Month: April 2023

While the SPS’s year-two expansion includes several notable updates, such as the introduction of a Latin American league and the addition of titles like “Garena Free Fire” and “Mobile Legends: Bang Bang,” the change that has elicited the most excitement from mobile esports players is the incorporation of “Call of Duty: Mobile” into the league, the result of a partnership between the SPS and the game’s developer, Activision.

“One of the great things about this two-year partnership is that we’re completely joining forces — the ‘Call of Duty: Mobile’ World Championship is being completely integrated into the Snapdragon Pro Series,” said Sam Braithwaite, ESL FACEIT Group’s vp of game ecosystems, mobile. “What we’re noticing is a trend across developers and publishers actually starting to loosen the reins a little bit on their owned and operated platforms and and understanding the value that something like the SPS can provide.”

With the backing of Activision, the SPS’s first year of “CoD: Mobile” competitions will dole out $1.5 million in prize money to participating players. For the game’s largely grassroots competitive scene, this represents a massive step up in terms of developer support.

“It’s fantastic for the ecosystem, and I can’t be more pleased that we’re going to see that this year,” said Sylvia Gross, one of the founders of Mobile Mayhem, an organization that has operated “CoD: Mobile” tournaments since 2020. “I’ve been watching the markers from the very beginning of esports with this game, and year three is a target year for things like this to occur — for esports to really kick off.”

Activision’s partnership with the Snapdragon Pro Series shows how its outlook toward mobile esports has diverged from other major mobile esports publishers. In November, Riot Games announced that it would be shutting down leagues outside Asia for its largest mobile esport, Wild Rift, citing the overwhelming popularity of mobile esports in that region over others. But the SPS operates in North America, and Activision representatives were full-throated in their belief that the future of mobile esports in the region is bright.

“We will remain active wherever our audience and our player base is, and North America continues to be a strong market for both of those for us,” said Jared Oldham, a senior producer for “Call of Duty: Mobile” esports. “The 2022 World Championship featured an all-NA grand finals between Luminosity Gaming and Tribe Gaming, which shows that the competition remains strong in North America.”

There is reason for Activision to be confident in the future of the North American “CoD: Mobile” scene. Although mobile esports is generally more popular in Asian markets than in the West, due to the lower rates of gaming console or PC ownership in those regions, the “Call of Duty” brand is particularly popular in North America.

“I make a lot of content around “Call of Duty: Mobile,” and I get a surprisingly high number of United States viewers,” said Drake Johncock, a gaming content creator and co-founder of Mobile Mayhem. “Obviously, me speaking English contributes to that — but I think it is definitely the biggest opportunity right now to expand mobile esports in North America.” 

That isn’t to say that Sweeney’s comments didn’t come across as good sense to many marketers in the space.

“I agree with Tim wholeheartedly; I am almost 99 percent aligned with what he said,” said Brent Koning, the global gaming lead at Dentsu. “When you look at in-game advertising, just generally as an industry, there are some challenges. Candidly, we have just RFP’ed all of the major in-game advertising partners, and a lot of those platforms are saying very, very similar things.”

Still, while Sweeney’s points are fair, it’s hard to deny that they favor the work his company is doing over other companies’ efforts to integrate brands into games. The argument that Fortnite’s brand integrations are more seamless than other forms of in-game advertising ignores the higher barrier to entry of this format. Compared to intrinsic in-game ads, which can be placed programmatically inside game environments, bespoke branded game worlds and in-game items require more pre-development and consistent updates to be effective. And as seamless as these integrations are, they aren’t necessarily easy to scale up — which is a prerequisite for any big advertising play.

“If you look at the cost of building experiences within Roblox or Fortnite, in terms of attracting people to that and then maintaining an ongoing experience, that’s a much bigger commitment of resources than delivering more transactional advertising,” said Malph Minns, managing director of the agency Strive Sponsorship. “So I think there’s actually room for both.”

To the studios designing these immersive experiences, of course, their depth of detail is a feature, not a bug.

“This approach, which only works with deep planning, collaboration and passion for the player experience, fosters a gaming ecosystem where brands enhance the gameplay and players engage with brands in meaningful ways,” said Gamefam CEO Joe Ferencz.

To the credit of intrinsic in-game ad companies, they are certainly aware that their offerings are not attuned to every game, and have been gradually working to make their programmatic ads as seamless and natural as brand integrations in Fortnite and Roblox. If they can succeed in securing premium console inventory — particularly the sports and lifestyle games in which gamers are used to viewing traditional ad formats — they may be able to mitigate the advantages of more immersive brand experiences.

