In this week’s Week in Review: Amazon launches a self-serve CTV tools for SMEs, GroupM still believes in the Sandbox, and Netflix announces clean room partnerships.
Top Stories
Amazon Launches Self-Service CTV Ads for UK SMEs
Amazon has launched a self-service ad product for small and medium-sized brands in the UK, allowing them to run campaigns on Twitch, as well as third-party streaming TV apps on Fire TV. The tool, Sponsored TV, offers self-service controls and measurement, alongside machine learning-driven optimisation models informed by Amazon’s first-party shopping and entertainment data. Amazon said the product has no minimum campaign spend, no minimum daily spend and no upfront commitments.
Small businesses have historically been largely kept out of TV advertising due to the high spend required to run a nationwide campaign. And for small businesses which are regionally based, a lot of this exposure would be wasted anyway. But CTV, where a lot of viewing is on demand and ads can be targeted, is a much more attractive proposition for SMEs. If the CTV ecosystem is able to effectively tap into this demand, it could bring a significant amount of new ad spend into the TV world.
GroupM Calls for Industry to Keep Testing Google’s Privacy Sandbox
Google’s decision earlier this year to scrap its plans to completely remove third-party cookies from its Chrome browser, opting instead to give users more control over their cookie settings, raised questions around the future prospects of various cookie-free identity solutions which publishers and advertisers have been testing. This included Google’s own Privacy Sandbox set of tools, designed to enable targeting and measurement without cookies.
WPP’s media arm GroupM still believes the Sandbox will have a significant role to play in the future of digital advertising. In a blog post, the company said that while cookies aren’t going away completely, the fact that they’re already unavailable in several other major browsers and will undoubtedly become less common in Chrome means that they can no longer be relied on as “the overarching signal for targeting, measuring & optimising digital advertising”. Multiple signals will be used instead, including browser signals. And GroupM says the Sandbox is “the most comprehensive set of signals” currently provided by a browser.
However the agency says that testing has been lacking somewhat, due in part to low adoption among other players in the supply chain, meaning it’s been hard to test thoroughly.
Netflix to Launch In-House Ad Tech Next Year
Netflix has announced that its in-house ad tech platform will be tested in Canada in November and launched globally in 2025. The company has closed its second year of Upfront negotiations, including deals around its live sporting events (WWE and NFL), and touted its new ad tech partnerships; private marketplace deals are now available through The Trade Desk, Google DV360 and Xandr, alongside clean room integrations with Snowflake, InfoSum and LiveRamp.
Netflix also announced extended measurement partnerships, including NielsenOne, Kantar and Barb; the ad tier will be available in Barb’s Advance Campaign Hub (ACH) from September.
The Week in Tech
Adelaide Acquires Insights Business Rita Following $1.4 Million Seed Expansion
Attention measurement specialist Adelaide Metrics today announced it has acquired marketing insights business Rita in an all-stock transaction, alongside closing a $1.4 million seed extension round led by AperiamVentures, a venture capital firm specialising in ad tech. Adelaide’s core product is its ‘AU’ attention metric, which analyses ad placements across different channels to gauge the probability that it will capture a viewer’s attention. Rita’s product, which collects opted-in data from users and lets them monetise it themselves by giving third-parties access to that data, will be used to enhance the AU metric. Read more on VideoWeek.
X Ad Spend Down 24 Percent in H1
Advertiser spending on X (formerly Twitter) fell around 24 percent YoY during the first six months of the year, according to MediaRadar. Ad spend reached approximately $744 million in H1 2024, compared to $982 million in H1 2023. The figures suggest persistent brand safety concerns; the company has lost more than half its ad revenues since Elon Musk’s takeover.
Nexxen Makes ACR Data Available on The Trade Desk
Nexxen’s automatic content recognition (ACR) data is now available on The Trade Desk demand-side platform, under a new partnership announced on Wednesday. The data will be available on the DSP in the UK, US, Canada and Australia. “Nexxen’s ACR data can empower advertisers to better understand their audience across platforms and devices, so they can aim to efficiently invest their media budgets to provide consumers with a premium ad experience,” said Ben Sylvan, VP of Data Partnerships at The Trade Desk.
EX.CO Launches LLM-Driven Video Content Recommendation Engine
EX.CO, a publisher video platform, has unveiled a new contextual video content recommendation engine for digital publishers. The product uses large language models (LLM) to provide audiences with the most relevant videos from a publisher’s video content bank. “By integrating LLM capabilities with ML optimization models, we built a new-generation recommendation engine,” said EX.CO CEO Tom Pachys. “We were surprised by the immediate results, which surpassed our previously highly refined models still considered best practice in this field.”
Publisher Monetisation Company Admiral Raises $19 Million
Admiral, a visitor relationship management company, has closed a $19 million growth equity and debt funding round. The round, led by Harbert Growth Partners and Bridge Bank, brings Admiral’s total capital raised to $28 million. The startup began as an ad block recovery tool, before branching out into other avenues for helping publishers diversify their revenue streams.
