BENTONVILLE, Ark. and NEW YORK—In a major bet on the rapidly growing CTV ad business that could have a long-term impact on local broadcasters, Walmart has announced plans to acquire Vibe.co, a self-serve, connected TV (CTV) advertising platform designed to simplify advertising for small and mid-sized businesses (SMB) and mid-market brands.

Financial terms were not disclosed but the Wall Street Journal reported that Walmart is paying $1.4 billion.

The acquisition is part of Walmart’s ongoing strategy of building more accessible, full-funnel advertising solutions through Walmart Connect, its commerce media business.

Those efforts make it a growing competitor for local broadcasters targeting the same small and mid-sized businesses.

By combining Vibe.co’s self-serve CTV platform with Walmart’s commerce audiences, closed-loop measurement and growing media ecosystem, including the streaming platform Vizio, Walmart Connect hopes to work with more advertisers to launch CTV campaigns and better measure their business impact.

“Walmart Connect is focused on making commerce media more accessible, more measurable and easier to activate for advertisers of all sizes,” said Ryan Mayward, GM and senior vice president, Walmart Connect U.S. “Vibe.co has created a purpose-built platform that simplifies streaming TV advertising, and together, we can help more businesses connect with customers across streaming environments while measuring the impact of those campaigns through Walmart’s commerce capabilities.”

Vibe.co’s platform offers self-serve campaign activation, direct supply partner integrations, proprietary advertising technology and performance-driven optimization that helps advertisers access premium connected TV inventory more efficiently.

The combination is expected to support broader adoption of the CTV ad media among advertisers across Walmart Connect, and the broader connected TV ecosystem, particularly among SMB and mid-market advertisers, including Walmart’s third-party marketplace sellers. The platform can deliver easier campaign activation, greater transparency and stronger measurement between media investment and commerce outcomes.

“Vibe.co was built as the self-serve platform for performance and ecommerce marketers to run streaming TV the way they run paid social: measurable, fast to launch, and optimized for better outcomes,” said Arthur Querou, Co-Founder and CEO, Vibe.co. “Joining Walmart gives us the opportunity to accelerate that mission and bring performance TV advertising to one of the most powerful commerce media ecosystems in the market.”

Combined with Walmart’s acquisition of Vizio, Vibe.co strengthens Walmart Connect’s ability to deliver simplified activation, enhanced targeting and measurable outcomes across its growing CTV ecosystem.

Following the close of the transaction, Vibe.co CEO and Co-Founder Arthur Querou, CTO and Co-Founder Franck Tetzlaff, and the broader Vibe.co team are expected to join Walmart Connect.

Walmart expects the transaction to close by the end of fiscal year 2027. Walmart said it does not expect the transaction to have any impact to FY27 sales and operating income growth guidance, as previously provided.

ATLANTA—Hoping to tap into growing political ad spending on digital platforms in what promises to be a record breaking election year, Gray Media has launched a new political digital advertising platform powered by Aristotle, a provider of political data and analytics.

The offering integrates Aristotle's political and consumer data into Gray's Political 360 go-to-market strategy that aims to provide candidates, issues, and advocacy organizations ways to reach constituents with greater precision across digital channels.

"We're excited to bring this advanced capability to our stations and to the candidates and media buyers we serve," said Mike Braun, Gray’s chief digital officer. "By combining Gray's local market strength and expertise with Aristotle's trusted, continuously updated voter intelligence, we can help campaigns engage their right voters at the right time with the right message."

The new Political 360 strategy is designed to help advertisers to move beyond broad demographic targeting and activate more precise voter audience segments. The data-driven approach improves campaign efficiency across devices and platforms and reduces wasted impressions, which Gray hopes will set it apart in the competition for what promises to be a record setting political advertising year.

"Successful campaigns depend on reaching the right voters with the right message at the right time," said Aristotle executive vice president of data Andrew Tavani. "By combining Gray's unmatched local market presence with Aristotle's trusted voter and consumer data, Political 360 gives campaigns a smarter, more efficient way to connect with the audiences that matter most."

Through Political 360, Gray leverages Aristotle's large national databases, including:

• The National Voter File, covering more than 235 million registered U.S. voters and sourced from more than 4,000 election jurisdictions.
• The National Consumer File, built from more than 267 million consumer records and enriched with demographic and lifestyle attributes.

These datasets enable Gray to support campaign strategies such as targeting party-specific voters within a district during a primary window. Gray’s Political 360 helps campaigns focus their spend where it matters most, drive frequency, and build awareness and advocacy in the runup to Election Day.

Warner Bros. Discovery has announced that it is working with its preferred cloud provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) to develop next-generation advertising experiences built with AWS agentic AI.

As part of the effort, WBD is expanding its advertising technology stack on AWS and deploying an agentic AI-driven approach to how premium inventory across its U.S. linear and digital channels is planned, activated, optimized, and monetized.

By rebuilding its longstanding traditional internal workflows from the ground up with automated, data-driven processes on a single platform, WBD reported that it is reimagining its infrastructure for advertisers in ways that unify "the buying experience across previously siloed business units and enable automated campaign optimization."

"We're embarking on the next frontier of advertising where convergence brings linear and digital together on a single platform – each retaining its own essence, yet with the fluidity to plan, package, and optimize across both — all measurable and optimizable at cloud scale with agentic, AI-native decisioning," said Dr. Nage Sethu, senior vice president of technology - converged advertising and linear systems, Warner Bros. Discovery. "Building with AWS has been critical to streamlining the buyer’s experience across linear and digital, powering critical layers of our data, forecasting, and next-generation agentic advertising stack."

In 2026, WBD began rolling out a new generation of capabilities, including agentic automation for direct response and commercial workflows, advanced audience forecasting, and enhanced measurement and attribution.

Building on those rollouts, WBD said it will introduce unified media planning in Q3, followed by a phased rollout of composable order management, pricing, and stewardship in Q4.

"AWS is proud to deepen our relationship with Warner Bros. Discovery at such a transformative moment in media and advertising," said Samira Panah Bakhtiar, general manager, media, entertainment, games & sports, Amazon Web Services. "By combining WBD's iconic content portfolio and rich audience signals with AWS's cloud and agentic AI capabilities, we're enabling a new era of intelligent, automated advertising that delivers better outcomes for brands and viewers alike."

More specifically, WBD’s new platform features autonomous AI agents for intelligent planning, dynamic forecasting, real-time optimization, and closed-loop measurement. These agents continuously self-optimize, learning from outcomes to drive better results for buyers and sellers alike with every campaign. The system enables flexible targeting approaches, allowing buyers to focus on specific brands or audience segments across linear and digital, with WBD providing optimal inventory allocation recommendations.

The platform streamlines the ad buying process for WBD inventory so that advertisers can more effectively allocate budgets across multiple platforms and brands. Additionally, advertisers can more easily leverage new ad formats, including interactive ads, while viewers receive more customized ad content.

Underpinning WBD's new advertising technology implementation is a composable data and interoperability layer that gives WBD's AI agents the real-time context they need to act, integrate seamlessly across the ecosystem, and deliver buyer transparency. Key AWS services powering the platform include:

Amazon Bedrock hosts the various foundation models employed in WBD’s closed instance

Amazon SageMaker provides the tools for training custom machine learning models for WBD’s exclusive use and in compliance with WBD data protection, segmentation and security controls

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) stores data in the Apache Iceberg format for the underlying data lake.

In addition, Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) powers application hosting and Amazon Quick provides a personalized, proactive AI assistant that enables Ad Sales teams to interact with data through natural language, uncover actionable insights, receive proactive recommendations, and make faster, data-driven decisions.

NEW YORK—In what could be its last upfront as a separate company, Warner Bros. Discovery’s annual upfront presentation showcased an expanding portfolio of advanced advertising capabilities and several new ad tech innovations, including shoppable pause ads, scene-level moments that allow advertisers to contextually targeting individual scenes in WBD’s premium programming and new AI tools for dynamic creative and agentic experiences.

It also unveiled a new “Always-On Measurement & Attribution Dashboard,” and “Unbreakable,” a cross-platform, solution that connects brands with audiences through participatory experiences on linear, digital and social platforms.

Company executives said that these enhancements and the company's expanding embrace of AI technology, are designed to deliver audiences a more relevant and engaging experience, while empowering brands to better connect with viewers through the iconic shows and films they enjoy across the WBD ecosystem.

“Our premium programming commands attention, and its cultural relevance is what further elevates us across the industry,” said Bobby Voltaggio, president U.S. Ad Sales, Platform Monetization, Warner Bros. Discovery. “By pairing our world-class content with these dynamic tools, we’re unlocking new and effective ways for brands to maximize their value and spend across WBD’s portfolio, all while enriching the viewing experiences for our audiences.”

The company described those new capabilities as follows:

• Scene-Level Moments. Scene-level Moments delivers unmatched precision in the market, contextually targeting individual scenes in WBD’s premium programming. This technology, powered by KERV.ai, matches brands to the right opportunity allowing viewers to discover greater product relevance during every moment of every show. In addition to HBO Max, Scene-Level Moments will be expanding to discovery+ and across the full WBD Stream footprint.
• Shoppable Pause Ads. This brand-new format is viewer-controlled, with unlimited time to engage. Every pause becomes a moment of relevance based on what's on screen, creating an opportunity to purchase, discover, or act, all without ever interrupting the viewing experience.
• This format takes standard creative and makes it actionable, opening shoppable advertising to an entirely new universe of brand categories that couldn't take advantage of it before.
• Dynamic Creative — Now Powering Brand Block. Dynamic Creative now powers Brand Block, our proven ad-lite creative. Messages now adapt in real time to what audiences are watching, as custom headlines and visuals shift the message dynamically, curating a brand's message in real time based on what's happening on screen. Headlines and visuals are tailored to the scene right before the break, informed by WBD’s proprietary contextual metadata, ensuring the right message, in the right moment, is delivered every time.
• Agentic Experiences. Brands will soon be able to be directly embedded inside the moment of intent, with AI-powered brand agents responding to what target audiences want to know in real time, and optimized to the outcome a brand wants to achieve, in the context of the content the viewers are already engaged with.

In addition the company launched Always-On Measurement & Attribution Dashboard, which is designed to accelerate the shift from conventional post-campaign reports to real-time insight and business outcomes for in-flight campaigns.

Built through direct integrations with leading measurement and attribution partners, the dashboard provides a continuous data loop between exposure and outcomes that offers:

• On-demand visibility into campaign performance across linear, streaming, and digital
• Direct matching to business outcomes, including brand lift, site engagement, and sales conversions
• Actionable insights and analysis delivered in-flight, enabling optimization while campaigns are still running

“Measurement is no longer a backend, post-campaign reporting exercise,” said David Porter, Head of Advertising Research, Data, and Insights, Warner Bros. Discovery. “With the Always-On Measurement & Attribution Dashboard, clients will better understand performance while the campaign is still running, combining the speed they expect with the independently verified outcomes they trust. That’s a powerful shift from reporting on performance to actively shaping and maximizing it.”

Another major ad Tech announcement was the launch of “Unbreakable,” a suite of new cross-platform ad solutions from Warner Bros. Discovery Advertising designed to connect brands with audiences through seamless, participatory experiences.

This fan-first approach is designed to move easily between linear television, digital environments, and social platforms, ensuring that brand experiences remain consistent and impactful regardless of where fans engage.

From real-time polling during live events, to fan-driven debates on social and on-air integrations that spotlight audiences, WBD executives said that “Unbreakable” turns single moments into immersive, ownable experiences that drive both engagement and cultural relevance.

“At Warner Bros. Discovery, fans are at the center of everything we do,” said Ed Romaine, GSVP, Head of Revenue Marketing, Warner Bros. Discovery. “Unbreakable is built to meet audiences in the moments that matter most to them—whether that’s watching live, reacting in real time on social, or continuing the conversation across platforms. For brands, it creates a powerful new way to be part of those moments in an authentic, scalable way.”

While sports programming will serve as the initial launchpad, “Unbreakable” is designed to be applied across WBD’s entire portfolio. It can incorporate real-time audience sentiment during town halls and debates in news, influence outcomes through live polling and bracket-style competitions in lifestyle programs, and power creator-led activations and fan participation in entertainment.

More information is available here.

NEW YORK—Operative, a provider of software that helps media companies manage and sell ads across TV, streaming and digital platforms, has named Dang Ly as chief product officer.

Ly, the former senior vice president and chief technology officer at Universal Destinations & Experiences, is tasked with leading Operative’s product strategy and road map across a portfolio that includes AOS, Operative.One, Adeline AI and STAQ; deepening its data-unification capabilities; expanding its omnichannel intelligence layer; and accelerating AI integration across its product suite, the company said.

“Media and advertising is evolving rapidly, and the companies that can unify trusted data and turn it into personalized audience experiences will define the next era,” Ly said. “Omnichannel engagement and AI only deliver value when the data underneath is connected, reliable and activated intelligently. Operative sits at exactly that intersection and I’m energized to help our customers turn connected data into measurable, outcome-based growth.”

Ly has spent more than 20 years scaling customer-facing products in media, entertainment, hospitality and retail, and building the data platforms that support them, Operative said. At Universal Destinations & Experiences, the theme-park unit of Comcast NBCUniversal, he oversaw a global enterprise strategy that leveraged data and AI to unify customer, operational and transactional data into workflows, automation and personalized guest experiences, the company said.

Previously, Ly spent nearly a decade leading NBCUniversal’s core ad sales technology and engineering teams.

“Dang brings something rare,” Operative CEO Mike Napodano said. “He has built audience data platforms at scale, and he has used them to deliver products that transform the way customers manage their business. He understands that 360-degree audience understanding isn’t a dashboard or a report, it’s an end-to-end discipline that starts with how you capture data and ends with how you act on it. That perspective is exactly what will shape Operative’s product roadmap as we help our customers grow in an AI-driven world.”

Ly’s appointment sets up Operative’s strategic focus on omnichannel data strategies and advanced analytics, the company said.

CHICAGO, Ill.—Weigel Broadcasting Co. has announced that it has started working with OpenAP in the run-up to the Upfronts to provide advertisers with better data and access to inventory on its portfolio of television networks, which include including MeTV, Heroes & Icons, Start TV, Dabl, Catchy Comedy, Story Television, MeTV Toons, MOVIES!, and WEST.

Launching ahead of the 2026 Upfront season, the partnership marks a significant step in Weigel’s move beyond traditional demographics to towards audience-based buying, which it says will enable advertisers to engage high-value, and often unexposed, audiences across its portfolio with greater precision, consistency and scale.

With OpenAP, Weigel Broadcasting Co. advertisers have the ability to define audiences once and activate seamlessly across its portfolio of content, with the flexibility to activate through direct insertion order (IO), programmatic guaranteed (PG) or private marketplace (PMP) transactions.

“Combined with recent announcements regarding datafuelX and VideoAmp, our partnership with OpenAP represents an important step forward in how we bring advanced capabilities to market as we aim to help our clients simplify cross-platform buying and deliver measurable outcomes with greater impact more efficiently,” said John Hendricks, executive vice-president, Weigel Broadcasting Co.

For more information, visit www.openap.tv and https://www.weigelbroadcasting.com/.

TORONTO—The independent supply-side ad platform Index Exchange Inc. has announced new capabilities using Gracenote that enables show-level transparency, brand suitability and post-campaign reporting for advertisers using its platform.

Spectrum Reach is among the first media partners to adopt the solution, bringing premium streaming inventory to market with enriched contextual signals and program-level reporting, the platform said.

The new features build on a recently announced agreement between Index and Gracenote that introduced what Index is calling the industry’s first SSP integration with Gracenote IDs to support show-level transparency, brand suitability, and post-campaign reporting.

The new capabilities also mean that Index will provide buyers with a count of show-level impressions, giving brands a proof of purchase across their streaming investments on Spectrum Reach inventory transacted through Index, while ensuring that no user information is associated with the reporting.

“Marketers want deeper transparency and more actionable signals in streaming TV, and we are focused on making these capabilities simple to access through programmatic,” said James Wilhite, vice president of product at Index Exchange. “Offering Gracenote-powered show-level reporting today underscores our commitment to advancing measurement and bringing meaningful innovation to both buyers and publishers.”

Index explained that for buyers, the solution offers a streamlined way to access deeper visibility into where ads ran and how they performed across streaming TV.

Program-level reporting helps marketers evaluate adjacency, ensure brand suitability, and strengthen planning and optimization decisions, all without additional workflow complexity or reliance on segment-based activation. This level of transparency also enables marketers to understand the types of shows and content themes that perform well for their campaigns, informing future strategies even when they choose not to activate specific Gracenote segments.