“We’ve all seen the ways in which in-game advertising can be executed poorly. Nobody wants to be disrupted while they’re immersed in their game experience, and no brand wants to be the reason for that disruption,” said Jonathon Troughton, CEO of the in-game advertising company Frameplay. “Some people have a visceral, negative reaction to in-game advertising because of disruptive ad formats like interstitials or rewarded video ads. There are better options out there for everyone involved, and we’re actively educating the industry on how much in-game advertising has changed.”

At the moment, the crux of the tension between these two forms of in-game advertising comes from the fact that many brand marketers still don’t fully grasp the differences between them — and that they are spending from a unified and often experimental gaming budget.

“Somebody owns that gaming budget, and they have a multi-channel responsibility, where it’s up to them to decide how that budget is spent across advertising, sponsorships, events, whatever it may be,” Minns said.

The good news is that gaming advertising budgets are likely to be increasingly split into several buckets as marketers continue becoming more knowledgeable about the space, including separate buckets for intrinsic in-game ads and immersive experiences, the two major forms of advertising directly inside game environments. 

Much like brands spend from budgets for their traditional sports sponsorships and Super Bowl commercials, so too will they eventually split up their spending to reach gamers — which could help alleviate some of the growing conflict in the world of gaming advertising. But for now, more education is necessary to reach this potential resolution.

“What people like Bidstack and Anzu and all those guys are doing, that would be an advertising buy, through a media agency,” Minns said. “Your virtual world stuff, whether it’s Roblox or Fortnite or whatever else, would probably come more from a sponsorship or marketing budget, and less core advertising.”

“I’m on this Snapchat mid-roll [ad] program, which I’ve been part of since last May. I’ve made over a million dollars from Snapchat mid-roll,” McKay said in the second episode of the Digiday Podcast’s four-part series on short-form vertical video creators. She added, “Snapchat changed my life entirely.”

Last week Snap expanded that mid-roll program to more creators who can receive a share of revenue from ads running against their Snapchat Stories. TikTok and YouTube Shorts have similarly stood up ad revenue-sharing programs for short-form video creators in the past year, but neither platform has yet had much to show for how much money creators can make directly from their platforms. With 2 million followers and an average 2.5 billion monthly views on the platform, McKay is showing the story may be different on Snapchat.

“I definitely make the most on Snapchat. There’s revenue streams of course from YouTube and the TikTok Creator Fund, but Snapchat definitely has been the lion’s share of my revenue this past year,” she said.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.

Her start with short-form vertical video

I started on Musical.ly, and it was right before Musical.ly transitioned over into TikTok. And the reason I started posting on there was because I was a theater kid in high school. When I wasn’t in a production, I was like, I have all this creativity pent up inside of me and I needed to get it out somehow. And I discovered Musical.ly, and I saw that people were lip-syncing to scenes from movies and TV shows. And so that’s what I started doing. My first viral video is me lip-synching to a scene from “Mean Girls.”

Her start on Snapchat

I started using Snapchat in 2021. I mean, I used it throughout when I was in middle school and high school, but that was more personal. But I started a public profile and using it to create content in 2021.

Her Snapchat content strategy

Imagine you’re snapping your best friend, like sending a video to your best friend. It’s like I’m doing that but putting it out publicly.

Her relationship with Snapchat

I’m doing this scripted podcast show “The Royals of Malibu,” and the Snapchat engineers made me a filter for “The Royals of Malibu.” I did a Europe trip, and for every city that I went to, they did a filter for me. So it was like “Alyssa in London” and the skyline of London. I can’t go to another platform and say, “Hey, I’m going to Europe, and I want to post TikTok videos about it. Can you do something for me regarding that?” Like, that’s not normal. But on Snapchat, I feel it is. 

“By about 12 o’clock [on Sunday] almost all of the budgets were already spent,” said Brandon Biancalani, head of paid advertising at social agency Modifly. “A lot of our account expenditure was in the course of one hour and two hours. That, of course, has an effect on the CPMs because it happened across the board for everyone.” 

For seasoned ad buyers, that there was once again an issue with Facebook that they then had to mitigate was no surprise. As one buyer noted, Facebook will typically break once or twice a year, often around Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Another noted with the various issues over the years, buyers have come to expect it, complain about it and then continue to keep on spending on the platform. 

