A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM HEARST

HEARST ANYSCREEN
A Higher Standard in OTT

Reach your audience, anytime, anywhere, on any screen. Hearst Anyscreen offers a targeted OTT platform that provides a single, centralized access point to the streaming TV marketplace.

With a unique focus on quality, Hearst Anyscreen delivers premium “living room experience” television that is served primarily on Connected TVs.

Elon Musk’s lawyers responded on Friday to Twitter’s demand for a trial in September over Musk reneging on his $44 billion deal to acquire the social media service. Twitter has tried to “shroud the truth” over fake accounts, and is rushing to court after a “two-month treasure hunt of delays, technical bottlenecks, evasive answers and, ultimately, refusals,” said the filing. The deal was due to be completed by October; Musk’s lawyers are asking for a court date in February, since the deal deadline automatically extends in the event of litigation.

TikTok introduced new features aimed at making the app safer for young users. “Content Levels” will classify content and assign a maturity score, and a new tool will allow users to manually block certain words or hashtags from their feeds. “As we continue to build and improve these systems, we’re excited about the opportunity to contribute to long-running industry-wide challenges in terms of building for a variety of audiences and with recommender systems,” wrote TikTok Head of Trust and Safety Cormac Keenan in a blog post.

Kids ages 4-18 now spend more time watching videos on TikTok than they do on YouTube, according to a survey from Qustodio. TikTok took the lead in June 2020, with an average of 75 minutes per day versus 64 minutes for YouTube. By the end of 2021, young TikTokers were clocking an average 91 minutes per day, compared to 56 minutes of YouTube time.

Roland Cloutier is stepping down as TikTok’s global chief security officer, as part of what the company says is a restructuring. “Part of our evolving approach has been to minimize concerns about the security of user data in the U.S., including the creation of a new department to manage U.S. user data for TikTok,” wrote TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew and ByteDance VP of technology Dingkun Hong in a memo to employees. With the scope of his role changed, Cloutier “has decided to step away from his day-to-day operations,” effective September 2, said the memo.

Facebook is testing a way to enable users to create up to five profiles, which would not have the company’s long-standing “real name” requirement. Users could create new accounts without using their real identity, and easily switch between profiles. “To help people tailor their experience based on interests and relationships, we’re testing a way for people to have more than one profile tied to a single Facebook account,” said a Meta spokesperson.

A WhatsApp update will allow users to use any emoji as a reaction, as opposed to just the six made available in May. The move improves on Telegram’s reactions, which have had a larger range than WhatsApp but can require a premium subscription.

tvScientific announced a strategic partnership with MetricWorks. With the integration of MetricWorks, tvScientific aims to reeducate marketers on the last-touch attribution while ensuring privacy and safety. The partnership also enables marketers to more accurately measure CTV performance with tvScientific’s performance advertising platform against set KPIs.

Kyrio and OpenVault announced that OpenVault is the first official member of the Kyrio PMA Partner Program for the development and deployment of Profile Management Application solutions. The PMA concept was developed by Kyrio parent CableLabs to leverage the programmable PHY layer to increase the usable capacity in DOCSIS 3.1 networks. The goal of PMA is to optimize the amount of data that can be transferred on a channel in a given amount of time based on real-world plant conditions.

Signal AI has launched its External Intelligence Graph, mapping the relationships between issues like climate change, supply chain risk or competitor intelligence, and highlighting how an organization is “associated” to these topics. “In part due to the rise of stakeholder capitalism and ESG focus, businesses are increasingly affected by the actions and behaviors of the people and organizations in the world outside of the company walls,” said Clancy Childs, Chief Product Officer. “The amount of external, unstructured data that now must be considered in modern decision making is daunting. With our AI technology working at scale, we provide the external intelligence to help businesses cut through the noise and understand the topics and events that are affecting them both directly and indirectly.”

Discovery Channel and Nifty’s are teaming to bring fans a two-part NFT program running Wednesday, July 20 through Sunday, July 31. The Shark Week NFT program will make shark digital collectibles accessible with opportunities for fans to purchase NFTs, to claim free NFTs for watching Shark Week content and to earn exclusive Shark Week NFT merch and rewards.

DAZN Group announced the launch of a boxing-focused non-fungible token global marketplace, DAZNBOXING.io. The first collection includes NFTs featuring moments from 2021 DAZN fights, including Parker vs. Chisora, Estrada vs. Chocolatito, Cameron vs. McGee, Haney vs. Diaz, Lopez vs. Kambosos, and more, sold in mystery packs of three.

A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM HEARST

HEARST ANYSCREEN
A Higher Standard in OTT

Reach your audience, anytime, anywhere, on any screen. Hearst Anyscreen offers a targeted OTT platform that provides a single, centralized access point to the streaming TV marketplace.