Perplexity AI to Introduce Ads on Search Chatbot in Q4
Perplexity AI, an AI search chatbot backed by Nvidia and Jeff Bezos, has announced plans to introduce ads to its search platform by Q4 this year. The announcement follows last month’s news that Perplexity will share revenues with publishers when the chatbot surfaces their content, including Time, Der Spiegel and Fortune. The company raised $62.7 million in April, bringing its valuation over $1 billion.
CMA Accepts Meta’s Proposed Limits for Marketplace Data
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has accepted proposed changes by Meta to limit its use of advertising data. The commitments ensure that the data of advertisers on Facebook Marketplace will not be used to “improve the ecommerce platform”, according to Reuters. The proposals come in response to the CMA’s investigation, launched in 2021, into Meta’s potential advantage in classified ads.
The Week in TV
FuboTV Injunction Halts Launch of US Streaming JV Venu Sports
The launch of Venu Sports, the sport streaming joint venture (JV) between Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), has been blocked by a US judge, who granted the motion for a preliminary injunction brought by FuboTV, a rival sport streaming service. Venu was initially due to launch in the next few months, but the ruling delays the release until 2025 or later. The injunction remains in place until the case goes to trial next year, but the defendants have confirmed they will appeal the decision. Meanwhile Fubo’s litigation continues against what it calls a “sports cartel”. The streaming company filed an antitrust lawsuit in February, accusing Disney, Fox and WBD of monopolising the sports streaming market. Read more on VideoWeek.
Edgar Bronfman Jr Launches Last-Minute Paramount Bid
In a last-minute twist in the Paramount takeover saga, media executive Edgar Bronfman Jr has launched a late bid for Paramount parent company National Amusements. The former Warner Music CEO is offering $6 billion, according to the WSJ, raising the bid from a proposed $4.3 billion earlier in the week. The deal comes at the end of Paramount’s “go shop” period contained in its proposed merger deal with Skydance Media.
Disney and Reliance Reject Selling Cricket Rights for Antitrust Clearance
Disney and Reliance have offered concessions to secure antitrust clearance for their $8.5 billion media merger, according to Reuters, but are unwilling to sell any cricket broadcast rights. Earlier this week the Competition Commission of India (CCI) warned that the merged entity’s tight grip on Indian cricket rights could hurt advertisers. The companies have reportedly offered to go easy on advertising rate hikes, but said they would not relinquish the cricket rights.
Channel 4 Aims to Double YouTube Views This Year
Channel 4 is “on track” to more than double its YouTube views this year, according to the UK broadcaster, with a target of 100 million views by the end of 2024. The broadcaster hosts full episodes on its YouTube Channel, including First Dates, Gogglebox and Hollyoaks, driving UK views of full-episode content up 331 percent YoY. “YouTube is not just a social platform nor is it a simulcast of TV,” said Matt Risley, Managing Director at 4Studio. “It is a combination of the two and is integral to our future strategy of reaching and engaging audiences at scale.”
Streaming Upfront Commitments Overtake Primetime TV
Primetime broadcast TV commitments took a hit during this year’s Upfronts, according to Media Dynamics Inc., with a 3.5 percent YoY decrease in ad dollars – and a 4.8 percent decline for primetime on cable. Meanwhile streaming video commitments for the next TV season were up 35.3 percent, reaching $11.1 billion, beating primetime broadcast/cable spend for the first time.
Paramount Rebrands Channel 5 as 5
Paramount is rebranding Channel 5 as “5”, unifying the UK channel’s linear, streaming and digital platforms under one name, by April 2025. The move abandons previous plans to merge the BVOD service My5 with Pluto TV, the free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) service.
The Week for Publishers
Condé Nast Agrees AI Partnership with OpenAI
Multinational publisher Condé Nast this week revealed it has become the latest media company to sign a licensing deal with AI giant OpenAI, meaning Condé Nast will be compensated for any of its content which shows up in OpenAI’s generative tools, and will receive attribution too. Condé Nast’s CEO Robert Lynch said that these sorts of deals can help remedy the losses publishers have faced where search tools haven’t properly compensated them for content. “Over the last decade, news and digital media have faced steep challenges as many technology companies eroded publishers’ ability to monetise content, most recently with traditional search,” he said. “Our partnership with OpenAI begins to make up for some of that revenue, allowing us to continue to protect and invest in our journalism and creative endeavors.”
Google Strikes Publisher Payments Deal in California to Avoid Legislation
Google this week struck a deal with California lawmakers in which it will pay $172 million over the course of five years to support local newsrooms within the state, as a means of preventing the passage of two bills which would have required tech companies to pay publishers for use of their content. The bill has been criticised by some, who say Google would have had to pay publishers significantly more if the legislation were passed. The deal’s provision for an AI accelerator programme have also been criticised, due to the threat AI poses to journalist jobs.
The Athletic Sees 30 Percent Jump in Ad Revenues
The Athletic, a sports specialist publication owned by the New York Times, saw ad revenues up by 30 percent year-on-year in Q2, according to Press Gazette. The Athletic’s model has historically been based around subscriptions, but it began running ads on its website following its acquisition by the Times. It also runs ads on its podcasts and YouTube shows.
