Tag: Streaming

Sydney, Australia – Independent omnichannel sell-side advertising platform Magnite has announced the launch of its singular supply side platform (SSP) Magnite Streaming, which combines technology from the Magnite CTV and SpotX platforms.

Magnite Streaming empowers media owners to maximise the value of their assets holistically across live and VOD inventory, CTV and OTT environments, and addressable linear, while gaining insights to more efficiently and effectively drive their businesses. 

Some of its CTV and OTT clients include Nine, TVNZ, Emtek Digital and Samsung Ads. Magnite Streaming also provides advertisers with unparalleled access to CTV and OTT inventory, audience targeting capabilities and real-time reporting.

The SSP’s features include comprehensive seller deal management capabilities to monetise all types of long-form video content, inventory curation tools purpose-built for video such as advanced podding, frequency capping and reserved/upfront inventory management, and multi-faceted audience activation features including seller defined audiences, third-party data integrations, and secure data matching, amongst others.

Juliette Stead, head of JAPAC at Magnite, commented, “Magnite’s combined expertise across all digital video formats makes us the strongest omnichannel technology provider for premium publishers to count on. Our experienced team is able to effectively address the diverse opportunities and challenges that arise in video advertising, having executed many exciting streaming video campaigns in partnership with leading broadcasters and streaming publishers throughout JAPAC, such as Nine, TVNZ, Emtek Digital and Samsung Ads.” 

She added, “Through Magnite Streaming, we’re reinforcing our commitment to address the unique needs of our clients and helping set them up for long term success to propel the progression of ad-supported CTV and OTT.”

The recent SSP launch comes after the recent news of Magnite’s global, two-year expanded partnership with Disney Advertising.

Manila, Philippines – Disney+, the subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service under The Walt Disney Company, is finally coming to the Philippines on November 17.

Disney+ coming to the Philippines comes after a year of the platform announcing its added expansion in the Asia-Pacific region.

The platform first appeared in APAC through its ANZ launch in November 2019, followed by the Indian launch in April 2020 through Disney Star’s Indian SOV Hotstar. It then launched in Japan via a deal with NTT Docomo in June 2020, in Indonesia in September 2020.

In 2021, Disney+ launched in Singapore (February 2021), Malaysia and Thailand (June 2021), as well as the countries of South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan in November 2021. Meanwhile, launch in Vietnam is slated for early 2023.

The Philippine launch also comes months after Disney+ has announced an adtech deal with The Trade Desk in its move to offer ad-supported plans for its subscriptions in the future.

Singapore – Popular streaming platform Netflix is finally rolling out its ad-supported plan on November 3 this year, starting off with a price of US$6.99 a month, three dollars less than the typical US$9.99 a month subscription plan. 

The ad-supported plan will first roll out in the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Through the new plan, users will be presented with a much smaller library of movies and series, and will have on average 4-5 minutes of ads per hour, ranging from 15 to 30 seconds each. Users will not be able to download their favourite shows for offline viewing.

In order to roll out their ad-supported plan, Netflix has partnered with DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science to verify the viewability and traffic validity of their ads starting in Q1 2023. Ads can be specifically targeted by the geographical location of the viewer and the genre they are watching.

Mark Zagorski, CEO, DoubleVerify, said, “Over the past decade, the team at Netflix has done a tremendous job building one of the most popular streaming services in the world. As we continue to expand our coverage across premium video and CTV environments, DV is thrilled to extend our third-party verification solutions across their platform, ensuring campaigns meet key quality criteria while maximizing performance and outcomes for advertisers”.

Meanwhile, Lisa Utzschneider, CEO at IAS, commented, “We are excited to partner with Netflix as they introduce their much-anticipated ad-supported tier that will dramatically increase the global supply of CTV advertising inventory. IAS provides marketers with the tools necessary to monitor the quality of their media buys as they expand their CTV inventory. We look forward to offering essential coverage to brands and the ability to purchase ads on the Netflix platform with confidence.”

It should be recalled that Netflix tapped Microsoft as its adtech partner following their interest to launch an ad-supported plan.

