advertising

Netflix’s entry into the ad business could give the connected TV business a big boost. Mark Zagorski, CEO of DoubleVerify, a top CTV measurement and verification company, said a Netflix with ads could grow the market for CTV ads by 30% to 50%, with Netflix attracting 40 million ad support subscribers right out of the gate.

The telecast is sold out across its three days on ESPN, ABC and the NFL Network with 30 first-time advertisers on board.

U.S. ad spending expanded for the 13th consecutive month in March, rising 5.7% over the same month a year ago. It was also the first month to show an increase over a year-ago month that also had gains. March 2021 rose 28.4% over March 2020, which was the first month of that year’s pandemic-triggered advertising recession.

To Roku, the 60th anniversary of the upfront is a good time to make streaming a more important part of advertisers’ TV budgets. “This year, our goal is to really shake up the upfronts,” Kristina Shepard, head of agency partnerships and national brand team lead for Roku, says.

While most big ad agencies have intimated plans to utilize so-called “alternative currencies” — audience measurement estimates other than Nielsen’s — as part of testing and learning about what works best in this year’s upfront advertising marketplace, Horizon Media this morning put a hard number around it: 15%. The agency said it has committed to transacting “up to 15% of its deals” in the 2022-23 upfront TV advertising marketplace using “alternate currencies.”

Veteran digital marketing executive Dennis Cook will lead all marketing for company’s digital division, with a special focus on accelerating the company’s advertising sales business.

Executives at the top streaming services, chasing ever bigger subscription numbers, are having a change of heart about commercials.

Executives from E.W. Scripps, Graham, Nexstar and Dentsu X will look at how buyers and sellers can work around the challenges to creating multimedia campaigns across linear TV, streaming, mobile and digital in a TVNewsCheck Working Lunch Webinar on May 19. Register here.

Advertisers have long been nervous about interacting on the site, new management could shake it up even more.

Sinclair Broadcast Group wants advertisers to move 20% of their cable ad budgets into its free over-the-air digital networks to capture cord-cutters. In addition to its slew of TV stations, Sinclair owns Comet, Charge and TBD, collectively branded as The Stack. In its upfront pitch, Sinclair is informing buyers that those cord-cutters leaving cable aren’t just moving to streaming channels; they’re also buying antennas to watch familiar shows — soon to include Buffy the Vampire Slayer — for free on its diginets.

Dentsu International has quietly begun to integrate so-called attention metrics into both its media planning and buying systems and has begun transacting media buys based on it, the agency’s chief investment officer disclosed during an Advertising Research Foundation panel discussion on Wednesday. “Yes, we’ve tested. Yes, we’ve seen the results — but now we’re actually planning, optimizing and buying against it,” Cara Lewis said during the panel discussing the role of attention metrics during the ARF’s Audiencexscience conference.

The upstart professional football league’s April 16 season opener will see advertisers paying up to $35,000-$40,000 for a 30-second spot with some hard-sell tactics from NBC and Fox to move inventory.

Riding a hot sports market after a regular season in which ratings were up 19%, Disney Ad Sales and Turner Sports report high demand and near sellouts for the NBA playoffs, which started Tuesday night on TNT.

Effectv, the local advertising sales division of Comcast Cable, has struck a deal with Comscore, for its local TV measurement product, to be a “new form of currency” for Comcast’s local cable TV advertising deals. With the deal, Effectv will use Comscore’s audience impression-based measurement product for local advertising clients.

Discovery Inc. on Friday named Jon Steinlauf to serve as chief U.S. advertising sales officer for the soon-to-merge Warner Bros. Discovery. Steinlauf, who currently holds that role at Discovery, will report directly to Bruce Campbell, future chief revenue and strategy officer for Warner Bros. Discovery.

TVNewsCheck‘s Michael Depp talks with Hadassa Gerber, head of research at TVB, about the organization’s recent survey on sports betting and how television wields enormous influence over sports bettors’ decisions.

Disney has over the past two years spent billions to snare new rights deals with top sports properties like Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Hockey League, the PGA Tour and others. But in months to come, the company may place new emphasis on programming around those big properties. New research from the company indicates more sports fans are interested in “the game around the game,” says Lisa Valentino, EVP at Disney Advertising Sales, and that could manifest itself increasingly in sports content that is found on smartphones; activity related to fantasy sports; or content related to sports-betting.

At a time when so-called “attention metrics” are competing for share of industry mind, Dentsu International endorsed a promising one based on a new explicit measure of attentiveness, “intrinsic time-in-view.” “The average consumer sees over 4,000 ads in any given day, so it is imperative that advertisers start evaluating channels through the lens of attention metrics, which are more indicative of meaningful exposures,” Dentsu VP-Global Media Partnerships Joanne Leong, said, following a pitch for Frameplay’s solution during the IAB PlayFronts conference on Tuesday.

