advertising

Apple is searching for a head of ad sales, meaning an ad-supported tier of Apple TV+ could be coming.

The newest entrant to TV’s Upfront Week has little to do with traditional TV. Just as companies like Walt Disney, NBCUniversal and Fox try to tempt Madison Avenue with previews of new programming in hopes of wooing billions in ad cash, so too will Netflix. The streaming giant plans to hold its own upfront presentation in New York’s Paris Theater — which it owns — on May 17, smack dab in the middle of a stretch of days during which TV’s biggest players make pitches of their own.

The new offering provides direct access to premium sell-side TV inventory.

Disney+’s and Netflix’s ad-supported tiers are opening up new inventory and audiences to marketers in 2023.

Spectrum Reach, the ad sales arm of Charter Communications, said today it hired Jason Brown as SVP, chief revenue officer, effective Jan. 30. Brown had been SVP, advertising sales at DirecTV. He succeeds Beth Plummer, who announced plans to retire last year. She will remain at the company to help with the transition through the end of March.

The commercial viability of premium programming hangs in the balance as a debate rages not just over who measures viewers and how to count them, but what content is included. Now, advertisers are looking for cross-screen measurement and a new can of worms has been opened. NBCUniversal is happy to let clients know the deduplicated reach and frequency of campaigns that run across NBC, USA Network and Peacock. (Ditto for The Walt Disney Co. with ABC, ESPN, Hulu and Disney+). Include user-generated content from the YouTubes and the TikToks of the world, or other forms of content that isn’t professionally created, though, and all bets are off.

The decision is one of the most consequential issued under the E.U.’s landmark data-protection law and creates a new business headwind for the social media giant.

November’s national TV advertising narrowed its spending losses from the preceding months due to the NFL programming and games that were in full swing — down 2% from the year-ago period, according to Standard Media Index. Still, it wasn’t all good news. Although NFL and college football brought in a collective $1.1 billion for the month, SMI says the NFL lost 15% in national TV advertising dollars for November versus the same period a year ago.

Paramount Global’s CBS is about to start listing its programs on a start-up service that aims to match TV programs with marketers eager to launch campaigns that use the shows to gain attention. Imagine a regional fast-food chain or a start-up online retailer — not to mention a big national consumer-goods manufacturer — being able to incorporate characters from “Young Sheldon” or the logo of “NCIS” to capture the attention of new customers. The idea is to unlock the ability of advertisers “to hook up with programs,” says Alan Gould, a co-founder of the new exchange, MutualMarkets.

Damian Riordan will head sales for the national networks, while Matthew Hijuelos has been promoted to vice president of distribution partnerships, reporting to Riordan.

The veteran advertising sales executive is tapped as president of direct advertising sales and partnerships across Allen Media’s digital and streaming platforms.

Warner Bros Discovery has enlisted measurement firm VideoAmp to track ad campaigns across screens for the company’s network and brand portfolio, which spans sports, news, lifestyle and entertainment. An announcement of the companies’ agreement said it followed the completion of a “first-of-its-kind test-and-learn” process designed to turn up alternative ways to gauge video ad performance.

The television industry went through a wild ride in 2022, The bottom fell out in pay TV, the losses the industry suffered shifted to streaming were unbearable, ad-supported streaming picked up but measurement issues slowed the flow of ad dollars. What’s ahead in 2023? A number of prominent industry executives have bravely ventured their thoughts about the future. If nothing else, they provide food for thought as we close out the old year and get ready for the new one.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a new law forbidding Tesla from advertising its vehicles as full self-driving. The new law, Senate Bill 1398, calls out “deceptively naming or marketing” a car as self-driving when it only has partial automation features and human drivers are still necessary.

More than 60 brands will be in the lineup as The Walt Disney Co. presents five National Basketball Association games on ABC and ESPN Christmas Day. State Farm returns as the NBA Christmas Day presenting sponsor for all five games, which will be simulcast on broadcast and cable. NBA player Boban Marjanovic stars in State Farm’s latest commercials and will appear as an announcer in the second quarter of an alternative telecasts of the noon  Philadelphia-New York game hosted by Stephen A. Smith. The Smithcast is presented by Cricket.

The bulk of advertising spend on Roku and Amazon Fire TV — two major streaming video distributors’ devices/platforms — comes via virtual pay TV providers such as Hulu + LiveTV, Pluto TV, Tubi, FuboTV and Sling TV. In November, 71% of Roku ad advertising spend and 62% of Fire TV ad spend was through vMVPD (virtual multichannel program distributors) apps, according to Pixalate, the CTV analytics company.