With a unique focus on quality, Hearst Anyscreen delivers premium “living room experience” television that is served primarily on Connected TVs.

ADVERTISING

Disney Advertising and The Trade Desk have reached an agreement to power greater audience activation at scale programmatically. The deal will enable an integration between Disney’s proprietary Audience Graph and the open-source identity framework, Unified ID 2.0, within a secure environment, enabling buyers to discover more addressable, biddable inventory across the Disney portfolio, all validated by Disney’s proprietary Audience Graph. “We have spent years investing in our data and technology strategy to create innovative solutions for advertisers to engage their audiences with greater precision and accuracy in a privacy-focused way,” said Rita Ferro, President, Advertising Sales, Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution. “This first-to-market capability sets the stage to empower access to the Disney portfolio, validated by powerful audience insights, in a way that’s automated and accessible.”

Desktop adblocking increased 5 percent over the course of 2021, according to Blockthrough’s 2022 PageFair Adblock Report, rebounding to previous 2018 levels. In the U.S., combined adblock rates came in at 19 percent, slightly lower than the global average of 21 percent. Rates in Australia, Canada and the U.K. were similar, at 19, 20 and 18 percent respectively. The report also finds Acceptable Ads’ opt-in rates crossing the 95 percent threshold for the first time, totaling 216M adblock users on browsers and extensions that support it. This represents a 50 percent surge in userbase from the beginning of 2019. “Pushing over the 95 percent ‘goal line’ confirms that Acceptable Ads are far and away the industry standard for respectful advertising,” said Marty Krátký-Katz, CEO, Blockthrough. “At the same time, the uptick in desktop is an interesting development. You can potentially surmise that pandemic lockdowns could be one key factor, since they kept people at home, spending more time on desktops instead of mobile devices.”

Cadent is partnering with data intelligence platform Tunnl to build on Cadent’s current offering, Aperture Audience Data Marketplace, by bringing Tunnl audiences to Cadent’s customers. Tunnl audiences are built from monthly, national, large-sample surveys paired with a proprietary data library. “This integration closely connects Cadent Aperture Platform users with Tunnl’s audiences at a time when OTT and CTV are increasingly important ways for advertisers to reach their buyers,” says Sara Fagen, Chief Executive Officer at Tunnl. “We see significant opportunity for advertisers to benefit from Tunnl’s partnership with Cadent as we continue to focus on connecting audiences with people’s TV viewership habits.”

Integral Ad Science introduced its third-party ad measurement technology to the digital audio streaming medium. Brands are now able to contract directly with IAS to measure a variety of audibility metrics as well as detect invalid traffic for the advertisers’ mobile audio ads running on Pandora. “As advertisers follow consumers from traditional radio to digital streaming, IAS is extending our verification and IVT measurement solutions to help brands validate their media spend,” said Tom Sharma, Chief Product Officer, IAS. “Audio ad verification on Pandora provides critical information for advertisers looking to engage the millions of streamers who use the platform. Looking towards the future, IAS is continually innovating on further enhancements to offer our clients an advanced set of verification tools in the digital audio space.”

Brands and advertisers are leaning to immersive creative ad formats, like AR, Native Ads and Dynamic Creative Optimization, as device IDs and cookies are depreciating, according to part two of Emodo Institute’s Voice of the Marketer Series. Key findings include:
· For 74% of consumers, AR ads are “more likely to capture [their] interest or attention” than normal ads.
· Marketers concerned about privacy are 84% more likely to prioritize immersive creative formats, such as AR and 63% are more likely to use Native Advertising.
· 85% of users say DCO has driven “substantially better results” versus non-DCO ads.
“There is a creative renaissance in advertising,” concludes the report. “The industry shift towards ad creative is occurring simultaneously with the decline of audience tracking data and the strategic implications of both are certainly intertwined.”

Marketers need step up their game when it comes to integrating the tools necessary to manage the new speed and velocity of data marketing, particularly AI, according to a new study by the CMO Council and GfK. Many marketers “need to get better at extracting relevant data signals across channels, generating actionable insights, making insights available in real-time, and going deeper and more granular with customer insights,” said the council’s Executive Director Donovan Neale-May in a statement released with the report, “The High-Velocity Data Marketer.” The number one area respondents said they are seeking to improve over the next year is “real-time availability of insights.”

Environics Analytics has partnered with Montreal-based Optable, a SaaS data collaboration platform and clean room solution designed for the advertising ecosystem. EA will integrate Optable’s technology into EA’s existing EAVault clean room, providing clients with expanded options for secure data matching, data collaboration, audience enhancement, and advanced advertising.