Cox Media Group, Capitol Broadcasting, Graham Media Group and other broadcasters are participating. Magnite, an independent omnichannel sell-side advertising platform, will make CTV inventory available to agencies and programmatic buyers.

He joins from Comscore where he was director of business development to fill the newly created slot.

DirecTV, spun off last year from AT&T, is setting up a new, independent advertising sales team headed by Amy Leifer, chief advertising sales officer, effective Friday. The new unit — DirecTV Advertising — is launching with a staff of about 400 people and a focus on helping advertisers reach target audiences within the DirecTV and DirecTV Stream footprint, Leifer said.

Vizio said it is beta testing a new ad format called Jump Ads and that Fox is the first programmer to test the feature. Jump ads appear as interactive overlays at the end of a linear TV program. They direct viewers to a supporting app on Vizio SmartCast to continue their viewing experience. In Fox’s execution, the Jump Ad appears at the end of the new series Welcome To Flatch and direct viewers to catch up on past episodes on the Fox Now App, where the first seven episodes of the docu-comedy are streaming.

Handing Facebook parent Meta Platforms a defeat, a federal judge has granted class-action status to advertisers suing the company over allegedly inflated metrics.

Legal broadcast streaming service provider Didja has announced the addition of programmatically decisioned dynamic ad insertion (DAI) to its LocalBTV platform. Los Altos, Calif.-based Didja provides a free streaming app supported by Roku, Android TV, Apple TV, as well as Samsung and Vizio smart TVs, designed to enable consumers to stream local broadcast stations … with the blessing of the broadcasters.

Media agency Magna Global reduced its forecast for U.S. advertising spending because of the from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Magna now expects U.S. ad spending to increase 11.5% to $320 billion. Its original forecast was for 12.6% growth. The war in Ukraine has exacerbated supply chain issues and inflationary pressures.

In addition, Josh Noval is promoted to senior vice president, Olympics & Paralympics.

Fox Corp. wants Madison Avenue to understand that Fox News doesn’t always mean hard-news content. As the company’s biggest generator of operating profit expands into weather news and lifestyle shows, its ad-tech division is offering new tools aimed at helping advertisers find the exact types of digital content they want to support. Fox Corp. today unveiled a proprietary technology it calls Atlas to a group of advertisers meeting in Los Angeles, with a mission to help them match commercials with specific types of digital programming.

Disney Advertising Sales said that the commercial inventory for Sunday’s Oscars telecast is sold out. The top tier of sponsors — ”proud sponsors” — include newcomers Crypto.com and, Pfizer, as well as returning sponsors Rolex and Verizon. Proud sponsors get four spots in the telecast. While traditional TV viewership is dropping, and even major events like the Academy Awards have seen their ratings plunge, streaming services have clamored to be seen by movie fans on the ABC broadcast.

Jim Tricarico: “As we approach this year’s Upfront, audiences will be top of mind for buyers, and therefore so should automation. Why? To realize the promise of data-driven TV — finding your audience no matter how or where they are watching — we need automation. Automation helps you find sports audiences. Automation helps you find children’s audiences. Essentially, automation helps you find audiences beyond the 18-to-54 demographic and create campaigns that meet today’s business objectives.”

The biggest U.S. marketers have expanded their efforts to use their commercial marketplace power to combat Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to findings of a new survey from the Association of National Advertisers. The survey, conducted the week of March 14, finds that 71% of ANA member respondents currently doing business in Russia say they have suspended or reduce their media spending in Russia, which is more than double the 31% who said so when the ANA last surveyed them after the Feb. 24 invasion.

The U.S. advertising marketplace has expanded for a full year — 12 consecutive months — in February, according to just-refreshed data from Standard Media Index’s U.S. Ad Market Tracker, a collaboration with MediaPost. Ad spending expanded 14.7% in February, meaning that with the exception of December 2021’s tepid 1.4% growth, every month has increased at healthy double-digit gains since coming out of the advertising recession in March 2021.

Linear TV advertising sales slowed in February, leaving year-to-day linear TV investments up 6% so far this year compared to last year, according to Standard Media Index. In January, linear TV sales were up 9%. But sales remain down from 2020, before the COVID 19 pandemic hit the U.S. Compared to 2020, linear television ad sales are down 6% so far this year.

The partnership will let Dentsu’s clients access NBCUniversal’s network of consumer contact across movies, entertainment, news, sports, ecommerce, subscriptions, theme parks and more.

The Comscore/SMI eCPM solution provides unified metrics for evaluating, planning and optimizing audience-based campaigns on TV.