A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM HEARST

HEARST ANYSCREEN
A Higher Standard in OTT

Reach your audience, anytime, anywhere, on any screen. Hearst Anyscreen offers a targeted OTT platform that provides a single, centralized access point to the streaming TV marketplace.

With a unique focus on quality, Hearst Anyscreen delivers premium “living room experience” television that is served primarily on Connected TVs.

Twitter is facing a class-action lawsuit for the layoffs last week that cost half of the company’s 75000 employees their jobs. Filed Thursday, the suit alleges that Twitter was in violation of laws requiring companies to notify workers in advance of mass layoffs.

Advertisers concerned about changes in content under Elon Musk accelerated their pause on spending. Musk pinned the blame for a “massive drop in revenue” on activist groups pressuring advertisers. “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day,” tweeted Musk.

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who stepped down last year, shouldered some blame for the Twitter firings. “I realize many are angry with me,” he tweeted on Saturday. “I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly. I apologize for that.” Dorsey added that he is “grateful for, and love, everyone who has ever worked at Twitter. I don’t expect that to be mutual in this moment…or ever…and I understand.”

Twitter will start charging customers $7.99 a month to receive a verification check mark on their profiles, the company announced Saturday in notes accompanying a new update to the Twitter app. “Power to the people,” the announcement said. “Your account will get a blue checkmark, just like the celebrities, companies, and politicians you already follow.” Some blue-checked celebs protested the move by changing their names on the platform to “Elon Musk.”

Substack is aiming to compete with Twitter with the launch of Substack Chat. The feature allows writers to communicate with readers within the Substack app, potentially moving discussions that would have taken place on Twitter.

WhatsApp has launched Communities, a feature offering larger groups, like schools and clubs, a more effective way to communicate and stay organized. Communities can support groups of up to 1024 users.

More Americans have an idea of what the metaverse is, with familiarity with the term rising from 68% to 79% between March to October 2022, according to research from Big Village that explores how consumers feel about the metaverse and its impact on their lives. But that hardly translates to expertise – 22% of millennials have heard of the “metaverse” but don’t know anything about it, according to the data. Other findings include:
· 43% of GenZers are very interested to learn about the metaverse and its implications on daily life.
· 35% of millennials are very interested to travel virtually to anywhere in the world for vacation.
· 34% of millennials are concerned it will cost too much money to enjoy the metaverse.

“Squid Game” is on track to bring in more than $2 billion to Netflix through 2027, according to Parrot Analytics’ new Content Valuation measurement system. “The entire industry is grappling with key questions right now about the future of content, and we’re excited to roll out an empirical solution to help the media and entertainment industry make sense of today’s attention economy,” said Parrot Analytics CEO Wared Seger. “Content Valuation will help global entertainment leaders help sort through the uncertainty facing the industry — determining whether or not to acquire or produce a title, where it should be released and whether to go theatrical or not, the overall value contribution of a title to an existing library, the value of an entire library, determining projected value across multiple seasons for a TV show or the value of a film to a streamer five years after the fact, just to name a few.”

Google is rolling out features to help holiday shoppers find the best deals. A new promotion badge will show up in Search on items running a promotion, and a clipping feature will make it easy to copy promo codes. Side-by-side comparisons will show prices for available items, and a price insights feature will help shoppers understand how one merchant’s price compares to others.

Signal AI announced the launch of the Signal AI 500, a reputation ranking of some of the world’s largest organizations. Powered by Signal AI x Kelp, Signal AI’s new corporate reputation ranking includes insights such as:
· Doing business well is the biggest reputation differentiator. Running your company well, operating profitably, and consistently earning shareholders’ trust generates more positivity overall than Purpose initiatives like sustainability investments.
· Partnerships boost positivity more than any other topic. Companies renowned for partnerships have higher reputation scores and are seen as game-changers in Innovation.
· Purpose is often seen as a reputation booster, yet Purpose topics make up only 18% of all corporate conversation and earn less positivity than Innovation or Performance areas. To win in Purpose, pursue Ethical Supply Chains, Philanthropy and Environment & Climate storytelling.
· Tech Struggles to Stay on Top: Despite being home to the most talked-about companies, controversy and negativity associated with the big players dropped the industry’s overall reputation ranking to #4, revealing vulnerabilities among the Goliaths.
· Across 45 sectors, Automotives ranked as the most reputable overall. Tesla is talked about more than any company other than Apple, yet Tesla’s reputation ranks among the lowest in its industry.