“We’re still early in figuring out what’s happening,” said Ashvin Melwani, CMO and co-founder of Obvi, a startup supplement brand. “But performance is definitely not great even today. We’re still trying to figure out what the best way to move forward from here while also tackling how do we get our money back.” 

Melwani isn’t alone in seeking clarity around a refund. Overall, ad buyers say that with this latest issue communication has been lacking and that they are worried about getting refunds. 

Facebook said in a statement that the “technical issue that has now been resolved cause ad delivery issues for some advertisers.” The company will follow its normal refunds process after the issue has been resolved to determine what ad placements and advertisers were affected. 

While the company is working to resolve the issue with buyers, buyers say the issue may shake confidence in the platform for some clients while others say they expect c-suite execs will question their marketing departments on it. That’s not a new conversation, said marketing consultant Kevin Simonson.

The response, per Simonson is: “What’s our alternative to get new customers, at scale, and measure the efficacy of what we’re doing? Nothing checks all the boxes in the same way [as marketing on Facebook].” 

Questions about communication issues also remain. Another buyer noted that it has been harder to get “high quality support” from the platform since it started layoffs this past December. 

“We would still urge clients to spend on Facebook, but now that this happened, I’m curious to see what the resolution is,” said Modifly’s Biancalani. “Depending on how they resolve the issue will depict how people view and see them in the future, and what their confidence is.”

That said, seasoned buyers don’t see a permanent resolution on the near-term horizon.

“It’s Groundhog Day at this point,” said Simonson. 

3 Questions with Warner Music Experience president Maria Weaver

Given your role as president, I’m curious how are you feeling about the progress for women in leadership now?

If I were to think about the evolution just in the last 30 years of female leadership, I would say we’ve made a tremendous amount of progress. There are more women with visibility at a president level and above. And for a long time, it was really hard for women to get past the SVP level. There was a lot of awareness that women were able to rise to SVP and they couldn’t break through that.

Much of the marketing community is trying to understand Gen Z. What makes them unique?

Gen Z is a very interesting consumer segment for us to understand. They consume content in so many different ways and there’s not one single approach that we can have. I do think that there were a lot of generalizations that we made around Gen X and millennials, but it’s harder to make those same generalizations around Gen Z.

How so?

The Gen Z consumer base is the most racially diverse group of any group we’ve seen. We know they tend to skew to be more on the liberal side. They’re very aware of politics and how politics can not only affect their life and generation but those of their children and future generations. — Julian Cannon

By the numbers

Digital advertising continues to be the crown jewel in ad budgets, especially for smaller brands and startups looking to quickly scale their company, and compete with bigger companies, according to new research from the Data Catalyst Institute on behalf of the Connected Commerce Council (3C). Findings included:

• 82% of advertisers say digital ads help them reach customers more effectively than traditional ads like billboards and television, while 80% say digital ads help them compete with larger companies.
• Small advertisers use an average of four digital advertising platforms at any given time, with 64% using more than two and 27% using six or more ad platforms. 
• 72% of Black-led small-to-medium business (SMB) publishers, 65% of Hispanic-led SMB publishers, and 71% of publishers generally agree they would not have been able to launch and sustain their business without revenue from digital advertising. — Kimeko McCoy

Quote of the week

“Anyone relying on social referrals as a key monetization factor has struggled in the last couple of years.”

— Justin Eisenband, senior managing director of corporate finance in the Telecom, Media & Technology division at FTI Consulting, when asked about Buzzfeed News’ demise.

What we’ve covered

• What marketers need to know about ‘Generation Zennial,’ from social media to buying habits
• How a major KFC franchisee is bolstering its marketing strategy with SMS
• Brands turn to gamification to reach hockey fans during the NHL playoffs

More than three years after Covid-19 first took hold, Americans have returned, for all intents and purposes, to life as usual. Yet despite once again spending more time out of the home, viewers are still tuning in to streaming services in record numbers. 

Streaming claimed the largest share of U.S. TV viewing in July 2022, according to Nielsen — a first after four consecutive months of hitting new viewership highs. Streaming viewership in a given month had exceeded broadcast viewing before, but this was the first time it also surpassed cable TV viewing. What’s more, Americans have been adopting ad-supported streaming services at a faster rate than purely subscription-based options: The number of U.S. homes streaming ad-supported streaming services increased 29% in 2022 versus a 21% increase in the same period for non-ad subscription-based streaming services, according to Comscore’s June 2022 State of Streaming report.