For media owners, the capability introduces a scalable and privacy-safe method of bringing contextual data to programmatic marketplaces. Spectrum Reach’s early adoption demonstrates how media owners can use Gracenote metadata to differentiate streaming supply, improve transparency for media buyers, and retain full control over when and how program-level information is shared, the companies said.

“Gracenote and Index are working together to make content-based data more interoperable and practical for modern ad buying,” said Jake Richardson, vice president of partnerships at Gracenote. “Our content ID graph helps unlock a clearer view of program-level performance, and this new capability with Index supports stronger outcomes for both sides of the ecosystem.”

“The combination of transparency and high-quality, privacy-focused data are the foundation of smart media investments and help drive better decisions,” added Daniel Callahan, senior vice president and chief revenue officer at Spectrum Reach. “Working with Index Exchange and Gracenote helps us provide advertisers with even more enriched streaming inventory in a way that benefits both advertisers and viewers.”

The way people watch TV and the technology continues to change, even as the technology evolves that marketers rely upon to make their ad spend more efficient, better targeted and, in 2026, culturally relevant.

Connected TV viewing is a lynchpin in this transition, helping to give brands and agencies greater insight into the wants and needs of viewers. CTV-derived viewing data in turn enables artificial intelligence to assist advertisers with their campaigns.

Here, “TVTech” presents the predictions of ad tech and CTV luminaries about what 2026 has in store.

Digital Culture Group, Crystal Foote, Founder/Head of Partnerships

• Diversity and cultural intelligence will become AI's strategic edge: In 2026, the most effective AI-driven campaigns will come not from those with the largest datasets, but from brands that embed cultural intelligence into the core of their tech infrastructure. AI is only as effective as its operator; without diverse talent guiding its development and deployment, campaigns risk automating bias instead of unlocking insight.
• Authentic cultural resonance requires more than data: It demands teams with lived experience and cultural fluency. Agencies that eliminated DEI roles missed a critical opportunity to evolve those positions into AI and innovation leadership. The expertise required to detect and mitigate bias, understand nuance and build inclusive strategies already existed within those roles. To succeed in the next wave of AI, brands must reimagine their organizational structures—infusing diversity not as a layer of review, but as a strategic function at the foundation of how AI is built, trained and applied.
• Voice will become the next frontier for contextual targeting: As consumers increasingly interact with technology through voice, advertising is poised to follow. Next year, voice-activated ad targeting will become a breakout channel, driven by a shift in behavior. People are speaking to their devices more than ever, replacing typed searches with spoken commands. This behavioral shift signals a major opportunity for brands to rethink how, where and when they show up in consumers' lives.
• Asking Alexa for a recipe, queueing up a podcast on Google Home or checking the weather through Siri are no longer just utility moments; they’re emerging touchpoints for real-time, hyper-relevant advertising. If brands and platforms don’t yet have infrastructure in place to retarget based on voice commands, they’re behind. Voice offers the immediacy and intimacy of conversation, paired with the potential for contextual targeting that reflects a consumer’s exact need in that moment. In a world where convenience, relevance and personalization are paramount, voice isn’t just a media channel—it’s a strategic unlock.
• Not every trend is yours to chase: Brands will re-evaluate when to join a cultural movement. Too often, brands jump into cultural conversations without understanding the audience they’re speaking to. The result? Cringeworthy content, outdated references and missed opportunities. The pressure to stay culturally relevant will push brands to chase emerging trends, especially those tied to Gen Z and Gen Alpha.
• However, the smartest marketers will ask themselves: ‘Is this really our audience?’ It’s no longer about being ‘in culture’ for the sake of optics. It’s about being in alignment with the audience you’re trying to reach. Cultural cachet doesn’t guarantee purchase intent, resonance does.
• In the year ahead, brands will need to pivot, reassessing whether their values, offerings and internal identity genuinely align with the generation they’re pursuing. When marketers treat culture as a static playbook or jump into conversations they don’t fully understand, the result is dissonance. Relevance in 2026 won’t be about looking youthful. It will be about using real-time audience signals, emotional context and resonance tools to ensure they’re not just speaking, but connecting.
• M&A activity will be driven by cultural intelligence, not just data. Startups are outperforming legacy platforms due to their agility and cultural fluency. This shift will drive a new wave of M&A activity in 2026. Just as holding companies once acquired influencer agencies to buy credibility, they’ll now seek out AI startups that offer clarity—tools that decode what people feel before they act. The value won’t be in the data alone, but in the cultural intelligence behind it.
• The smartest startups will seek collaboration not acquisition. In 2026, the most meaningful AI innovation in advertising won’t come from big tech. It will come from startups. Agile and unencumbered by red tape, these companies will lead by building culturally intelligent, partnership-driven solutions that reflect how people actually live and choose.
• They’ll use AI not just to automate but to anticipate—decoding emotional, behavioral and cultural signals in real time. The smartest founders won’t wait for acquisition offers; they’ll build power through collaboration. By joining forces with other nimble innovators, they’ll form ecosystems of shared data, creativity and cultural fluency that big tech can’t replicate. Together, these partnerships will create value through clarity, resonance and measurable outcomes shaping the future of advertising on their own terms.

Ampersand, Justin Rosen, SVP, Data and Insights

• 2026 will be the year data dominates TV advertising. As marketers become more comfortable with AI and machine learning in their daily workflows, 2026 will be the year the focus shifts from the tools themselves to the quality of the data powering them. Audiences, outcomes and especially device graphs and ID linkages will determine who can execute precise, measurable campaigns across CTV, streaming and linear TV.
• Ecosystem players with large, scaled first-party data will hold a decisive advantage, whether acting as marketers or as enablers, controlling insights that drive targeting, measurement and optimization. In a world where AI tools can be leveraged by anyone, retaining exclusive access to high-quality first-party data will be more than a competitive edge. It will be essential to winning in a landscape where precision and transparency across screens define success.
• Vertical video becomes the open web’s new front door, and its next premium channel. By 2026, vertical video won’t just enhance publisher experiences. It will define them.
• As short-form becomes the dominant language of the internet and 90% of consumers say they’re open to vertical video on publisher sites, publishers will rebuild homepages and article templates around immersive, swipe-first video streams rather than static layouts.
• This evolution will fundamentally change how users enter and navigate the open web, with vertical clips acting as a dynamic ‘front door’ that funnels audiences into news, evergreen content and commerce experiences.
• At the same time, the rise of AI-generated misinformation and deepfakes will push advertisers toward brand-safe vertical environments controlled by trusted publishers, elevating vertical video from a format to a standalone premium channel. Expect chief marketing officers (CMOs) to carve out dedicated budgets for this inventory as attention and engagement –not just views— become the core KPIs for digital storytelling. The result: the open web finally competes with walled gardens on the same creative canvas, but with one crucial advantage—credibility.

Media.net, Karan Dalal, COO

• Sell-side decisioning becomes the new battleground for performance: The next leap in programmatic efficiency won’t come from curated packages, it will come from smarter sell-side decisioning. Supply-side platforms (SSPs) are evolving from simple access points into real-time decision engines that determine which impressions to surface, which demand paths to prioritize and which low-quality supply to filter out before the auction even begins.
• This shift creates a cleaner, higher-signal supply layer by default, giving buyers performance gains without the manual work of curation. As identity erodes, decisioning becomes a new form of addressability, powered by context, intent and quality scoring rather than user IDs. The platforms that pull ahead will be the ones that make the most intelligent choices upstream, long before a bid is ever placed.
• Transparency transitions from a ‘check-the-box’ expectation to a measurable advantage. Programmatic transparency has long been treated as hygiene, but in 2026 it becomes a competitive moat. As marketers gain clearer visibility into how impressions are sourced, scored and priced, transparency will directly correlate with lower media waste and higher ROI.
• Buyers will increasingly abandon ambiguous supply paths in favor of partners who can show, not tell: no MFA sites, no hidden fees, no black-box optimization. The rise of AI only heightens this demand; marketers will insist on explainable automation that surfaces why certain impressions won and how decisions were made. This dynamic creates a two-tiered market. Systems built on radical clarity rise, while opaque platforms lose relevance in budget cycles driven by accountability. In the coming year, transparency evolves from a compliance requirement into a performance driver.

Direct Digital Holdings, Calvin Scharffs, VP, Marketing & Maria Vilchez Lowrey, Chief Growth Officer

Calvin: The open web is facing real existential pressure. AI is absorbing consumer traffic, and more ad spend continues to migrate into walled gardens like CTV and commerce media. To retain advertiser interest, the open web must make buying easier through AI-driven tools and improve accessibility for smaller and mid-market advertisers.

Maria: The ad market has been tough because the macroeconomic environment remains unpredictable. Next year may surprise on overall spend, but that spend will likely consolidate around social, CTV and search—where performance is clearest.

Yahoo DSP, Joshua John, Head of Strategy

• AI becomes the primary gatekeeper of discovery. Seventy-five percent of executives say OS-level AI assistants will increasingly determine which shows and services are surfaced on TV home screens, shifting power away from individual apps.
• AI reshapes what gets watched, not what gets written. Nearly half say AI’s biggest near-term creative impact will be in automated trailer creation, artwork testing and content packaging. Respondents see AI enabling faster, scalable creation of thumbnails, cuts and promotional assets tailored to different audiences at a speed impossible with manual workflows.
• Sports remains the biggest CTV battleground. A total of 47.4% say bundling will define sports strategy, but 34.5% still expect fragmentation to worsen first.
• FAST has matured into a core revenue model. Nearly 60% view FAST as a sustainable, premium, ad-supported business in its own right, marking its evolution from ‘free funnel’ to a strategic pillar.
• Gaming remains complementary, not core for now. Nearly 73% say streaming-to-gaming convergence will remain niche in 2026 with growth focused on casual, low-friction experiences that enhance viewing rather than replace it.
• Younger audiences see TikTok and YouTube as their primary TV. Nearly half say viewing behavior has permanently shifted, forcing traditional streamers to rethink discovery, formats and cultural relevance; 38.3% say streamers must adopt creator-driven models to compete with YouTube.

Looper Insights, Lucas Bertrand, CEO

• In 2026, the real breakthrough won’t come from yet another shiny targeting feature. It will come from fixing the stubborn, unsexy problems that still keep billions of TV dollars stuck on the sidelines.
• Today’s CTV pipes are clogged with genre mislabeling, inconsistent metadata, opaque supply chains and brand-suitability blind spots: issues that no amount of AI hype can mask. The platforms that apply next-generation contextual intelligence to clean up these basics will unlock the real step-change: making CTV buying as transparent, predictable and high-performing as digital promised a decade ago.

Nexxen, Oscar Rondon, VP, Data and Measurement Solutions, Eric Solomon, SVP Product-Data, Ally Appelbaum, VP, Global CTV Partnerships & Irina Katsnelson, SVP of Enterprise Sales

Oscar:

• Audience portability finally becomes real. The next frontier in automation is audience portability. Marketers want to define an audience once and activate it everywhere, without having to rebuild it across different partners or channels. 2026 will be the year we start seeing that vision realized across both TV and digital, creating a true bridge between planning, activation and measurement.
• Attention becomes the new performance metric. The industry is moving beyond clicks and impressions. Attention measured through time-in-view, creative resonance and contextual alignment is becoming the new performance signal. This is the first step towards real outcome-based models where success will be determined by the consumer’s response, not the platform’s metric.
• Smarter TV signals unlock true incremental reach. The next big efficiency boost will come from better TV viewing signals. As high quality, privacy safe smart TV data becomes more available, advertisers can cut waste and find audiences that legacy datasets might have missed. The goal is true incremental reach, not redundant exposures.

Eric:

• CTV investment accelerates as measurement and AI evolve. CTV remains a true lean-back, highly engaged environment, but it’s under-monetized relative to time spent. In 2026, that gap in spend will likely narrow as outcome measurement improves and AI reduces production costs, expanding access to this high-quality inventory.
• Planning and buying converge as walled gardens tighten control. As AI platforms and walled gardens take more control over audience discovery, buying efficiently across the open web will become more challenging. More ad spend will flow to platforms that connect TV and digital planning in one place with clear reporting on business outcomes rather than just reach. The focus will shift toward real-time learning, using live campaign data to adjust performance faster.

Ally:

• Premium CTV gets redefined amid supply abundance. The CTV market is experiencing a supply surplus, creating a need to rethink what qualifies as ‘premium.’ As advertisers crowd around a few household-name apps, valuable audiences across FAST and mid-tier platforms are being overlooked. In 2026, education around quality and engagement, not price point or paywall, will reshape how premium is defined.
• New CTV formats scale through programmatic efficiency. Innovative ad formats like pause ads and native placements on OEM platforms are gaining traction, but standardization remains fragmented. The next phase of growth will rely on bridging creative innovation with programmatic efficiency, ensuring these experiences scale beyond direct deals into automated, measurable environments.

Irina:

• Automation becomes the industry’s operating system. The macro trends shaping 2026 –specialization, consolidation, workflow simplification and autonomous advertising– aren’t abstract ideas, they’re the realities guiding how advertisers plan and buy today. We’re seeing the industry shift from experimentation to execution where efficiency and intelligence are the real differentiators. And the companies that embrace this reality, adopting automation and streamlining how they operate across the ecosystem, will be the ones who win.

AdOmni, Jonathan Gudai, CEO

• The rise of the creator-powered billboard. For the past decade, creators have been trapped in a 5-inch screen. Digital-out-of-home (DOOH) is their breakout stage. It transforms content into a real-world statement—a way to say, ‘This matters beyond the algorithm.’ Whether it’s a tour, a product drop or a fan milestone, showing up on a screen in Times Square or a college campus signals that what they’re building has cultural weight.
• Instant creative iteration. Content may still be king, but context is queen—and in DOOH, she rules with precision. The same ad can speak differently on a rainy Monday than it does on a sunny Saturday. This isn’t just clever creative, it’s strategic adaptation. When ads adjust to real-world signals like weather or time of day, they stop interrupting and start resonating.
• AI media planning becomes mainstream. For decades, sophisticated media planning was the domain of the few, meaning large brands with big budgets and specialist teams. AI has leveled that playing field. Today, a small brand can describe its campaign goals in plain language and receive a multi-screen, data-informed media plan in seconds. The shift from exclusivity to accessibility is the real breakthrough.
• By the end of 2026, at least a quarter of DOOH and video campaigns globally will be AI-planned with humans setting the vision and AI doing the heavy lifting. AI’s greatest impact won’t be job replacement but idea acceleration.
• The return of local. When the screen on the street becomes the polling station. The most effective political campaigns know that persuasion is local, and in 2026, so is advertising. DOOH has become the modern-day field organizer, reaching people where they live, commute and vote.
• Smart campaigns aren’t just buying citywide impressions; they’re targeting the exact bus stop a swing voter uses on their way to work with messages tailored to the time of day and local context. Brands are starting to adopt this mindset, realizing that mass reach doesn’t mean much without relevance. Whether you're running for office or launching a product, the winning strategy is the same: act block by block.
• DOOH becomes the interface for the AI agent economy. As AI agents begin to guide more of our decisions, DOOH will become their real-world interface—the place where algorithms meet emotion. These agents will filter, recommend and prioritize, but the final decision still belongs to the human. That’s the magic of DOOH. It’s the moment where a person reconnects with a choice. Advertisers who design for both the algorithmic layer and the emotional moment on the street will win in the AI-powered economy.

Swivel, Frans Vermeulen, President

• Agent-to-Agent Trading Becomes Real. In 2026, we will start to see media buying diversify beyond programmatic and direct sold paths. Buyer and seller agents begin handling full workflows from interpreting intent to generating executable logic. Instead of just automating what exists today, these agents open the door to new types of deals, new product formats that don’t fit into legacy pipes, and scale that humans simply cannot match. Once these agents start talking to each other across systems, interoperability turns from a buzzword into the way work actually gets done.
• Ad ops move from doing to directing. Ad ops teams today are executing manually and across a lot of disconnected tools. In 2026, ad ops teams can finally focus on strategy–if they can delegate execution to machines. Operators define the rules, the constraints and the goals. Agents take those inputs and execute across platforms continuously. With agentic orchestration, specially trained agents parse operator intent and act on it. Automation handles the repetitive work so teams can focus on strategy–launching new experiments, adapting in real time and unlocking ideas that would have been deprioritized in a manual world.
• The gateway to automation. Across the ecosystem, teams are leaning into automation first where the work is repetitive, high-volume and can operate within human-defined guardrails. These are the clearest places for agentic systems to replicate existing behaviors, executing tasks the way a trained operator would. Once that reliability is established, organizations begin to scale automation across more workflows, expanding coverage and accelerating execution. As trust builds, teams grow more comfortable delegating critical and time-intensive tasks, freeing up operators to focus on higher-order decisions that drive margin and revenue.
• 2026 is the year of agentic trust building led by CTV. This is the year when people finally start giving agents real work rather than just testing them on the side. Trust grows as agents handle low-risk, repetitive tasks reliably while humans stay in the loop on critical decisions. CTV moves first and shows the rest of the market that agentic selling is ready for real scale and real revenue impact.