Marketing technology and media services company Sightly has joined the Brand Safety Institute. “Sightly has a unique voice in the industry thanks to our deep digital media expertise and grasp of both the market and cultural intelligence that powers our technology,” said Greg Garunov, EVP of Business and Strategic Development, who has joined BSI’s Board of Advisors. “While risk avoidance is paramount for brand advertisers in today’s complex and chaotic landscape, they also want to capitalize on the countless opportunities to align with audience values that arise every day. Sightly’s partnership with BSI will allow us to work with industry leaders to spearhead the future of brand safety.”

MGM announced the launch of the MGM Clip Locator, an AI-driven solution that will enable marketers and filmmakers to quickly surface and source clips. “MGM’s library is iconic, with a huge demand from marketers, documentarians, filmmakers, and others who are interested in using clips of the studio’s content,” said Robert Marick, EVP Global Consumer Products and Experiences. “With the launch of the MGM Clip locator, we are not only making the process easier for our customers, but we are also providing an innovative solution that sets a new bar for how Hollywood studios can make the process more efficient.”

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM HEARST

HEARST ANYSCREEN
A Higher Standard in OTT

Reach your audience, anytime, anywhere, on any screen. Hearst Anyscreen offers a targeted OTT platform that provides a single, centralized access point to the streaming TV marketplace.

With a unique focus on quality, Hearst Anyscreen delivers premium “living room experience” television that is served primarily on Connected TVs.

ADVERTISING

Advertising platform Innovid has struck a partnership with NCSolutions aimed at empowering the CPG ecosystem to create and deliver more effective advertising with purchase-based audiences and sales measurement solutions. Leveraging NCS’ purchase insights and Innovid’s proprietary dynamic creative optimization and personalization technology, the partnership provides a new way for brands and agencies to optimize creative delivery and drive sales. “Historically, purchase signals have been well-known for audience targeting and post-campaign outcome-based measurement, leaving creative messaging use cases as an afterthought,” said Dan Mouradian, VP Global Client Solutions at Innovid. “With a combined offering that unifies NCS’ industry-leading PDM solution with our advanced DCO technology, CPG advertisers can now optimize their creative messaging strategies to drive deeper engagement and maximize incremental sales.”

Fox Corp. has selected FreeWheel as a partner to enable its OneFox video inventory across the company’s portfolio. “We teamed up with this goal in mind: to create a better overall ad – and user – experience for the TV advertising industry,” FreeWheel GM Mark McKee tells Cynopsis. “As a result, you’ll see us working with Fox to bring forth new solutions and capabilities tackling many of today’s pressing industry needs, including fragmentation, reducing waste, optimizing efficiency and reaching the right target audiences.”

Global CTV ad fraud reached 19% in the second quarter, up from 14% in 2Q21, according to Pixalate’s Q2 2022 Invalid Traffic Benchmarks Report Other findings include:
· 2x more ad fraud in Q2 2022 on Roku apps without app-ads.txt vs. with app-ads.txt.
· 28% mobile in-app ad fraud rate in Q2 2022. 2x more ad fraud in Q2 2022 on Roku apps without app-ads.txt vs. with app-ads.txt.
· USA traffic has the highest rate of mobile in-app ad fraud (35%) among the top 10 countries based on ad volume.

Basis Technologies, provider of cloud-based workflow automation and business intelligence software for marketing and advertising, has enabled cookieless conversion attribution for its customers. For programmatic advertising activated through the Basis platform, marketers can create one universal pixel that tracks click-through conversions even when third-party cookies are not supported for a given web user. Operated in a privacy-compliant manner, the pixel tracks both standard and cookieless conversion attribution.

Programmatic media partner MiQ has acquired UK-based privacy-first audience platform AirGrid. Instead of using cookie-based data, AirGrid uses machine learning to segment publisher audiences without the use of any identifiers. It then stores, models, and activates locally on-device or “at the edge” so that user data never leaves a device. “With AirGrid, publishers and marketers will be able to target inaccessible audiences previously out of reach due to cookie blockers,” said John Goulding, Global Chief Strategy Officer for MiQ. “It’s a win-win-win scenario. Publishers get better control, access, and monetisation opportunities, brands can apply more precise targeting functionality to key audiences historically out of reach, and consumers’ data never leaves their device.”

