Google is the latest tech company to announce cutbacks, in this case in the form of a two-week hiring freeze. SVP Prabhakar Raghavan informed employees the company will “review headcount needs and align on a new set of Staffing Requests for the next three months,” reports The Information. The freeze will not affect offers already made.

Facebook has launched a Feeds tab, enabling users to see posts from friends, groups, Pages, more separately and in chronological order, announced Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a post. “One of the most requested features for Facebook is to make sure people don’t miss friends’ posts,” wrote Zuckerberg. “The app will still open to a personalized feed on the Home tab, where our discovery engine will recommend the content we think you’ll care most about. But the Feeds tab will give you a way to customize and control your experience further.” The redesign is similar to TikTok’s algorithmically chosen videos.

Facebook giveth, and it taketh away. The company is moving engineering and product support away from its Facebook News tab and newsletter Bulletin as “those teams focus on building a more robust Creator economy,” Campbell Brown, head of global news partnerships, told employees in a memo. “For a lot of us—this was a labor of love and I know it’s hard to see these products put on the backburner,” said Campbell. “These are products that have delivered tremendous value for our partners and our users.” The shift comes amid global regulations requiring technology platforms to pay for news content, and Meta’s focus on short-form video content and the metaverse.

Slack has instituted its first price increase since its launch in 2014. On September 1, 2022, monthly Pro plans will increase from $8 to $8.75 per user per month, and annual Pro plans will increase from $6.67 to $7.25 per user per month. Free users’ plans will have access to new features.

As part of its effort to tamp down password sharing – and keep subscriber numbers up – Netflix has introduced an “add a home” features that allows users outside a subscriber’s household to use the service, for a price. Starting next month, Netflix account holders in select Latin American countries will be able to purchase additional homes; the number of added homes allowed depends on the subscription tier.

WUSA9, TEGNA’s CBS affiliate serving Washington D.C., Virginia and Maryland, debuted an environmentally friendly, low emission live truck. The first of its kind in the broadcasting industry, ECO9 is a 2022 Toyota Highlander XLE Hybrid; Washington Area Toyota Dealers are serving as launch partner and exclusive sponsor. ECO9’s electronics for broadcasting run on a state-of-the-art rechargeable lithium-ion battery system with supplemental charging from solar panels on the roof. “Our environment matters, and we’ve committed to making a positive impact through our work, which includes today’s introduction of ECO9,” said Richard Dyer, president and general manager, WUSA. “ECO9 might be the first of its kind, but we hope it will be a standard setter as we begin testing its capabilities here in the DMV.”

NCTC and OpenVault announced an enhanced partnership to provide NCTC
members with access to OpenVault’s lineup of SaaS-based tools to improve network performance, subscriber satisfaction and monetization. NCTC and OpenVault also will provide the NCTC-OpenVault Industry Trends and Analytics Report. “OpenVault’s tools enable our Members to make data driven decisions to better manage and monetize their networks as consumer demands rapidly change,” said Zach Cutrell, Director of Technology Innovation, NCTC. “This new agreement only strengthens our relationship, expanding on the available feature set while introducing new pricing options for even our smallest Members.”

Holy Krap! Dan Harmon (“Rick and Morty”) and FOX Entertainment’s Blockchain Creative Labs unveiled krapopolis.com, featuring utility-focused, chicken-inspired NFTs ahead of the debut of FOX’s new animated comedy, “Krapopolis.” The program’s inaugural collection of “Krap Chickens,”a series of limited-edition NFTs, will drop for purchase on Thursday, August 11.

Meanwhile, “The Simpsons” animator Erick Tran is working with NFT marketplace Mogul Productions to create an animated NFT series. “The Mogies,” a celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Hollywood sign being erected, comprises a pool of 1,923 NFTs inspired by the past century of Hollywood characters and personalities. The NFTs are being developed into both an animated series and an expanded Mogieland metaverse.

TIME Studios has named producer, sound designer, and editorial content director Sachar Mathias as Executive Producer, Audio – signaling the studio’s expansion into the audio space. Mathias, who joins TIME Studios from Pushkin Industries, will be leading the charge on building out the studios podcast business.

Evolution Digital and the National Cable Television Cooperative struck a new multi-year agreement that will continue to make Evolution Digital’s suite of broadband and Android TV products available to more than 700 independent service providers across the US. As part of the deal, NCTC’s member operators may access Evolution Digital’s OpenSync certified devices, which, in combination with Plume’s SaaS Experience Platform enables service providers to deploy a new bundle of cloud-driven Smart Home Services.