GWI, Misha Williams, COO

• Generic AI will collapse under its own weight. In 2026, the threat to marketing won’t be AI hallucination—it’ll be AI homogeneity. As more brands rely on the same public models, strategies will start to blur. What once felt like an edge will become indistinguishable. The real differentiator? Specificity. Brands embedding real-time, psychographic data into their AI tools won’t just move fast, They’ll move meaningfully. In a world of sameness, relevance becomes the moat.
• The consumer intent funnel will finally fracture. In 2026, marketers will stop pretending consumers buy in neat, rational paths. Real decisions are emotional, erratic and culturally shaped. AI can now detect contradictions, so the smartest teams will stop smoothing over gaps between intent and action and start designing for them. The future belongs to those who market to tension not just conversion.
• Social media will be recast as a passive superchannel. In 2026, social won’t be dead, it’ll be dominant. Passive discovery has replaced active searching. Gen Z and Gen Alpha aren’t logging off. They’re scrolling in silence. Social media now commands more attention than TV, streaming or radio. For marketers, the job isn’t to disrupt the feed. It’s to become the feed.
• The 2026 World Cup will redefine what a ‘fan’ means. In 2026, fandom will go far beyond the pitch. Gamers, content scrollers and cultural spectators are reshaping what it means to be a ‘fan.’ These audiences aren’t watching—they’re playing, remixing and sharing. Brands that cling to TV-centric targeting will miss the real opportunity: finding fans in the feeds, not the stands.
• Gen Alpha will demand to be treated like stakeholders, not segments. In 2026, Gen Alpha hits 16—and hits reset on generational marketing. This isn’t Gen Z 2.0. They’re collaborative, creative and co-purchasing. They want empowerment, not pandering. Brands that treat them like passive consumers will lose. The ones that include them in creation will win. They don’t just consume culture, they code it.
• Human data will be the next great AI differentiator. In 2026, the smartest AI won’t be the biggest—it’ll be the most human. Most tools today are trained on scraped, outdated or synthetic data. The result? Insight that feels off, or worse, biased. Winning brands will pair AI with real, structured, psychographic data, turning automation into cultural relevance. Truth, not scale, will be the new benchmark.

LAS VEGAS—In the run-up to the 2026 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January where a variety of new digital ad technologies will be on display, NBCUniversal unveiled a suite of new technology and data products that its says will open up new audience opportunities and help reimagine digital advertising with breakthrough formats, better real-time measurement and attribution.

“Our company was built on innovation, and as we enter into NBC’s 100th year, we are pairing the strength of our storytelling with the power of our technology to enhance the consumer experience and prove real-time impact for brands,” said Mark Marshall, chairman, Global Advertising & Partnerships, NBCUniversal. “Premium video is more valuable to advertisers than ever, and with these new innovations, we are providing solutions clients have been asking for, backed by the power of NBCUniversal’s entire cross-platform ecosystem – setting a new industry standard for success.”

NBCUniversal’s latest product suite includes LIVE Total Impact, Performance Insights Hub, and AI-powered Contextual Targeting in LIVE.

NBCU said these solutions are designed to turn engagement into real outcomes, moving audiences from attention to conversion across every platform.

NBCU described LIVE Total Impact as the industry’s first cross-platform tool designed to leverage the real-time viewership of live tentpole moments and extend that engagement across NBCUniversal’s full ecosystem, delivering the right ad, to the right person, at the right time.

The official launch follows a successful beta rollout during Sunday Night Football - where telecom and retail brands saw higher brand lift through targeted re-exposure across NBCU platforms.

The company said it will now expand and scale LIVE Total Impact to even more advertisers across such major February events as Super Bowl LX, the Milan Cortina Olympic Winter Games, NBA All-Star Weekend, and additional live events throughout 2026 such as Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

In terms of the Beta testing during Sunday Night Football, NBCU said it delivered the following results:

• +10% lift in awareness and memorability compared to control
• +77% higher search engagement vs competitive streaming benchmarks
• +1.8x greater website visitation compared to industry benchmarks
• Retargeted viewers exposed to in-game ads visited the website 6.8x more than those who were not exposed, showing strong lower-funnel impact.

In terms of Contextual Targeting in LIVE, NBCU reported that it allows, for the first time, advertisers to target Live programming in real time.

More specifically, NBCU said Contextual Targeting in LIVE is a breakthrough AI-powered tool that continuously scans live content to ensure an advertiser’s ad or creative automatically aligns with the most relevant moments as they unfold live. Initial VOD beta tests showed brands saw significant increases in engagement and favorability, demonstrating how AI can match brand messages to relevant themes and boost audience interaction, the programmer reported.

In an early beta with a luxury brand NBCU reported the following results:

• +27% higher enjoyment of the creative vs. baseline
• +14% agreement that surrounding content enhanced the brand’s message
• +10% higher Unaided Brand Awareness vs. baseline
• +38% perception of the luxury brand as environmentally responsible
• +56% higher search engagement vs. competitive streaming
• By automating brand suitability and real-time context, this capability gives advertisers greater efficiency, agility, and precision, optimizing every second of live media investment to reach audiences at the exact right moment of authentic connection.

NBCU described the new Performance Insights Hub (PIH) as a proprietary intelligence platform providing advertisers of all sizes with a unified view of campaign delivery, audience insights, and full-funnel, in-flight performance.

Built on NBCUniversal’s One Platform Tech Stack, PIH integrates first- and third-party data through standardized schemas and automated workflows with partners including Dynata, EDO, Kochava, LiveRamp, MarketCast and VideoAmp.

Upcoming integrations will support turnkey outcomes measurement for foot traffic and purchase data, plus category-specific integrations to power CPG, Pharma and more, NBCU said.

NBCU said this new tool moves marketers beyond static post-campaign reporting enabling in-flight reporting and insights that improve performance across awareness, engagement, and conversion metrics.

NBCU also reported that it is launching Arrival Ads on Peacock, which allows brands to own the first impression as soon as viewers enter the platform.

In addition, NBCU is expanding Peacock’s premium Pause Ads into the programmatic marketplace, enabling advertisers to access this high-impact format through Programmatic Guaranteed deals.

The programmer reported that it is the first major premium AVOD publisher to offer a full-screen programmatic Pause Ad, which it said will bring more scale, flexibility, and automation to a placement that has already proven effective in direct-sold campaigns.

Pause Ads appear when a viewer pauses a programming. NBCU said Pause Ads have already proven to be a powerful format, driving a +68% lift in ad memorability, underscoring the format’s ability to capture attention and enhance brand impact. Additionally, campaigns with Pause Ads have driven a +106% lift in foot traffic for advertisers.

In terms of the upcoming Olympics, NBCU said that partnerships with Amazon DSP, FreeWheel Buyer Cloud, Google Display & Video 360, StackAdapt, The Trade Desk, Viant, and Yahoo DSP, will allow it to open up a private marketplace with biddable access for advertisers of all size.

Additionally, following its successful launch at CES 2025, Universal Ads will serve as the first-ever, exclusive ads manager for NBCUniversal’s coverage of the Milan Cortina Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games, offering advertisers even more opportunities to invest in NBCUniversal’s coverage of the Games.

More information about these and other new capabilities are available here.

Since the beginning of commercial television, advertising has been a key part of broadcasting. Over the years, the technology for inserting ads into programs has developed to the point where there is now a whole technological subsection dedicated to it. Ad tech encompasses not only scheduling and playing commercials but also directing them to their correct destinations on the wide variety of platforms and devices now in use, increasingly with a high degree of personalization.

The growth of the streaming sector and the corresponding increase in the adoption of connected televisions (CTVs) have added to the reach and complexity of ad tech. Among trends identified by Allan Nicholson, senior director of advertising solutions and strategy at Harmonic, is the move by some broadcasters to enable programmatic buy-in—also known as programmatic advertising, using automated, data-driven techniques for buying and selling ad slots—on linear broadcast platforms.

“Some of them are also the broadcasters that are making the transition to become more streaming-focused and they’re adopting streaming ad tech for personalization,“ he said. “The other trend we're seeing is broadcasters enabling service providers to start monetizing services using DAI [dynamic ad insertion]. The way to think of this is as a linear to programmatic [application] for monetization, as opposed to the programmatic to linear trend, which enables linear broadcast.”

More Engagement, Less ‘Ad Fatigue’
In the streaming market, and particularly for live sports, Nicholson said operators are personalizing new ad formats, such as L-shaped double boxes (a form of nonlinear addressable TV advertising), squeeze backs (where the program is minimized to give prominence to the ad) and overlays (nonlinear ad banners, tickers and scrolling text alongside the main program).

“And they're all opting to do this server-side,“ he said. “These new ad formats are really all about increasing ad loads while maintaining new engagement and avoiding ad fatigue.”

The coming together of linear and streamed (digital) platforms—at least in the minds of viewers—is also highlighted by Dan Walsh, senior vice president of product management at Imagine Communications.

“Broadcasters and streaming providers are under growing pressure to bridge the gap between linear and digital operations,“ he said. “Audiences don't distinguish between platforms; they simply expect access to content wherever and however they choose to watch. But many broadcasters are still managing these environments separately, which creates inefficiencies and limits their ability to fully monetize inventory.

“To address these issues, the industry is shifting toward a unified advertising approach, often referred to as ‘Total TV,’ which focuses less on delivery mechanisms and more on audience value,” Walsh added.

This, he explained, is being driven by automation across ad sales, trafficking and optimization: “That reduces costs, improves yield and frees teams from the manual processes that have long defined traditional ad sales.”

With streamers now delivering linear programming as well as their core services, David Dembowski, chief revenue officer at Operative, said everything is now about a viewing experience, including the ads.

“The reason why streamers chose to use a digital platform is primarily because of impression-based sales or, put another way, addressable offerings,” Dembrowski said. “We have a client that was adamant about break-based ad sales, but recently has gone to impression-based sales. There are a lot of reasons for this, but it is mostly because of targeting and measurement.”

‘Unprecedented Opportunities’
Through the introduction of impression-based sales on what Dembowski describes as “the big screen” approach, TV has become a “full funnel advertising platform.” This, he says, goes from a broad approach—high-profile, big automobile or movie launches—to something based more on buying behavior.

“And it shows what's so exciting about CTV,” he added. “Take the example of Amazon [Prime Video], which was an SVOD streamer, always on-demand, up until about three years ago. Then they signed the relationship with [NFL] “Thursday Night Football.” What they've been able to do is expand the TAM [total addressable marketplace] of advertisers that had never even considered buying the NFL on prior platforms. It's created an unprecedented opportunity for new advertisers to get exposure to an audience that was out of reach for years.“

Paul Davies, head of marketing at DAI technology specialist Yospace, said the company prefers the term “addressability” to personalization.

“The reason is that personalization makes you think of an ad targeted at an individual,” he explained. “What we see is that the true value of CTV/OTT advertising is in measurement. We are able to deliver real-time viewing metrics on a one-to-one addressable level, which means that advertisers going to broadcasters to use their CTV inventory are able to get similar types of metrics to those they’re able to get in other digital channels, such as social media.”

Impact of AI
As with other areas of broadcasting, artificial intelligence is top of mind. Davies said he is hearing “lots of discussion” about it, including the potential for Generative AI to create “truly personalized ad creatives” for each viewer.

“I would say there are legal and technical hurdles to that, which would mean perhaps broadcasters aren't jumping on them as opportunities straightaway,” he observed. “One of the reasons why TV advertising is so popular is because of the premium quality and delivery and the fact that it's considered brand-safe.’

Dan Walsh at Imagine said the use of AI in ad tech is “in its early stages” but is being used to identify and enhance factors that produce good results. “By combining optimization tools with AI capabilities, broadcasters can further refine audience targeting and campaign performance,” he said.

Operative's David Dembowski said AI gives “the chance to accelerate the knowledge, workflows and outcomes” being used. “The application of AI to on-board data has cut times by more than half,” he observed. “It's created efficiencies that are so critical in today's world.”

For instance, Harmonic’s Nicholson said his company uses its "homegrown AI technologies" to help advertisers target audiences based on contextual information contained in frames of video prior to ad breaks. “This means you don't have to use personal identity information and can avoid regulatory issues,” he said.

The relationship between TV and streaming advertising may still not be a totally warm one, but ad tech is at least making it possible for broadcasters to show audiences commercials they might actually want to see or are interested in. Or at least are not driven mad by.

NEW YORK—Advertising technology company Operative Media has named Mike Napadano as its new CEO.

The company described Nadpadano’s promotion as an important milestone in its next growth phase. Former chief technology officer at Disney ABC Television Group, Napadano has been with Operative since 2019, most recently as its chief customer officer.

“This is an exciting moment for Operative,” Napadano said. “We’ve built a remarkable foundation of world-class products, deep customer partnerships, and a trusted position with the biggest brands in media. As the industry continues to evolve, our focus is on scaling that foundation with the technology and intelligence that help our clients operate smarter, grow faster and unlock new value across every screen.”

An industry veteran with more than 25 years of experience, Napadano was Disney ABC Television Group CTO from 2017 to 2019, leading enterprise initiatives spanning advertising technology and distribution, Operative said. Prior to that, he was senior vice president and chief information officer for sales, research and analytics at NBCUniversal, where he helped modernize data and technology operations, according to Operative.

Since joining Operative in 2019, the company said, Napodano has played a key role in scaling its cloud solutions, driving delivery excellence and strengthening its partnerships with global media companies.

“The pace of change in media has never been faster, and Operative is uniquely positioned at the center of that transformation,” said Napodano. “Our vision is to be the connective platform that unites technology, data and operations across the ecosystem. We’re enabling media companies to innovate with agility, optimize performance and realize the full value of their audiences and content. I’m energized by what’s ahead as we continue to grow and innovate alongside our customers.”

Operative said it is the preferred advertising management solutions provider for more than 300 top media brands across 18 countries, including Fox, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Disney/ABC, Australia’s Seven Networks and Sky. Since 2000, it has grown to process more than $60 billion in ad revenue, the company said.

BELLEVUE, Wash.—Julie Van Ullen has joined cross-platform TV ad measurement company iSpot as president and chief revenue officer.

Van Ullen, who will report to iSpot founder and CEO Sean Muller, will be responsible for a range of functions critical to organizational growth, the company said, including sales, marketing and customer success; driving media partnerships and business development; and leading client-focused data science teams.

She comes from e-commerce firm Rakuten Rewards, where she was chief revenue officer.

“Julie is a dynamic leader with a proven track record of building high-growth teams and fostering trusted relationships with customers across the media and advertising ecosystem,” Muller said. “She has a clear vision for how iSpot’s measurement and data assets will power performance and efficiency in the next generation of advertising—and the kind of passion and energy required to drive success.”

While at Rakuten Rewards, Van Ullen’s guidance helped drive 135% revenue growth for the loyalty firm, iSpot said. She also played a key role in the successful rollout of new advertising solutions, the integration of advanced measurement and data capabilities and the scaling of strategic platforms with brands, agencies and platforms, the company said.

Prior to Rakuten, she held buy- and sell-side leadership positions at ad-buying platforms FreeWheel and OpenX.

“I’m beyond thrilled to join this talented team and to work with America’s leading brands, publishers and platforms,” Van Ullen said. “iSpot ushered in a new era of speed, transparency and performance for the TV marketplace and is such a critical decisioning flywheel for marketers across the entire advertising journey—from creative to audience measurement to outcomes—as a way to more directly drive ROI. The modern marketer needs actionable clarity of media performance and iSpot is a crucial ‘must have’ in that regard.”

Van Ullen has also been an influential voice in the ad industry, iSpot said, most notably as a member of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s board of directors, where she played a vital role in shaping the standards for advertising measurement and efficacy.

Lexington, Ky.—As part of a push to highlight its advanced advertising capabilities, Viamedia has launched a new AI-powered ad tech platform and officially rebranded itself as Viamedia.ai.

The new platform is powered by the integration of LocalFactor, the tech-enabled digital advertising which Viamedia acquired in March 2025. Viamedia.ai reported that the integration combines their strengths, Viamedia’s scale, reach and operator relationships with LocalFactor’s innovation, proprietary data and AI-driven tools, to create a single platform built for advertisers’ future need.

The shift to “.ai” also represents Viamedia’s deep investment in artificial intelligence powered innovation, automation and intelligent omni-channel media delivery, the company explained. The decision to drop “TV” from its identity signals an evolution beyond television into a unified, omni-channel ad tech provider.