Taking note of consumers’ increased interest in ad-supported streaming services, Netflix launched Netflix Standard with Ads [formerly Netflix Basic with Ads] in November 2022 and The Walt Disney Company launched Disney+ Basic with Ads in December 2022. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Discovery doubled down on its streaming offerings. The company announced earlier this month that it will relaunch HBO Max, including its ad-supported tier, under its new moniker “Max” in May 2023. Additional programming will come from sibling streamer Discovery+, while Discovery+ will also remain as a stand-alone platform. 

In this, Digiday’s second annual report on the state of ad-supported streaming services, we present an industry-level look at the top ad-supported streaming platforms to assess: 

• What the platforms offer advertisers and consumers, including plans and pricing, audience reach, and ad options
• What types of offerings advertisers say they need from platforms and where they spent the bulk of their 2022 ad budgets
• And which platforms are best equipped to handle advertisers’ various needs

We’ve included the newer Netflix Standard with Ads [formerly Netflix Basic with Ads] and Disney+ Basic with Ads, as well as the revamped Max in our analysis.

Digiday identified the top-earning ad-supported streaming services by 2022 ad revenue and also included other popular platforms selected by the Digiday editorial team for their prominence. Here are those platforms in alphabetical order: 

• Amazon Freevee
• Discovery+
• Disney+ Basic with Ads [launched December 2022]
• Hulu
• Max [formerly HBO Max (Ads)]
• Netflix Standard with Ads [launched as Netflix Basic with Ads, November 2022]
• Paramount+
• Peacock
• Pluto TV
• Samsung TV Plus
• The Roku Channel
• Tubi
• YouTube

Digiday surveyed the 13 ad-supported streaming platforms for basic data, including plans and pricing, launch date, device availability, audience size, and ad software. Digiday updated data for platforms that did not provide updates when possible based on available information. 

Digiday interviewed executives at Hulu, Peacock, The Roku Channel, Tubi and YouTube about their platforms’ ad offerings and recent innovations.

Digiday fielded a survey in February to 49 brands and agencies on their streaming platform buying behaviors and preferences.

Max was listed in the survey under its former name HBO Max (Ads).

Netflix Standard with Ads [formerly Netflix Basic with Ads] and Disney+ Basic with Ads were included in the survey, but do not appear in the results charts due to nascency and lack of data.

After a jump-start during the Covid-19 pandemic, streaming services are increasingly overtaking linear TV as the preferred viewing platforms for consumers. Brands that traditionally spent the bulk of their budgets on network and cable TV are increasingly shifting spending to streaming. And, for their part, the companies offering these streaming services have realized they can make more money per user through a dual revenue model of subscriptions and advertising income. 

To appeal to brands and consumers alike, the top ad-supported streaming services offer a variety of plans and pricing, device availability, and ad and software innovations, all in the hopes of winning advertisers’ dollars and viewers’ attention. 

The charts below present an overview of what the top ad-supported streaming services analyzed in this report offer consumers and advertisers. Data were collected via platform surveys, publicly available financial filings and documents, and additional Digiday reporting.

* Data for asterisked platforms was compiled by Digiday after the platform did not respond to our request by time of publication.

Audience size varies, subscribers vs. active users

Audience size data was either provided by the platforms or culled from publicly available company filings. While audience numbers for general platform viewers are often publicly available, several platforms have not released numbers pertaining specifically to their ad-supported audiences, and thus data are not all-inclusive. Likewise, it is difficult to draw conclusive comparisons when considering active viewers versus subscribers. 

Generally speaking, YouTube had the largest audience size at 2 billion-plus monthly logged-in users, according to YouTube. Peacock had the smallest subscriber base at 20 million subscribers as of year-end 2022, according to Comcast, although that number was up 5 million subscribers from Q3 2022. The platform had a much larger number of active monthly users at 79.4 million, according to Comscore data as provided by Peacock. 

Paramount+ and Hulu fared much better than Peacock when it came to their subscriber numbers, coming in at 56 million and 48 million respectively at year-end 2022. Pluto TV, The Roku Channel and Tubi were harder to assess, having only providing active user numbers as follows: Pluto TV, 79 million monthly active global users as of Q4 2022; The Roku Channel, 70 million active accounts as of Q4 2022; and Tubi, 64 million active users as of February 2023. All three have active user bases in a similar size range to each other, as well as to Peacock. 