Hyperscale data analytics solutions company Ocient released a new version of the Ocient Hyperscale Data Warehouse. New features and optimizations include a suite of indexes, native complex data types, and the creation of data pipelines at scale to enable faster and more secure analysis of log and network data for multi-petabyte workloads. Customers in telecommunications, government, and operational IT can now use Ocient to find needle-in-the-haystack insights across a broad set of uses.

Nielsen is expanding its cross-platform measurement of YouTube across computer, mobile and connected TV devices. First available in Nielsen Total Ad Ratings, Nielsen Four-Screen Ad Deduplication will be foundational to deduplicate audiences across devices, services and platforms in the company’s forthcoming cross-media measurement platform, Nielsen ONE. “Four-screen measurement is a critical step toward Nielsen ONE, as it provides the comparability necessary to produce a trusted, deduplicated number across platforms that enables clients to better understand reach, manage frequency and verify the audiences of their media buys,” said Kim Gilberti, SVP Product Management, Nielsen. “As consumer engagement across platforms continues to converge, digital measurement must provide continuous and comparable metrics across all channels.”

MONEY TALK

Twitter went from a $66 million profit in 2021 to a $270 million loss in its latest quarterly report. Twitter counted 237.8 million monetizable daily active users, up 17% from last year’s quarter but lower than projected. The company pinned the blame for the disappointing numbers on ad industry headwinds and uncertainty about its acquisition by Elon Musk. And that’s about all that will be shared. “Given the pending acquisition of Twitter by an affiliate of Elon Musk, we will not host an earnings conference call, issue a shareholder letter, or provide financial guidance in conjunction with our second quarter 2022 earnings release,” said the company.

“Our financial results for Q2 do not reflect our ambition,” said Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, as the company’s quarterly report showed net losses growing to $422 million, up from $152 million during the same three months ending in June of last year. Adjusted EBITDA was $7 million (versus $117 million last year) and free cash flow was a negative $147 million (versus negative $116 million). Daily active users increased by 18%, to 347 million. “We are evolving our business and strategy to reaccelerate revenue growth, including innovating on our products, investing heavily in our direct response advertising business, and cultivating new sources of revenue to help diversify our topline growth,” said Spiegel.

Netflix reported a loss of 970,000 subscribers in 2Q22, significantly lower than the two million it had forecast. The company’s stock rose 8% after the financial report was released. As for the third quarter, the streamer said it expected to add one million subscribers.

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ADVERTISING

Programmatic activation partner MiQ introduced CookielessIQ, a cookieless “readiness” assessment for advertisers, designed to further optimize their campaigns ahead of the deprecation of third-party cookies. The CookielessIQ score represents an advertiser’s progress in minimizing cookie reliance, offering visibility needed to benchmark efforts and establish test and learn mechanisms. “The truth is, there’s no escaping the new reality, and advertisers and brands need to start seriously considering other data sets and approaches that will help target, activate, and measure their efforts without reliance on long-established cookie based methods,” said Erin Madorsky, Chief Strategy Officer for MiQ. “We believe transparency and experimentation are the key to preparing for change.”

The new season of “Love Island USA” is offering shoppable experiences for viewers attracted to the islander vibe – scanning the ShoppableTV QR code on screen will take users to shoppable articles on E! Online; from there, they can complete their purchase via NBCUniversal Checkout. “’Love Island USA’ presented the perfect opportunity to blend together content and commerce in an engaging way for our audiences,” said Evan Moore, SVP, Commerce Partnerships, NBCUniversal. “In collaboration with ITV, we had the unique opportunity to redefine shoppable, premium video by identifying which products to place in each episode, how to extend the love for the show across One Platform, and more specifically deliver what looks, or styles fans will want to re-create themselves.” (Evan Moore will be on hand at the Cynopsis Big TV Conference to share more details about shoppable advancements at NBCU -details on the event are here.)

Vibrant Media has unveiled its sell-side solution within the Quintesse platform. Publisher ad network Concept.dk is an early adopter of the solution, leveraging it to more granularly categorize its publishers’ pages in real-time and push the contextual inventory key-values into the programmatic ecosystem. “As the effectiveness of third-party data and cookies continue to decline, integrating the Vibrant Media Quintesse platform with our publishers allows them to categorize their content with more precision than ever before,” said Henrik Sørensen, digital client director with Concept.dk. “Vibrant Media sell-side contextual targeting is incredibly advanced and a proven money maker for our publisher partners.”