“We’re not just rebranding—we’re reimagining how advertising should work,” said David Solomon, CEO of Viamedia.ai. “Our AI eliminates the complexity that has plagued multi-channel campaigns for years. What used to take weeks of coordination now happens in seconds.”

The complain said that Viamedia.ai’s new platform uses artificial intelligence to streamline and unify the entire advertising process. It described its capabilities as follows:

• Unified Planning: AI analyzes audience data across all media channels to recommend optimal media allocation and KPI’s.
• Streamlined Activation: Launch dynamic campaigns simultaneously across linear TV, streaming platforms and digital channels from a single dashboard.
• Real-Time Optimization & Insights: Campaigns get smarter with every activation, continuously improving performance over time thanks to AI driven learning

“Ultimately, this move will drive greater demand for our partners’ supply, resulting in increased revenues across all Viamedia supply partnerships,” said Evan Rutchik, president and chief strategy officer of Viamedia.ai. “No one else is integrating linear and digital data and inventory at our scale and speed. I’m so proud of our team’s commitment to building innovative and privacy-compliant solutions that anticipate the market’s needs that future-proof our partners’ investments. Using AI in this way truly sets us, our people, and our partners up for an exciting future.”

Through 2026, Viamedia.ai said it will continue to roll out new tools and features that expand its omni-channel capabilities and deepen its AI-driven insights.

The company’s new digital home is www.Viamedia.ai.

FreeWheel, a global provider of streaming ad technology, announced that it has expanded its two-year partnership with Roku, “following strong results” from the collaboration launched in late 2024.

Roku’s premium CTV supply can now be activated through the FreeWheel Streaming Hub with better demand signals, more transparency, and more efficient monetization, the companies said. At the same time, this partnership creates greater scale for buyers to transact more efficiently with Roku inventory, with a direct path to the FreeWheel Advertiser Suite.

“At Roku, we want to create better outcomes for all our advertisers and content partners, with more transparency and streamlined workflows,” said Miles Fisher, Senior Director, Strategic Advertising Partnerships, Roku. “This collaboration with FreeWheel is a great opportunity to represent supply to buyers and deliver a more efficient, data-rich environment.”

With this deeper collaboration, Roku can seamlessly manage direct-sold and programmatic campaigns and distribution inventory, as well as tap into demand via the FreeWheel Marketplace. Participating publishers have direct access, and for the first time, they can connect directly to Roku’s supply in the FreeWheel Marketplace, through a standardized, Open Real-Time Bidding-based connection. Additional enhancements include direct access to the FreeWheel Curation Hub and FreeWheel Buyer Cloud.

“The combination of Roku’s scale and market leadership in CTV and FreeWheel’s premium content and direct connections make this collaboration a game changer for the CTV ad marketplace,” said Greg Bel, Vice President, Head of Supply, FreeWheel. “Our expanded partnership is a marked transformation, as Roku shifts from a demand partner to a full platform client, truly impacting our mutual partners by giving them the ease, speed, and precision they asked for.”

“As one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies, NBCUniversal has long been focused on making premium video easier for advertisers to buy and measure,” said Alison Levin, President of Advertising and Partnerships at NBCUniversal. “Roku’s large scale and this expanded partnership with FreeWheel creates more transparency and efficiency across the marketplace, ultimately driving better outcomes for both advertisers and publishers.”

“As audience growth across streaming continues to accelerate, Warner Bros. Discovery is focused on maximizing the value of our premium storytelling across every platform while helping shape a more integrated and efficient premium video ecosystem,” said Jill Steinhauser, Group Senior Vice President of Platform Monetization and Partnerships at Warner Bros. Discovery. “This partnership between Roku and FreeWheel enhances our initiatives by giving advertisers greater access to streaming audiences at scale and drives more effective results for both advertisers and publishers.”

STAINES-UPON-THAMES, U.K.—Synamedia today announced Chris Le May and Henry Rivero have joined its Iris ad-tech team.

Le May, who has 25 years of experience in TV and digital media, joins the company as director of advanced advertising. Rivero comes to Synamedia with a broadcaster’s perspective as the former vice president of advanced advertising and innovation at RTL Group. He takes on the role of business development lead for advanced advertising.

Before joining Synamedia, Le May held leadership roles at DataXu and the European Broadcaster Exchange (EBX), a broadcaster-led joint venture. He has worked closely with Sky, BBC, RTL and Channel 4, driving innovation in addressable TV, crossplatform monetization and advanced advertising strategies across Europe, Synamedia said.

In his previous role at RTL Group, Rivero managed technology and product road maps across broadcast, digital and social advertising. He also led the teams responsible for data and programmatic advertising. Rivero has advised several media companies, including Xandr, BBC Studios and Bertelsmann, helping them navigate advanced advertising and digital transformation, the company said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

NEW YORK—Independent sell-side advertising company Magnite today announced an integration with Acxiom, the connected data and technology foundation of global advertising and marketing service firm Interpublic Group of Companies.

The move establishes Magnite as Acxiom’s first programmatic partner for sell-side data activation. The integration enables advertisers to activate their first-party data and Acxiom’s third-party data directly through Magnite to enhance addressable buying, Magnite said.

“We’re pleased to pave the way as the first programmatic sell-side partner to offer a direct integration with Acxiom,” said Kristen Williams, senior vice president of Strategic Partnerships at Magnite. “By opting for sell-side activation of their data-driven advertising campaigns, advertisers can tap into commercial efficiencies, differentiated data insights from streaming publishers, and further tailor their addressable strategy with Acxiom’s data.”

Initial testing demonstrates this streamlined approach to data activation helps reduce costs and aids in eliminating unnecessary fees, ultimately helping to maximize ad spend that goes towards working media while maintaining competitive performance, it said.

Activating through Magnite means buyers can access greater sell-side insights, including advanced forecasting and increased match rates due to Magnite’s direct relationships with publishers. By layering audiences on the sell side via deal IDs, Acxiom clients can buy on Acxiom pre-filtered inventory in their DSP of choice, it said.

“Bringing together Acxiom’s vast and trusted data services with Magnite’s access to unique streaming inventory presents advertisers with a turnkey activation point,” said Martin Wexler, executive vice president of Partnerships at Acxiom. “Magnite’s proximity to inventory helps drive improved match rates and reduces signal loss, enabling advertisers to activate with precision and augment performance across streaming and omnichannel media.”

More information is available on the Acxiom and Magnite websites.

IRVINE, Calif.— CTV and programmatic ad provider Viant Technology Inc. has announced a new integration of its DSP with Wurl that provides advertisers with scene-level CTV targeting and measurement

The two companies are billing the integration as the first time a DSP has delivered scene-level contextual intelligence across Connected Television (CTV). This is being made possible by IRIS.TV’s IRIS_ID and Wurl BrandDiscovery’s unique streaming signals and proprietary scene identification technologies. Those solutions allow advertisers to align messaging with on-screen context in real time, driving stronger engagement and outcomes, the companies reported.

The solution also features the integration of Viant’s new Open Real Time Bidding (oRTB) with Wurl, which provides premium Free Ad-Supported Streaming TV (FAST) inventory from top publishers.

The companies said that this partnership marks the first time Wurl’s BrandDiscovery-enabled supply is available via direct oRTB in a DSP.

By combining this supply with Viant’s Household ID and identity graph, which provides 95% of coverage of U.S. adults 18+, advertisers achieve greater reach, relevance, and efficiency in the fastest-growing digital advertising channel: CTV, the companies reported.

“As the first DSP to offer scene-level targeting and measurement capabilities, we are powering a new generation of privacy-safe, contextually relevant advertising that benefits the entire ecosystem,” said Tom Wolfe, senior vice president of business development at Viant. “The partnership with Wurl helps fulfill our mission to drive meaningful outcomes for our advertisers, and across the CTV landscape by addressing persistent challenges like fragmented targeting, limited measurement and lack of content transparency.”

Through its integration with IRIS.TV, Wurl’s proprietary BrandDiscovery segments, which classify each scene’s emotional tone and thematic context, are now assigned IRIS_IDs at the scene level.

With every Wurl impression IRIS-enabled, advertisers gain a new level of precision, aligning creative with narrative moments that drive stronger engagement and results. These signals are fully actionable in the Viant DSP via the company’s newly launched IRIS-enabled Content Report and Pre-bid Targeting solution.

“Wurl’s mission includes unlocking greater value for both publishers and advertisers in the streaming ecosystem,” said Ria Madrid, VP of Advertising Partnerships at Wurl. “With BrandDiscovery and IRIS IDs enabled across the Wurl footprint and fully integrated into Viant’s DSP, a biddable contextual solution is now activated at unbelievable scale. Advertisers can reach streaming audiences while also aligning their creative with relevant content. Contextual relevance has been proven to drive results – better campaign performance and ROAS for advertisers, and incremental revenue for publishers.”

Learn more at viantinc.com and at www.wurl.com.

RESTON, Va.—Comscore has announced that its AI-powered ID-free audiences offering has been integrated into Yahoo DSP, adding to the existing suite of targeting solutions offered by the demand side ad platform.

With this integration, Yahoo DSP clients can now activate Comscore’s ID-free audiences directly within the Yahoo DSP, giving advertisers a scalable, privacy-by-design solution that can be leveraged across desktop, mobile, and CTV., the companies said.

“At Comscore, we’re committed to helping brands understand consumers and we’re rewriting the industry playbook for how consumer insights are collected and applied, without compromising on privacy,” said Steve Bagdasarian, Comscore’s chief commercial officer. “This expanded partnership with Yahoo DSP empowers advertisers to activate AI-powered, ID-free audiences, reaching the right consumers without sacrificing performance or budget efficiency.”

ID-free audiences, which uses Comscore’s first-party data, contextual technology, and proprietary AI, is designed to help advertisers more efficiently target audiences, with many clients seeing lower CPMs, higher CTRs, and lower CPAs, Comscore said.

The integration builds on the ID-free targeting strategies already available in Yahoo DSP which is now providing an even more powerful suite of tools, Yahoo reported.

“Yahoo has long been committed to simplifying how advertisers reach their target audiences at scale in a privacy-forward way through our premium DSP. Our expanded partnership with Comscore is another important step in achieving these goals,” said Giovanni Gardelli, vice president of ads data products, Yahoo DSP. “By offering Comscore ID-free audiences directly in our platform, we’re enabling our clients to deliver better outcomes while balancing the need for user privacy.”

The integration is now live and available to all Yahoo DSP clients.

NEW YORK—As digital advertising enters a new era shaped by AI, privacy enforcement, and the unraveling of traditional identity systems, the Interactive Advertising Bureau has announced that the IAB Tech Lab Summit 2025 will take the industry “Through the Looking Glass” during a June 4 event here that will tackle such subjects as AI, identity, connected TV and regulation.

“The way things have worked for the past twenty-five years is not how they will work for the next twenty-five. We are already operating in a new normal, and not just in advertising. The world has changed,” said Anthony Katsur, CEO, IAB Tech Lab. “Privacy is real, advertising signals are disappearing, streaming TV continues on its phenomenal growth curve, and AI is generating both code and content. This summit is about rethinking what it takes to make digital advertising take the next leap — technically, commercially, and sustainably.”

The event will feature a fireside chat with Peter Zeihan, a globally recognized geopolitical strategist and best-selling author. In conversation with Katsur, Zeihan will offer a candid, data-rich perspective on the global forces reshaping markets, governance and innovation and their impact on the future of artificial intelligence, technical infrastructure, global supply chain realignment, and the downstream effects on consumers and businesses.

Reflecting the industry’s pivot to intelligent systems and adaptive infrastructure, this year’s program features a strong emphasis on AI’s transformative potential:

• Unlocking Innovation: From Word Models to World Models. Nikhila Ravi, Research Lead at FAIR (Meta’s AI research group), explores how agentic AI is enabling new forms of planning, reasoning, and collaboration across the marketing ecosystem.
• Reimagining Context With AI. Jonah Goodhart, CEO of Mobian, discusses how AI is redefining contextual relevance by decoding emotion, sentiment, and consumer mindset in real time.
• AI-Driven Identity Infrastructure. A panel featuring leaders from LiveRamp, Optable and ID5 explores how adaptive identity solutions are streamlining compliance while unifying identity across connected TV, mobile and desktop environments.

In addition to keynote speakers Zeihan, Ravi and Goodhart, the summit will feature insights from a powerful lineup of voices shaping the future of digital advertising.

Notably, New Jersey Deputy Attorney General Thomas Huynh will join the conversation, bringing a critical privacy enforcement and regulatory perspective to the forefront. As state-level privacy laws expand and enforcement intensifies, this session offers a rare opportunity to hear directly from those shaping the legal boundaries of data use, identity and consent in digital media.

Executives from The Trade Desk, OpenX, LiveRamp, Optable, ID5, VideoStorm, and Didomi will also share insights, offering a rich cross-section of expertise from across the digital ecosystem.

Designed for engineering, product and strategy teams, the summit’s breakout sessions provide practical frameworks for implementation. Topics include:

• Programmatic monetization and signal optimization with Trusted Server – Learn how to sustain performance in a signal-constrained environment.
• Server-side privacy enforcement and data control—Explore frameworks that align with global compliance requirements while maintaining campaign effectiveness.
• Real-time ad delivery for live events—Discover how advanced infrastructure is enabling frame-accurate ad insertions and dynamic creative switching in live sports, news, and streaming, driving maximum viewer engagement and monetization.
• Trusted server infrastructure and open Conversion APIs (CAPIs)—Get hands-on with CAPIs and learn how they’re helping marketers recover lost attribution, improve measurement accuracy, and enhance campaign performance in a privacy-safe, browserless environment.
• Monetization Strategies in a world driven by Agentic AI and LLMs—Explore an actionable framework for publishers to deploy mechanisms for enforcing fair compensation from AI bots and content scrapers and for brands to protect brand reputation in the face of zero click search and changing consumer behavior with AI agents.
• Standardizing CTV creative ad portfolio through the Ad Format Hero initiative—Improve operational efficiency and creative consistency across platforms.

Since its inception, IAB Tech Lab Summit has brought together the teams building the digital ad infrastructure of tomorrow. This year’s event continues that tradition with honest conversations, deep technical insights and meaningful collaboration.

“Come join us in pressure-testing what can work in this new world in which we’re operating,” Katsur said. “We are through the looking glass. It’s time to retool with clarity, practical thinking, and real alignment across the digital ad economy supply chain as we enter this new socio-political and economic global paradigm.”

More information is available here.

NEW YORK—Amazon Publisher Services (APS) and independent sell-side advertising company Magnite are collaborating more deeply on streaming TV through the APS Transparent Ad Marketplace (TAM) and Magnite SpringServe.

Publishers can now access high-quality, incremental demand from Magnite more easily on Amazon devices. Magnite is also giving publishers incremental access to streaming TV inventory via APS on Fire TV devices, the company said.

“We’re pleased to broaden our work with Amazon Ads to make more streaming content on Fire TV devices available to buyers through Magnite,” Sean Buckley, president of revenue at Magnite, said. “By developing the custom integration, we’re able to more comprehensively connect advertisers to premium streaming inventory across Fire TV devices.”

The collaboration builds on existing integrations of Amazon Ads and Magnite. In 2016, Magnite was a launch partner of the Transparent Ad Marketplace, helping drive demand opportunities for APS publishers. In 2024, the company was one of the first to join Amazon Ads’ Certified Supply Exchange Program.

“Expanding our work with Magnite was the natural evolution in our dedication to bring incremental demand to publishers through interoperable solutions,” said Scott Siegler, director of APS. “Our shared goal is to maximize streaming TV advertising effectiveness that ultimately improves consumers’ ad experiences.”

More information is available about activating Magnite demand through APS online.

NEW YORK—In an important step towards creating a unified framework for measurement and reporting of attention to media, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Media Rating Council (MRC) have released their Attention Measurement Guidelines for public comment.

"Attention is getting a lot of, well, attention — but without a shared standard, it's become a bit of a Wild West situation," said Angelina Eng, vice president of measurement, addressability and data center and center of excellence operations at the IAB. "Right now, there are too many different ways to measure and define it, which creates confusion and makes it hard to compare results or build trust. These guidelines are about bringing order to the chaos. They lay down a clear, consistent foundation so that attention can be measured in a way that's credible, useful, and ready for where the industry is headed."

Developed by the IAB Attention Task Force—a group of more than 200 members from across the advertising, media, and measurement industries—the IAB and the MRC reported that these guidelines offer a structured framework for the consistent measurement and reporting of attention across media. During the public comment period of 60 days, until July 12, 2025, the IAB is inviting brands, publishers, platforms, agencies, and measurement providers to review the guidelines and provide feedback.

