Month: August 2024

This week’s Future of TV Briefing updates the list of the key terms that can cause confusion when talking about the TV, streaming and digital video industry.

• The future of TV, defined
• Netflix’s new ad prices, MrBeast’s game gone wrong, Nvidia’s YouTube scraping and more

The future of TV, defined

Welcome to the third edition of our glossary of key terms that people in the TV, streaming and digital video industry use — and, often, misuse. For as much as people continue to use OTT or to act as if CTV and streaming are interchangeable, new terms keep cropping up that can confound and convolute any industry conversation. So here’s the latest guide to what people talk about when they talk about the future of TV.

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In 2024, publishers look for revenue opportunities anywhere they can and two of the most prominent vendors for incremental ad revenue — Outbrain and Teads — announced last week that the former was acquiring the latter in a $1 billion deal.

While unexpected at first, two publishers said in the days following the announcement that they will likely stand to benefit, at least in the short term, from two rather different businesses merging into a one-stop-shop for full-funnel ad sales. Additionally, whereas Outbrain’s clients are more performance-oriented, Teads primarily brings brand advertisers into the mix, according to Jessica Studholme, evp of sales and revenue operations at BDG, which has been a Teads client for years.

While BDG has never worked with Outbrain — using its own proprietary technology for content recommendation on its site — “it would be silly for us not to entertain how [Outbrain] could grow our bottom line revenue,” Studholme said, which is why she’ll “never say never” to working with the Outbrain-side of the newly combined business.

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X is dragging a global alliance of advertisers to court, accusing them of mob-like behavior. The advertising industry, of course, finds this beef utterly ungrounded.

But in typical X fashion, it went completely off-script. There was no press release from corporate comms, no statement on social media. Instead, they announced the lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) — including its members CVS Health, Mars, Orsted, Unilever, and the trade body behind it, the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) — with a hostage-esque video featuring CEO Linda Yacarrino explaining why it had come to this.

This federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday August 6, is arguably the wildest twist in the ongoing standoff between the controversial billionaire and advertisers since Elon Musk acquired X (formerly Twitter) nearly two years ago. Musk’s response to this impasse? Sue the advertisers for not buying ads, hoping to force their hand. Because nothing says “please advertise with us” quite like a hefty lawsuit.

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Judge Amit Mehta’s ruling has triggered a potentially yearslong process to decide how to punish the company. For users, it could mean a future in which Google isn’t front and center everywhere.

YouTube is testing a new ad format for live video that might appear less disruptive to viewers. The company’s new picture-in-picture mid-roll ads will run alongside a livestream without halting the
viewing experience.

Steve Simon and four other secretaries of state are calling on Elon Musk to “immediately” implement changes to the X platform’s AI chatbot Grok, which has come under scrutiny for spreading
election-related misinformation. They say Grok informed millions of X users that Vice President Kamala Harris had missed the ballot deadline in several states for the 2024 election, when the ballots
are actually still open.

Steve Simon and four other secretaries of state are calling on Elon Musk to “immediately” implement changes to the X platform’s AI chatbot Grok, which has come under scrutiny due to its tendency to
spread election-related misinformation.

A deal is not certain, but Mars is exploring a possible acquisition, according to a Reuters report. And if it does happen, another agency shakeup could be in the works.

The group says Google has harmed countless businesses, including publishers.

Taboola advertisers can import their custom brand-safety and suitability settings from across their media mix and go beyond standard categories and keyword blocklists, the company says.