Warner Bros. Discovery had a combined number of 96.1 million global subscribers across HBO, HBO Max and Discovery+ as of Q4 2022, according to the company’s financial filings.

Platforms give consumers mostly standard viewing options, with some outliers

In terms of the devices viewers can use to access ad-supported streaming platforms, the platforms all had fairly comparable offerings across smart TVs, tablets and smartphones. Exceptions were Samsung TV Plus, which was limited to Samsung smart TVs, and The Roku Channel, which was primarily available on Roku devices, Amazon Fire TV and select Samsung smart TVs.

However, seven of the 13 platforms also included gaming devices (PlayStation, Xbox or both), as options for viewing their content, perhaps signifying an intent to reach a younger user base. Those platforms were Amazon Freevee, Disney+ Basic with Ads, Hulu, Paramount+, Peacock, Pluto TV, and Tubi, with Hulu being the only platform that also listed Nintendo Switch. 
Tubi, seemingly in an effort to extend its audience base further, was the only platform that said its device availability included Enseo, a technology company that provides in-room entertainment capabilities for the service industry, including hotels and senior living facilities. In March 2020, when Tubi announced the partnership, the platform said it would be accessible in more than 30,000 hotel rooms in over 20 hotel and resort brands.

Pricing plans range from free to $15.99 for ad-free options

Digday’s survey of ad-supported streaming services found that the platforms’ plans and pricing run the gamut from no cost at all to as much as $15.99 per month for an ad-free option. Aiming to give viewers the most accessible of all entry points, a half dozen of the 13 platforms are free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) services, with no monthly fee whatsoever for their ad-supported content. Of those six, only YouTube offers the option to subscribe to an ad-free tier for a fee. That fee is $11.99/month for a standard YouTube account and does not include YouTube TV, which has its own plans and pricing structure. 

Meanwhile, more than half of the 13 platforms charge a fee for both their ad-supported and ad-free subscriptions. The least expensive of those is Discovery+ at $4.99/month for its ad-supported plan and $6.99/month ad-free. Paramount+ and Peacock offer the same pricing for both of their plans at $4.99/month ad-supported and $9.99/month ad-free. Disney+ Basic with Ads and Hulu, although both owned by The Walt Disney Company, differ when it comes to their ad-free plans — $10.99/month and $14.99/month respectively — but stick to the same ad-supported pricing of $7.99/month. The soon-to-be-launched Max [formerly HBO Max (Ads)], which is owned by the same parent company as Discovery+ — Warner Bros. Discovery — comes in with the highest ad-free pricing of $15.99/month. Its ad-supported subscription is $9.99/month.

Rounding out the seven, Netflix’s pricing lands somewhere in between the other platforms at $6.99/month for its new Standard with Ads and $9.99/month ad-free.

Shoppable ads and content takeovers lead the way

Shoppable ads have emerged as a leading ad innovation among the platforms surveyed for this report, with Amazon Freevee, The Roku Channel and Peacock all listing shoppable ads as a feature they’ve recently introduced or expanded.  

The Roku Channel’s Shoppable TV Ads with Native TV Checkout gives viewers the ability to shop and make purchases through Roku-enabled devices using their remote controls. “We have a full suite of interactive ads that leverage the Roku remote,” said Jordan Rost, Roku’s head of ad marketing. “This allows users to engage deeper with brands’ video ads, and now Roku users can shop and checkout directly through the TV using the Roku remote and Roku pay.”

Amazon Freevee’s interactive video ads let viewers engage with an ad using their voice or Fire TV remote in order to request an email about the product they just viewed, add an item to their Amazon shopping list or purchase a product directly from an ad. 

The platform also makes QR codes available through custom ad overlays, which can include the QR code, headline, copy and a click-through URL to direct viewers to branded landing pages, special promotions or custom content to learn more about a product or service.

Amazon Freevee is also taking advantage of parent company Amazon’s Alexa device. Its Branded Experiences with Alexa are custom-built, immersive video or audio activations that let viewers verbally prompt their Alexa-enabled devices for information to learn more, interact with exclusive content and shop for products.

Peacock’s Must ShopTV identifies objects in videos and makes them interactive and shoppable so viewers can purchase products within programs and check out using a remote control.