A final version is expected to be released before the end of 2025, laying the groundwork for future MRC accreditation audits of attention measurement services.

The measurement guidelines outline four primary methodological approaches—data signals, visual tracking, physiological and neurological observations, and panel or survey-based inputs. It also creates shared requirements that can be applied across formats and platforms.

By reducing reliance on inconsistent or proprietary methodologies, the guidelines give all sides of the ecosystem a common baseline for comparing attention metrics and aligning them to business outcomes, the IAB and MRC reported.

"From the MRC's standpoint, measurement only works when it's grounded in rigor and ready for real-world scrutiny," said Ron Pinelli, senior vice president, digital research and standards, MRC. "It's important to have industry-accepted requirements for consistent measurement and reporting of attention metrics to enable users of these measures to understand and use them in an appropriate manner. These guidelines represent a framework for attention measurement across various methodological approaches including data validation, empirical support for models used and transparency in the form of reporting and disclosure. They define not just what attention is, but how to measure it with quality and consistency in a way that's transparent, comparable, and built to inform future validation through independent audit and accreditation."

The Attention Measurement Guidelines establish clear parameters around how attention should be applied in practice — not as a replacement for delivery or outcome metrics, but as a complementary signal that can enhance how exposure and engagement are understood, the two groups explained. By aligning methodologies, definitions, and reporting principles, the framework helps reduce ambiguity and supports more confident decision-making across planning, buying, and evaluation. It gives the industry a way to move beyond experimentation and begin operationalizing attention with greater consistency and accountability, the IAB and the MRC explained.

"This is about creating the conditions for trust — and ultimately, investment — in attention as a reliable indicator of exposure and engagement," Eng concluded. "But it only works if the industry leans in during this public comment period and helps shape something we can all stand behind."

Stakeholders are encouraged to review the draft Attention Measurement Guidelines and submit comments before July 12, 2025 here: https://www.iab.com/attention.

NEW YORK—Fox’s ad-supported streaming Tubi made a series of product and partnership announcements during IAB NewFronts in New York, including the launch of new interactive ad formats, detailed some expanded tech partnerships and highlighted its self-serve ad platform.

“As Tubi scales from emerging to essential, we are focused on providing ad solutions that meet the needs of brands across industries, from CPG to Auto and more, driving outcomes across the funnel so dollars can work smarter and harder when you need it most,” said Jeff Lucas, CRO, Tubi, which has more than 97 million monthly active users “Today is an exciting step forward as we continue to create innovative solutions for brands to connect with viewers who have significant and growing purchasing power.”

Tubi describe the new products unveiled at the NewFronts as follows:

• Tubi Wrappers: With the largest content collection in streaming television, Tubi is allowing studios to reach entertainment fanatics through Tubi Wrappers. Studio advertisers can take over Tubi’s homepage to promote upcoming theatrical releases with animated backgrounds, auto-play trailers, high visibility branded UI elements and a call to action.
• Carousels: Designed with CPG, Tech, and Auto verticals in mind, Carousel Ads enable brands to create immersive virtual showrooms or product showcases on the valuable Tubi homepage, featuring tiles with a custom video, multiple images, and a CTA or QR Code. Viewers can scroll through the tiles to view brand imagery, product details and specific calls to action.
• New Pause Ad Formats: Animated Pause Ads feature a sound-off, looping video background to give advertisers more creative possibilities.
• Tubi Moments: Tubi is enhancing its vast content library by tagging scenes to capture the tone, sentiment and visual cues, enabling brands’ ad creative to appear in the most relevant content moments during a viewer's journey.
• Tubi Storefronts: In addition to the shoppable second screen storefront Tubi launched with ShopsenseAI in February, there is now a Tubi Shop with collections of goods like clothing, home goods and more inspired by the content viewers are obsessing over. Today, commerce-centric advertisers can start up a Tubi Storefront within the Tubi Shop in minutes.
• Tubi Prime: Tubi Prime gives advertisers guaranteed ad placements within our most popular, brand safe content on Tubi. Through Upfront deals, advertisers can select from content lineups like Tubi Top 50 and Popular with Gen Z and guarantee placements throughout the year, bringing brands closer to conversations around pop culture.

Tubi also announced a number of new and expanded ad tech partnerships, including:

• Identity: Tubi's strategic partnership with Amazon Demand Side Platform enables in market shopper reach and closed loop measurement - leveraging Amazon's variety of signals - for retail media advertisers.
• Performance: Tubi is partnering with Moloco, an ad tech platform using advanced machine learning, to optimize Connected TV (CTV) advertising, driving both app installs and post-install engagement. Tubi has also integrated Kochava for Publishers providing advertisers with clear-labeled ad measurement technology, connecting ad delivery to business outcomes such as app installs, in-app engagements, website visits, and conversions.
• Vertical and Custom Solutions: Ad products and measurement partnerships tailored to bespoke solutions for specific industries—Polk from S&P Global Mobility for automotive insights, Innovid for real-time incremental reach measurement and online attribution solutions, NCS for e-commerce and in-store incremental sales lift, solutions for pharma, finance, QSR and more.

During the event, the streamer also highlighted how easy it now is for businesses of any size to use its self-serve format, powered by Universal Ads.

In the last year, Tubi announced integrations with FreeWheel, AudienceXpress and FOX’s AdRise platform and introduced ad products including Tubi Selects, Tubi Takeovers, Timeouts and Tubi360 to provide marketers with a variety of contextual ways to reach cord-cutters and cord-nevers.

PRINCETON, N.J.—Triveni Digital and Brazilian technology provider Mirakulo are collaborating on developing a dynamic ad insertion delivery system for the ATSC 3.0 and Brazilian TV 3.0 (DTV+) over-the-air platforms.

The system enables the selection and playback of ads in TV receivers based on criteria such as viewer location and habits, marking a significant advancement in broadcast advertising technology, Triveni Digital said.

“Our partnership with Triveni Digital represents a significant step forward in broadcast advertising technology,” said David Britto, CEO of Mirakulo. “By combining our expertise in ATSC 3.0 and TV 3.0, we're opening new doors for broadcasters to enhance their revenue streams while delivering more relevant content to viewers.”

The new dynamic ad insertion delivery system provides broadcasters with a capability previously limited to streaming platforms. The end-to-end solution enables broadcasters to reach viewers with highly targeted and personalized ads over the air for selection and presentation in the receiver, the company said.

Compatible with both ATSC 3.0 and Brazil's TV 3.0 standards, the system integrates seamlessly with Triveni Digital's broadcast chain products, including GuideBuilder XM and ATSC 3.0 Broadcast Gateway.

What sets the solution apart is Triveni Digital's expertise in broadcast technology solutions and Mirakulo's deployment footprint and relationships with TV receiver manufacturers in Brazil. This combination paves the way for broadcasters to increase revenue substantially for each ad slot. It also will streamline future implementations in other markets, Triveni Digital said.

“Mirakulo has successfully solved the technical and business issues associated with building a commercially viable dynamic ad insertion delivery system on prior generation TV delivery platforms,” said Mark Simpson, president and CEO of Triveni Digital. “We are excited to combine our expertise to shape the future of broadcasting and anticipate continued collaboration in Brazil, with the potential to impact other markets such as the U.S.”

More information is available on the Triveni Digital website.

PEARL RIVER, N.Y.—Global media solutions company Active Media Services (AMS) has formed a new relationship with VideoAmp, a measurement company for linear TV, connected TV and digital advertising.

VideoAmp's suite of offerings will enable several product initiatives that will give AMS clients the ability to reach and measure custom audiences across the full video landscape, AMS said.

“We are thrilled for AMS to be powered by VideoAmp, as they deliver customized, actionable audiences across broadcast, cable and streaming,” said Josh Hudgins, chief product officer of VideoAmp. “Our work with AMS speaks directly to our mission of transparent media measurement, and we're excited to see how they employ our suite of APIs to drive innovation in their product offering.”

AMS Technology will leverage VideoAmp's VALID, its big data and technology engine consisting of viewership footprint, identity graph and clean room technology, across the entire company, including XACTV, Involved Media and Active International, it said.

"By bringing VideoAmp's custom audiences to linear we have a common currency and a true effective CPM across all video," said Alex Sapoznikov, CIO of AMS. "VideoAmp has an amazing combination of scale, speed, and technical integrations, allowing us to be even more strategic in how we plan and buy video. We can compare custom audience CPMs to traditional demo CPMs to see what we're really getting for our clients. It's finally all bought and measured in one place."

More information is available on the AMS and VideoAmp websites.

NEW YORK—Premion, a CTV/OTT advertising solution for regional and local advertisers, has launched expanded capabilities and new tools for advertisers to execute and optimize campaigns across channels.

With the integration of Octillion, Premion has further strengthened its purpose-built local CTV platform and demand side platform (DSP) to drive full-funnel outcomes, the company reported.

Launched in 2016 by Tegna, Premion is a premium CTV/OTT advertising platform for regional and local advertisers. Gray Television, Inc. acquired a minority stake in Premion in 2020.

The upgrades follow the acquisition of Octillion by Premion in 2024.

“Consumers have embraced streaming for its convenience, choice and control, making CTV the fastest-growing ad channel. Advertisers want that same flexibility in buying CTV while optimizing spend and performance across channels, whether through managed services or programmatic buying,” said Daniel Spinosa, president at Premion. “Publishers are also eager to unlock more local revenue, and with expanded capabilities powered by our DSP, we’re providing innovative solutions that meet these needs, creating a win-win for all.”

Premion reported that its DSP transforms local CTV advertising with a privacy-focused, cookieless platform that enhances audience targeting and campaign performance across channels, while a powerful device graph enables seamless identity resolution.

Unified attribution tools allow brands and agencies to track the full customer journey and optimize outcomes in multi-touch marketing campaigns.

Premion described the newest improvements as follows:

• Expanded Omnichannel Advertising Solution for Advertisers. Premion’s DSP seamlessly integrates CTV into a broader omnichannel strategy, allowing advertisers to combine CTV with video, audio, display, and retargeting for a unified approach.
• Simplified Co-Op Advertising to Maximize Performance. Premion’s Co-Op advertising solution revolutionizes traditional co-op models by eliminating campaign competition and enhancing return on ad spend (ROAS). Co-Op advertising is a powerful yet often underused strategy to amplify CTV campaigns. By sharing advertising costs among brand partners, co-op programs reduce spend, increase exposure, and ensure consistent branding across locations, enabling brands to achieve more with less.
• Strengthened Publisher Relationships to Drive Local Revenue Growth. Premion continues to expand its partnerships to include all major publishers, many of whom are new to the local CTV space. By providing access to differentiated demand, Premion offers publishers a scalable solution that complements their national direct sales efforts while unlocking new revenue opportunities in local markets.
• Achieved TAG Platinum Status for Brand Safety and Fraud Protection. Brand safety has always been foundational to Premion’s platform. Reinforcing its leadership in delivering a trusted advertising environment, Premion has achieved “TAG Platinum” status, recertified for the TAG Brand Safety Certified Seal and the TAG Certified Against Fraud Seal, and earned the TAG Certified Against Malware Seal for the first time from the Trustworthy Accountability Group (TAG).

“Local relevance is a top priority for advertisers, and we’ve supercharged our ad-tech capabilities to drive automation, enhance data-rich targeting, and unify attribution. Local differs from national, and with our DSP, we’re delivering the precision, flexibility, and expertise that set Premion apart,” added Spinosa.

ENGLEWOOD, Colo.,—Dish Media has launched a new, specially configured Order Management System that was created in collaboration with Decentrix’s BIAnalytix Planner.

This platform seamlessly integrates workflows across Dish Media’s national network, encompassing set-top-box inventory (Dish) and connected TV (Sling TV).

Dish also reported that this all-in-one campaign management system offers media buyers the most simplified and efficient solution to target unique audiences across multiple platforms.

“At Dish Media, we’ve always been at the forefront of innovation in TV advertising,” said Tom Fochetta, senior vice president, Dish Media. “By investing in a cutting-edge Order Management System, we’re establishing the foundation for a more streamlined and efficient advertising ecosystem, one that can be built upon with future innovations, enabling us to provide clients with the most effective campaigns across our national footprint.”

With the launch of its enhanced Order Management System, Dish Media said it improves impression-based advertising by delivering greater control and efficiency. This will help optimize campaigns, accelerate order fulfillment and enhance operational performance, providing increased flexibility and improved experiences for clients, Dish said.

"We are pleased to have been chosen by Dish to provide our Planner OMS cross-media campaign capabilities across their sophisticated addressable and digital advertising operations. The unique underpinning of Planner OMS with our AI toolset (AI4Media™) creates unparalleled operational efficiencies and allows for even deeper integrations in the future,” said Wayne Ruting, chief executive officer, Decentrix.

NEW YORK—AI is set to transform the advertising industry, but the industry still has a ways to go in adoption, according to new research from the IAB.

The study is particularly notable because it povides the first-ever industry benchmarks on AI usage, adoption rates, and perceptions as well as challenges, opportunities, and future needs within the media campaign lifecycle.

One major finding is that to date, only 30% of agencies, brands, and publishers have fully integrated AI across the media campaign lifecycle. The data also success that the initial focus of AI usage is clearly on driving efficiency, as nearly twice as many agencies and publishers have fully scaled AI compared to brands.

The new report, “State of Data 2025: The Now, The Near, and The Next Evolution of AI for Media Campaigns” was designed to evaluate market readiness for AI transformation, and created by IAB in partnership with BWG Global and Transparent Partners. It surveyed over 500 subject matter experts across the buy- and sell-sides of the industry.

“While AI has long been used for yield management, optimization, and automation, the explosion of generative and agentic AI solutions will radically alter the entire digital media ecosystem. AI will soon power every aspect of media campaigns, not to mention its impact on the creative process.” said David Cohen, CEO, IAB. “We must fundamentally rethink how agencies, brands, platforms and publishers work — which is both incredibly exciting and challenging at the same time.”

Despite a slow start, the researchers reported that half of those who haven't yet fully integrated AI expect to do it by 2026. But the study also reveals that half the industry lacks a strategic roadmap for AI.

“The industry isn’t taking full advantage of what AI can do now. It can build media plans, generate audience segments, select media partners, forecast performance, and even use synthetic or “fake” data to enhance marketing mix modeling and sales attribution” said Angelina Eng, VP Measurement, Addressability & Data Center, IAB. “This will transform how media campaigns are conceived, executed, and managed from start to finish. It will happen fast, and laggards are at risk of being left behind. This report will help the industry develop the roadmaps they need to leap from AI-assisted workflows to the complete integration that will unlock AI’s full potential.”

In terms of what is holding the industry back, the report offered some interesting conclusions.

Contrary to popular assumptions, job security is the least of the industry’s concerns at just 37%. The industry recognizes that AI requires a strong foundation before it can take on human tasks and realize its potential.

Nearly two-thirds cite the quality of the data being used and produced, the protection of that data, and fragmentation among disparate tools as top barriers for AI adoption.

The study also found that there are fears about transparency. Half of brands worry they don’t have enough transparency about how agency and publishing partners use AI on their behalf, and half of agencies worry about brands bringing their AI capabilities in-house and reducing their reliance on partners.

In another notable finding, the study asked about eighteen different solutions ranging from clear use cases, formal training, defined KPIs specifically for AI solutions, formal assessment of workflows, to governance boards to address concerns and challenges.

The survey found, however, that at most, only 49% are using or planning to use any one of them.

Eng concludes, “The study suggests that agencies, brands, and publishers need to take a phased approach to AI adoption, ensuring that data inputs and outputs are secure and of high quality. They also need to train teams on best practices, collaborate with the industry to develop standards, and prioritize key use cases to establish a strong foundation for full-scale adoption. There is already a lot of catching up to do, and AI capabilities are leaping even further ahead almost daily. There’s no time to waste.”

The report, IAB State of Data 2025: The Now, The Near, and The Next Evolution of AI for Media Campaigns, is available here.

A series of four webinars on this vital subject will begin March 24. To register for the IAB State of Data Webinar: AI in the Media Campaign Lifecycle click here.

In addition, IAB is releasing a companion guide to the report that provides tactical recommendations for integrating AI into day-to-day media planning, activation, and analysis.

LEXINGTON, Ky.—The independent ad rep firm Viamedia has announced a deal to acquire LocalFactor, a Westport, Connecticut-based, tech-enabled digital advertising company specializing in omnichannel programmatic advertising solutions for large regional and national brands and agencies.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

As part of the deal, LocalFactor founder and CEO Evan Rutchik has been named president and chief strategy officer of Viamedia, reporting to Viamedia CEO David Solomon. In this role, Rutchik will drive Viamedia’s strategic vision while continuing to oversee LocalFactor’s operations. He will also join Viamedia’s board, ensuring a seamless integration of LocalFactor’s advanced digital capabilities into Viamedia’s growing portfolio.

