The company’s 42 NBC and Telemundo TV stations and nine regional sports cable outlets have formed a partnership with TVSquared, a company that tracks response to advertising in an effort to determine the effectiveness of the efforts.
The streaming-video hub is starting a trial run of new commercials aimed specifically at binge-watchers, which the company defines as subscribers who watch three or more episodes of the same series consecutively. Over the course of a three-episode session, a specific ad in the last commercial break of each of the first two episodes offers humorous commentary from Hulu and a specific marketer, and acknowledge that a binge session has begun.
It marks the newest expansion of major market local news streaming services from CBS and features local news content produced by WCCO Minneapolis.
TV manufacturer Vizio has debuted Vizio Ads, a new business unit that will let brands, agencies and advertisers purchase TV ad inventory across the Vizio SmartCast platform. Ad inventory will be available within the launch and discovery environment, partner OTT apps and throughout Vizio’s WatchFree service.
Exclusives
Attorney General William Barr signaled that the Justice Department plans to step up its scrutiny of Silicon Valley, exploring new legal tools to probe companies for their privacy abuses and the way they police content online.
Reporters Without Borders is seeking donations to its campaign to hold tech companies to the same ethical standards as news publishers, suggesting without it the click-driven ad model is a threat to reliable and accurate news. Currently, social media companies are not legally liable for their content, as are publishers, and generally argue they are not published, but rather platforms allowing others to publish speech.
Dish Media, a provider of national addressable advertising, said it will employ a new technology platform from Comcast’s FreeWheel that handles both linear and addressable advertising, enabling the company to optimize campaigns against both types of inventory.
Susie Banikarim, a journalist with nearly two decades of experience in digital and TV news, is joining Vice News as one of its top editorial execs. Vice Media Group tapped Banikarim as EVP and global head of newsgathering for Vice News, a newly created role. She will be based out of Vice’s Brooklyn headquarters and report to Jesse Angelo, president of global news and entertainment.
As the decade ends, nothing about TV is the same, whether it’s how much television we consume; how and where we do it; who gets to make it, and the level of respect given the creatively emboldened small screen. We don’t just watch TV, we binge it until we’re bleary-eyed if not sated. We still change channels with a remote control, but more often we’re logging in to watch shows on our phones or other devices and on our schedules, not network-dictated appointment TV.
Major U.S. nonprofits and other organizations have pledged millions of dollars toward groups trying to build a modern trust-busting movement.
KHQ Spokane Hit By Cyber Attack
A “very sophisticated” cyber attack on the software running KHQ’s news broadcasts has journalists at the Cowles Spokane, Wash., NBC affiliate reading off paper scripts and resorting to technical workarounds for video. “It’s very late ’90s all of a sudden in here,” said Traci Zeravica, director of content and communications for the station.
If Netflix’s figures are accurate, that would make Martin Scorsese’s 3 1/2 hour crime epic one of this year’s most widely watched Oscar contenders. On Monday it received five Golden Globe nominations, including best film, drama.
Britt McHenry’s lawsuit filed Tuesday claims Fox News retaliated against her after she complained about her co-host’s sexual harassment by shunning her and excluding her from company events and shows. It seeks unspecified damages.
The teams at website ET Online and digital network ET Live have merged, resulting in layoffs across those Entertainment Tonight-adjacent brands.
Giant tech stocks have posted a remarkable year, shrugging off the trade war, bipartisan political hostility and regulatory threats.
In the wake of continuing strong growth OTT projections, the Interactive Advertising Bureau has released an overview of the space that cites 37% growth in advertising spending on OTT platforms in 2019 to almost $7 billion. But the IAB does have concerns about the future of streaming when it comes to new services that may be looking to restrict TV program content and/or data for potential marketers.
Jim Brady: “While we’ve been chasing that adulation and virality, social has been chipping away at the core of what journalism has spent decades building.”
Democrat Representative David Cicilline of Rhode Island, who leads the Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, doesn’t just want to enforce the laws governing the tech industry. He wants to change them.
The new platform is designed to give media organizations of all sizes powerful new tools to lift their subscription rolls and preserve programmatic ad revenue, while boosting audience engagement.
CBS has joined Open AP, the audience-targeting alliance working to accelerate the emerging advertising practice known as “audience buying.”
The shutout, believed to be for the first time, of the broadcast networks — ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, The CW and PBS — made for a seemingly awkward situation for NBC, which will host the awards ceremony Jan. 5 and covered the nominations live on Today. It was a crowining moment for Netflix, which got 17 TV nods, to go with its 17 on the movie side.
Google, Alibaba and other Big Tech companies could be forced to share data on financial services customers with banks and financial technology firms to prevent unfair competition. As Facebook’s plan for its Libra “stablecoin” faces scrutiny, a global body of regulators from the world’s main financial centers said that Big Tech’s growing tentacles raised questions for financial stability, competition and data privacy.
