Month: January 2024

The nation’s largest advocacy group for people with dwarfism flew into action when they heard about a new dwarf wrestling show on the Discovery Channel.

Programmatic auctions are creating so many carbon copies of themselves, it’s threatening to topple the entire structure of programmatic. The bid duplication is getting so extreme, buyers are starting to take notice of this strange behavior. Instead of seeing the whole universe of bid opportunities, demand-side platforms see only a small portion of inventory copied […]

The post Attack Of The Clones: Programmatic’s Hidden Scourge Of Bid Duplication appeared first on AdExchanger.

Idaho’s capital city is seeing an influx of young people as they apply for tech jobs away from big coastal cities amid massive layoffs and a disillusion with Big Tech.

Did you know the US and New Zealand are the only two countries that allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise prescription drugs directly to consumers? That means the only way for pharma brands to reach consumers everywhere else in the world is to communicate with them via their physicians, says Harshit Jain, founder and global CEO […]

The post A Healthy Dose Of Programmatic, With Doceree’s CEO appeared first on AdExchanger.

In the dynamic realm of CTV, many advertisers are limiting brand exposure to so-called premium inventory from Netflix, Hulu or Max. But they’re missing out on the huge opportunities provided by smaller, long-tail CTV players. Advertisers will often give their tech vendors broad “block lists” of CTV channels where they don’t want ads to appear, […]

The post Lucrative Long Tail: Why CTV Advertisers Should Think Beyond Premium Channels appeared first on AdExchanger.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Pining For AI Google laid off nearly 1,000 employees last week – but the hits keep coming. It’s also scrapping hundreds of jobs in its ad sales division, Business Insider reports. The headcount reduction is a byproduct of restructuring its ad sales team, […]

The post Anything You Can Do AI Can Do Better; The In-Housing Trend That Stuck appeared first on AdExchanger.

This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at the potential tie-ups that the media and entertainment could see as the M&A market appears set to heat up.

• Match game
• CTV’s children’s privacy conundrum
• TV watch time ends 2023 on a high
• ESPN’s NFL deal talks, entertainment unions’ next AI negotiations, VideoAmp’s currency costs and more

Match game

Paramount’s parent company, National Amusements, is reportedly on the verge of a sale. Whether the media conglomerate ends up in the hands of Skydance Media or Warner Bros. Discovery, such a deal could kickstart yet another wave of merger and acquisition activity in the media and entertainment industry. 

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As of January 4, the Danish esports company BLAST has partnered with Epic Games to become the official operator of “Rocket League” esports. Epic’s choice to work with BLAST over the Saudi-Arabian-owned league operator ESL/FACEIT Group took many in the competitive gaming industry by surprise — and suggested that Saudi Arabia’s $38 billion investment in esports might not result in a full takeover of the industry, as many once believed.

BLAST began as a “Counter-Strike” tournament operator, but it has produced “Fortnite” events for Epic since 2021, managing the entirety of Epic’s Fortnite Champion Series (FNCS) in 2022 and 2023. As part of this month’s “Rocket League” deal, the company will administer all event production, sales, operations and marketing for the Rocket League Championship Series (RLCS), as well as manage the commercial rights to both the game and its esports competitions.

“We work in a lot of traditionally non-brand-friendly games, and managed to develop great commercial partnerships and programs,” said BLAST chief business officer Leo Matlock. “So to have one where perhaps some of those barriers aren’t there is great.”

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Between CES in Las Vegas last week and the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, this week, publishers’ events and sales teams have had a busy start to 2024, arguably even more so than last year.

CES provided an important opportunity for face-to-face time with brand marketers and agency execs to try and secure advertising dollars for the back half of the year. But WEF is the place for publishers’ events teams to showcase their ability to convene top brass, and it appears that advertisers are more willing than last year to pay to share that space. 

Bloomberg decided to go much bigger at WEF this year by bringing its Bloomberg House franchise to Davos. Having hosted iterations of the House franchise at SXSW and Cannes Lions in previous years, the expansion to WEF gives the company a space to hold four days’ worth of editorial programming as well as curated networking spaces and party venues, said head of Bloomberg Live Jessica Webber. This is the first time Bloomberg House will be at Davos.

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TheSkimm plans to reach its goal of 1 million subscribers to its wellness newsletter, Skimm Well, by the end of 2024. The newsletter currently has 100,000 subscribers after launching six months ago.

TheSkimm’s CRO Mary Murcko told Digiday that 50% of those subscribers are new to the theSkimm and don’t subscribe to its other newsletters, such as its flagship Daily Skimm. Overall, theSkimm has an audience of 12 million across platforms, a spokesperson said. The company declined to share how many total newsletter subscribers TheSkimm has (though it had over 7 million subscribers in 2022).

The team behind theSkimm thinks this year’s news cycle with the presidential election, the Olympic Games this summer and reproductive health legislation — as well as issues around the economy, the lack of federal paid family leave, maternal health care and cultural polarization — will get more people to subscribe to its wellness newsletter this year.

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