Authenticated email as an ID saw flat growth YoY (67%), with 30% of those surveyed saying it’s hard to scale, and 58% saying email-based IDs are still using third-party cookies, according to Lotame’s new report, Beyond the Cookie: Next Generation Customer Acquisition & Retention for Marketers & Publishers. Other findings include:
· Data clean room use is up but half (47%) report privacy as a challenge. Meanwhile, nearly 60% of those not using clean rooms say they won’t because of cost.
· Google Topics is the most popular ID (71%) but over one-third (36%) are concerned about growth if they can’t target beyond walled gardens and 31% feel constrained by having to work within them. Still, with limited options, nearly 40% will spend more there in 2023.
· More than half (54%) of marketers predict a reduction in programmatic spend over the next year – at the expense of publishers.
“We see tremendous interest in next-generation tools for audience building, enrichment and activation,” said Andy Monfried, Founder & CEO of Lotame. “As brands take stock of the insights and analytics they can secure for known customers with a CDP, the market remains hungry for simple, effective tools that can expand those insights to the open web while minimizing new customer acquisition costs

MEASUREMENT

Digital intelligence company Similarweb announced a new collaboration with data and analytics platform EDO to produce a scaled solution for CTV measurement. EDO will receive internet activity data from Similarweb hourly and match and measure lift in digital behaviors with the over half a billion impressions per day EDO observes across all of linear and streaming TV. “Convergent TV measurement continues to be a core focus of conversation across our client base, especially as the streaming industry continues to rapidly expand,” said Sam Bloom, CEO at Camelot Strategic Marketing & Media. “Our clients – who are modern marketers at mid-sized companies to giant corporations – like Experian, TurboTax and Michael’s, have long asked for more granular insights into their streaming ad performance. EDO and Similarweb’s new solution will help us achieve this goal while driving greater performance from streaming investments.”

STREAMING

Warner Bros. Discovery’s merger of HBO Max and discovery+, initially planned for next summer, has been moved up to spring. “We can’t wait to make the service available to consumers around the globe and get the business running on all cylinders,” said WBD CEO David Zaslav during the company’s third quarter earnings call. “While our team is hard at work preparing for the launch of our combined offering, we’re also actively experimenting and testing our hypotheses about the future product in large part to address some of the deficiencies of the existing platform.”

YouTube is rolling out Primetime Channels, a third-party hub for streaming subscriptions that enables users to sign up, browse and watch TV shows, movies and sports from Showtime, AMC+, Paramount+, ViX+ and more than 30 other services, directly on YouTube. “This new feature gives us the opportunity to expand our presence on YouTube, broadening our reach and giving consumers even more choice,” said Jeff Shultz, Paramount Streaming’s Chief Strategy Officer and Business Development Officer.

YouTube is also preparing to roll out a new feature that will enable select creators to invite guests into their livestream with Go Live. Using a mobile phone to go live, the creator’s live stream feed will show up above their guest’s.

Only 8% of pay-TV subscribers would definitely cancel service is their favorite live sport moved exclusively to streaming, according to research from Aluma. Among pay-TV subscribers that selected professional football as their favorite TV sport, 11% said they would cancel service if a full season of games moved exclusively to a streaming service. This compares with 8% of those who favor watching professional baseball and 7% of those who favor watching professional basketball and 8%. Which isn’t to say MVPDs should drop live sports. “That’s missing the point altogether,” said Michael Greeson, Founder and Director of Research at Aluma. “The data only indicates that the role of live sports in reducing churn may not be as strong as we’ve long believed. That said, there is a point at which the exorbitant fees MVPDs pay to license sports are no longer worth the cost.”

Music video network Vevo has partnered with cloud-based SaaS company Amagi to support its CTV expansion. “As Vevo expands and monetizes on CTV worldwide, we are extending our capabilities correspondingly in order to work with more distributor and advertising partners, especially those in the rapidly growing FAST space,” said Natalie Gabathuler-Scully, SVP, Global Revenue and Distribution Operations, Vevo. “Amagi’s cloud-based infrastructure enhances our ubiquity and bolsters our flexibility as we navigate growth.”

Redbox Free Live TV service has surpassed 150 FAST channels, with the additions of Fear Factor, Deal or No Deal, The Biggest Loser, and Wipeout Xtra from producer-distributor Banijay. That’s in addition to Cowboy Way, True Crime Now, Paranormal Files, and Snowy River. “We have been aggressively adding channels to our Redbox Free Live TV service and expect to accelerate that further in the coming months,” said Adam Mosam, Chief Digital Officer of Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment. “The addition of these addictive evergreen channels combined with hundreds of hours of newly added genre content adds tremendous value to our growing FAST offering.”

Haystack News has launched its 2022 Midterms Elections channel, with coverage of races at the local and national levels. The channel features stories from newsrooms in all of the most closely watched states this year including Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia and more. The channel will also feature live coverage on Election Night.

Hearst Television’s free streaming service, Very Local, is now available on VIZIO. “The addition of the VIZIO platform marks a major step in the growth of our distribution for Very Local’s programming,” said Andrew Fitzgerald, SVP, Streaming Video Services, at Hearst Television. “We want to reach consumers with quality local content wherever they are and on their own timetable, and working with VIZIO helps us substantially in that objective.”

Cynopsis Team