advertising

Nexxen said that its new cross-platform planning product has been adopted by programmers including A+E Networks, Fox and TelevisaUnivision. Formerly known as Tremor International, Nexxen said its planner enables buyers to optimize campaign while maximizing reach. The product also has an auto-budget allocation feature that lets an advertiser’s spending flow across a programmer’s linear and digital inventory to  reach viewers across screens.

Disney Advertising said that commercial inventory on the U.S. Open tennis tournament is sold out. The event, televised on ABC, ESPN and ESPN Plus, has more than 20 sponsors and nearly 150 advertisers. Presenting sponsors include American Express, Cadillac, Evian, Fidelity Investments, Heineken Silver and IBM.

President Biden’s reelection campaign has placed a large ad buy on the Fox News website ahead of Wednesday night’s first GOP primary debate, using the event to promote abortion rights messaging while making use of a popular meme relating to the president. The “Dark Brandon” ads will be displayed on FoxNews.com beginning midnight Tuesday running through Thursday morning “highlighting President Biden’s commitment to fighting a national abortion ban and codify Roe,” the campaign said.

TikTok is capitalizing on its growing use as a search tool, particularly by Gen Z consumers, by allowing brands to serve ads in its search results. The new feature in TikTok Ads Manager, called Search Ads Toggle, lets advertisers target users who are actively looking for more information on products or brands through TikTok searches. It is available now in the U.S., and testing in other markets.

One of the groups said it had used Google’s tools to run a targeted ad campaign this month on children’s channels. Google has said it did not allow such ads on videos made for children.

Summer TV broadcast viewing patterns continue to follow that of recent live, linear television trends overall — registering double-digit percentage declines in viewing, with national TV spend also sinking. After nearly two months, season-to-date viewership dropped 25% to average 1.81 million viewers per summer prime-time episode, according to Nielsen’s live program-plus-seven days of time-shifted video-on-demand metric for May 25-Aug. 13.

Executives from CBS, Sinclair and Fox Television Stations will discuss how they’re preparing to take advantage of a strong 2024 in ad sales after 2023’s powerful headwinds in a panel at TVNewsCheck’s TV2025: Monetizing the Future conference at the NAB Show New York on Oct. 25. Register here.

It appears the wireless industry in the U.S. is gearing up to support “branded calls.” Such calls will allow businesses to insert things like their name, the reason for their call and even potentially their corporate logo into a smartphone’s calling screen. According to the companies promoting the technology, branded calls can help reduce the nuisance of spam calls, and can create more trust in the nation’s overall calling system. However, the technology may also allow voice calling providers to make more money by charging businesses to access this kind of Rich Call Data (RCD).

The women’s World Cup soccer tournament attracted 22% more advertisers than four year ago, according to a report from iSpot TV. Despite the early exit of the U.S. team, losing to Sweden in the knockout stage, the World Cup has generated 1.05 billion ad impressions so far for the 294 advertisers. Games the U.S. played in generated 18.8% of all of the TV ad impressions.

Some of the world’s biggest advertisers, from food giant Nestle to consumer goods multinational Unilever, are experimenting with using generative AI software like ChatGPT and DALL-E to cut costs and increase productivity, executives say. But many companies remain wary of security and copyright risks as well as the dangers of unintended biases baked into the raw information feeding the software, meaning humans will remain part of the process for the foreseeable future.

Advertisers spent $1 billion buying advertising on connected TV in June, a significant milestone, according to Vivvix, Kantar’s ad tracking unit, in its first-half report. “This milestone validates the projections on CTV’s ascendency from experimental to a ‘table stakes’ medium,” said Andrew Feigenson, CEO of Vivvix.

Ad commitments for primetime broadcast TV fell 3%, to $9.595 billion, compared with $9.91 billion in last year’s market, according to Media Dynamics Inc., an advertising consultancy that tracks the upfront, when U.S. TV networks try to sell the bulk of their commercial inventory for their next programming cycle. Cable TV saw even worse erosion, with advertisers committing $9.52 billion for primetime TV, down 7% compared to the $10.23 billion in commitments secured last year.

Julio Marenghi, CBS Television Stations president of sales, will retire as of Oct. 1. He’s been at the CBS group for 14 years, including a run as WBZ Boston general manager.

On the eve of its latest quarter earnings release, Disney Advertising has closed its upfront advertising deal-making for the new TV season that starts next month at a revenue volume “in line with the prior year,” according to the company. A year ago, Walt Disney amassed $9 billion from upfront advertising revenue commitments for the 2022-2023 TV season, Disney said.