The LocalFactor brand will be retained in the marketplace, as a division of Viamedia.

“LocalFactor and Viamedia share two essential traits: a ‘local-local’ marketing philosophy that has served our respective clients well, and a people-first culture that empowers employees to innovate and do their best work for clients,” Solomon said. “By combining LocalFactor’s expertise in omnichannel, locally optimized-data-driven digital campaigns with Viamedia’s expansive linear TV and digital ad infrastructure, we are creating a powerhouse in localized advertising—offering brands unmatched precision and reach across all channels. Additionally, with the strength of LocalFactor’s sales organization, Viamedia’s video service provider partners will benefit from enhanced monetization opportunities and expanded access to top brands investing in premium video inventory.”

The news comes on the heels of numerous Viamedia client additions, making Viamedia the first U.S. ad sales firm to represent more than 100 video service providers, encompassing 75 DMAs.

“Joining forces with Viamedia marks an evolution for LocalFactor and a natural progression of our shared commitment to delivering innovative, data-driven advertising solutions to brands, agencies, and content providers,” said Evan Rutchik, president and chief strategy officer of Viamedia. “With the addition of Viamedia’s exclusive supply and expansive infrastructure, LocalFactor will provide its customers with even more unique premium video-based inventory and customer support, significantly increasing our scale and impact. Together, we are creating an omnichannel ecosystem that optimizes brand reach while driving measurable results.”

Founded in 2021, LocalFactor’s Performance Engine offers advertisers access to every digital channel, with the option to leverage proprietary audience and creative technology to optimize campaigns. At the core of the Performance Engine, is the Geo-Graph, which maps data to geographic micro-localities—unlike traditional device graphs that rely on cookies or device matching—enabling scalable, privacy-compliant audience development and consistent targeting across all channels, devices, and media tactics.

The Geo-Graph seamlessly integrates with LocalFactor’s Attention+ Studio, a creative technology that enhances and repurposes brands’ existing video assets for cross-channel activation and advanced ad delivery, the companies said.

In announcing the deal, the two companies reported that the acquisition would strengthen both companies in a variety of ways, including:

• Expanded Sales and Monetization Capabilities. The LocalFactor sales organization enhances Viamedia’s core business, bringing new brands and stronger monetization opportunities to Viamedia’s video service provider partners. Viamedia brings over two decades of video advertising experience, exclusive access to local households thru video provider partnerships and built out customer success infrastructure and local inventory and audience knowledge and expertise. About 75% of LocalFactor’s revenue is video based, aligning with Viamedia’s core strengths while bringing technological innovation to the monetization of supply.
• Advanced Digital Ad Operations that will be strengthened by a highly skilled team with direct access to top digital ad buying and supply platforms and creative technology.
• Expanded Technology Stack. Integration of LocalFactor’s Geo-Graph and Attention+ Studio technology will provide precise, privacy-compliant audience targeting across micro-localities.
• National Brand Relationships and Seamless Buying Models. The deal adds direct ties with leading agencies and brands, including within GroupM, IPG, and Publicis, further expanding Viamedia’s reach into high-value advertising markets. In addition, LocalFactor’s custom data solutions can be delivered programmatically, ensuring seamless execution within clients’ existing buying models—whether through managed services or self-service.
• The addition of the LocalFactor team and technology also gives Viamedia enhanced digital operations capabilities, a robust national sales arm and proprietary ad-targeting and campaign-reporting technology. The combination creates an integrated advertising ecosystem that leverages LocalFactor’s ability to execute localized, data-driven digital strategies with Viamedia’s expansive linear TV and digital advertising infrastructure. The LocalFactor brand will be retained in the marketplace, as a division of Viamedia.

GEONA, Nev.—Independent digital and linear advertising rep firm Viamedia will adopt cloud-based ShowSeeker Pilot as its primary ad campaign and order management system, streamlining operations across an extensive network of more than 100 providers in 75 of the top designated market areas (DMAs) nationwide.

“We selected the ShowSeeker Pilot platform to have the single best innovative and seamless advertising solutions for our clients,” said Viamedia CEO David Solomon. “Pilot’s unified, predictive capabilities empower us to streamline workflows and optimize campaign performance, ensuring we remain at the forefront of connecting advertisers with their audiences. This collaboration reflects our shared vision for driving efficiency and results in an ever-evolving media landscape.”

Viamedia’s adoption of Pilot will streamline ad sales workflows, enabling advertisers to have a more efficient, results-driven process. The integration enhances Viamedia’s capacity to deliver precise, cross-media advertising strategies tailored to the needs of local, regional and national advertisers, ShowSeeker said.

“Our expanded partnership with Viamedia reflects the depth of our shared commitment to transforming ad sales operations,” said Jeff Blaszak, senior vice president of business operations and strategy at ShowSeeker. “By fully adopting Pilot across their operations, Viamedia gains a unified platform that simplifies workflows, optimizes results for advertisers and sets the stage for further advancements. We’re proud to build on this collaboration to drive greater efficiency in the media industry.”

More information is available on the company’s website.

CESSON-SEVIGNE, France—Chunghwa Telecom, the leading telecommunications operator in Taiwan, has selected Broadpeak to provide solutions for its streaming service Hami Video.

As part of the agreement, the telco is using Broadpeak’s server-side-ad-insertion (SSAI) solution via the broadpeak.io SaaS platform.

The two companies reported that the advanced dynamic ad insertion solution would improve viewing experiences and increase ad revenue from the live basketball matches and associated content offered by Chunghwa’s premium sports streaming channel.

Chunghwa Telecom serves over 3 million video streaming subscribers, offering a broad array of live and on-demand content, including premium international sports. With continued rights investments in premier live sports content, the operator required new and enhanced ad insertion capabilities so that it could better monetize its growing OTT service, Hami Video and boost ad revenues.

Jacques Le Mancq, president and CEO of Broadpeak, explained that “Chunghwa Telecom is innovation-led and champions exceptional subscriber experiences. Market leaders like Chunghwa set a pioneering example of how operators can elevate their monetization toolkit while bringing the best live sports and entertainment to rapidly-growing audiences. We’re proud to support Chunghwa as it embarks on new periods of growth as the ultimate streaming platform for Taiwanese viewers.”

The two companies reported that Broadpeak’s solutions are designed to be rapidly deployed and that Broadpeak enabled the service to go live within weeks with a flexible, easy-to-use SaaS solution.

Alongside fast time-to-market, the cloud-based solution provided Chungwha Telecom with effortless third-party integration via API-driven architecture, seamless interoperability within existing CDN and ad-tech environments. Broadpeak also implemented AI-driven tools to automatically detect ad breaks and insert the relevant SCTE-35 markers within video streams.

More information is available at www.broadpeak.tv.

LONDON and LOS ANGELES—ThinkAnalytics will feature its newly launched ThinkMediaAI, a unified artificial intelligence (AI)-powered platform that encompass content monetization, contextual advertising, content curation and content bundling for video service providers, at the 2025 NAB Show, April 5-9, in Las Vegas.

“ThinkMediaAI is an investment that drives subscriber satisfaction and growth, reduces vendor complexity, drives operational efficiencies and creates new monetization opportunities through innovative applications of AI trained on massive datasets,” said ThinkAnalytics chairman and CEO Eddie Young.

A flexible, modular solution, ThinkMediaAI uses AI to unlock new monetization opportunities across multiple business areas, including editorial and advertising, to maximize content value and enhance audience targeting, the company said.

The all-in-one platform tackles video providers’ critical challenges—from discovery and personalized recommendations to search, voice, editorial and automated curation, A/B testing, actionable business insights, advertising and metadata enrichment — in a single solution. ThinkMediaAI drives real ROI with increased viewer engagement, productivity gains, reduced churn, upsell and monetization opportunities — all fuelled by AI-powered personalization and first-party data enrichment, the company said.

ThinkMediaAI business benefits include:

• Removal of vendor complexity as a single AI-powered solution that streamline media workflows.
• Monetization at scale by unlocking new revenue streams with addressable and contextual advertising and content bundling in a single platform.
• Best-in-class technology leveraging the latest AI and natural language processing (NLP) solutions to enhance media operations.
• Operational efficiency that reduces complexity and automates workflows to do more with less.
• Proven ROI that delivers measurable business impact and increases profitability.

“We know that content is one of the most valuable assets media companies own but only with the right AI tools can they maximize that value,” said Peter Docherty, ThinkAnalytics chief technology officer and founder. “With ThinkMediaAI, we’ve built a platform that understands content, enhances monetization opportunities and optimizes workflows, all powered by state-of-the-art NLP, AI, and Generative AI technologies. This has been made possible by the scale of our customer base of 500 million viewers, giving us an understanding of viewer behavior that is second to none.”

See ThinkAnalytics at 2025 NAB Show booth W2657.

More information is available on the company’s website.

Former Fox Sports executive Dan Donnelly has joined audience measurement firm VideoAmp as head of sports strategy, tasked with accelerating growth for its sports practice and enhancing its measurement efforts within the industry.

Donnelly had been senior vice president of ad sales strategy at Fox Sports, where he oversaw strategic efforts influencing multibillion dollars in ad revenue, VideoAmp said. He also held leadership roles in the U.S. Sports and Entertainment division of Publicis Media and at Starcom Mediavest Group. He has negotiated multiple high-profile media partnerships with major sports leagues, securing multiyear TV deals for Anheuser-Busch with the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS, NASCAR, the NCAA, the PGA Tour, the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup, VideoAmp said.

“After so many years in media and marketing, working with brands, media owners, leagues, and agencies, I'm excited to join VideoAmp where technology is at the heart of smarter planning, measurement, and optimization,” Donnelly said. “It’s about leveraging data to drive more efficient and effective strategies, all with the ultimate goal of tracking and enhancing brand and business outcomes. Being part of a team that’s pushing the boundaries of how we measure success in advertising is truly inspiring, and I’m eager to contribute to this transformative journey.”

At VideoAmp, Donnelly will focus on addressing the need for accurate cross-platform measurement in sports media, strengthening and expanding the company’s partnership portfolio and accelerating technological capabilities to meet the rising demand for precision in sports advertising, the company said.

“VideoAmp could not be more excited to welcome Dan on board to lead our Sports practice,” Executive Vice President of Revenue Bryan Goski said. “As a 20-year industry veteran with deep expertise with agencies, brands, and publishers in the Sports vertical, I have no doubt that he will add immense value to our team and help us realize our mission to provide the highest quality of measurement to our partners.”

VideoAmp said its advanced out-of-home measurement solution uses Big Data culled from TV sets and smartphones to provide actionable insights. Donnelly will work to strengthen and expand a VideoAmp partner portfolio that includes Netflix and WWE for “Monday Night Raw” and CBS Sports, the company said.

STAINES-UPON-THAMES, U.K.—Dynamic ad insertion provider Yospace has named Stuart Barnes as vice president of international business development.

Working alongside Vice President of Commercial Ed New, Barnes is tasked with bolstering Yospace’s ability to accelerate adoption of digital ad insertion across North America, Europe and the APAC region.

“Stuart has a proven track record in building great customer relationships and delivering success for some of the best-known media companies in the world,” Yospace CEO Tim Sewell said in a statement. “He rejoins Yospace at a time when the role of advertising to media companies has never been more important.”

Barnes brings to Yospace more than 20 years of experience in the digital video industry, including a prior five-year stint with the company, Yospace said. He also led sales efforts for ad-tech firm Brightcove in London and then for the company’s media category in the United States. He later joined Vimeo as vice president, Americas, where he helped evolve the video platform’s enterprise sales division.

Barnes and his teams helped position both Brightcove and Vimeo for their initial public offerings in 2012 and 2021, respectively, Yospace said.

“Having worked with Stuart for a number of years, I know full well the added value he will bring to Yospace," New said in a statement. “His decision to rejoin the company is a further validation of the market-leading position the wider Yospace team has achieved. I cannot wait to work alongside him again and turbocharge our sales capabilities.”

Barnes also relaunched and chaired the New York Video Meetup, a community of several thousand video professionals, in 2023.

“Yospace’s impressive roster of global customers, including DirectTV, Fox, ITV, RTL,TV4, Nine Entertainment, Seven West Media and many more, is a testament to its value to media organizations worldwide,” Barnes said. “Reliable and scalable dynamic ad insertion is absolutely pivotal to their success, so it’s a perfect time to be coming on board. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to once again work with Tim, Ed and the rest of the team at such an exciting time.”

NEW YORK—DirecTV Advertising is bringing programmatic ad sales capabilities to its linear satellite inventory in a move that it said will provide advertisers to increased inventory, scale and untapped audiences across satellite and streaming.

While connected TV and streaming platforms have long offered programmatic ad capabilities, traditional linear TV—which does not generally offer programmatic sales—still dominates ad impressions, generating nearly six times more impressions than streaming, according to Comscore.

By enabling programmatic capabilities for its satellite households, DirecTV plans to change that by allowing for the same real-time bidding, campaign execution via private guarantees (PG) or private marketplaces (PMPs) and enhanced signals that are widely available in streaming environments. This will offer buyers access to premium, brand-safe inventory through their preferred demand-side platform and sell-side platform across all DirecTV endpoints.

“In today’s rapidly evolving media landscape, buyers require a new level of flexibility. We’re excited to set TV free,” said Amy Leifer, chief advertising sales officer, DirecTV Advertising, which has been a pioneer in addressable advertising. “By enabling satellite households to be accessed programmatically, we’re creating flexible, seamless solutions for marketers to reach premium TV inventory.”

DirecTV Advertising is currently in market with select partners including, Publicis Media Exchange (PMX), Magnite and Basis Technologies, with plans to make this inventory more widely available in the first quarter this year.

“DirecTV Advertising is meeting marketers where they are by automating and streamlining how customers are engaging with TV,” said Tyler Kelly, president, Basis Technologies. “Having unparalleled, preferred access to DirecTV’s brand-safe premium content via programmatic advertising methods gives Basis Technologies and our clients unique opportunities to reach incremental audiences.”

In addition to expanding its programmatic inventory, DirecTV Advertising said it is leveraging universal IDs and content metadata to boost relevancy and transparency, as well as enhance brand safety for buyers. By enabling more signals, brands can reach and manage their audiences on a granular level and gain a deeper understanding of the content in which ads are running.

“We’re excited to help DirecTV Advertising bridge the gap between linear and streaming, creating a unified workflow for buyers to seamlessly access inventory across their portfolio,” Magnite President, Revenue Sean Buckley said. “At a time when control and transparency are top of mind for programmatic buyers, DirecTV Advertising is meeting the moment by enabling more signals within their content. These advancements have generated new opportunities, such as in live sports, where clients can leverage rich contextual signals to get closer to the content and enhance transparency.”

The effort builds on the launch late last year of MyFree DirecTV, an app-based free, ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) service offering more than 70 channels and on-demand content within the DirecTV app. With this new consumer offering and the connected devices within its linear satellite footprint, DirecTV said its streaming footprint is doubling, bringing more scale to digital buyers.

NEW YORK—Vizio’s Inscape, a leading provider of smart TV data, and TVision, which measures TV and CTV viewer engagement, have announced a multi-year data deal that will strengthen Inscape’s measurement capabilities.

Inscape has a nationally representative household that is based on more than 24 million opted-in devices. Data from TVision’s passive measurement panel will give Inscape the ability to unlock and understand consumer co-viewing behavior—critical to media owners and buyers seeking to evaluate audiences and make marketing decisions, the companies said.

The extended partnership also will provide data to help publishers better understand and capitalize on cross-platform consumer viewing behavior to inform distribution decisions. It also provides marketers with business insights from TVision’s industry-leading regional coverage.

“Synergizing TVision’s person-level viewing activity across all linear and CTV, hundreds of apps, and thousands of programs with Inscape’s nationally representative data and measurement will help all parts of the industry become smarter and make better decisions,” TVision CEO Yan Liu said.

The agreement builds on several recent announcements by Inscape to further strengthen its measurement capabilities. In November, Inscape and EDO announced a partnership that will help fuel outcomes measurement. In September, it struck a partnership with local video advertising provider Locality to help brands plan, measure and manage local ad reach. And at the beginning of 2024, the company rolled out Smart TV Tuner technology in order to bring big data to the local landscape.

NEW YORK—In a notable development for TV and connected TV advertising, Comcast has unveiled Universal Ads, a new TV advertising platform designed to simplify the process of buying ads in premium video content. The effort is particularly targeted to attract money from advertisers who had previously focused on social media and had limited ability to develop TV ad campaigns.

