Digital

As TikTok and its massive creator base attempt to block the potential ban/selloff in the U.S., the ByteDance-owned social media company is continuing to compete with YouTube by testing the ability for users to upload hour-long videos. The company says that the feature, which marks the platform’s longest video-upload length by 30 minutes, is currently available to a limited group of users in select markets.

A new Aluma study indicates that pay TV subs are far more likely to buy the new Venu Sports service, which would accelerate cord cutting.

It was intended to be a teaser for future research validating ad attention measurement by medium, but the Advertising Research Foundation this week teased an anecdotal finding from its latest phase indicating TV outperforms the attention of social media by a margin of more than two-to-one.

The buzzed-about Netflix series ranks third among original series and ninth overall.

When YouTube launched nearly two decades ago, its first clip was a grainy video of co-founder Jawed Karim speaking to the camera while standing in front of the elephants at the San Diego Zoo. Since, then the online video giant has increasingly been the entertainment of choice for billions of people. And while the Google-owned service is still often thought of as being the destination for people watching funny short videos on their smartphones, the way that Americans watch it has changed in a big way.

The Trade Desk, Google Display & Video 360 and Magnite join Microsoft handling programmatic sales.

The Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB) is challenging a new Nielsen tabulation aggregating total TV viewing across both linear and nonlinear viewing sources, because it includes some non-ad-supported viewing. The new analysis, which Nielsen released Tuesday, showed Disney has the biggest share of aggregate cross-platform audiences, followed by YouTube. TVB President Steve Lanzano said the analysis “misleads marketers into thinking their commercials can reach significantly more streaming viewers than is possible or the reality.”

Netflix has secured rights to an NFL doubleheader on Christmas Day, taking another leap forward in live sports. After this year, the streaming giant will carry at least one holiday game over the next three years. Rumored in recent weeks, the deal was formally announced by the league as it also prepared to release its entire 2024-25 schedule Wednesday night. Financial terms were not disclosed, but Bloomberg reported the fee was less than $150 million per game.

Billionaire Frank McCourt is organizing a bid to acquire the U.S. business of video-sharing platform TikTok, weeks after the passage of a law that would ban the company unless it separates itself from its Chinese owner.

Amazon’s Prime Video has ordered Pop Culture Jeopardy!, a spinoff of the long-running gameshow. The series, which comes from Sony Pictures Television’s Game Show Division, marks the first time that a Jeopardy! series has been created for a streaming service.

Former NFL linebacker Shawne Merriman has soft-launched Lights Out Sports, a free ad-supported sports streaming service. Content partners include Glory Kickboxing, World Poker Tour, Swerve Combat, Chess.com, Streetbeefs, Outdoor America, Speedvision, Cineverse and A7FL.

Former Sony exec Doug Belgrad has been tapped to become Netflix’s vice president of film under Dan Lin, the streamer announced on Monday.

Brands turn to retailers, Google, Meta and TikTok for additional reach.

Apple plans to announce that it will bring generative AI to iPhones after the company’s most significant reorganization in a decade.

In Demand CEO Dale Hopkins in a Friday memo to staffers said the company, owned by Comcast, Charter Communications and Cox Communications, will close at the end of 2025 and transition services to its owner companies over the next 18 months. The pay-per-view content aggregator served as liaison between event distributors and MVPDs.

Comcast said its Now Internet and Now Mobile prepaid services are now available nationwide across the cable operator’s footprint. The Now brand is designed to be a low-cost option for consumers looking for reliable digital connectivity services.

OpenAI plans to announce its artificial intelligence-powered search product on Monday, according to two sources familiar with the matter, raising the stakes in its competition with search king Google. The announcement date, though subject to change, has not been previously reported. Bloomberg and the Information have reported that Microsoft-backed OpenAI is working on a search product to potentially compete with Alphabet’s Google and with Perplexity, a well-funded AI search startup.

The docuseries Full Court Press closely tracked college stars like Clark and Kamilla Cardoso. Fans who want to follow elite WNBA rookies could have a tougher time. Pictured: The women’s basketball players Caitlin Clark, Kiki Rice and Kamilla Cardoso were followed for the ESPN+ docuseries Full Court Press. (Darron Cummings/AP)

TikTok will start labeling artificial intelligence-generated content uploaded from other platforms as part of a push to tackle misinformation, the company said Thursday. TikTok is partnering with the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), a project that supplies resources necessary to identify AI-generated content.

Vice Media said Thursday it will create a joint venture with Nashville-based Savage Ventures to relaunch its digital properties, including Vice.com, Munchies, Motherboard and Noisey. The deal will see Savage Ventures investing “tens of millions of dollars” into the joint venture, a Vice spokesperson said.

Tom Wheeler: “Over the past four decades, we have come to take C-SPAN for granted. But this important public service is now threatened by a new technology — online streaming — as consumers increasingly ‘cut the cord’ of their cable subscription.”

Fallout recorded 2.9 billion minutes of viewing time in the U.S. over its first five days, according to Nielsen’s streaming ratings for April 8-14. That’s far and away the best opening for a series on the Amazon-owned Prime Video, beating Reacher’s series premiere week in early 2022 (1.84 billion minutes) by more than a billion minutes.