The veteran advertising exec will oversee the company’s newly created national ad sales team as part of its unified sales strategy.

The Fitch Ratings agency last week announced that it would downgrade its long-term credit rating of the United States from AAA to AA+ with a stable outlook. It forced the stock market rally to take a breather, and drove up interest rates in the housing market. Although it has not been determined how the downgrade will affect the advertising industry, as companies and brands make decisions about which media to buy and where to spend budgets, some look back to the last downgrade in 2011 to share opinions.

Agencies want broadcasters to run what they pay for and feel that should no longer be challenging in 2023, executives from Sinclair, Magna, Icon International and Locality said during a TVNewsCheck webinar last week.

London-based research firm Ampere Analysis estimates that ad tiers from Netflix, Disney and others have collectively surpassed 100 million users.

The owner of the Univision broadcast network and the Vix streaming hub was able to increase the volume of ad commitments it secured in upfront talks, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company expects volume to increase in the high-single-digit percentage range, while most of its English-language rivals are seeing commitment volume that is largely flat to slightly up from year-earlier performance.

Marybeth Strobel and Greg Regis lead agency-focused teams, while Jon Diament heads sports sales.

Less than a month after sharing ad revenue with select verified creators, Twitter — now rebranded as X — has made its “Ads Revenue Sharing” program available for all eligible creators across the globe.  “Today is the day,” tweeted X, instructing creators to set up payouts from within Monetization to get compensated for posting content. 

CBS and Fox weighed in on their upfronts today, following NBC last week. CBS has closed its 2024 selling season up “low-to-mid single digits” in dollar commitments. Fox Corp. showed gains in news and is looking at a fall slate of sports, animated and unsripted content. Both companies, along with the rest of the television industry, have been in unusually protracted negotiations amid unprecedented Hollywood labor action and a problematic ad market.

The streamer asks for patience as it tries to jump-start its $6.99 a month ad tier.

Ad-tech company PubMatic has launched Convert, a self-service advertising platform for commerce media. Convert is built on PubMatic’s global cloud infrastructure and was created for commerce media networks and their advertising clients. It enables onsite and offsite monetization through listing ads and connected TV. IPG MediaBrand, Coles 360, Lyft Media, MiQ and Wallapop helped develop the platform.

Kia will advertise on Telly, whose free 55-inch televisions come with an attached second screen to show ads and other content.

If Twitter’s ad revenue is off an average of 50%, as Elon Musk disclosed earlier this week, then it’s coming mainly from the platforms biggest advertisers. Ad spending across Twitter’s top 10 ad categories are down an average 71% through the first six months of 2023 compared to the same period a year ago, according to estimates released today by ad tracking service MediaRadar.

Many ads are easier to make with the fast-improving technology. It also poses a threat to an industry already in flux. Pictured: A Virgin Voyages campaign using artificial intelligence allowed users to prompt a digital avatar of Jennifer Lopez to issue tens of thousands of customized video invitations to a cruise.

Traditional TV is dying. Ad revenue is soft. Streaming isn’t profitable. And Hollywood is practically shut down as the actors and writers unions settle in for what is shaping up to be a long and bitter work stoppage. All of this turmoil will be on investors’ minds as the media industry kicks off its earnings season this week, with Netflix up first on Wednesday.

In its First Half TV Transparency Report, measurement and analytics company iSpot points out viewing trends that illustrate the changes and challenges facing the industry. It says that linear TV ad impressions grew by 5% to 4.21 trillion in the first half of 2023 while at the same time, national TV ad spend dropped by 7.4% to $21.6 billion.

Roku has partnered with Shopify to allow Roku streaming device users to purchase products from Shopify merchants directly from their TV screens, via Roku Action Ads. This is the first commerce integration for independent Shopify merchants on TV streaming, and an extension of the two companies’ existing commerce relationship.

The veteran exec has held that spot since 1997 and has been at the station group since 1991.

Automotive national TV spending declined 18.1% in June despite big sports buys, according to iSpot.tv. The estimated national TV spending by automakers was $128.7 million, compared to $157.2 million in June 2022. Impressions for the month rose 7% to 27.9 billion, up from 26.1 billion in June 2022. The top five brands by estimate national TV ad spend were Lexus ($12.8 million), Kia ($12.7 million), Chevrolet ($11.7 million), Toyota ($10.6 million) and Nissan ($8.9 million).