24 March, 2017

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Welcome to News Views, CASBAA’s news round-up culled from sources across the industry for the week ending Mar 24th. Curated by CASBAA, News Views keeps you in the loop. We always value your feedback, so tell us what you think!

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Christopher Slaughter

Christopher Slaughter

CEO

“Brand safety” is the buzzword — YouTube is the problem.  Starting last week in Britain, more than 250 brands joined a boycott of YouTube over concerns about their ads appearing next to offensive material; in the US, momentum grew, with AT&T, Verizon, and Johnson & Johnson all yanking their ads.  Google has apologised to its ad clients, but the company has already lost US$24 billion in valuation, with possible further downside.  The boycott comes as the advertising industry gathered for Advertising Week Europe, where the topic was discussed at length.  Worth noting, as the NY Times did, “…unlike television, with specific programming during which brands choose to run their advertising, YouTube mirrors the internet’s sprawl.”  Equally worth noting, while YouTube stands to lose millions in revenue, Google’s search advertising business is less likely to be hit.

 

Mark Lay

Mark Lay

Vice President, Singapore

News in the world of internet TV gave us a few stories of note this week. Are all those logins per subscription for OTT services leading to cord-cutting and revenue loss or an opportunity to access an elusive demographic, see: Password Sharing: Mountain or Mole Hill for ESPN and Other Sports TV Networks to Overcome? UBS analyst looks at the impact of streaming on the current players. Cable ops will mitigate revenue drop by selling more data, but satellite TV providers will be more challenged. Since the future business models will be shaped by viewer behaviour, Can Hulu Reprogram The Way We Watch TV? And to end off, would you like to know “five interesting tidbits about Netflix’s path to world domination”.

 

John Medeiros

John Medeiros

Chief Policy Officer

The annual FICCI FRAMES event had a major focus on piracy this year.  Various government spokesmen announced the intention to do more to repress online piracy.   And the state of Maharashtra said it would form a specialized police unit to give new impetus to anti-piracy enforcement.   But the most eye-opening info came in a new report from Verisite.   That company’s Chairman, Bharat Dube, denounced “badvertising”, which pays for piracy.   He said his company tracked over a thousand piracy websites in India, and found 73% of them were ad-supported.  (For those who like full texts, you can find the Verisite report on advertising on Indian piracy websites here.)

 

Kevin Jennings

Kevin Jennings

Vice President, Programme

Just when the cable guys thought they’d identified all the exigent threats to the pay TV business, savvy Dutch company Altice announced it is expanding in the advertising market with the takeover of TEADS, one of the largest online video advertising exchanges. TEADS is especially strong in Altice’s two largest markets, the US and France. Altice for its part is the fourth largest broadband provider in the US after its takeover Cablevision last year, and expects the that acquiring TEADS will help it develop better advertising to deliver to its fixed and mobile customers.  It is also a shot in the arm for the development for real time programmatic online ads being served. Altice will provide clients with data-driven, audience-based advertising solutions on multiscreen platforms including TV, digital, mobile and tablets.  All in all, this puts Altice in a very strong position to grow its global advertising platform and better monetize its core telecommunications access and content business.

 

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