advertising

Amping up its cross-platform data efforts, Disney Advertising Sales held a recent new industry event — Disney Platform Tech Showcase — to highlight its new single unified advertising effort. “This new way of doing business will be optimizable in real-time through our programmatic offerings,” said Lisa Valentino, EVP of client solutions/addressable enablement at Disney Advertising Sales .

Leaders of the spot TV buying and selling community will tackle the evolving world of performance campaigns and how well they are doing at making local TV ad campaigns both more effective and easier to steward during a TVNewsCheck webinar. Set for March 31 at 1 p.m. ET, Performance Campaigns and Optimizing Spot TV will feature (top row, l-r): Nancy Larkin, Horizon Media; Kathy Doyle, MagnaGlobal; Missy Evenson, Scripps; (bottom row, Ted Kramer, ProvantageX; and moderator Janet Stilson. To register, click here.

In a move that will bolster Roku’s advertising capabilities, the streaming company has acquired Nielsen’s Advanced Video Advertising unit. Terms for the deal were not disclosed. A person familiar with the transaction described it as “not material” to the overall business of Roku, whose market value is $53 billion. Nevertheless, the acquisition is a meaningful step forward for the streaming potentate. The company will now be able to serve viewers “dynamically inserted” ads on live, linear programming, opening up new horizons for its burgeoning ad business.

In the wake of a pandemic-disrupted year — and declining advertising business — just one of the six major TV platforms witnessed an uptick in ad dollars in 2020: local TV stations’ advertising. Local TV advertising was 8.3% higher to $16.25 billion, driven by record-high political advertising spend. Total TV advertising saw a decline of 8.9% to $66.8 billion in 2020, according to market and media research firm Kantar.

Impressions will be used as the measurement standard for all ad campaigns running on NBCUniversal’s local TV stations and NBC Sports regional networks

While late to the ad game compared to the likes of Roku and Amazon, original equipment manufacturers like Vizio, Samsung and LG are hurriedly building out their advertising businesses as ad dollars flow into connected TV.

A coalition of trade organizations filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Maryland state government over passage of a bill that imposes a tax on digital ad revenue. The Computer & Communications Industry Association, along with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Internet Association, sued Maryland Comptroller Peter Franchot (D). CCIA’s members include Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google and Uber.

Gannett’s USA Today national sales team will lead the go-to-market strategy on behalf of both companies. It will take the lead on pitching clients and agencies about the new partnership, which is being dubbed the “combined power of local.” Several new ad products will help national brands reach local audiences across the local news sites from the combined Gannett and McClatchy portfolios.

Univision said that ahead of its May 18 upfront presentation, it will hold an event for advertisers that will introduce the company’s new management and its new direction to advertisers. The new event — set for March 24 — will be titled “A New Vision at Univision.” Earlier this year Univision was acquired by a group headed by former Viacom CFO Wade Davis.

Advertisers are planning to buy more connected TV and streaming video, and the biggest spenders are looking to offerings from established networks to reach cord-cutters and other over-the-top viewers, according to a new survey from Advertisers Perceptions.

General Motors’ Chevrolet division unveiled the all-electric 2022 Bolt EUV and a redesigned Bolt EV on Sunday via a long-form video it created with Walt Disney World. The 14-minute and 25-seconds video Behind the Magic is hosted by TikTok creator Nick Cho. It is a deep-dive into the all-new Bolt EUV and also provides a look at the making of the vehicle’s debut spot, the 90-second Magic is Electric.

Fox sats it will be holding its upfront presentation on May 17 and that, in addition to its entertainment and sports programming, this year’s event will showcase Tubi, the ad supported streaming service it bought last year.

Fox Television Stations’ new FLX service allows advertisers to buy availabilities across its linear TV stations and about 150 OTT and CTV options. The service is now included in Fox’s pre-existing partnership with Mediaocean.

This year, at least one perennial upfronts week presenter — Disney — is returning to its usual position on the schedule. Disney will hold its upfront presentation on Tuesday, May 18, at 4 p.m. ET, which is the company’s traditional upfronts week time slot. But attendees will have to wait another year to return to the typical location at New York’s Lincoln Center — the event will be held virtually.

The year’s biggest TV advertising day will include nods to a difficult time — and Dolly Parton, who recorded a variation on her 1980 hit 9 to 5 for a Squarespace commercial (above).

The group recruits Jodi Chisarick from 20th Television for day-to day oversight of the national general market ad sales teams

When Mountain Dew released a teaser of its new Super Bowl commercial last week, the clip featured a computer-animated dog made of watermelons — and no people. That was by design. With COVID-19 still spreading, Mountain Dew’s ad agency made the spot with as small a crew as possible and as far apart as the team could keep them. Producers watched the shoot from home. A backup crew was ready to replace anyone who tested positive.