The new Universal Ads platform is backed by a host of major TV players and media companies, including A+E, AMC Networks, DirecTV, Fox Corp., NBCUniversal, Paramount, Roku, TelevisaUnivision, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Xumo who have committed to be launch partners. More companies are expected to be announced in the coming months, Comcast said.

Launching in Q1, Universal Ads is built on top of FreeWheel’s ad technology and will seamlessly allow ad buyers and sellers to directly transact all in one place.

“Universal Ads has been purpose-built in response to what advertisers have been asking from Comcast,“ Comcast Advertising President James Rooke said. “That is, make TV simpler to buy, scale and measure in a way that is compatible with the needs of performance marketers, and really, all marketers. Comcast has tremendous assets across tech, media and data. Universal Ads brings those assets together in a way that has never been done before. And, just as importantly, we are thrilled that our partners, many of whom are already FreeWheel clients, have signed on to join us in this initiative, as we seek to transform the TV ad marketplace of the future.”

The effort is notable on several levels, including the fact that it is Comcast’s first-ever cross-industry collaboration at this scale. By strategically partnering with premium industry partners, Universal Ads will provide simplified access to audiences of premium content and will provide "full-funnel performance" for advertisers while opening new demand channels for publishers, Comcast noted.

“Universal Ads offers the solution to the fragmented premium video advertising category,“ Jeff Collins, Fox president of advertising sales, marketing and brand partnerships, added. “Coming together as publishers allows us to present a singular platform for brands of any size in any category to advertise in premium video — all with the ease and familiarity of buying on social. This is a terrific opportunity for advertisers and publishers alike.”

The effort also hopes to take advantage with growing disillusionment with social-media platforms. According to a 2024 study of 250 performance-based advertisers conducted by Comcast Advertising, 50% of advertisers who have never advertised on TV or only done so minimally felt that their ROI from social media buying had peaked or is diminishing, and 89% are willing to try TV advertising.

Comcast said Universal Ads is designed to attract advertisers who were limited in their ability to purchase premium, brand-safe inventory from some of the top TV publishers. Those clients can now access premium video at scale directly, with a simple, consistent buying experience regardless of the publisher, the cable operator said.

“The north star of advertising has always been combining the premium reach of linear with the precision of data-informed targeting for marketers,” said Mark Marshall, chairman, NBCUniversal Global Advertising & Partnerships. “Now with Universal Ads, we are delivering that vision to businesses of all sizes. TV has always been a performance vehicle for brands, and Universal Ads puts the scaled reach and premium content that TV is known for into the hands of marketers everywhere.”

More specifically, Universal Ads will offer:

• Universal Ads Manager, a free self-service, easy to use TV ads buying tool.
• Direct access to premium, brand-safe video that reaches over 90% of U.S. households.
• Plans to offer free, automated AI creative production of TV commercials.
• A marketing API, which will enable developers to build reporting, measurement, creative generation and other applications.

Comcast executive James Grant has been tapped to lead the Universal Ads initiative. On the product front, former Snap executive James Borow, who helped platforms such as Snap, Reddit and Discord launch their ad businesses, has been hired to lead the Universal Ads product and engineering teams, in collaboration with the FreeWheel product and technology team.

For more information visit www.UniversalAds.com.

NEW YORK—Privately-held ad tech giant Mediaocean has inked a definitive agreement to acquire Innovid, an independent software platform for advertising creation, delivery, measurement and optimization for around $500 million.

Mediaocean provides widely used software for managing ad deals.

The deal calls for Innovid to merge with Flashtalking, which Mediaocean acquired in 2021, to create a global independent omnichannel ad-tech platform, the companies said.

Mediaocean will pay $3.15 for each pair of Innovid common stock in a transaction with an enterprise value of approximately $500 million and an equity value of around $525 million, the companies said.

The acquisition is expected to close early next year.

The combined organizations will provide a broad array of complementary offerings, including ad delivery, creative personalization, measurement, and optimization across channels, including digital, social, connected TV and linear TV.

In announcing the deal, Mediaocean said that combining two trusted and innovative platforms—Innovid and Flashtalking—will provide advertisers with increased control over data and decisions, more choice in where ad spend can go, and tools and workflows to make media investments more effective and efficient.

Zvika Netter, CEO and founder of Innovid, will lead the combined ad tech organization as CEO, reporting to Bill Wise, co-founder and CEO of Mediaocean. Grant Parker, who currently runs Flashtalking, will be president of the combined ad-tech organization, reporting to Netter. Netter will also join Mediaocean’s board.

“Today’s advertising landscape needs independent technology companies who can provide a neutral alternative to Google and interoperate effectively across Big Tech platforms,” Wise said. “Our Prisma business provides robust ad infrastructure to the world’s largest brands and agencies. Now Flashtalking plus Innovid will establish a premier independent ad tech business with a keen focus on creative and CTV.”

Added Netter: “From the start, when we founded Innovid 17 years ago, we have been driven by the belief that advertising can be made better for all—and this merger represents a key milestone on that journey, and the people, teams, and passion behind it. We believe Innovid, Mediaocean and Flashtalking represent decades of innovation and integrations of some of the world’s best technologies. Together, we will be a partner that brands, agencies and publishers can rely on to innovate, drive growth, and build their future.”

Added Flashtalking’s Parker: “Innovid and Flashtalking are two of the most trusted ad tech platforms providing business-critical value to advertisers around the world. We believe our solutions engage consumers in the moment and deliver highly relevant messages. Combined, we will provide omnichannel orchestration for brands and agencies—from creative personalization to media delivery to transparent and trusted measurement and optimization.”

Deutsche Bank Securities served as Mediaocean’s financial adviser, with White & Case as legal adviser and Bain & Co. and 3C Ventures as strategic consultants. Evercore served as Innovid’s financial adviser with Latham & Watkins as legal adviser.

NEW YORK—Warner Bros. Discovery Advertising Sales has incorporated Kerv’s AI-enhanced technology into its ad-tech platform and launched two new ad offerings that offer shoppable entertainment experiences via Max.

The two new ad offerings, Shop with Max and Moments, will allow viewers to go from watching content to purchasing products and are part of a larger push by Warner Bros. Discovery and other streamers to boost profits by greatly expanding their ad-sales efforts.

“Shop with Max and Moments are two dynamic solutions that exemplify how Warner Bros. Discovery is accelerating and delivering innovation across advertising technology,” Ryan Gould, head of advanced advertising and digital ad sales, Warner Bros. Discovery, said. “By closely partnering with KERV, we’re redefining how audiences discover and engage with products while creating deeper connections between brands and our iconic portfolio of premium content and IP across Max.”

At launch, brands including Wayfair will start to leverage both Shop with Max and Moments to enhance their campaigns across the Max portfolio.

“We're delighted to collaborate alongside WBD and KERV to create a more contextually relevant ad experience for viewers,” Kara O’Brien, head of brand marketing at Wayfair, said. “These new solutions on Max will make it easy for viewers to discover and purchase items for their homes inspired by the content they’re viewing and enjoying on Max.”

More specifically, Shop with Max is a suite of state-of-the-art ad formats designed to accelerate the path from viewing to purchasing. By leveraging cutting-edge metadata and AI technology, Shop with Max identifies items within television shows and films and pairs them with related items in an advertiser’s catalog via a QR code that takes them to a second screen, allowing viewers to easily explore and purchase products inspired by the beloved stories they’re watching without interrupting the viewing experience.

Warner Bros. Discovery said that key advantages for advertisers include:

• Discoverability: Available across all genres, including scripted and unscripted series, animation, and blockbuster movies. Title availability will vary.
• Contextual Relevance: Proprietary metadata pinpoints key opportunities to showcase products that correspond to the program’s storyline.
• Seamless Purchase Experience: Optimized for both connected TV and mobile, Shop with Max reduces steps from inspiration to purchase, creating a seamless and more efficient shopping experience.

Shop with Max also features two new ad innovations. The first is Product Showcase, a first-of-its-kind dynamic mid-roll ad format that presents relevant catalog items inspired by on-screen content. Shoppers can scan a QR code to explore items directly on their mobile devices. The second is Mobile Shop, a curated second-screen experience offering a selection of 12-20 products inspired by the content being watched and connected to the trusted point of purchase on the advertiser’s website.

Advertisers can unlock the power of Shop with Max by curating products inspired by specific programs or movies (in addition to title sponsorships) or by scaling their ad experience across contextually relevant episodes via Moments.

WBD describes Moments as a new solution for aligning brands with thematic content. Powered by Kerv’s advanced AI technology, Moments is able to use audio and visual cues to identify relevant themes, sentiment and on-screen elements. Through 40 curated Moments, such as Cooking, Real Estate, Gaming and Science & Space, Moments enables advertisers to reach audiences engaged with specific topics that align tonally with their messaging across the entire Max portfolio.

WBD said the offering provides advertisers with:

• Episodic-Level Precision: Extends beyond endemic networks and titles to reach viewers in the right mindset while they’re consuming contextually relevant episodes.
• Scalable Distribution: Enables advertisers to reach diverse audiences across Max’s extensive library of iconic franchises, networks and IP.
• Privacy-First Design: By leveraging contextual signals, Moments provides a high-quality, effective ad experience across CTV and mobile environments.
• Brand Suitability Options: Using contextual signals, advertisers can tailor targeting solutions to meet their brand goals. This includes targeting towards relevant themes to create positive alignment, and away from sensitive themes or topics within TV-MA and R-rated content.

“We’re excited to be partnering with Warner Bros. Discovery to redefine what's possible in streaming advertising,” Marika Roque, chief innovation officer of Kerv, said. “With Shop with Max and Moments, we’re harnessing the power of Kerv’s patented moment-based metadata to create hyper-relevant, contextual ad experiences that enhance viewer engagement and bring brands closer to their consumers through stories they love.”

NEW YORK—Adlook said it has begun working with Comcast’s FreeWheel ad tech platform to provide marketers access to top-tier connected TV and online video inventory.

Adlook, which bills itself as a brand growth platform and is owned by RTB House Group, said it will combine its Deep Learning automated bidding platform with FreeWheel’s supply of premium ad inventory to allow marketers to streamline campaign efficiency and reduce waste through precise targeting and optimization.

“Our partnership with FreeWheel marks a significant milestone in our mission to provide marketers with the most effective access to premium ad supply for Video and CTV,” Viktor Zawadzki, vice president of platform partnerships at Adlook, said. “This alliance not only enhances our ability to meet current market demands but also positions us to lead the industry with groundbreaking innovations in the context of planning, curation and optimization.”

The new collaboration will facilitate real-time optimization of targeting, creative assets and messaging, ensuring campaigns resonate with audiences and achieve desired outcomes using artificial intelligence, the companies said.

In addition, the expansive inventory to be made available through the partnership will eliminate inefficiencies and unnecessary costs associated with fragmented platforms in ways that optimize budget allocation and enhance overall campaign effectiveness, the companies said.

“We are thrilled to join forces with Adlook and showcase the combined power of our platforms,” Xavier Llerena, executive director, marketplace platform strategy at FreeWheel, said. “Our goal is to help brands and agencies tap into the incredible potential of total video advertising and this partnership expands our ability to deliver incremental reach for publishers, enhancing their capacity to connect with a broader audience in impactful ways.”

VIENNA—Bitmovin said it has launched its AI Contextual Advertising solution, combining the company’s playback and encoding offerings to provide hyper-personal advertisements for audiences based on what they are watching.

Bitmovin AI Contextual Advertising optimizes ad placement for users by relying on a machine-learning model that extracts relevant characteristics from every scene in a video and analyzes viewer engagements, the company said.

The solution is based on cookieless workflows, Bitmovin said, so it provides relevant ads to viewers with no need for personalized tracking.

“We’re extremely proud of Bitmovin’s AI Contextual Advertising, which is a unique solution that will deliver personalized and relevant content to the viewer, which will translate into increased ad conversions revenue and brand loyalty,” Bitmovin CEO and co-founder Stefan Lederer said. “We believe our AI Contextual Advertising will help propel the industry forward by harnessing the power of AI into the integration of our award-winning technologies for smarter ad placements that will positively impact the customer’s bottom line.”

Bitmovin’s encoding solutions leverage AI to analyze both video and audio content. It uses an AI model from OpenAI to extract metadata to enable a more content-focused advertising placement. Each extracted piece of content metadata is assigned a time stamp to map that information to the specific position where it belongs, Bitmovin said.

Metadata descriptions are detailed enough to allow for targeted ad placement but can also describe a scene more broadly, Bitmovin said. The Bitmovin Player sends this metadata to a content-aware ad server, which replies with contextual ads, the company said.

Using a conversion heat map generated by the Bitmovin Player, the ad's position is optimized to increase its chance of conversion. Categories are based on the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s taxonomy in tandem with an AI analysis of historical data and the current user environment, it said.

“More and more media and entertainment companies are looking to advertising to support growth,” Lederer said. “Yet lack of personalization in advertising remains a huge challenge for brands. AI can help make advertising experiences more tailored to the viewer by analyzing the content they are watching, which can help pinpoint what mood they are in and place ads that they will be more receptive to in that moment.”

Bitmovin AI Contextual Advertising & Prediction measures conversion rates at various points in the video. Combined with information about a user’s viewing environment, it places a specific ad when the viewer is most likely to convert, the company said.

Metadata also can be used to ensure brand safety and avoid placing ads with content incompatible with a brand, it said.

Bitmovin’s AI Contextual Advertising integrates two existing products, making integration simple for customers, the company said.

More information is available on the company’s website.

NEW YORK—Innovid, a software platform for the creation, delivery, measurement and optimization of connected TV (CTV), linear and digital advertising, said LG Ad Solutions has joined its Harmony initiative.

Earlier this year, Innovid launched Harmony to bring together industry players to improve efficiency and return on investment, enhance transparency and control, reduce carbon emissions and provide better viewing experiences for consumers across CTV and digital.

As part of the initiative, Innovid’s Harmony Direct is designed to offer a streamlined workflow for guaranteed, nonbiddable CTV media and to remove friction points, including additional technology hops, fees and energy waste.

LG Ad Solutions joins Assembly, CMI Media Group, Goodway Group, PMG, Roku, and Vizio as partners using Harmony Direct.

“Since we launched Harmony in April, the industry-wide support for it has been inspiring,” Innovid founder and CEO Zvika Netter said. “Advertising leaders across the buy- and sell-sides know that to create a CTV ecosystem that benefits all—and, most importantly, the viewer—the time to act is now. I’ve never felt more optimistic about the future of advertising.”

Innovid also reported that PMG, an early agency adopter, is now rolling out Harmony Direct across its portfolio of clients. After leveraging it for local campaigns for multiple quick-service restaurants and a national restaurant chain, PMG found that it yielded major efficiencies with programmatic buys, including an increase in working media dollars.

Harmony Direct launch partners saw an average 8% increase in working media for agency partners, Innovid said. Publisher partners improved yield by up to 15%, which included average fill rates increasing from 90% to 100%. In 2024, across the total U.S. CTV market, this could represent more than $1 billion in immediate savings going back into the ecosystem.

“For our clients, we are always looking for the most direct path to a publisher—and removing unnecessary friction points is a win-win for both the buy and sell sides,” PMG Video and CTV Strategy Lead Mike Treon said. “Programmatic guaranteed deals are riddled with wasted spend and lost impressions. We leaned into working with Innovid’s Harmony Direct because, as an industry, we have to remove inefficiencies to realize the true power of CTV as an advertising channel. Results from our initial campaigns made expanding our use of Harmony Direct across our client base a natural next step.”

Released in July, the initiative’s Harmony Frequency, is the first holistic frequency management solution for CTV and digital advertising. Currently in closed beta, the solution provides demand-side platforms with frequency intelligence across a brand’s entire media portfolio before they bid—reducing ad waste, strengthening campaign effectiveness and improving the viewing experience.

DETROIT—Waymark, a developer of AI video-creation technology, is launching “Variations,” a new technology that generates video ads in multiple lengths and aspect ratios with a single click for all devices and platforms, maintaining a cohesive look and feel, the company said.

Waymark said its AI-powered video platform enables creators to generate high-quality commercials for local businesses in five minutes or less. With Variations, creators will be able to take their Waymark videos and convert them into additional lengths such as 30- 15- and 5-second clips, as well as complementing formats such as 16x9 and 4x5, with a single click, creating an “omnichannel” video campaign, the company said.

“As we rolled out our video ad platform over the last two years, we’ve continued to talk with our partners about their ongoing needs and we’ve often heard their desire to generate high-quality ads that can cover all of their platforms,” Waymark CEO Alex Persky-Stern said. “So, I’m thrilled to say that our entire team dug in and developed our groundbreaking new Variations technology. We believe it’s going to truly be a game-changer for all our partners.”

