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New: 2023 CTV/OTT Advertiser Perceptions Study
86% of CTV/OTT advertisers say that CTV/OTT’s value is greater than,
or equal to, primetime TV, with 44% saying CTV/OTT is more valuable.
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X, formerly Twitter, is offering two new subscription tiers. Priced at $16/month, Premium+ offers the “largest reply boost,” no ads in For You or Following, and access to X’s full suite of creator tools. A new Basic tier ($3/month) gives users access to “the most essential” Premium features.

Apple Watch Series 9 and Apple Watch Ultra 2 now offer the double tap gesture with watchOS 10.1, enabling wearers to operate the watch using just one hand and without touching the display. By tapping the index finger and thumb of their watch hand together twice, they can quickly perform many common actions, like answering and ending phone calls, snoozing an alarm, playing and pausing podcasts and music, and more.

A Threads API is in the future, posted Instagram head Adam Mosseri. “We’re working on it,” he wrote, in response to a conversation about creator tools. “My concern is that it’ll mean a lot more publisher content and not much more creator content, but it still seems like something we need to get done.”

Hisense and Verance announced that Hisense is introducing the first mass market ATSC watermark detection for NextGen TVs across their ATSC 3.0 product lines. Cable networks and regional sports networks are now able to join local stations and national networks offering these new features. The Verance Aspect watermark provides a high-performance, commercial implementation of the ATSC audio A/334 watermark specification.

ADVERTISING

AMC Networks has enabled programmatic ad buying on AMC, WE tv and BBC America after a successful pilot last month. It’s the first time live linear inventory was able to be purchased programmatically in a real-time, biddable ad environment. The company created and executed this innovation in partnership with FreeWheel, The Trade Desk, and Canoe Ventures. “During this pilot, we were able to deliver seven distinct creative executions to viewers simultaneously as part of the same national linear commercial slot, through a real-time biddable process,” said Evan Adlman, EVP of Commercial Sales and Revenue Operations for AMC Networks. “This is a huge advance for us and for the industry and, like our pioneering efforts in addressable advertising, makes our inventory even more valuable.”

Nearly one year after launching its ad-supported tier, Disney+ announced plans to develop “advanced audience targeting, additional programmatic marketplaces, expanded ad formats and enriched measurement across verification, identity, effectiveness and attribution.” Said Disney President of Global Advertising Rita Ferro, “Consistent with Disney’s strategic approach, we spent the last 10 months testing, learning and listening to our consumers and clients. That’s how we continue to create viewer-first experiences while simultaneously introducing new capabilities, functionality and formats.”

Consumers pay nearly four times more attention to ads that are hyper-relevant to the content they are watching, according to a new study by Alliance for Video-Level Contextual Advertising, titled Driving Viewer Attention and Brand Metrics in CTV Advertising. The study also analyzed how brand suitability impacts CTV viewers’ attention and brand perception and found that 54% of respondents were less interested in the brand and products found in contextually misaligned ads, and more than one-third of viewers liked the brand less and paid less attention when an ad was placed in unsuitable environments. “Attention is a scarce resource and as CTV continues to grow, advertisers need to seek out deep contextual relevance to achieve strong return on ad spend,” said Rohan Castelino, CMO of IRIS.TV, and Principal Member of AVCA.

Basis announced a new partnership with Direct Digital Holdings through its companies Colossus Media, LLC and Huddled Masses. Colossus SSP has directly integrated with Basis to increase DEI efforts by scaling spend on multicultural/diverse audiences and media. Basis has also been named a preferred DSP by Huddled Masses, enabling Basis to increase its reach with underserved marketers.

Amazon Ads is launching a self-service advertising system, Sponsored TV, that enables brands selling goods on Amazon to reach more customers by using the company’s Amazon Freevee, Twitch, and streaming channels offered through Fire TV apps. Sponsored TV campaigns are powered by Amazon’s machine learning technology.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM PREMION

PREMION
Premium CTV/OTT Advertising
BUILT WITH THE POWER OF LOCAL

New: 2023 CTV/OTT Advertiser Perceptions Study
86% of CTV/OTT advertisers say that CTV/OTT’s value is greater than,
or equal to, primetime TV, with 44% saying CTV/OTT is more valuable.
DOWNLOAD COMPLIMENTARY REPORT

125+ Leading TV & Media Brands, Precision Targeting, Attribution & Measurement
TAG BRAND SAFETY CERTIFIED and TAG CERTIFIED AGAINST FRAUD

MEASUREMENT

Comscore is integrating Roku into its cross-platform measurement solution, Comscore Campaign Ratings. The partnership will allow Comscore’s clients to access Roku-specific co-viewing data. With the integration, Comscore is an approved measurement vendor in Roku’s Measurement Partner Program.

