The online retailer is moving aggressively into digital advertising, emerging as a major competitor to Google and Facebook.
TVN FOCUS ON PODCASTS
Stations Finding Sound Reasons To Podcast
Tegna, Tribune, Scripps, Fox and Graham are among a growing number of TV broadcasters who are exploring adding audio content and advertising platforms. A study from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers puts podcast ad revenues at $313.9 million in 2017, and projects that it will more than double, to $659 million, by next year.
End-to-end automated buying within the Strata platform removes common barriers to buying premium OTT video. It opens up access to OTT marketplace for all Strata clients, from agency holding companies to independent media buying shops.
AT&T’s advanced advertising and analytics subsidiary Xandr will roll out a new video advertising marketplace and enhanced addressable TV offerings during its upfront week event Tuesday. The new video ad marketplace will be called “Community” and will be cross-platform, encompassing OTT, CTV, digital and mobile.
For the first time, U.S. digital advertising revenues have passed $100 billion — totaling $107.5 billion in 2018, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Internet Advertising Revenue Report.
Google’s 1Q advertising revenue, its key moneymaker, grew by 15% to $30.7 billion — slower than investors had hoped. Its digital-ad rivals Facebook and Amazon, meanwhile, both reported strong earnings last week, adding to the investor surprise when Alphabet stumbled despite a strong economy.
Exclusives
The Snap Audience Network allows advertisers to reach a larger group than by advertising on Snapchat alone.
Reddit, the news and info sharing site that is wildly popular among Millennials, may finally be making inroads on Madison Avenue. New estimates released today by the digital statsmasters at eMarketer forecast Reddit will top the $100 million mark in advertising sales this year.
Hulu’s recent price cut for its basic ad-supported on-demand service — with an expected increase in subscribers — will accelerate advertising revenue, according to eMarketer. Its ad revenue is expected to climb 25% this year to $1.82 billion; 23% in 2020 to $2.24 billion; and 21% to $2.7 billion in 2021.
Ned Segal, Twitter CFO, told investors at a Morgan Stanley Technology Conference that the company has become “much more clear with advertisers [as to] why they should use Twitter,” he said, adding that the company is missing some ad offerings that it is working to change.
Dish’s Sling TV tripled its ad revenue in 2018, largely thanks to its dynamic ad insertion (DAI) business, the company says. The company did not give any specific revenue numbers around its ad sales, so it’s unclear how significant that tripling is in terms of overall revenue.
Facebook makes money by charging advertisers to reach just the right audience for their message — even when that audience is made up of people interested in the perpetrators of the Holocaust or explicitly neo-Nazi music.
Walt Disney Co. is said to have pulled its advertising spending from YouTube, joining other companies including Nestle SA, after a blogger detailed how comments on Google’s video site were being used to facilitate a “soft-core pedophilia ring.” Some of the videos involved ran next to ads placed by Disney and Nestle.
A long-anticipated milestone will finally be attained this year according to eMarketer. Digital ad spending is expected to outpace traditional ad spending beginning in 2019, with digital going on to comprise more than two-thirds of total media spending by 2023.
Marketers spent a total of $75.8 billion over the first three quarters of 2018 — the most ever on record.
Citing a “noticeable uptick in enthusiasm for Amazon’s ad business,” Wall Street securities firm BMO Capital Markets upgraded its outlook for Amazon’s ad revenues for 4Q 2018, as well as full years 2019 and 2020. “This marks one of the most significant reinforcements of our thesis on Amazon,” BMO equities research analyst Daniel Salmon wrote in a note sent to investors this morning
Critics are targeting Facebook and Google after a week of high-profile layoffs in the media industry, pointing to their dominance over internet ads as the reason news outlets are struggling. In all, about 1,000 media jobs were cut in the past week.
TVN’S FRONT OFFICE BY MARY COLLINS
Collins | The Advertising Experience Re-Imagined
With the explosion in connected digital devices — in people’s hands, on their desks, and even at the gas pump and on the sides of buildings — more ads are being shown to more people in more places than ever before. To survive, video programmers are expanding their footprint beyond the fixed screen in the family room. The question then becomes, how can a media company make more money by reducing their inventory?
AT&T’s Turner networks and advertising business Xandr said Tuesday they have begun using the wireless carrier’s customer data to help advertisers better reach audiences across Turner brands like CNN and TBS on TV and over digital platforms.
Blockchain technology will now be used to secure data for advanced TV advertising, according to an industry initiative pushed by Comcast Cable Advertising, along with Viacom and Charter Communications’ Spectrum Reach advertising unit. Comcast is also working with its NBCUniversal unit to test its Blockgraph software, with plans to fold it into an addressable offering in early 2019.
AT&T’s advertising unit, Xandr, will be at the center of its effort to transform the video advertising business. “Consumers clearly like the breadth of content that is available today. They like the choice. And a lot of that choice comes on the back of ad-supported models,” WarnerMedia CEO John Stankey said.
Disney’s Direct-To-Consumer & International unit has reached a deal with Google for advertising technology in a bid to increase revenue across its vast digital footprint.
Public databases that shine a light on online political ads — launched by Facebook and Google before Tuesday’s U.S. elections — offer the public the first broad view of how quickly the companies yank advertisements that break their rules.
Digital video advertising spending will continue to hit sharp gains — rising nearly 30% to $27.82 billion this year, according to eMarketer. Total digital video ad spending — which includes social platforms — will make up 25% of all U.S. digital ad spending.
The metric gives marketers a barometer to indicate whether the ad content ranges from “poor” to “excellent” and measure its relevance, quality and diversity. Combined with actionable feedback, the new tool aims to make it easier to improve the effectiveness of ads.
Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal shines a light on the murky world of predictive analytics.
Procter & Gamble said today it cut digital advertising spend by $200 million last year based on viewership data provided by tech and media companies that showed its ads were not reaching its target audience effectively. P&G, the world’s biggest advertiser, has been at the forefront of a campaign to pressure digital media companies to be transparent with their viewership metrics by telling them how many people see their ads and how ad agencies spend advertising dollars.
The document aims to create “an opportunity to provide further education to the industry as well as to provide guidance to marketers that are curious about the space,” according to a blog post from Doug Fleming, Hulu head of advanced TV, and Adam Lowy, Sling TV director of advanced TV,
Unilever continues to work with IBM to develop a blockchain to address transparency and trust issues among its advertising partners. Keith Weed, chief marketing and communications officer at Unilever, sent a forceful warning to Google, Facebook and other digital platforms to clean up their act, or the company will pull its advertising.
The company, one of the biggest marketers in the U.S., hasn’t returned to the platform because of concerns that its ads could appear with offensive content.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau released the schedule for a trimmed-down version of the Digital Content Newfronts, which will be held in New York April 30-May 4. The IAB is also planning to launch a West Coast version of the Newfronts, which will be held in the fourth quarter of this year.
Telecom companies like AT&T and Verizon are racing into the digital advertising space — currently dominated by Google and Facebook — now that Washington has given them the ability to sell data to third-party advertisers.
Media buying agency Assembly is teaming up with advertising technology consultancy AdFin to shed light on the murky process of digital ad buying — a proclamation to its clients that it has nothing to hide.
