| 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. |
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| Monday August 1, 2022 |
| Facing backlash that users’ Instagram feeds have too much irrelevant content (“Stop trying to be tiktok I just want to see cute photos of my friends,” said a petition from Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner), Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg addressed the topic of algorithmic recommendations. “I want to be clear that we are still ultimately a social company focused on helping people connect,” he said. However, “Social feeds are going from being driven primarily by the people and accounts you follow to increasingly also being driven by AI recommending content that you’ll find interesting from across Facebook and Instagram, even if you don’t follow those creators.” The Snapchat+ paid subscription launched June 29, allowing users to see who has rewatched their Stories, change their app icon, try out pre-release features and more for $3.99/month, has generated approximately $7.3 million in worldwide consumer spending, according to Sensor Tower. That 30-day figure is versus $63,000 the app earned via in-app purchases in the 30 days prior, and beats Twitter’s in-app revenue, which is $4 million since Twitter Blue’s launch in June 2021. TikTok is testing mini-games in a pilot launched with partners including FRVR, Nitro Games, Aim Lab, Voodoo and Lotum. The games can be played inside the app and discovered through creators’ vdeos. Google has postponed its plan to kill third-party cookies in Chrome web browsers. While Google had said it would implement anti-tracking policies by 2023, the phase-out is now slated for the second half of 2024. As Google has been developing privacy-preserving alternatives to third-party cookies, “The most consistent feedback we’ve received is the need for more time to evaluate and test the new Privacy Sandbox technologies before deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome,” said Anthony Chavez, VP, Privacy Sandbox at Google. Tremor International has entered into a agreement to acquire Amobee for $239 million. “The acquisition of Amobee is expected to build upon Tremor International’s growth strategy and proven track record of successfully integrating companies that enhance and expand the capabilities and scale of its data-driven end-to-end technology and business platform, focused on CTV and video,” said Ofer Druker, Tremor International’s CEO. “Amobee would add several capabilities including campaign execution across linear and digital channels within a single platform. Additionally, the Transaction would fulfill our strategy to add significant global scale and self-service growth to our demand side platform, increase our US and international customer reach and data footprint, and drive more advertiser spend to our SSP, Unruly.” Russia has fined Google $34.2 million for allegedly abusing its position in the YouTube video hosting services market. Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service gave Google two months to pay up. "We will study the text of the official decision to define our next steps," said Google in a statement. Amino, the media and entertainment technology solutions provider, and Innovative Systems announced the availability of their integrated Android TV managed service offering to bring a wider variety of content to a diverse population of subscribers. This technology combination provides a carrier-grade system with a modern user experience for linear and streaming content, while supporting legacy Pay TV infrastructures. Ahead of the August 21 debut “House of the Dragon,” HBO Max has launched “House of the Dragon: DracARys,” the official augmented reality app for the series. The app enables fans to “hatch” and raise their own virtual dragons at home. Each dragon will be unique to its user, and as it grows it will develop its own look and temperament driven by its keeper’s interactions with it, all based on the lore from George R.R. Martin’s world. Users will also learn Valyrian words from “House of the Dragon” to command their dragon through a voice recognition system. Musicube, a provider of advanced artificial intelligence solutions for the music industry, is offering free tagging of songs for musicians and publishers, using the company’s advanced AI solutions. Through its musicube cloud AI service, the company will allow up to 10,000 songs per account to be tagged free of charge, and will deliver customized solutions for all catalog owners, enabling greater searchability for deep catalog titles as well as an acceleration of broader acceptance of enhanced data enrichment. |
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| 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. |
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| ADVERTISING Integral Ad Science announced a partnership with Anzu enabling brands and agencies to monitor the quality of their in-game media investments in mobile gaming environments. Through the collaboration, IAS provides advertisers with Invalid Traffic measurement and reports on Viewability through the IAS Signal platform. “Gaming continues to emerge as a medium with broad appeal and growing reach. By partnering with Anzu, we now deliver in-game measurement and transparency for advertisers within gaming environments,” said Tom Sharma, Chief Product Officer of IAS. “This integration sets the platform for quality standards within ad-supported gaming and allows advertisers to better understand and control the quality of their media on Anzu.” OOH audience measurement provider Geopath is expanding into audio advertising measurement via a deal with in-store audio advertising network Stingray Advertising. "We are thrilled to have Stingray join Geopath and together provide the industry with another valuable measured format of OOH media," said Geopath President Dylan Mabin. “Measuring a new form of media, such as AOOH, is one of many accomplishments along Geopath’s strategic vision to bring together all segments of the OOH industry and work together to build a strong and diverse OOH media ecosystem of the future." MONEY TALK Meta reported its first revenue decline as a public company for 2Q22, posting $28.8 billion in revenue, down 1% versus 2Q21, and slightly below analysts’ expectations of $28.9 billion. "We seem to have entered an economic downturn that will have a broad impact on the digital advertising business," said CEO Mark Zuckerberg. "It's always hard to predict how deep or how long these cycles will be, but I'd say that the situation seems worse than it did a quarter ago." Amazon reported a net loss of 20 cents in 2Q22 compared with earnings of 76 cents in 2Q21 and analysts’ expectations of earnings of 13 cents, but revenue rose 7% to $121.2 billion, beating expectations of $119.09 billion. The number of active Roku accounts in the quarter ending June 30 was 63.1 million, up 14% from 2021, but the company lost 82 cents a share and posted revenue of $764 million, versus Wall Street expectations of a loss of 6 cents and revenue of $805 million. “There was a significant slowdown in TV advertising spend due to the macro-economic environment, which pressured our platform revenue growth,” said a letter to shareholders. “Consumers began to moderate discretionary spend, and advertisers significantly curtailed spend in the ad scatter market (TV ads bought during the quarter). We expect these challenges to continue in the near term as economic concerns pressure markets worldwide.” Snap missed Wall Street expectations with revenue of $1.11 for the quarter, up 13% from the same period a year earlier but below its previous guidance of 20% to 25%. Daily active users increased 18% year over year to reach 347 million. “While the continued growth of our community increases the long-term opportunity for our business, our financial results for Q2 do not reflect the scale of our ambition,” said the company said a letter to investors. “We are not satisfied with the results we are delivering, regardless of the current headwinds.” Apple revenue rose 2% year-over-year to $83 billion, while earnings per diluted share were at $1.20, down from $1.30 in the same period in 2021. That was enough to beat Wall Street expectations of earnings of $1.16 and revenue of $82.8 billion. The results “demonstrate our ability to manage our business effectively despite the challenging operating environment,” said CFO Luca Maestri. |
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A CYNOPSIS MESSAGE FROM HEARST
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| STREAMING When it comes to streaming, simpler is better, according to a “Monetization of Video,” a new study from Hub Research. Among viewers who consolidate access to multiple services through any kind of device (e.g. a cable box, a Roku, Amazon or Apple box, a smart TV etc.), 91%say that having access to multiple services in one device makes their viewing experience better, with 52% saying it makes the experience “a lot” better. When asked how aggregators improve the TV experience, the most common reason mentioned (39%) is that it makes it easier to watch content across all their different sources. But for many, it also makes it easier to manage the subscriptions themselves: a third say they like the ease of adding new providers (34%) or of pausing or cancelling them (31%). And 33% say they like the convenience of consolidating multiple subscriptions into one bill. Curiosity and edtech firm Macademia have partnered to add the Da Vinci Kids educational streaming and interactive learning platform to Curiosity’s Smart Bundle. The bundle, offered through Curiosity Stream, gives viewers access to seven subscription services dedicated to entertainment that inspires learning. |
Cynopsis Team
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