Cynopsis Team