Peacock is also planning to launch In-Scene Ads in a partnership with ad tech company TripleLift later this year. The ads will use artificial intelligence in post-production to virtually place products within existing programming, according to Jenny Burke, evp of advertising strategy at NBCUniversal. “We have two formats — 2D, which would be signage in a scene, or 3D which is a physical product,” Burke said. “For example, I have my Starbucks cup. It would be in a scene and we have AI working to ensure it’s a relevant scene — the emotional intelligence and the conversations among the talent — to make sure it’s the right scene to introduce a product.”

“It’s product integration, but with the ability to get it to scale versus one and done,” she added. “And incorporating personalization and data, so that it can benefit from the promise and offerings of digital and data-informed advertising.”

Content takeovers stood out as another ad innovation that several platforms said they’ve instituted or added to in the last 12 months.

Tubi’s Total Takeover aims to give advertisers 100% audience reach during a specific window of programming time. Tubi’s Chief Revenue Officer Mark Rotblat described a takeover by Hormel Foods’ Planters brand. “We recently partnered with Hormel and Planters to bring the long version of their Super Bowl commercial to stream on Tubi as part of a Total Takeover package, marking the first time that we’ve included advertiser-created content as entertainment,” Rotblat said.

A commercial featuring brand mascot Mr. Peanut as the subject of a celebrity roast was spotlighted on Tubi’s home screen for a day, according to Rotblat, and a long-form version of the ad was discoverable for a month via Tubi’s recommendation algorithm.

“As Planters drove viewers to watch the roast on Tubi, the commercial organically became one of our most-watched pieces of content during the flight of the campaign,” Rotblat said.

YouTube’s Cost Per Hour Masthead gives advertisers the option to buy masthead ad placement during the hour(s) leading up to, during or after priority brand moments, according to Brian Albert, YouTube’s managing director of media partnerships and creative works.

Similarly, the platform’s First Position (formerly Moment Blast) gives advertisers prime positioning — owning the first ad a user sees — on YouTube Select content on connected TVs and other devices, plus a branded title card and optional masthead placement.

“I would bucket both of these in your tentpole moments where brands come to us and they’re looking to reach a critical mass of their audience, generally in a short period of time to gain the most awareness,” Albert said. “It could be because they’re launching a new movie, activating a launch on a live sporting event, dropping a new product, or doing a holiday push. … If you’re really trying to generate mass awareness before, during and after any one of those moments, you can really collapse your delivery into a much tighter window to drive mass awareness.”

Amazon Freevee aims to provide shorter all-encompassing advertising experiences through its Freevee Welcome Screen. Advertisers can give customers a full-screen, seven-second brand experience when they launch the Freevee app on Fire TV for the first time in a day. A brand’s custom creative replaces the standard loading screen that customers see up to once a day, seven times in a month.

Platforms expand data clean room and ad targeting options

While perhaps not as colorful a category as ad innovations, platforms’ recent data innovations warrant discussion as well.

In an effort to expand its data collection capabilities beyond the automatic content recognition technology built into its smart TVs, Roku launched its own data clean room in April 2022. An agency, brand or publisher can bring its data to Roku and combine it with the platform’s first-party data to target and measure campaigns without either side exposing its customer data to the other. The Roku clean room creates audience segments that can only be targeted with its proprietary DSP OneView.

Other platforms focused on expanding programmatic ad buying and ad targeting capabilities across media channels and streaming platforms, with offerings such as:

• Peacock Audience Extension, which allows advertisers to target audiences across NBCUniversal’s streaming platforms
• Samsung’s Total Media Solution platform that manages and measures ad buys across linear and streaming services
• Tubi has been particularly active in this dimension:
  • Tubi’s integration with VideoAmp’s Premium Video Planning Tool for upfront and scatter deals that, according to Tubi, “gives brands the ability to plan holistically across media channels”
  • Tubi’s LiveRamp TV Activation, in which brands can take third- and first-party data and forecast coverage on Tubi. Advertisers can send Tubi an audience for planned transactions, with LiveRamp helping to inform scale across Tubi’s viewership
  • Tubi’s Alternative Audience Measurement, whereby brands can measure campaigns via Comscore Campaign Ratings and VideoAmp Audience Measurement, allows advertisers to test a variety of partners

New for this second annual report on ad-supported streaming services, Digiday surveyed brands and ad agencies to ask what platform offerings are most important to them when they’re deciding on which ad-supported streaming services to place ads. We also asked brands and agencies which platforms received the bulk of their ad budgets and ad placements in 2022. 

