Month: May 2024

Amazon’s pitch to the market has traditionally relied on its ability to appeal to Madison Avenue’s rational side, with sales decks that heavily emphasize data targeting and demonstrable ROI.

However, earlier this week, at its upfront debut, Amazon added some showbiz glamor to the pitch with the unveiling of multiple pieces of programming, which some interpret as an effort to shore up its inventory supply challenges. 

Amazon’s upfront presentation on May 14 was heavy on the content and relatively light on ad tech announcements, with company executives mostly stressing the depth and range of Amazon’s content portfolio across Prime Video, live sports and Twitch.

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Programmatic marketers are settling in at the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit, taking place over the next three days in Palm Springs, California.

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Thanks to Disney for sponsoring Digiday’s upfront coverage and presenting this edition of the Digiday+ Future of TV Briefing, normally available exclusively to paying subscribers.

This week’s Future of TV Briefing looks at how ad buyers’ and sellers’ discussion around advanced audiences is different in this year’s upfront market.

• The advanced upfront
• Disney tops TV watch time
• Streamers’ talent payment terms, Netflix’s NFL talks and more

The advanced upfront

If you sat through any of this week’s upfront presentations, you’ve likely heard the words “advanced audiences” (or its synonyms “strategic audiences,” “data-driven audiences,” etc.). The buzzword isn’t new. TV and streaming ad sellers have been talking up their targeting capabilities since before the pandemic. But there is a new aspect to the pitch this time around.

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Amazon spent the bulk of its May 14 upfront presentation showcasing its massive and still-growing content portfolio — but for the most part, Twitch was absent from the proceedings. The few times Twitch was mentioned, it was framed as more of a brand for gamers than a major streaming platform in its own right, providing a window into Amazon’s changing approach to the service.

Twitch came up exactly three times during Tuesday’s upfront presentation, which was Amazon’s first-ever television upfront. Two of those times were in passing: there was a slide of celebrity presenter Keke Palmer streaming on Twitch, as well as a snippet of a Twitch stream included amid a slideshow of other Amazon properties such as “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” “Thursday Night Football” and “The Boys.”

Fleeting as it was, the latter mention provided some insight into the way Amazon is increasingly approaching Twitch as the gamer-oriented facet of its broader video content portfolio as the company looks to become more attractive to brands. Instead of meriting its own upfront presentation as an advertising platform for brands looking to reach gamers, Twitch is another piece of inventory underneath the Prime Video umbrella.

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Google’s vision for a world assisted by AI became more clear on yesterday as the tech giant announced a wide range of updates for its generative AI capabilities across various software and hardware devices. 

At its annual developer conference Google I/O, the company debuted ways to use AI agents for everything from searching online and offline worlds to creating content and performing tasks. Powered by its Gemini family of AI models and others, Google unveiled new AI models for various tasks to help make AI faster, more efficient and potentially more private. Other upgrades included allowing for larger amounts of information digested by AI and new ways for its platforms to process video, audio, images and text.

Separately, Google debuted new ways to create and edit video through a new AI video model called Veo. It also touted ways to create music through its Music AI Sandbox, which Google created in collaboration with YouTube and major artists like Björn (from ABBA) and Wyclef Jean. While Veo will compete with rival platforms like Runway and OpenAI’s Sora, the music feature puts it up against apps like Suno AI that have become increasingly popular. 

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One day after OpenAI announced its conversational AI GPT-4o model that can see, hear and analyze, the company’s chief scientist Ilya Sutskever said he is stepping down.

One day after OpenAI showed off an all-new, emotional version of ChatGPT, the company announced that chief scientist Ilya Sutskever is leaving the company. He had voted in November to fire CEO Sam Altman.

Spot shows that it takes a village of weird folk, with divergent looks and personalities, dressed in every type of Speedo, to become a true crowd.

During Disney’s upfront event, just hours after Amazon’s, the Mouse House couldn’t hold back on pitching its content and advertising prowess. Sports was a big highlight.

The post Disney’s Upfront Spotlights ESPN And Hulu appeared first on AdExchanger.

“The FTC will take action to protect consumers against the illegal collection, use, and disclosure of their personal data,” the agency said Tuesday.