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| Monday, October 7, 2019 |
| Facebook should rethink its plan for an encrypted messaging service, said officials from the US, UK and Australia in an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg. “We must find a way to balance the need to secure data with public safety and the need for law enforcement to access the information they need to safeguard the public, investigate crimes, and prevent future criminal activity,” write U.S. Attorney General William Barr, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, U.K. Home Secretary Priti Patel and Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton. “Not doing so hinders our law enforcement agencies’ ability to stop criminals and abusers in their tracks.” While the officials press for back doors that enable law enforcement to access content, digital rights organizations argue weakening encryption makes users more vulnerable to fraud. Looper Insights has entered into a deal with A+E Networks under which the software-as-services VOD optimization company will provide TVOD/EST management and optimization services. Under the deal, A+E Networks is using Looper Insights’ tools to track, manage and optimize the sale of its TVOD titles across the US market’s transactional stores, including Apple iTunes, Amazon, Google, Xbox and Vudu. In addition, Looper Insights is working with A+E Networks to automate its workflows across storefronts and analyze its sales drivers. Independent video software provide Synamedia is augmenting its video network portfolio through a partnership with VOD workflow solutions vendor Telestream. The Telestream Vantage products complement Synamedia’s video network solutions such as Digital Content Manager; Synamedia’s virtualized DCM supports linear TV broadcast and live streaming, and enables live transcoding at multiple bit rates and in multiple formats. “With the addition of Vantage we now offer customers the industry’s broadest range of video network solutions, reaching across the entire value chain,” said Julien Signes, SVP at Synamedia. |
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| Spotify users can now create custom playlists of podcasts. Once a playlist has been created, it can be shared the way music playlists can be; music can also be added to the playlist. For now, the feature is only available on mobile. More streaming services mean more subscriptions, according to a new survey from Parks Associates. "The number of OTT services available in the US increased by 140% in five years, giving consumers an unprecedented number of options to meet their video needs," said senior analyst Steve Nason. Most OTT households are anchored by Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime Video, “but consumers are finding they can't fulfill all their interests through a single service,” adds Nason. “Many small and medium-sized services are building their brand and subscriber base by filling in these gaps in content.” The percentage of households with multiple OTT subs has increased by 130% since 2014, said Parks, and 46% of U.S. broadband households subscribe to two or more services. In its bid to entice its user base to add on premium subscriptions, Roku is offering free episodes of original series from subscription services from Showtime, History Vault, Acorn TV and more. Roku has also made it easier to add premium subs by enabling one-click sign-up. Yext, the platform for Brand Verified Answers in search, announced a new global integration with Trustpilot, the independent platform for companies to build trust with consumers, that enables Yext customers with Trustpilot accounts to manage location-based reviews directly in the Yext platform. Businesses can log in to the Yext platform to monitor and respond to their Trustpilot reviews in real time, in the same place they manage reviews from other channels. “The customer journey starts with a question, and online reviews are one of the first places people turn for answers when deciding whether or not to transact,” said Marc Ferrentino, Chief Strategy Officer of Yext. “Yext’s integration with Trustpilot makes it possible for businesses to monitor and engage with reviews at the location level directly in our platform.” CBS Digital is rebranding to CBS VFX. The division, whose effects work has appeared in Netflix’s G.L.O.W. and Orange in the New Black, NBC’s This is Us and CBS’ Hawaii 5-0 among others, also is expanding capabilities and will move to new digs at the CBS Studios facility. In addition to virtual production, CBS VFX recently created visual effects for Showtime’s Black Monday and ABC’s Modern Family and produced an Emmy-nominated Stranger Things VR experience. |
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| ADVERTISING Personalization is the key factor in influencing the path to purchase for consumers, according to Clinch, an AI platform that leverages data to create personalized customer ad experiences. “Purchases are happening on all the channels, some more, some less – but relevancy ultimately determines effectiveness, " said Oz Etzioni, CEO of Clinch. "This is why consumers cite again and again that Facebook is the strongest platform for product discovery and purchasing. The platform makes it easy for brands to leverage data to find the right audiences, deliver tailored messages and access insights quickly to optimize campaigns.” In a survey from Clinch, consumers were asked which platform they use to discover new brands. 58.9% said Facebook, followed by 44.7% for Instagram, 40.4% for YouTube and 42.6% for general display ads on the web. TikTok announced it wants to be known as a place for creative expression and a positive environment – and that means no political ads. “Any paid ads that come into the community need to fit the standards for our platform, and the nature of paid political ads is not something we believe fits the TikTok platform experience,” says Blake Chandlee, VP of Global Business Solutions. “To that end, we will not allow paid ads that promote or oppose a candidate, current leader, political party or group, or issue at the federal, state, or local level – including election-related ads, advocacy ads, or issue ads.” The explanation from the Beijing-based video app, which also has censored the Hong Kong protests and pro-LGBT content, came in an October 3 post from Chandlee. Discovery Inc. and Comcast’s FreeWheel announced a multi-year agreement to unify ad management for Discovery’s cable nets. Discovery will use FreeWheel’s platform to re-aggregate scale, enhance targeting capabilities, and simplify the workflow for transactions with ad buyers. “FreeWheel has been a strong partner over the years, and their work to integrate the tech stacks of our expanded portfolio, while complicated, has been seamless,” said Keith Kazerman, EVP Digital Sales, Advanced Advertising and Research, Discovery, Inc. “The resulting, combined Discovery platform offers advertisers the necessary scale and intelligence to reach their customers across the array of data-enabled delivery channels that are redefining the way television is bought and sold.” Connected Television now accounts for half of all video ad impressions, according to Extreme Reach’s Q2 2019 Video Benchmarks Report, based on video ads served from AdBridge. “While much of CTV’s growth has been attributed to cordcutters, the truth is that CTV is rapidly becoming just another way to watch content for everyone,” says the report. Of note: while the number of impressions served by CTV reached the 50% milestone, the number actually decreased in the auto vertical by nearly 30% while mobile impressions doubled. Geopath, the not-for-profit organization that provides the currency for out-of-home advertising, announced that its Insights platform has been approved and launched as the industry currency for OOH measurement. “This is a defining moment for the out-of-home industry at a time when it is one of the fastest growing segments of advertising,” said Kym Frank, President of Geopath. “I applaud the OOH industry for listening to the needs of the advertisers and making an investment in the state-of-the-art, accountable metrics needed to power a smarter marketplace.” Geopath Insights was launched in beta in 2018 and developed in conjunction with the OOH industry around an “audience-first” approach. The methodology provides more than 8,000 unique audience profiles, with additional segments being added on a regular basis. Although marketing budgets dropped from 11.2% of overall company revenue in 2018 to 10.5% this year, 61% of CMOs believe their budgets will bounce back in 2020, according to the Gartner’s CMO Spend Survey. "However, that same percentage of marketing executives believed their budgets would increase in 2019, indicating their optimism is misplaced,” said Ewan McIntyre, VP analyst for Gartner’s. “While we're not yet witnessing a precipitous drop in budgets, this year's downtick presents a counterintuitive scenario. You could call this confidence in the face of adversity. Or you could call it hubris.” Wurl, a provider of streaming video distribution and advertising services for connected TV, announced the general availability of a new advertising marketplace enabling video producers to sell their CTV ad inventory to advertisers ranging from global brands to local businesses. AdPool is a free service for video publishers and CTV platforms that are part of the Wurl Network; premium CTV video publishers can use AdPool to complement their existing advertising sales and reduce unsold inventory or as their primary ad sales channel. |
Cynopsis Team
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