DirecTV Now used to start at $40 a month. The cheapest for new customers will now be $50. Packages will now include the AT&T-owned HBO, but the service is dropping some popular lifestyle and entertainment networks not owned by AT&T, including HGTV, Discovery, Food Network and MTV.
Already the market leader in over-the-top advertising, Hulu is prepping for another big year as viewers continue to flock to connected TV screens — and advertisers chase after them.
Rupert Murdoch’s Australian media company is calling for the breakup of Google, saying the U.S. tech company wields too much power over news outlets and online advertisers.
Global action is required to tackle the World Wide Web’s “downward plunge to a dysfunctional future,” its inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee said on the 30 anniversary of its creation.
Can the TV biz finally get its act together to target ads to viewers the way internet companies have done for years? A new consortium, led by TV manufacturer Vizio, is promising to assemble the right technology platform and media partners to make addressable ads on television a reality — as soon as early 2020. Founding members include Disney Media Networks (which includes ABC, ESPN and Freeform), Comcast’s FreeWheel and NBCUniversal, Discovery, CBS, AT&T’s Xandr and WarnerMedia’s Turner, Hearst Television and AMC Networks.
Exclusives
PBS Living, a new over-the-top streaming channel featuring lifestyle and how-to content, will launch Thursday on Prime Video Channels, an Amazon subscription service. PBS Distribution, which is overseeing the channel deal, is also “restructuring and extending” its partnership with Amazon on PBS Kids content, PBSd Co-President Andrea Downing told station GMs.
Wendy McMahon, president, ABC Owned Television Stations Group, to receive the award at the NAB Show Achievement in Broadcasting Dinner on April 8.
NBC News plans to introduce a streaming service called NBC News Now in early May. Speaking at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, NBC News President Noah Oppenheim said the free, ad supported streaming service will launch with eight hours of programming, including live updates at the top of every hour.
The biggest screen in the house is becoming the go-to for watching online video, according to new research from Parks Associates. The firm said that 52% of U.S. broadband households surveyed now watch online video (SVOD, AVOD, etc.) on a connected TV. Not coincidentally, Parks also found that watching TV and movies at home is the most popular leisure activity for U.S. broadband households.
Kelly Bennett is leaving as Netflix’s chief marketing officer after more than six years leading the streaming giant’s branding and advertising teams during a period of massive growth.
Tegna’s over-the-top advertising unit Premion is using a new suite of blockchain-based technology from MadHive to prevent fraud, target campaign and verify ad delivery.
Spark Foundry, a media agency part of Publicis Media, and AI Music, a London-based AI company, today announced a new solution, Sympaphonic Ads, which will bring deeper personalization to audio advertising by […]
Despite the plethora of content available to audiences at any time and any place, the allure of tuning in to live TV specials like award shows is thriving. One component of the live TV special experience today is social media, where TV audiences and content creators alike can react and engage as if they were all sitting in the same living room. With their glitz, glamour and cultural relevance, award shows in particular provide the unique ingredients to marry content with conversation.
Amit Mathur comes to the broadcaster from Electronic Arts to grow Sinclair’s digital publishing platform and expanding suite of digital products and services.
Instead of just being the network that connects everyone, Facebook wants to encourage small numbers of individuals to carry on encrypted conversations that neither Facebook nor any other outsider can read. It also plans to let messages automatically disappear, a feature pioneered by its rival Snapchat that could limit the risks posed by a trail of social media posts that follow people throughout their lives.
The Gillette Gaming Alliance will be composed of 11 Twitch streamers from 11 countries active on the platform. Those gamers will represent the Gillette brand, and create related content for their viewers.
Telemundo Deportes says it has debuted the first Spanish-language esports channel in the U.S. offering fans more than 2,000 streaming hours of content a year featuring exclusive streamers, short-form content […]
Hottest Houston Social Media Stars In February
Viacom has closed its $340 million acquisition of free, ad-supported streaming service Pluto TV. The acquisition, which raised eyebrows for its pricetag when it was announced in January, advances Viacom’s plan to focus on advertising as it invests in streaming. That’s the opposite approach from media peers like Disney, CBS and WarnerMedia.
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.
Jon Steinberg is CEO and founder of Cheddar, a two-year-old OTT business news service. “He has vital lessons to share with the industry, from branding and content decisions resonating with younger viewers to monetization strategies, including OTT bundles, essential for survival in the OTT space,” says TVNewsCheck Publisher Kathy Haley. The first OTT News Summit in New York on June 11 will explore all elements of the OTT value chain for news organizations.
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.
