Digital

Social media proved to be a key search-and-rescue tool in Houston this weekend. Identifying those who needed to be evacuated, connecting families, and recruiting volunteers are just a few ways sites like Twitter and Facebook were used. Here are other ways social media has proven useful in a crisis.

There’s a growing debate over whether local news outlets should keep online comments—and just how to keep such comments civil. Countless newsrooms rely on comments sections and social media to foster community engagement and drive traffic to their sites, but those platforms are too frequently hosts to hate, bigotry, threats and damaging content.

The effort of covering the historic storm fully tested Houston stations’ technological and logistical prowess and planning, while straining their human resources. With power and cable outages prevalent, the broadcasters also streamed their coverage continuously over Facebook Live so that folks with a charged smartphone could watch, too. Above, KHOU broadcast news temporarily from the facilities of noncommercial KUHT.

WTHR Indianapolis and WBNS Columbus, Ohio, are now carried on the local live-streaming subscription TV service.

The idea is to simplify ad rotation into two settings. With the change, two options become available in September — Optimize, which prioritizes the best-performing ads; and Rotate Indefinitely, which gives ads equal preference. The Optimize setting will optimize ads for clicks in each individual auction using signals such as keyword, search term, device, and location.

Second Street announced today the acquisition of Presslaff Interactive Revenue (PIR), a data-driven email marketing software and consulting business focused on the collection and use of first-party data for the […]

While AR shows more promise than VR, there has yet to be a “killer app” that everyone must have, the way smartphones have become essential for navigation and everyday snapshots. Rather, people will discover AR over time, perhaps a few years. Someone renovating or moving might discover the furniture apps. New parents might discover educational apps. Those people might then go on to discover more AR apps to try out. But just hearing that AR is available might not be enough for someone to check it out.

Facebook is making a number of moves to help local news publishers do their work better and generate revenue to pay for it. Robertson Barrett, president of Hearst Newspapers Digital Media, details what he sees as the current promise of Facebook’s nascent effort to promote subscriptions for local news publishers and assesses the state of other major, yet-to-be-resolved issues for the publishers as they weigh their future on and with the giant social platform:

WLS, ABC’s O&O in Chicago, is ahead in social media actions in the market over the last six months according to data from audience insight firm Shareablee. WLS has almost 25 million actions on social, 36% of the total engagement generated in the DMA (No. 3), with more than 69 million social actions. WLS was also first on Instagram with almost 950,000 actions.

After eschewing banner ads for years, BuzzFeed is finally embracing them. BuzzFeed will introduce display ads that will be bought and sold using third-party ad technology on a global basis. The move is a bid to tap into its scale and monetize its owned-and-operated platforms more effectively.

There is a small but savvy crowd of consumers who know exactly what they want out of their TV experience. Cost-conscious and empowered by the Internet’s convenience-at-a-click mentality, these consumers take advantage of free trials, no-contract commitments and the media industry’s own struggle in the face of technological change to help guard their wallets.

Accenture’s R&D division has spent the last year developing breakthrough product placement technology that can seamlessly insert a brand into online video, including the ability to replace existing labeling.

Continuing its crackdown on “fake news,” Facebook will no longer let publishers advertise on its network if they are found to be spreading such content. If a page repeatedly shares stories that have been marked as false by third-party fact-checkers, they will no longer be able to buy ads on Facebook.

Would you smoke a strain of weed based on the feeling you get from one of your favorite TV shows? That’s something Netflix tried to provide for fans this weekend with a pop-up dispensary in West Hollywood, Calif., to promote its new series Disjointed. The streaming giant partnered with a dispensary, Alternative Herbal Health Services, or AHHS, to distribute 12 strains of marijuana based on 10 of its shows.

The Chrome team at Google is experimenting with a setting that will allow site visitors to mute and unmute a website directly from the “info bubble” on the page.

The move makes the young-skewing channel the fifth major broadcast network to stream live on the platform.

Grainy video, errors and buffering streams weren’t what fans paid $99 to see, according to the class-action lawsuit.

It appears the restraining order Showtime obtained earlier this month from a federal court against websites that had advertised they would make the pay-per-view Mayweather-McGregor bout available for free was effective. Legitimate video distributors charged $100 to buy the event in HD. But the far more widespread theft of Saturday night’s boxing match took place through the use of a software program and “add-on” apps that consumers worldwide are now using steal programming, channelsFlo and content of all kinds.

The main exhibition did not begin until after midnight on the east coast, and Floyd Mayweather said afterwards the combatants deliberately waited in their dressing rooms because of the widespread problems fans were having ordering the pay per-view program.

Texas TV stations sitting under a stalled Tropical Storm Harvey are using Facebook, especially Facebook Live, to keep users/viewers informed during this cataclysmic flooding event. Many residents without power can’t watch TV so stations must turn to social media to put information in the palms of people’s hands. Above: KHOU, the Tegna-owned CBS affiliate in Houston, went off the air for a time on Sunday when its studios were flooded.

Illegal streams of the anticipated event were advertised on e-commerce sites including Amazon, eBay and Alibaba, according to digital security company Irdeto.

Analyst Colin Dixon took at look at YouTube TV economics and determined the new virtual service is losing quite a bit of money.

Amazon will order more of its shows straight-to-series in the future, studio chief and head of content Roy Price said Friday at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. Pilots “sort of slow you down,” Price explained. It adds ‘another 10 months.”