Last week, at the Comcast Technology Center, NBCUniversal brought together nearly 50 local businesses and agencies, its local sales team and experts across the entire company to discuss One Platform resources that local marketers can begin to leverage, from NBC Spot On, to Open Doors, to company experts across business development, commercial innovation, measurement, and local advertising. Here are some key takeaways from the event.

Executives from Nexstar, Graham Media and Gray Television will share strategies for creating and expanding on opportunities to reach consumers on streaming and other digital platforms in a TVNewsCheck Working Lunch webinar on Jan. 26. Register here.

For the first time since July 2020, digital ad spending declined in November, according to new data from Standard Media Index (SMI). The analysis also is the first from SMI to include new media breaks based on ad formats, and shows that a new break for “digital video” rose 7% in November, helping to offset digital’s overall 1% decline in November. The data also shows linear TV ad spending fell 12%, driving the share of U.S. ad spending for the long-dominant medium to 35% vs. 23% for digital video, which includes any digital ad format running on websites, platforms or CTV apps and devices.

Google and Meta, known together in the ad industry as the “duopoly,” are expected to bring in less than half of all U.S. digital advertising this year for the first time since 2014. The duo’s ad dominance has for years made both companies the target of antitrust investigations and lawsuits. While they still tower over digital rivals, their momentum is starting to slow as competition moves in.

The U.S. ad market fell 6.7% in November, marking the sixth consecutive month of declines and giving impetus to the notion that the ad industry is in recession, according to MediaPost’s analysis of data from Standard Media Index’s U.S. ad market tracker.

Paramount Global won’t hold forth at New York’s Carnegie Hall during TV’s “upfront” season, signaling some of the many changes taking place in the ways traditional media companies talk to Madison Avenue about matching commercials with content. Paramount, owner of CBS, Nickelodeon and Paramount+, “will be hosting a series of high-impact, intimate gatherings in April for each of our major agency partners and their clients in lieu of our traditional presence at Carnegie Hall,” said John Halley, the company’s new president of U.S. ad sales, in a statement. “We believe this expanded format will prove more effective in facilitating our upcoming upfront discussions.”

NBCUniversal has signed BBC Studios Global Distribution COO Maggy Chan to lead its global advertising and partnerships in the U.S., EMEA and Asia Pacific, replacing KC Sullivan, who recently became CNBC President. Chan, a 25-year entertainment and media veteran, will work with international advertising and partnerships teams to expand, grow global reach and help advertisers reach 1 billion viewers across 150 countries, building on ties with Sky, Apple News and RTL AdConnect.

Brian Lawlor, president of the new Scripps Sports division, said cord cutting has become a “massive problem” for teams and leagues, making his company’s broadcast stations and linear networks attractive to rights holders looking to reach a bigger share of fans and potential fans.

Netflix is falling short of ad-supported viewership guarantees made to advertisers and allowing advertisers to take their money back for ads that have yet to run, according to five agency executives. The specific shortfall amounts vary by advertiser, but in some cases, Netflix has only delivered roughly 80% of the expected audience, said the executives.

The Big 4 agency holding company consensus outlook for next year fell again this morning, as Dentsu slashed its 2023 estimates for global ad spending growth to 3.8%, the lowest estimate of any coming out of the major holding company forecasting units. The 2023 growth estimate is 1.6 percentage points lower than the 5.4% growth Dentsu projected for 2023 in its last update in July.

Estrella Media said today it’s working with Comcast’s FreeWheel unit to help boost its connected TV advertising businesses. The combination will take advantage of the growth in Hispanic CTV viewing, the companies said.

Through the quarterfinals round of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, an estimated $213.6 million in national TV advertising was placed on the Fox TV networks and NBCUniversal’s Telemundo channels so far, according to iSpot.tv. This has resulted in a collective 8.4 billion impressions. Additional viewing also took place on NBCU’s streaming platform, Peacock. Event-wide viewing and advertising-revenue estimates for the streaming platform were not readily available.

Twitter is still seeking ad partners for the World Cup, as the tournament heads into its final stretch. It is yet another example of how the platform’s beleaguered ad team is having a hard time winning back advertisers after the sudden drop-off of major brands that have fled in the Elon Musk era.

The new AVOD offering rolled out in the U.S. on Thursday, with plans to expand internationally in 2023.

The new controls are part of Twitter’s effort to reassure and lure back advertisers that have pulled ads off the platform since it was purchased in October by billionaire Elon Musk, amid reports from civil rights groups that hate speech has risen since the acquisition and after several banned or suspended accounts were reinstated.

Netflix’s Co-CEO and Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos says its new advertising option will likely expand down the road. “It’s likely there’ll be multiple ad tiers over time, but nothing to talk about yet,” he said speaking during a UBS investor event. “And the product itself will evolve. I suspect pretty dramatically, but slowly and gradually.”