Digital

Nearly every commercial that runs on TV is backed by a guarantee of how big an audience will watch it. Late last year, Fox and Netflix decided to throw out that rule, one of the oldest in media economics.

GTG powers and provides Sinclair stations’ websites with Game Center, offering a menu of integrated direct-to-consumer fan engagement games.

Reddit, the 19-year-old website that hosts millions of online forums, priced its IPO on Wednesday at $34 a share, the top of the expected range. The offering brought in $519 million, according to Reddit, and values the company at close to $6.5 billion. Reddit had planned to price the deal at $31 to $34 a share.

At the company’s One24 tech showcase Wednesday, execs touted the new aspects of the streaming experience for both consumers and advertisers. Peacock will carry more than 5,000 hours of live coverage, including all 329 medal events, in Paris from July 26 to Aug. 11. Two new features of note are Live Actions and Discovery Multiview, which are aimed at helping viewers find and engage more deeply with Olympic programming.

For the first time, Walt Disney is allowing direct access of its programmatic platform — Disney Real-Time Ad Exchange (DRAX) — with two of the largest demand-side platforms (DSP): Google’s Display & Video 360 and The Trade Desk. Google and The Trade Desk will be Disney’s launch partners in this effort, called DRAX Direct — providing those platforms’ advertisers with a new way to directly purchase Disney’s connected TV inventory.

TelevisaUnivision’s streaming platform ViX is firing up six new original shows during the first quarter of the year, including a comedy feature with Spain’s The Mediapro Studio.

Innovid said that connected TV continues to grow its share of digital video impressions and that it offers advertisers an opportunity to run enhanced ads that generate more attention from consumers. According to Innovid’s The CTV Advertising Insight Report 2024, CTV accounted for 53% of video impressions, up 12% from a year ago.

Instagram has officially launched a new “Ads with Promo Codes” option for all brands using Meta’s photo-sharing platform across the globe. The new ad product aims to provide marketers with a more visible way to highlight promotions and automatically apply them for interested consumers.

Peacock’s Apples Never Fall was the top show in TVision’s Power Score rankings of shows on connected TV for the week of March 11. All seven episodes of Apples Never Fall, based on Liane Moriarty’s best-selling novel, were released on March 14.

Warner Bros. Discovery has acquired television rights to the Bellator Championship Series mixed martial arts franchise, adding to its lineup of live sports content. Max will stream Bellator’s first event under the new deal on March 22 from Belfast, one of eight Bellator Championship Series events taking place during the year, according to WBD. Each event will take place from various locations around the world and highlight the best fighters from each region.

Meta Platforms on Monday asked a federal appeals court for an emergency injunction halting an FTC in-house hearing that could result in a ban on monetizing teens’ data. The social media platform contends that FTC in-house hearings are unconstitutional — in part, because the FTC acts as both prosecutor and judge at in-house hearings.

Spotify’s fourth annual “Loud and Clear” report, which originally launched in 2021 following criticism over its lack of transparency, noted record accomplishments, including the highest annual payment from any retailer to the music industry.

Prime Video has handed a series order to reality competition series Beast Games from YouTube personality MrBeast (né Jimmy Donaldson) and Amazon MGM Studios, with a $5 million grand prize – the biggest payout in TV history.

The Supreme Court seemed wary Monday of imposing harsh limits on how federal officials communicate with social media platforms about content moderation decisions. Sharply questioning both sides, the justices sought to determine when it is appropriate for the government to encourage the platforms to remove controversial content — if ever.

After making an initial announcement in November, YouTube is officially rolling out a new set of rules around synthetic media. To enforce a sense of transparency around what users are seeing on the video-sharing app, YouTube is now requiring creators to publicly disclose when they upload synthetic content, including generative AI, that they have altered or created to be realistic in any way.

The justices must distinguish between persuading social media sites to take down posts, which is permitted, and coercing them, which violates the First Amendment.

Legal battle would force courts to weigh the government’s national security objectives against the First Amendment rights of TikTok and its users.

The former Apple and Hulu Executive is tapped to lead the new joint venture from Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery.

Startup Netskrt says its fringe delivery networks could help broaden access to live sports streaming.

A majority of the FCC on Thursday voted to redefine broadband as speeds of at least 100 megabits per second for downloads — a fourfold increase from the current standard of 25 Mbps, which was set nine years ago. The new benchmark for upload speeds is 20 Mbps — nearly seven times faster than the current 3 Mbps standard. The FCC also set a long-term goal of 1 Gbps for downloads and 500 Mbps for uploads.