Direct Digital Holdings announced that its supply-side advertising platform, Colossus SSP, had a strong first quarter, with comparisons between Q1 2021 to Q1 2022 showing a 540 percent surge in revenue. “Colossus SSP’s approach has always been one of inclusivity, bringing together a diverse set of audiences – Black, Hispanic, Asian, LGBTQ, and more – alongside general market, to serve as a one-stop-shop for advertisers who want to reach a cross-section of consumers,” said Lashawnda Goffin, CEO, Colossus SSP. “Not only has this allowed savvy marketers the opportunity to reach a vibrant range of consumers, but it has helped them increase investment in minority-owned media properties that have often been left out of the programmatic mix.”

Spectrum Reach, the advertising sales business of Charter Communications, and Frequence, provider of advertising sales automation and workflow software, announced the launch of Unified Proposal, a technology that builds multiscreen media plans for advertisers by seamlessly integrating linear, streaming TV and digital tools and processes. “With Unified Proposal, we are able to facilitate automated workflows that combine our aggregated and de-identified first-party data with the power of our multiscreen products to create media plans in one proposal,” said Rob Klippel, SVP, Advanced Advertising Products and Strategy, Spectrum Reach. “This technology allows us to simplify the process so our account executives and planners can create multiscreen plans in real-time, and with greater efficiency.”

OOH advertising platform Broadsign has released a solution that enables media owners to consolidate and manage programmatic bids from multiple third-party supply-side-platforms. Broadsign Reach Header Bidder offers a streamlined approach, combining pDOOH demand from multiple SSPs into one slot in the ad loop and choosing the winning bid to play based on Broadsign’s fair play auction logic.

Inventory from Intersection is now available for purchase via the supply-side platform from Vistar Media, provider of software for programmatic digital out-of-home. From LinkNYC to digital urban panels and digital bus shelters, Intersection’s media is placed throughout a consumer’s daily route in major cities across the US. Buyers can now programmatically purchase Intersection inventory via open exchange or private marketplace deals.

STREAMING

F.A.S.T. viewership has more than doubled year-over-year, and today, 6 out of 10 households with connected TVs are using F.A.S.T. services, according to Comcast Advertising’s F.A.S.T. Report. Many consumers may be landing on F.A.S.T. channels without even realizing it, through their integration into the channel guide by TV manufacturers, notes the report, which points out 70% of XUMO users are cord cutters, relying on XUMO as a complement to SVOD services. “F.A.S.T. is a new and engaging way for consumers to watch and discover premium content in an environment that mimics linear TV,” said James Rooke, President, Comcast Advertising. “And because F.A.S.T. services are easy and free to access without signing up, it’s becoming a valuable way for advertisers to reach audiences – especially cord cutters.”

Netflix has ceased responding to inquiries on its Twitter customer help account (@Netflixhelps), established in 2009. Customer support is still available via online chat and phone.

FOX News Media has expanded distribution of FOX Nation across FuboTV. Subscribers to FOX Nation on FuboTV can access the service via the FuboTV app on connected TV, mobile and tablet devices as well as on the web.

Upgrades to Prime Video’s interface are rolling out. Enhancements include new visual cues to indicate which programming is included in a user’s service as part of a subscription, and which is available to rent or buy. The interface is also less cluttered, with a simplified navigation menu, and there’s a new “Find” feature to simplify searches.

Sixty-seven percent of Gen Z say that subscribing to streaming services is totally worth the money and 42% use streaming services solely for their original programming, according data from Helixa. The top 5 shows across Gen Z (ordered from most favorite to least) were “Pretty Little Liars,” “Rick and Morty,” “American Horror Story,” “Sportscenter,” and “Stranger Things.” Across the fie audience segments identified by Helixa, (Fashion Foodies, Competitors, Activists, Dedicated Gamers and Entertainment Fanatics) “Rick and Morty” was the only show to appear in each groups’ top 5.

Chefclub and Pluto TV announced the launch of a standalone Chefclub channel in France. The partnership comes on the heels of Chefclub’s debut on Pluto TV’s channels in the US, Latin America, Spain and the UK in April this year.

Cynopsis Team