STREAMING

Spotify has acquired Heardle, the music version of addictive word game Wordle. As The New York Times did when it bought Wordle in January, Spotify is keeping the game free to play. “We are always looking for innovative and playful ways to enhance music discovery and help artists reach new fans,” said Jeremy Erlich, Global Head of Music, Spotify. “Since its debut, the game has quickly built a loyal following, and it aligns with our plans to deepen interactivity across the Spotify ecosystem.”

Netflix has lost 26% of young female mobile viewers (aged 18-24) between 2019 and 2022, a larger decline than any other age group, according to data from Global Wireless Solutions. Other key findings include:
· Mobile users are not just leaving Netflix but watching for less time, with minutes spent on the app falling by an average of 25% across all groups.
· Netflix saw a greater decline in its net promoter score (NPS) than any other major video streaming service.
· Despite Netflix’s decline, use of other major subscription streaming services has been growing among mobile users with a 10% increase across all age groups.
“Subscription based streaming services should think carefully about how they can continue to inspire younger audiences,” said Paul Carter, CEO, Wireless Solutions. “While these platforms can take comfort from the fact that consumers consistently declare mobiles as crucial devices for their consumption of video content, an increasingly competitive market will always mean consumers are attracted by the best content and the best service when streaming online.”

Rotten Tomatoes has joined forces with Movieclips to create a video destination for entertainment fans. The new Rotten Tomatoes YouTube Network will offer fans access to more than 100,000 short and long-form videos celebrating the world of movies, TV and streaming and feature 10 active channels, including Rotten Tomatoes Movieclips, Rotten Tomatoes Trailers, Rotten Tomatoes Coming Soon, Rotten Tomatoes Indie, Rotten Tomatoes Family, Rotten Tomatoes TV, Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers and more. Both Rotten Tomatoes and Movieclips are part of the Fandango digital network.

LiveOne has reached an expanded multi-year content and distribution partnership with ReachTV. LiveOne’s music, entertainment and vodcast/podcast video content will be featured across ReachTV’s network, including its airport network. Additionally, LiveOne and ReachTV will join forces to develop and produce new content and formats including podcasts/vodcasts, pay-per-view events, original TV series and more.

Brightcove Marketplace users can now deploy Maestro’s flexible monetization support in a way that works seamlessly with their online video strategies. This includes tools such as subscriptions, ticketing, and tipping. Maestro also supports live commerce, enabling users to sell products directly in their streams. “We are proud to partner with Brightcove to deliver a solution for modern streaming use cases with paywalls, subscriber management, and paywall gateways,” said Ari Evans, Founder and CEO of Maestro.

Almost two thirds (62%) of TV homes report streaming using a smart TV, compared with 47% two years ago, according to Hub Entertainment Research’s fourth annual “Evolution of the TV Set” study. The increase is driven by increases in both smart TV homes and in the share of those homes using smart TVs to stream. Smart TVs are used for more than viewing TV programs or movies. In smart TV homes, 73% say they use a set for something else – up from 63% in 2020. The most popular non-TV activities on smart TVs are streaming music, mirroring or casting another screen to the set, checking news or weather apps, or using an on-set browser.

Synamedia has acquired cloud delivery platform Quortex, pioneer of just-in-time video processing for live streaming. If no one is watching a channel, it frees up those resources. For long tail content, this cuts cloud costs up to 67%. “True innovation often derives from a dismantling of legacy approaches to a problem and Quortex has brought some timely fresh thinking to video streaming technology,” said Ben Keen, independent analyst and advisor. “The addition of this true SaaS proposition to the portfolio should allow Synamedia to offer live streaming services to a far broader range of increasingly cost-sensitive and environmentally-aware customers.”

Pluto TV has reorganized its US channel lineup. Audiences now have 18 categories to choose from, three more than before, including Movies, Entertainment, News + Opinion, Crime, Game Shows, Daytime TV, Comedy, Classic TV, Home, Food, Lifestyle + Culture, Sports, Gaming + Anime, Music, En Español, Kids, and Local. New launches include channels dedicated to syndicated shows “Judge Judy” and “Let’s Make a Deal,” with “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!” dropping August 1

Streaming TV combines with gaming for interactive event “The Walking Dead: Last MILE” on Facebook. “’The Walking Dead: Last MILE’ is a bold and exciting new expansion for TWD,” said Robert Kirkman, Chairman of Skybound Entertainment and creator of the “The Walking Dead.” “Throughout the history of TWD, characters are forced to make hard choices with serious consequences. For the first time in TWD:LM, fans will make those choices together, as a community. The results will not only change the fate of those characters but also their future in the franchise.”

Candy Digital has teamed up with Netflix to launch official “Stranger Things” digital collectibles. The collaboration will include 11,111 digital collectibles featuring one of 17 characters from the new season in the form of poster-style artwork.

Cynopsis Team