YouTube, with the largest audience reach of all the platforms, came out on top among the ad-supported streaming services assessed in this report as the platform that received the largest portion of both respondents’ ad placements and budget allocation in 2022. The overwhelming majority (83%) of brand and agency respondents said they currently place ads on YouTube, and more than half (60%) said YouTube consumed the largest portion of their 2022 budget. 

Disney-owned Hulu and Roku’s The Roku Channel were second and third, respectively, for both ad placements and ad spend. Meanwhile, Paramount+ and Pluto TV, both owned by Paramount Global, which has been expanding its streaming services, came in next to last for ad placements. Likewise, only 2% of respondents said Pluto TV received the largest portion of their 2022 budget, and none said so of Paramount+.

YouTube came in first among advertisers for ad placements and 2022 budget allocation mainly due to its massive audience reach. The platform has more than 2 billion monthly logged-in users, according to YouTube, which far outpaces other platforms. 

Additionally, while most ad-supported streaming platforms offer similar content in the form of on-demand movies and TV series, original movie and TV programming created for the platforms — in this case, YouTube Originals — and some live TV channels, YouTube stands out as the only platform that offers user-generated content. According to YouTube’s Albert, that UGC is truly what sets YouTube apart from other platforms, for consumers and advertisers alike.

“Our creator economy and the 500 hours of content that gets uploaded to YouTube every single minute is our single biggest differentiator and competitive advantage,” Albert said. “Depending on what you’re interested in, you’re going to find something on YouTube that appeals to your passions and interests, whether it’s endemic creator content because you love MrBeast, or you’re looking for TV shows and movies, or live sports or music. There’s literally everything for everyone.”  

Likely of more importance to advertisers than YouTube’s UGC is the platform’s access to parent company Google’s entire first-party search and browser history data through Google’s demand-side platform (Display & Video 360). First-party data reserves are increasingly becoming a crucial selling point to attract advertisers, as privacy concerns and regulations around the use of third-party cookies in programmatic advertising increase. Brands and ad agencies naturally want to buy ad time on a platform that offers tremendous audience reach combined with access to vast first-party data pools for ad targeting. 

With an audience size of 48 million monthly subscribers as of year-end 2022, Disney’s Hulu came in a distant second to YouTube for ad placements and 2022 budget allocation, with slightly more than half (52%) of brand and agency respondents saying they currently place ads on the platform and less than a quarter (23%) of respondents saying they devoted the largest portion of their 2022 ad budget to Hulu. 

While Hulu doesn’t have nearly the audience reach of YouTube, it does have access to all of Disney’s first-party consumer data through the company’s Disney Select platform, which gives Hulu a similar competitive advantage in the race to provide advertisers with immense first-party data reserves. Hulu also taps into Disney’s programmatic ad exchange dubbed DRAX (Disney RealTime Ad Exchange), in which buyers can bid on all Disney ad impressions — thereby appealing to advertisers on both a first-party data reserve basis and a programmatic basis. 

In third place for ad placement and 2022 budget allocation is The Roku Channel. Nearly one-third of respondents (31%) said they currently place ads on the platform, while only 6% said The Roku Channel consumed the majority of their 2022 budget. Roku’s third-place standing is likely thanks in part to its growing active user base. According to the company, Roku had 70 million active accounts as of Q4 2022, a net increase of 9.9 million accounts since 2021. 

Additionally, according to Roku’s Rost, The Roku Channel “is an incremental audience with 42% of viewers not watching Hulu, 38% not streaming YouTube.” Therefore, it follows that brands and agencies, while perhaps not devoting the majority of their budgets to The Roku Channel, do want to place ads on the platform in order to reach viewers they may be missing on Hulu and YouTube. 

Interestingly, the ad-supported streaming services that came in next to last as platforms where advertisers currently place ads — Paramount+ and Pluto TV — are both owned by Paramount Global, which said it was leaning hard into streaming when it rebranded from ViacomCBS to Paramount Global in February 2022. “We see a huge global opportunity in streaming, a much larger potential market than can be captured by linear TV and film alone,” said Paramount’s president and CEO Bob Bakish in a statement at the time.  

However, according to Digiday’s survey results, the company has yet to reap the rewards of its efforts. Only 15% of survey respondents said they currently place ads on Pluto TV and only 13% said the same of Paramount+. (Samsung TV Plus tied with Paramount+ at 13%.) Perhaps even more telling, only 2% of respondents said Pluto TV consumed the largest portion of their ad budget in 2022, while none said so of Paramount+.