Google Ups Publisher Attribution in AI Overviews
Google this week announced updates to its AI-generated overviews which appear in some search results, providing information or answering search queries using generative AI directly within the results page. AI overviews have proven controversial due to their potential to siphon traffic away from publishers. Google’s update aims to help remedy this, embedding links to publisher content directly within AI overview results.
Mirriad Launches Diverse Media Alliance
Virtual product placement specialist Mirriad this week launched the Diverse Media Alliance, a new effort to drive more ad spend to diverse media, with Canela Media, LatiNation, BOMESI, NTERTAIN’s NEON16 and The Shade Room signed up as launch partners. The Diverse Media Alliance is the “accountability arm” of Mirriad’s own diverse media marketplace according to AdExchanger, raising awareness and soliciting publisher feedback on the data, innovation, and research needed to bring more ad dollars to diverse media.
US News Publisher Sites Saw July Traffic Bump
All but two of the top 50 news publishers in the US saw a month-on-month increase in traffic in July, according to Press Gazette’s analysis of Similarweb data, as major political news stories drove up readership. USA Today saw the largest traffic bump out of the top ten most visited sites, up 34 percent month-on-month. CNN was the most visited website, with 525 million views.
The Week for Brands & Agencies
WARC Forecasts 10.5 Percent Rise in Global Ad Spend This Year
Total global ad spend is on course to hit $1.07 trillion this year, according to new data from marketing data business WARC, representing 10.5 percent year-on-year growth. This is an increase of 2.3 percentage points compared with WARC’s previous forecast last August, suggesting improved market conditions over the past year. But the major beneficiaries of overall increases in ad spend continue to be the dominant tech giants. Google, Meta, and Amazon will attract 43.6 percent of global ad spend this year. Excluding China, they will hoover up over half of global ad spend. Read more on VideoWeek.
S4’s Sorrell says Arielle Garcia is Half Right About ‘Garbage’ Data
S4 Capital’s executive chairman Sir Martin Sorrell says that Arielle Garcia, UM’s former privacy chief who has vocally accused the industry of leaning on inaccurate and unreliable data sources, is half right in her comments. Speaking with Mi3, Sorrell agreed that there are “garbage” data sources in the industry, but said it’s the agency’s job to weed out these sources. “There are bum sources, to put it crudely, but that’s the fault of the person who’s buying the data,” he said. “They should buy the stuff that’s more accurate. They should do more Arielle-type investigation … that is our role, to validate those black boxes.”
Dentsu Enters Data Partnership with Sports Innovation Lab
Dentsu has entered a partnership with Sports Innovation Lab which will see the latter’s sports audience insights and data made available through Dentsu’s Merkury for planning and targeting. Sports Innovation Lab’s dataset covers audiences from all teams across seven major US sports leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, WNBA, MLS, and NSWL), as well as other sports-related sources like betting platforms.
Carbon-Heavy Brands Target Esports
A number of brands in carbon-heavy industries such as oil, air travel, and car manufacturing are heavily targeting esports with their ad campaigns, according to data from industry group Badvertising as reported by The Guardian. Badvertising says at least 33 large scale campaigns have been launched by heavy polluters since 2017, with these brands seemingly looking to influence the younger audiences who engage with esports content.
Hires of the Week
Condé Nast Taps Yahoo’s Elizabeth Herbst-Brady as CRO
Condé Nast has named Elizabeth Herbst-Brady as its new Chief Revenue Officer. Herbst-Brady has led revenue and advertising teams at Verizon, Snap, Viacom and most recently Yahoo. Beginning in September, her new role will oversee the expansion and diversification of Condé Nast’s advertising and consumer revenue.
FreeWheel Appoints Kris Magel Head of Global Agency Partnerships
FreeWheel, a TV ad tech company, has appointed Kris Magel as Head of Global Agency Partnerships, overseeing agency collaborations while identifying and capitalising on revenue growth opportunities. Magel joins from Samba TV where he was Head of Agency and Publisher Solutions, following agency roles at Dentsu and IPG.
P&G’s Taide Guajardo Named ISBA VP
ISBA, the UK advertising trade body, has announced Procter & Gamble’s Taide Guajardo as its new Vice President. Guajardo joined P&G in Mexico in 1990, before moving to Europe and ultimately becoming Brand Senior Vice President Europe.
This Week on VideoWeek
FuboTV Injunction Halts Launch of US Streaming JV Venu Sports
Adelaide Acquires Insights Business Rita Following $1.4 Million Seed Expansion
With Streamers Trimming Spending, Big Budget Shows Remain a Risk
VideoWeek Podcast #47, Jay Prasad, Relo Metrics
Tubi and The Roku Channel are Quietly Overtaking Their SVOD Rivals
As M&A Heats Up, Are Tech Giants Cooling on Ad Tech?
WARC Forecasts 10.5 Percent Rise in Global Ad Spend This Year, but Tech Giant Domination Continues
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