Hot List: Big Things Can Be Easy To Overlook

Data & MeasurementAdvertising
Written By Jason Damata

“In a world where consumers have more content choices than ever, discovery becomes just as important as the content itself.” — VIZIO’s Ashley Hovey

Sunday morning thought: what big transformations are we all missing here?

It’s easy to overlook some macro trends because it’s so hard to keep up in a fragmented world. Sometimes the play by play of the horse race for media attention that we fail to talk about the horses or the gambling infrastructure that sits on top of this. Until one moment, BAM!, gambling is a runaway train.

This happened with AI, when 10 years ago we couldn’t get much attention to the promise of machine learning for our clients and now it drives the American economy. It happened with video gaming when everyone knew there was a lot of time being spent and all of the sudden there was an ecosystem bigger than TV and watching people play video games became a huge pillar inside of YouTube. And it happened in streaming when Roku boxes and dongles went from being cute “over the top” supplements to forcing the entire TV industry to map out how they drive attention at the mercy of a TV OS.

Well, I could be wrong but I think it’s happening again with the re-bundling of entertainment writ large and a new media oligopoly emerging. Not one that solves fragmentation for us normies, but one that changes what we see and feel all the same.

Retail giants now reach living room screens with better offers. Social platforms now control a huge share of monetizable attention. The legacy media companies are folding into each other to compete. But few in entertainment are talking about how agentic platforms are sucking time and attention with better responsive experiences and purer signals on consumer intent than anyone (ever). Where does that go?

In TV, everyone is focused on Paramount. Its debt, its new leaders, the economic impact on studios. But so few are including the fact that the Ellisons together now have a solid footing in TikTok and enough IP under management that they have a chance to completely re-design a new form of cross platform entertainment. One that suppresses competition, while supercharging preferred content. Given TikTok isn’t just one of the biggest time sucks among young people, it’s also one of the fastest e-commerce platforms in history, there is a non-zero chance that Ellisons’ Larry+David utilize their raw materials and infrastructure to give YouTube a run for its money.

But what do I know? Maybe I’m focused on the wrong horse.

This week’s originals below. As always, thanks for being here.

LG Ad Solutions Partners With Best Buy Ads to Connect Ad Inventory Platforms [Media Play News]

  • TL;DR: Advertisers can now buy LG’s TV inventory through Best Buy Ads, paired with Best Buy’s first-party shopper and device-ownership data.

CTV ad leaders at Advertising Week call for better measurement frameworks [eMarketer]

  • “CTV should be … on the hook for business outcomes and attributions,” Nicole Scaglione, vice president of CTV/OTT and OLV at PubMatic, said during a Tuesday panel.

Carat, NBCUniversal Launch Agentic Planning Tool For Upfront Buys [TVNewsCheck]

  • TL;DR: Carat, NBCUniversal, FreeWheel and Newton have introduced a programmatic agentic media solution designed to help advertisers optimize upfront investments across NBCUniversal inventory.

TiVo One Ad Platform Tops 6.3 Million Monthly Active Users [Media Play News]

  • TL;DR: TiVo One passed 6.3 million monthly active users as of June, up 70% year over year, while TiVo Ads revenue grew 54% in Q2.

Paramount completes $110B Warner Bros. merger to form Skydance [NBC News]

  • TL;DR: Paramount closed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on October 6, creating a combined company called Skydance that trades on the NYSE as SKYD.

The Emmys Move to Prime Video in 6-Year Deal, TV Academy Chairman Explains Why [TheWrap]

  • TL;DR: The Emmys will stream exclusively on Prime Video through 2033, free in more than 240 countries, ending a 31-year rotation among the broadcast networks.

Why Retailers, Streamers and Ad Tech All Want Their Own Roku [The Streaming Wars]

  • TL;DR: Walmart, Best Buy, Amazon and The Trade Desk are each going after a piece of the TV home screen, while Fox is paying $22B to own Roku outright.

Hot Links

Hanlon’s Local Links

Jason Damata

Jason is the founder and CEO of Fabric Media, a media incubator and talent consortium. The company serves leading-edge TV disruptors- from data and analytics platforms to TV networks to emotional measurement companies. Damata has traveled the country for C-SPAN, where he worked with MSOs, produced educational political programming. He has served as CMO of Bebo when it was the world's 3rd largest social network, led marketing for Trendrr until it was acquired by Twitter and helped build the world's largest LIVE broadcast offering at explore.org where he built up a global syndication network. He is an analyst for companies on the edge of TV innovation such as iSpot, Inscape, Canvs, TNT and more.

http://linkedin.com/in/jasondamata
Next

Live Sports Streaming Has Momentum. Here’s What Needs to Happen Next