Despite boasting proprietary offerings that include Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, MTV and VH1, along with other movie and TV programming, at the time of the rebrand, some analysts suggested Paramount’s platforms might not have enough brand awareness to give the likes of YouTube, Hulu and The Roku Channel a run for their money. 

Pluto TV has had the benefit of being in the streaming game longer than many other platforms — it launched in 2014 and therefore is an established name — and it also has 79 million monthly users worldwide, according to Paramount. But that longevity and user base hasn’t equaled extensive advertiser investment, according to Digiday’s survey results. 

For its part, Paramount+ was originally known as CBS All Access and it only entered the ad-supported streaming arena under its new moniker in March 2021. Therefore, the platform hasn’t had as long to build name recognition, and it’s also still working on building its audience base. In that area, Paramount+ has seen some success. The platform added 9.9 million subscribers in the Q4 2022 to reach 56 million by year end, according to Paramount. 

Coming soon: The second installment in this series, publishing April 27, will dive deep into the results of Digiday’s recent survey of brands and agencies to analyze how advertisers’ preferences for ad options, software, targeting and campaign measurement preferences match up to the platforms’ offerings. We will also examine challenges advertisers face when placing ads on ad-supported streaming services and provide a guide to which platforms are right for key advertiser needs.

For O’Kelley, the executive credited with coining the term “supply-path optimization,” the concept of shifting ad dollars away from high carbon supply paths to ones that provide fewer carbon emissions is already pushing on an open door.

“We’ve all known about the supply-path issues for several years,” he told conference attendees, adding that “what people couldn’t do for money, transparency or privacy, they might do for saving the planet.” 

Speaking with Digiday, Ratko Vidakovic, founder of consultancy service AdProfs, echoed such sentiments, adding that corporations’ public CSR commitments are “SPO with leverage” as it gives their buying teams an enhanced mandate to pressurize their suppliers.

Ryan Barker, founder and CEO of BERA, a start-up that helps brands measure how they are achieving their CSR goals using consumer panel data, told Digiday that marketers are increasingly likely to insist upon more “carbon-lite supply paths” in their advertising campaigns. This is especially the case as they are better able to correlate consumer sentiments such as “brand love” with sales.

Although for Adform’s Jospeh Dressler, goodwill is one thing, but the industry requires a significant cultural shift for there to be actual change. And it’s one that will test the fortitude of those with responsibilities for revenues on the sell-side of the industry.

“I looked up the last 100 RFPs that we got,” he told Green Media Summit attendees, “it was less than five that had any mention whatsoever of sustainability and green goals… so a brand can say they want to be sustainable, but it has to trickle all the way down to media planning and programmatic for it to have any impact.”

Research from Jounce Media suggests that at least 20% of all ad impressions are traded on several occasions along the ad tech supply chain with middlemen taking a cut of the initial transaction fee, all while adding to the industry’s carbon footprint. Albeit, the question must be asked, will a reduction in the number of ad tech partners result in diminished revenues for publishers?

For fellow summit speaker, Maggie Mattingley, lead director for inventory management at The Trade Desk, a company that has (arguably) blazed a trail in the industry’s SPO efforts, publishers have to ask themselves if they are willing to “take that short-term sacrifice on revenue” when it comes to reducing the number of partners they work with?

PreBid, an industry body that helps implement tech standards for media owners, is currently preparing guidelines for its membership to better understand how they can reduce their carbon emissions while maintaining revenue.

“You can have 100 pixels firing on the page, but the reality is how many are actually generating revenue?,” said PreBid president, Mike Racic, speaking separately at The Green Media Summit. “[The guidelines] are about things like testing the incrementality between all these different partners, so you can understand who’s truly driving revenue.”

Speaking separately with Digiday, OpenX CEO John Gentry said there is a thin line between some of the industry’s latest proclamations about sustainability and “greenwashing” but, in general, the trend is a positive one.

“If somebody is trying to figure out a solution I support that but I think people trying to use this [sustainability] as another competitive dimension, and not working to figure out a real solution that is aligned with global standards, I think that’s a challenge and a problem,” he added.

Ben Feldman, a specialist in helping companies offset their carbon emissions (who also has a background in ad tech) companies in the sector that are eager to escape the ‘greenwashing’ tag need to do more than just purchase carbon offset credits. “The carbon offset system has a problem because it’s saying that ‘you’ve got permission to emit carbon,” he said. “Companies should move to things like how they are removing carbon from the atmosphere.”