Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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Branded content is a recurrent theme at CASBAA events, and this year’s Convention is no exception — be sure to catch our panel on integrating brands and content on Wednesday morning. But before that, you might also have a look at Emily Nussbaum’s excellent New Yorker article on what advertising does to TV. |
John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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I like the beginning of this article: “Russia has vowed to do what Obama and the EU dare not – and we don’t mean bomb ISIS. The Putin-led nation has promised to go after big business and the pirate websites they support.” The issue is mainstream advertisers’ support for piracy websites, an area CASBAA is going to illuminate in an international conference on October 26th. The article points up some ironic angles (starting with Russia, the land of piracy sites and adtech bot networks suddenly getting all moral. And it quotes a Publicis exec with the bottom line: “The entire advertising industry is too fixated on chasing cheap slots, even if that means ‘fishing in a cesspool.” By the way, the issue in Asia got some coverage for the first time last week. I was shocked, shocked to learn that advertisers in Asia might be turning a blind eye to where their ads appear. |
Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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Astro has launched a new VOD service, called Astro OD, targeting viewers who are increasingly watching content outside the home, online and offline. The new service is a more comprehensive than its previously-launched Astro Plus service, and features three tiers; free, subscription, and transactional. With the new service, Astro is hoping to quadruple its individual user base within five years. |
Anjan Mitra
Executive Director, India
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They’re baaaaaack… ESPN is partnering with Sony-owned MSM to launch a co-branded channel in India. One of MSM’s existing sports channels will be rebranded Sony ESPN and the two companies are planning to jointly roll out more channels as well as other offerings. |
Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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No question about it, OTT is the flavour of the month. But even as many companies are struggling with the basics of their digital strategy, there are plenty of broadcasters who are moving forward. Here’s a pretty comprehensive overview of who’s doing what, in which markets, with whom. |
Kevin Jennings
Programme Director
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Bloomberg Business has reported that Amazon is looking to create its own live TV service and has apparently held preliminary discussions with CBS and NBCUniversal. It remains to be seen if this would be another bundling service separate from cable companies or if Amazon will take it even further. |
Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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In the New York Times series TV Transformed, the piece: ‘YouTube’s Young Viewers are Becoming Its Creators‘ hits home for anyone with kids. “Viewers under 18 are not seeing the Internet as a farm system for Hollywood, the way the major studios hope.” Translation: Maybe our kids won’t turn into us. Followers of the excellent website, REDEF, will enjoy hearing from Jason Hirschhorn in TheGrill: Cable Unbundling, TV as Secondary Medium. Jason also interviews YouTube’s Robert Kyncl: Isn’t Sweating Competition, Touts Site’s ‘Astounding’ Growth. |
Christopher Slaughter
CEO
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Viacom and Hulu are renewing and expanding their partnership that gives the streaming service exclusive SVOD rights to shows from Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and MTV. Although the jury is still out on whether this is a good thing, it certainly highlights the intense competition among streaming services to nail down top-rated shows. And who is producing those shows? It doesn’t take Kirsten Dunst to tell you that it’s all happening in TV. |
Jane Buckthought
Advertising Consultant
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It’s not exactly been the quest for the Holy Grail (although, of course, King Arthur was Welsh), but the hunt for serious multiplatform audience measurement has certainly felt as challenging at times. However, recent industry developments could mean that the ability to track individual viewership across platforms — ranging from OTT to mobile to gaming devices, and including PVRs and linear TV — might be getting closer. |
John Medeiros
Chief Policy Officer
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Here’s an interesting look into a world of “Spy vs. Spy” on the internet. It seems that pro-copyright enforcers have been using VPNs to track pirate downloaders, so some of the torrent sites are retaliating by blocking VPN use. And meanwhile, the pro-piracy crowd is looking into how the pro-copyright crowd is using other technical tools to track them. Ah, and I thought everybody on the Free and Open Internet was high-minded and completely open… |
Mark Lay
Vice President, Singapore
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Facebook is starting to get more into the TV space. Last week they “took a page from YouTube’s playbook and started behaving like TV”. “You can be as big as you want, but for now at least, you’re going to need to speak the language of the oldest guys in the room.” And this week Facebook Enhances Tools for TV Producers to Engage Fans. “The new tools, which have been tested in early iterations with partners, will let TV production teams introduce live polling and voting, as well as provide the ability to more easily curate fan-submitted photos, videos and posts from Facebook and Instagram.” Is the fox charming their way into the henhouse? |
Kevin Jennings
Programme Director
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Rightster, the global digital video multiplatform network, has launched VideoSpring, a fully-searchable video licensing portal, for brands, agencies and producers to source trending content for their creative campaigns and programming. Rightster said the video library, which consists of one of the world’s largest collections of premium viral and user-generated content, offers marketers, creators and producers the ability to discover and license the best-known and most shared videos without a long and complex clearance process. |
Yegee Chun
Regulatory Assistant
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Businesses can now upload email addresses from their customer database into Google’s new advertising service, “Customer Match”, which allows Google to personalize ads across devices. No longer relying on device-constrained cookies, this will allow ad targeting for a specific user no matter if they are browsing on a computer, tablet, or smartphone. Apparently, Customer Match far exceeds Twitter and even beats Facebook in matching advertisers’ email lists with customers using Google products. Of course, just because a business CAN do something doesn’t mean they SHOULD do it. It would probably be illegal for businesses to use this service in some jurisdictions (including Hong Kong) without obtaining user consent to the transfer of personal data. |