Comscore also announced the inclusion of social metrics in its Media Metrix Multi-Platform suite which provides a deduplicated view of audiences across desktop, mobile, and social to enable publishers and brands to measure their comprehensive total digital population. “We take enormous pride in the scale of our highly engaged audiences on social media. We’re thrilled to finally be able to showcase a holistic view of our readership, no matter where they consume our content,” said Wesley Bonner, SVP Marketing & Audience Development at Bustle Digital Group.

And in more Comscore news, Proximic by Comscore has enabled a new suite of audience segments that reach users based on exposure to specific political campaigns and local TV exposure. The new segments are available exclusively to clients of The Trade Desk. “As more political advertisers look for ways for greater reach with right audiences, digital advertising becomes a critically important component to media campaigns. The open internet provides opportunities for political advertisers to apply more data to better understand what messages resonate with audiences,” said Kevin Fisher, GM, Business Development, The Trade Desk. “In working with Proximic by Comscore, we’re presenting an innovative and privacy-centric offering to marketers across connected TV.”

Cint announced the seamless integration of social platform measurement into its attitudinal measurement product, Lucid Impact Measurement by Cint, addressing challenges in brand lift measurement across multiple media platforms. With the integration of social into Lucid Impact Measurement, Cint will provide a combined view of brand lift across digital, TV, and now, social platforms, empowering advertisers to optimize their strategies inflight.

AI

OpenAI has created a team to assess catastrophic risk preparedness. The Preparedness team “will tightly connect capability assessment, evaluations, and internal red teaming for frontier models, from the models we develop in the near future to those with AGI-level capabilities,” said OpenAI in a blog post. “The team will help track, evaluate, forecast and protect against catastrophic risks spanning multiple categories.”

Audio network Westwood One and Super Hi-Fi announced a partnership for Super Hi-Fi’s AI-generated weather service, Weathercaster. Under the terms of the agreement, Westwood One will exclusively market and monetize Super Hi-Fi’s Weathercaster. Utilizing Super Hi-Fi’s MagicStitch™ AI production technology, Weathercaster incorporates irealistic synthetic voices, integrated sponsorships, format-specific music beds, custom station IDs to produce weather reports aimed at informing and engaging listeners.

ON THE MONEY

Alphabet reported $76.7 billion in sales for 3Q23, up 11% year-over-year. Analysts’ estimates had been $76 billion. The company beat profit estimates, with a 42% jump to $19.7 billion, versus a forecast of $18.5 billion. Google Cloud posted less rosy numbers, posting sales of $8.4 billion, versus a projected $8.6 billion. “Investors were disappointed by the relatively weak performance at its Google Cloud Platform,” wrote Jesse Cohen, an analyst at investing.com in a note.

Amazon beat analysts’ forecasts with a 26% jump in ad revenue for the third quarter, and revenue of $143.1 billion, up 13%. “We had a strong third quarter as our cost to serve and speed of delivery in our Stores business took another step forward, our AWS growth continued to stabilize, our Advertising revenue grew robustly, and overall operating income and free cash flow rose significantly,” Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in announcing the results.

Meta also exceeded expectations for 3Q23, with a 23% rise in quarterly revenue, to $34.15 billion. “We had a good quarter for our community and business,” noted CEO Mark Zuckerberg. “I’m proud of the work our teams have done to advance AI and mixed reality with the launch of Quest 3, Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and our AI studio.”

Snap reported 3Q23 revenue of $1.19 billion, up 5%, and a net loss of $368 million, beating estimates. Snapchat gained 9 million daily users, for a total of 406 million. “Our revenue returned to positive growth in Q3, increasing 5% year-over-year and flowing through to positive adjusted EBITDA as our reprioritized cost structure demonstrated the leverage in our business model,” said CEO Evan Spiegel. “We are focused on improving our advertising platform to drive higher return on investment for our advertising partners, and we have evolved our go-to-market efforts to better serve our partners and drive customer success.”

STREAMING

Bango, the platform for data-driven commerce, and MyBundle, the online platform connecting consumers, streaming services and broadband providers with tools to simplify streaming television, have teamed to open up deeper access to US consumers for streaming subscription services. Leveraging the Bango Digital Vending Machine® technology, the collaboration enables MyBundle to accelerate the deployment of a range of new tools and offerings to the MyBundle marketplace.

The price for a monthly subscription to Apple TV+ is rising from $6.99 to $9.99, while an annual sub will jump to $99 from $69. Apple TV+’s price hikes follow similar moves by Netflix, Disney+, Hulu and Peacock.
 

Cynopsis Team