Moving away from demographics metrics, A+E Networks says this year’s upfront deals with advertisers will shift to total audience guarantees as its primary mode of transaction. Demographic viewing groups — 18-49 viewers and 25-54 viewers, for example — will be offered as secondary guarantees. This will apply for all its networks — A&E, Lifetime and History — for its upfront deal-making. A+E will hold a virtual upfront presentation on March 3.

With Dentsu weighing in as the last — and most pessimistic — of the major agency holding company forecast updates, Madison Avenue’s global consensus outlook has dropped to an average 6.2% decline for 2020, and a 7.3% increase in 2021. For the U.S. ad economy, the consensus outlook drops to -4.4% in 2020 and a 4.3% expansion in 2021.

Sales and research executives from CBS Television Stations, Gray Television and BIA said they see a sharp rise in core revenue ahead this year, while UM Worldwide threw some colder water on that prediction in a TVNewsCheck webinar on spot TV last week. The executives also tackled the iffy near-time prospects of fully-functional automated buying and selling and the growing revenue prospects of local streaming. Above, Julio Marenghi, president, advertising sales at CBS Television Stations said that the CBS owned stations are seeing more money from OTT business extensions — “There’s definitely more money than there was a year ago” — but it’s not yet significant.

“There is no longer a competitive market in which newspapers can fairly compete for online advertising revenue,” the owner of The Charleston Gazette-Mail and other West Virginia news publications said in a lawsuit in federal court on Friday. It accuses the companies of profiting from “anticompetitive and monopolistic practices” that have damaged the newspaper business.

TVNewsCheck‘s Michael Depp and John Consoli look at sports advertising’s gangbuster performance, even while sports viewership is down, and how prospects are looking for the trend to hold steady. Read more about the sports advertising boon here.

Live sports viewership may be down in COVID-buffeted times, but skyrocketing advertiser demand has given networks all the leverage. “Live sports are the only vehicle on TV now that has mass reach appeal and big event status,” says one agency executive. Another adds: “Right now, it’s the only game in town.” Note: This story is available to TVNewsCheck Premium members only. If you would like to upgrade your free TVNewsCheck membership to Premium now, you can visit your Member Home Page, available when you log in at the very top right corner of the site or in the Stay Connected Box that appears in the right column of virtually every page on the site. If you don’t see Member Home, you will need to click Log In or Subscribe.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau this morning unveiled highlights of the agenda for its annual conference, which will be held virtually March 8-12, and which will feature speakers such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, Sen. Ron Wyden and WPP CEO Mark Read.

ViacomCBS and Dish Media said they began delivering addressable advertising impressions during live national broadcast network inventory using technology developed with Adcuratio Media.
A number of campaigns have run across Dish’s footprint in certain markets where CBS owns TV stations. The campaign’s target viewers at the household level via Dish set top boxes.

The purchase creates a cross-screen platform for measuring brand impact and business outcomes for TV advertising in real time.

This was supposed to be the year when digital ad spending loosened up again after double-digit losses last year. However, some media buyers hit an immediate pause following last week’s Capitol siege.

OpenAP has introduced a supply side platform that gives advertisers automated access to linear inventory from participating TV networks. Omnicom Media Group is the first agency to integrated the new SSP with its in-house buying platform, Omni. The integration launched this month, and Omnicom’s media agency will test the new SSP over the first and second quarters.

The National Football League will allow CBS, NBC and Fox to sell an additional two minutes of commercials during the playoff games leading up to the Super Bowl, according to network and league officials. That will mean several million dollars of new revenue for the networks, as NFL postseason games are among the most sought-after content for advertisers. A spot usually runs as high as $1 million during the early playoff rounds and can top $2 million for the conference championships that determine who plays in the Super Bowl, network executives said.

The most important 30-day stretch of the year for the television industry begins this weekend on the gridiron. The 14 most-watched U.S. TV broadcasts of 2021 could take place over the next month: 13 NFL playoff games (up from 11 due to expansion) and Monday’s College Football Playoff National Championship.

On-set commercial production has been shuttered temporarily in Southern California because of surging coronavirus outbreaks in the region, effective immediately. The major studios and streamers, meanwhile, are already on production hiatus in Southern California until mid-January. The agreement to halt local commercial production was announced Sunday night by SAG-AFTRA, the Producer Guild of America and the Joint Policy Committee of the Association of National Advertisers and the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

When comparing the average weekly spend since November to the average weekly spend from April to October, Walmart, Target, Macy’s, Best Buy, and Kohl’s more than doubled the amount they spent on advertising. Walmart, Target, Macy’s, Best Buy, and Kohl’s drove spikes in online advertising buys. While retail ad spend saw the same seasonal spike as in 2019 ahead of the holidays, it’s no surprise that spend remains down year-over-year in 2020, estimates MediaRadar.

In a year like no other, only the most adaptive and bold marketers thrived.

In an advertising claim version of “storage wars,” The National Advertising Division (NAD) of BBB National Programs has recommended that Dish Network pull the plug on some claims about its Hopper 3 DVR’s superiority to that of others and the company has agreed to do so.