Month: January 2025

Netflix’s Christmas Day NFL coverage was a hit among viewers and advertisers. Its two holiday games each drew an average of 26.5 million U.S. viewers, according to the Nielsen Big Data + Panel, while ad inventory sold out weeks in advance.

In the short term, that performance will defuse industry concerns over the service’s ability to host major sporting moments, following its glitchy telecast of the Jake Paul and Mike Tyson fight in November.

“They proved that they can handle the NFL,” said Adam Schwartz, svp, director of video investment, sports at media agency Horizon Media.

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Wrapping up its search-related string of partner deals announced at CES this week, Digiday has learned that Omnicom Media Group has secured access to Roku’s viewer searches on the streaming platform in order to help guide clients better fine-tune their investments and messaging across the CTV space.  

As with all its other partnerships this week — with Google, with Amazon Ads and with TikTok — Omni, the parent company’s central operating platform, will play a major role in the first-to-market deal. Brand-specific audiences created within Omni get sent to Roku’s clean room to get layered with Roku’s anonymized and aggregated search data. It includes data on the most searched programs, content categories, genres and performers. 

Say a consumer searches for Hugh Jackman. Those results will likely yield as much song-and-dance films like The Greatest Showman or time-travel works like Kate & Leopold as it will Wolverine films. That immediately opens the door to insights that can inform spend and content decisioning from sponsorships, tailored creative messaging or even contextual optimization. 

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This week’s Media Briefing hones in on the business areas that publishing execs say they will prioritize this year – and what they are leaving behind in 2024.

• Media execs focused on growing engagement, subscriptions, direct ad revenue and reach
• Meta is bringing back political content, Time staffers are concerned about coziness with Trump and more

2025 look-ahead

This year, media companies will focus on growing engagement, subscriptions, reach and direct ad revenue, according to 16 publishing execs.

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Nexstar Media Group, Inc. and NBCUniversal have reached a comprehensive multi-year agreement to renew NBC Television Network affiliations in 33 markets across the country, including 29 stations owned by Nexstar, three owned by Mission Broadcasting, Inc., and one owned by White Knight Broadcasting, Inc. Together, the 33 stations reach more than 14 million U.S. television…

Mark Zuckerberg’s “free speech” announcement was all-business — if your business is being a 1950s dystopian cult leader.

Disney is giving advertisers tiers of joy thanks to its latest ad-supported streaming numbers. Today, at its 5th annual Tech and Data Showcase at CES, the company’s president of global advertising, Rita Ferro, announced that the company reached an estimated 157 million monthly active users globally, including 112 million domestically, on average per month over…

Stunning images of the Los Angeles wildfires that aired across TV screens on Tuesday night have helped bring attention to the unfolding calamity in Southern California. Homes and businesses in the path of the fires have turned into ashes. Their rapid spread was brought on by the Santa Ana winds, which pummeled the area with…

To deepen advertisers’ understanding of what drives sales, market research company Circana is expanding its sales lift solution for YouTube, intended to give CPG advertisers the ability to measure
more ad formats within the social video platform, including Shorts and In-feed.

Not even the pink aura of Barbie could save the top brass at Warner Bros. Motion Pictures from the effects of the pandemic and the Screen Actors Guild/American Federation of Television and Radio Artists and Writers Guild of America strikes, as the studio revealed a shuffle atop its executive ranks Wednesday. President of domestic distribution…

Meta might have opted for a content moderation tactic similar to X, but don’t expect brands to boycott Facebook in the same way they did Elon Musk’s platform. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced changes to the company’s content moderation policies this week–specifically ending third-party fact-checking, and lifting restrictions on free speech across Facebook and Instagram….