CTV

Looks like Pinterest has its eyes – or its pins, rather – fixed on connected TV.

On Tuesday, TV advertising company Cadent announced the acquisition of VuePlanner, which specializes in contextual advertising and media planning for YouTube.

After a prolonged will-they, won’t-they phase between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix swooped in with an $83 billion offer on Friday to acquire the Warner Bros. side of the business.

Is it too soon to start thinking about New Year’s resolutions? Because I’m setting a goal for myself to start talking to more media planners, agency executives and buy-side experts.

The metaverse hype is over; Apple Maps forays into advertising; and streamers vie for HBO Max and the WBD studio archive.

CTV spending is flattening, performance is plateauing and buyers are hesitant to push budgets further. The reason is not complicated. When buyers cannot see what they are buying, they cannot commit their spend with conviction.

Add Vibe.co to the list of CTV ad platforms that are kicking supply-side resellers to the curb.

With the launch on Wednesday of Uproxx TV, Jarret Myer wants his brand to take the same step forward that YouTube did by moving beyond mobile and desktop viewing and into the living room.

Is it just me, or do third-quarter earnings always seem especially strange?

We break down some of the most interesting financial trends coming out of Q3 earnings reports, and what rises to the level of being worth covering in the first place.

Consumers don’t experience media in silos. They might stream a live game on their TV, scroll social feeds during halftime and research products on their mobile device later that night.

Disney’s Q4 earnings double down on the success of sports streaming content, but the YouTube TV blackout continues.

Confusion in CTV isn’t a natural byproduct of a maturing market; it’s an outcome of how distributors protect their pricing power.

Nextoor is rolling out a bunch of new ad capabilities, including campaign optimization, contextual weather-based ad targeting and expanded video ad formats.

Paramount Skydance, which officially turns 100 days old this week, released its first post-merger quarterly earnings report on Monday.

On Monday, Amazon announced the launch of location-based interactive video ad units on Prime Video, which will allow small and local businesses to reach their target customer in specific geographic areas.

New APIs from Roku, Comcast and The Trade Desk are reshaping digital advertising, from self-serve campaign management to cross-platform measurement. But when it comes to identity and targeting, a new study finds that IP address matching is missing the mark.

Before Warner Bros. Discovery’s Q3 earnings call even began on Thursday, the investor relations team made it clear that leadership did not want to talk about the company currently trying to sell parts of itself to potential bidders.

On Thursday, AdGood, a nonprofit that helps other nonprofits buy premium streaming inventory at a discount, announced a partnership with Samsung Ads, which is donating ad space from its Samsung TV Plus service to AdGood’s media marketplace.

Social CPMs have risen. The ability to find incremental audiences on social platforms has declined. Add the growing brand-safety concerns, and the equation looks even worse.

Netflix announces a new way to measure viewership; streaming and smart TV companies face data collection investigations; and Polymarket ads incentivized losing bets.

Magnite says it’s not mad at The Trade Desk for prioritizing OpenPath or labeling all supply-side platforms as “resellers.”

According to a new report, IP-to-email matches are accurate just 16% of the time on average, while IP-to-postal matches are accurate only 13% of the time. (Oof.)

Two quarterly reports might not be enough to confirm a pattern. But it is enough information to draw a line – and so far, that line is going up for MNTN.

Tuesday marked the launch of Roku’s Ads API, which feeds directly into the company’s self-serve Ads Manager. The new free-to-use toolkit will allow developers to create new integrations between Roku and other kinds of advertising applications.

The IAB Tech Lab’s new device attestation feature for its Open Measurement SDK provides a scaled way for original device manufacturers to confirm that ad impressions are associated with real devices.

On Monday, Brand Networks announced that Universal Ads would now be buyable through the company’s agentic ad buying platform, Aimy Ads.

The Trade Desk is going after Amazon; Facebook creators are going after Meta; and everybody’s going after Warner Bros. Discovery.

Ignoring the fact that early pioneers in the space didn’t plan to have ads in the first place (looking at you, Netflix!), even with targeting and personalization, most major players are still thinking of national reach – not local reach – as their default.

WPP aims to turn around faster; YouTube TV tips the carriage deal market; and Roblox takes its time on video ads.