Month: November 2023

The nearly four-month old actors’ strike has reached a tentative three year agreement between the actor union, SAG-AFTRA and the major TV/movie studios with gains made in minimum
pay for members and improvement in residual payments for streaming TV shows and movies.

The strike officially ends at 12:01 a.m. on Thursday for 160,000 actors and
performers. The actors’ walkout began on July 14, joining forces with the writers who had been on strike since May 2.

Actors still need to vote on the agreement to
finalize the deal.

On Saturday,  the studios — through its negotiating group Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers — presented to SAG-AFTRA its
“last, best and final offer”, which union officials then spent the next several days making language changes.

The deal also includes improved contributions
to the unions health and pension plans.

The agreement comes less than a month after the Writer’s Guild members approved their own agreement with the
studios.

Writers also looked to raise their fees for streaming programs, as well as protections against artificial intelligence efforts which could replace their
work.

Under its new deal, the writers will get success-based streaming TV bonuses, minimum rate increases, and staffing minimums. 

Both strikes caused major disruption for the start of the fall TV season in September with many popular primetime scripted TV shows out of production. The six month combined
writers-actors strike has been estimated to have cost the industry $6.5 billion, especially to the Southern California economy. 

It also had an effect on
summer’s TV upfront advertising market — already suffering from general marketplace weakness since the fourth quarter 2022.  This summer’s upfront selling period witnessed rare
pricing declines for scripted entertainment of around 1% to 3%.

TV networks had hoped the strikes would end in early fall with the hopes of re-starting the production
process at that time. That would mean they could have new scripted TV episodes ready for air around January/February 2024.

Walt Disney’s D2C business had positive results, with strong subscriber additions and lower projected losses — boosting the company’s stock in after-market trading, about 4% higher.

Abbey Klaassen replaces Paulo Fogaca as US CEO Dentsu Creative. Fogaca was in the post for less than a year, having joined from Gut.

‘Times’ now has over 10 million subscribers, including print.

If you’re willing to clip the Ai Pin to your chest, you can talk, gesture, and tap to take photos or summon a powerful virtual assistant.

An experimental AI helper attempts to operate a web browser in the same way a human does to take on office admin like processing invoices or screening job applicants.

Meta now offers users an ad-free option, but it’s only available in Europe for those who can afford the €10-a-month subscription.

Brian Danzis, managing director, US, Seedtag

There’s an enduring cliche in sports: some teams play not to lose, whereas others genuinely play to win. The same could be said of how brands and agencies have approached contextual targeting. 

As brands reach out to agencies to plan for life without cookies, agency teams have a pivotal opportunity to prove their strategic value and deepen client relationships. An increasing share of these deliberations revolves around contextual targeting, which is sometimes misconstrued as a secondary plan or a plan B. That is, contextual is still seen as a way not to lose. 

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The firm now says it will have an organic net revenue decline for the full year without offering a specific range as to how sharp that decline will be.

Streaming TV and video ads didn’t bring home the bacon for Magnite this quarter, but the bloom isn’t off the CTV rose for the SSP. CTV contributed $52.5 million to Magnite’s Q3 earnings, actually declining 6% from $56 million at the same time last year. CTV comprised 39% of overall revenue this quarter, compared to […]

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