Since launching its video ad platform last year, Waymark has signed partnerships with numerous leading media companies including Spectrum Reach, Fox, Scripps, Gray, Beasley Media Group, Nine (Australia) and U.K. newspaper publisher National World plc. Earlier this year, Waymark teamed with Paramount+ and Pluto TV to launch the new Paramount Ads Manager platform and joined Comcast NBCUniversal’s LIFT Labs Vertical AI Accelerator program.

NEW YORK—Yahoo DSP has announced a new integration that enables advertisers who leverage Snowflake Data Clean Rooms to seamlessly onboard their data onto the Yahoo DSP. 

As advertisers seek privacy-centric solutions, the integration is important because it will allow advertisers to match the data against Yahoo ConnectID and create personalized campaigns in ways that will protect consumer privacy and at the same time improve targeting and campaign performance, the companies said. 

By making Yahoo ConnectID compatible with Snowflake Data Clean Rooms, advertisers gain access to one of the industry's leading alternatives to traditional identity solutions, now accessible in one of the most popular data clean rooms. The integration supports a number of critical advertiser use cases that accelerate and optimize campaign performance, including improved personalization and precise user-level targeting on the open internet in near real-time. Additionally, it supports ad suppression to ensure campaigns reach the intended audience without over-delivery – all while protecting consumer privacy, the companies said. 

"At Yahoo, we're committed to providing innovative data solutions that meet advertiser needs and allows them to leverage their preferred partners and paths," said Giovanni Gardelli, vice president, Ads Data Products at Yahoo. "Our integration with Snowflake represents a significant step toward empowering advertisers to connect with audiences more effectively, while prioritizing consumer privacy."

Yahoo ConnectID is a first-party, data-powered identity solution for addressable environments that is resilient to signal loss, Yahoo reported. 

Fueled by direct and consent-based consumer relationships with more than 205 million authenticated users in the U.S., Yahoo ConnectID stands as one of the world's most popular identifiers sustainable to signal loss. Today, Yahoo ConnectID is implemented across more 55,000 publisher domains and is compatible with more than 35 top data platforms. Additionally, marketers can now use Snowflake to onboard their first-party data, which Yahoo then translates into ConnectIDs to power activation, Yahoo said. 

Snowflake Data Clean Rooms is a cloud-based native application that provides a secure way to mine insights as well as activate data while protecting sensitive information. It allows multiple parties to combine and collaboratively analyze data without sharing raw data, supporting enhanced privacy, deeper insights, and increased security. All analyses are conducted within the secure environment of Snowflake’s Data Clean Rooms. Collaborators can access aggregated results and insights but cannot directly query the raw data, allowing tight control over data usage, the company said. 

“We are thrilled to work with Yahoo and to redefine the way that advertisers connect with consumers in a privacy-centric manner,” said David Wells, industry principal of Media, Advertising, and Entertainment at Snowflake. This integration enhances the security as well as the efficiency of data usage, while empowering advertisers to achieve their advertising objectives in an increasingly cookieless world.”

Yahoo DSP takes an integrated approach to identity across all digital environments. Yahoo Identity Solutions, which includes Yahoo ConnectID and Next-Gen Solutions, account for both addressable and non-addressable inventory. While Yahoo ConnectID supports addressable environments, Next-Gen Solutions is an AI-built identity solution that leverages Yahoo ConnectID users as a panel audience and drives relevance and reach within non-addressable environments.

More information is available at yahooinc.com. 

DENVER―Imagine Communications has appointed international media industry executive Don Durand to the position of senior vice president of global sales for its ad tech business. In his new role, Durand will lead the worldwide sales strategy and customer engagement initiatives for Imagine’s market-leading ad tech portfolio.

Durand brings to Imagine more than 20 years of experience in domestic and international media software and expertise in both global sales leadership and product management. Prior to joining Imagine, Durand held executive-level positions with multiple companies in the ad tech space including Pilat Media (now Operative) and WideOrbit, where he was most recently senior vice president of international sales and product.

"Don’s broad experience in global ad tech sales and product management make him a significant addition to both the Imagine team and the customers we support around the world," said Rob Malcolm, general manager of ad tech at Imagine Communications. "As the industry continues to face multi-dimensional change, media companies are having to make tough decisions about the future. Don’s deep roots in ad tech and strong industry relationships will enable him to advocate for our global customers and ensure that we deliver on our commitment to help them work smarter and more profitably.”

During his two-decade career in ad tech, Durand successfully launched multiple products and services tailored for both the U.S. and EMEA/APAC markets and repeatedly demonstrated his ability to drive growth in sales through the establishment of international sales divisions, Imagine said. Career highlights include managing a $180 million opportunity pipeline across international markets and scaling two major product lines from under $2 million to nearly $30 million in annual revenue.

"Imagine is recognized across the industry—not only for its legacy of driving media tech innovation, but also for its exceptional dedication to supporting its global customer base,” said Durand. “I am truly excited to join a company that is paving the way to the converged linear/digital future of broadcast advertising, and I look forward to leading this highly skilled, global team to further strengthen the company’s market-leading position.”

NEW YORK—MobileFuse has announced an agreement with cross-platform measurement company iSpot.tv that will make iSpot.tv MobileFuse's preferred measurement solution. 

The use of iSpot’s Unified Measurement platform ensures MobileFuse clients can accurately measure the effectiveness of CTV and OLV campaigns at scale, the two companies said. 

The partnership will also help MobileFuse account for additional CTV audiences that brands can't access when running a linear-only strategy. With the partnership brands can use the iSpot and MobileFuse platforms to bridge the gap between linear and CTV, with iSpot measuring linear TV impressions for 30,000+ brands using their proprietary ad catalog, airing data and industry-leading Smart TV panel, the companies said. 

This data is combined with MobileFuse's CTV solutions, giving advertisers the full picture of linear and CTV overlap, expressed as incremental reach.

With access to iSpot's Unified Measurement dashboard, MobileFuse expands its optimization and reporting capabilities to include publisher, audience, and frequency adjustments, the companies said. 

"Over the last year, we focused on expanding our CTV offerings and reporting capabilities. We're committed to providing critical tools that deliver our clients and partners a competitive edge," said Ken Harlan, founder and CEO of MobileFuse. "After vetting multiple linear and CTV measurement partners, we found that iSpot.tv perfectly aligns with our expectations. The platform ensures our clients have access to unified insights that drive results."

In May, MobileFuse aired campaigns from a variety of verticals, including Retail, QSR, Travel, and Pharma. An analysis performed by iSpot found that over 67% of MobileFuse's reach for a medium-sized brand was incremental to linear - and that number rose to 85% for a smaller brand. MobileFuse frequently exceeds iSpot's Unified Measurement Benchmarks for the Percent Incremental Reach metric, which shows the percent of MobileFuse's total reach that is delivered above and beyond linear and speaks to the uniqueness of MobileFuse's audience.

"Accurately measuring the value of CTV advertising is crucial as audiences have migrated from linear TV to streaming," said Dan Lowenberg, VP, media partnerships, iSpot. "We're excited to work with MobileFuse in order to help them showcase their evolving solutions and provide their clients the tools they need to win in this ultra competitive environment."

These measurement capabilities are available to all MobileFuse clients interested in running CTV campaigns in addition to their linear buys. For more information, visit https://mobilefuse.com/. 

DENVER—Imagine Communications has unveiled new features and improvements to xG Linear, its ad management platform for MVPDs in North America. 

The new xG PlacerPlus features are designed to help the many media organizations that rely on xG Linear to reduce ad placement times by up to 90 percent and utilize inventory more effectively to drive profitability. The enhanced placer is available immediately as part of xG Linear version 2.6, the company reported. 

xG Linear is an enterprise-level ad management solution that empowers MPVD operations with proven ad placement tools, copy management, schedule optimization, and real-time visibility​. Deployable as an on-premises or cloud-hosted platform, xG Linear easily integrates leading ad tech partners through open APIs and scales seamlessly to 10,000 headends to match the volume and complexity of any growing sales operation, Imagine explained. 

The new xG PlacerPlus feature not only reduces ad placement time, but also helps operators determine how to make the most money with that placement. For example, if a new high-value order comes in, the enhanced placer can automatically bump lower-cost ads into other spots, ensuring that high-value ads are placed into higher value inventory, the company said. 

"Media companies around the world have long relied on Imagine ad tech products to monetize their businesses, and they trust us to continually invest in innovation that will help them move their businesses forward,” said Rob Malcolm, general manager, ad tech, at Imagine Communications. “The latest advances in our well-established xG Linear platform underscore Imagine’s commitment to continuously make improvements that will help our customers work smarter and maximize revenue today — and successfully navigate a converged linear/digital future to achieve sustainable, profitable growth."

Imagine reported that  some of the key features and benefits of xG PlacerPlus include:

• Increase Revenue. The new xG PlacerPlus enables media companies to increase revenue by more effectively utilizing inventory and improving distribution of ad units. Advanced features include automated vertical and horizontal spot movement, improved orbit placement logic, and the option to use cost-per-second in place of rate when ranking ad units.
• Improve Workflow Efficiency. With xG PlacerPlus, MVPDs can boost workflow efficiency with automation that dramatically reduces the need to make manual schedule viewer changes. Operations teams can save multiple hours per week, streamlining their day. Color-coded ad unit icons in the schedule viewer further enhance efficiency, assisting operations teams in quickly identifying applicable ad unit inventory. 
• Prepare for Convergence. Ad Unit Classification capabilities enable user-defined tracking of nonlinear ad units at the order line level, enabling media organizations to seamlessly transition to converged workflows, effectively track impression-based ad units and efficiently manage ad campaigns across all TV channels, including linear, CTV, and FAST.​

For more information about Imagine Communications’ ad tech portfolio, visit https://imaginecommunications.com/monetize-tv/

NEW YORK—DirecTV Advertising has unveiled a new slate of product enhancements to its portfolio of advanced advertising solutions, that include investments in data collaboration, guaranteed incremental reach with Addressable RFO and other developments.  

“After running hundreds of successful campaigns that help ensure that heavy viewers are not bombarded with the same ad over and over again, while also helping to reach light TV viewers, we’re excited to be able to guarantee incremental reach for clients utilizing our Addressable RFO technology,” said Amy Leifer, chief advertising sales officer at DirecTV Advertising. “Additionally, as the market shifts and more content is being consumed on CTV devices, we’ve transformed our business to be more digital and streaming-centric, providing clients with the most premium, brand-safe inventory, more targeting options, better transparency, and working with industry-leading clean room solutions so that advertisers can better utilize their own data across our platforms.”

The enhanced product offerings include:

• Guaranteed Incremental Reach with Addressable RFO. DirecTV Advertising is now guaranteeing incremental reach for advertisers who utilize their Addressable Reach-Frequency Optimization (RFO) to enhance their national TV buys. RFO combines the company’s proprietary data, viewership insights and addressable technology to help advertisers maximize reach, optimize frequency, and balance impression distribution against their TV campaigns.
• Investing in Data Collaboration through Clean Room Solutions. DirecTV Advertising is enhancing its DirecTV Advantage data suite with clean room technology to help advertisers and agencies better securely match and analyze different datasets in a privacy-centric way. DirecTV Advantage’s clean room solution is currently integrated with AWS Clean Rooms, InfoSum, LiveRamp, Snowflake and is expanding integrations in the future with other providers, such as Epsilon Clean Room. This will help to facilitate better matching, insights, and results all while keeping customer data safe and secure.
• Enhancing Brand Safety Through Contextual Targeting. DirecTV Advertising’s enhanced contextual solutions allow brands to air within endemic content, without needing to rely on audience data. Utilizing rich contextual signals such as network, genre and rating, DirecTV Advertising empowers brands to target content on a more granular level to boost relevancy and maximize engagement across live and VOD content. Advertisers can verify where their ads have run with transparent reporting through multiple verification partners, with DirecTV offering series-level reporting through Publica by IAS just later this year.

NEW YORK—Samba TV is debuting new capabilities for Samba AI, the company’s suite of generative AI technologies. Samba AI’s new capabilities provide a real-time, second-by-second understanding of everything seen on-screen. It provides facial recognition of actors and athletes in scripted, reality and sports programming; logo, object and product recognition for both brands and their competitors; sentiment and behavioral analysis, including understanding the emotions of people on-screen and the context of their interactions; and brand safety detection, including language and violence, the company said. 

"We’re entering the fifth generation of TV data, which will be powered by AI and led by Samba AI,” said Ashwin Navin, co-founder and CEO of Samba TV. "TV data has evolved from paper diaries and people meters to set-top-box data and Automated Content Recognition, which Samba TV invented more than a decade ago.

“Samba TV is once again at the forefront of disruption with Samba AI, which provides advertisers and publishers more meaningful insights into the context of what's happening on TV, demonstrating that context is as crucial as the content itself.”

Currently in beta, advertisers can use this contextual understanding provided by Samba AI as a prompt to create targeting segments that engage audiences that have seen a specific brand or product. They can also leverage contextual insights about what’s happening in a video to create data-targeting segments that are relevant to their brand, it said.

 More information is available on the company’s website. 

LONDON—The CTV marketplace Amagi Ads Plus has announced a strategic partnership with ShowHeroes, a prominent player in the global digital advertising space, that will expand Amagi’s reach within the European market.

Ad solutions provider ShowHeroes will use Amagi Ads Plus to enhance ShowHeroes' capabilities, offering advertisers advanced solutions and an extended reach across the European region, with an emphasis on Germany, Spain, France, and the UK, the companies said. 

Amagi has been at the forefront of technological advancements, pioneering the Commitment to Certification and higher standards in advertising Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF). This commitment ensures that advertisers leveraging Amagi Ads Plus benefit from a brand-safe advertising environment, where user data is protected. The TCF aligns with industry standards, promoting a higher level of trust and accountability in the advertising ecosystem, Amagi caid. 

"We are excited about our collaboration with ShowHeroes, a company that shares our passion for innovation and excellence in CTV advertising,” explained James Smith, executive vice president and general manager of Amagi Ads Plus. “This partnership not only strengthens our position in the European market but showcases unique native ad formats and the impact of long-form creative."

"The partnership with Amagi Ads Plus is a significant step forward in our mission to deliver cutting-edge advertising solutions to our clients,” added Sarah Lewis, ShowHeroes global director of CTV. “By joining forces with Amagi Ads Plus and embracing the TCF standards, we are upholding a new benchmark for quality and transparency in digital advertising. This collaboration will undoubtedly elevate the advertising experience for brands and audiences alike."

Amagi Ads Plus and the FAST Deals marketplace are built on Amagi's FAST platform, which currently facilitates content creation, distribution, and ad insertion across more than 110 million hours of viewing and more than 1 billion ad impressions. Ads Plus leverages Amagi's extensive relationships with premium CTV content owners to establish an advertising marketplace that bridges the gap between content creators and leading advertisers.

NEW YORK—The IAB Tech Lab, a global digital advertising technical standards-setting body, has officially launched its Advanced TV Initiative. 

The effort was developed within the Advanced TV Commit Group to create more standardization and interoperability across digital video, live streaming, and linear TV environments and to help media companies bridge the current gaps between traditional linear TV, digital video, and live streaming that create difficulties in delivering cross platform advertising campaigns. 

The Commit Group said that its initial primary focus is implementing a creative ID framework and conducting a dedicated workshop to help companies implement it. 

This registered creative ID – overseen by organizations managing metadata and access controls – will outline the integration process for all supply chain members.

In addition, it will include essential information about advertisers, represented products, and technical specifications – details crucial to various ad placement scenarios such as frequency capping, competitive separation, measurement, and cross-platform creative reconciliation.

"We understand that interoperability across distribution environments is critical to achieving better reconciliation, auditability, and verification," said Shailley Singh, executive vice president of product & COO at IAB Tech Lab. "This effort emphasizes standardization and interoperability, paving the way for a unified and integrated television advertising reconciliation framework, freeing up thousands of hours of legacy inefficiencies, and saving media companies time and money."

While TV viewing remains consistent for consumers, the underlying technologies for content delivery and advertising signaling vary across different platforms. To tackle this fragmentation, key companies in the industry have joined together to create foundational elements crucial for enhancing interoperability among these distribution environments.

One of those companies is NBCUniversal, which applauded the effort. 

"NBCUniversal's north star is making sure our partners' marketing dollars are as effective as they can be," said Ryan McConville, executive vice president  advertising, platforms and operations, NBCUniversal Advertising & Partnerships and IAB Tech Lab Board Member. "The Commit Group is making significant strides advancing standardization and interoperability for the industry, which are critical components of driving efficiency and creating better, more impactful advertising."

More information about the Advanced TV Initiative is available here.