“While it’s still very early days, we’re pleased with the interest from both consumers and the advertising community — and couldn’t be more excited about what’s ahead. As we learn from and improve the experience, we expect to launch in more countries over time,” Netflix said in a statement.

Netflix’s launch of the ad-supported plan comes after six months of their interest to launch said offering. The platform has been losing performance this year, resulting in a massive layoff and slow growth.

Singapore – Storyteller platform Viddsee is expanding its IP incubator Viddsee Labs in Asia-Pacific following several deals with filmmakers in the region to develop original titles for the platform. Interestingly, South Korean filmmaker Doyeon Noh is one of those who signed the deal.

The regional expansion of Viddsee Labs comes after the success of its first two ‘Shorts to Series’ projects in Singapore with ‘The Lying Theory’ and ‘Home Is Where the Heart Is’.

Viddsee Labs will work with a diverse group of storytellers from South Korea, Hong Kong/Canada, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines with Indonesia, making up most of the slate with six projects. 

Other titles from the ‘Shorts to Series’ project include Indonesian short horror film ‘Stratagem’, Indonesian social commentary film ‘In The Middle of Blackhole’, Indonesian comedy film ‘Opor-Operan’, Filipino post-apocalyptic film ‘LOLA’, Malaysian post-apocalyptic film ‘Hawa’, Singaporean film ‘How To Bury a Dead Cat’, Singaporean original series ‘The Multiverse At 13 Hill Ave’, Indonesian tragic comedy film ‘Antar Ibu Pulan’, Malaysian film ‘Longhouse Chronicles’, and a film adaptation of the book ‘Fallen Butterflies’.

As an IP incubator, Viddsee Labs helps facilitate the growth of Asian storytelling by identifying and developing talent and testbedded IPs. Its long-term goal is to support the region’s democratisation efforts of the creator economy by disrupting how stories and talents are discovered and developed; to bring more authentic Asian stories to bigger audiences.

Derek Tan, co-founder and chief commercial officer at Viddsee, said, “We recognise talent and IPs are key aspects of our storyteller community, which encouraged Viddsee Labs to tap upon its existing regional footprint to develop these diverse range of projects. Moving forward, we hope that this first look deal will help to further support Asian filmmaking talents by enabling entertainment partners to discover the next generation of storytellers with us.”

Manila, Philippines – Local live-streaming platform Kumu has announced a collaborative partnership with Huawei Ads through the platform’s ad agency AVOW to enhance user experience by improving advertising on the platform.

In this campaign, AVOW made use of the various ad solutions offered such as AppGallery, Petal Search and display ads to balance out their ad placements to generate the best results. 

Additionally, incorporating HUAWEI Ads multiple targeting options such as location, demographics and user behaviour into Kumu’s ad strategy brought about greater brand exposure to a diverse audience base. These features collectively amplified Kumu’s presence and audience conversion rates.

Furthermore, HUAWEI Ads Data Management Platform (DMP) provided Kumu with insights on the campaign performance through a comprehensive breakdown of key metrics. This information allows Kumu to make targeted improvements that will optimise their future ad strategies, with the help of AVOW.

Alex Tshering, chief growth officer at Kumu, said, “Thanks to the delivery of premium advertisements on HUAWEI Ads, Kumu has grown to be one of the highest grossing applications in the markets. Our partnership with HUAWEI Ads have helped us to generate leads far greater than our initial campaign goals.”

Based on activity data gathered from algorithms across all Huawei devices, HUAWEI Ads identified and recommended potential audiences who fit Kumu’s target profile, which ultimately helped them broaden their target audience and user base. In addition to growing Kumu’s user base and maximising its ad performance, the algorithm detects and filters out fraudulent inventory, effectively countering the issue of inflated ad performance metrics.

Meanwhile, Rei Xiao, director of mobile ecosystem business growth at Huawei Asia Pacific Region, commented, “Our partnership with Kumu highlights our commitment to delivering high quality ads that drive user growth and engagement. We have dedicated teams that work closely with our clients to get the best returns on their investment. We greatly look forward to deepening our strong partnership with Kumu, and to continue working as one team to meet their business objectives.”

Singapore – Streaming giants Netflix and Disney+ are going head-to-head with their ad-supported subscriptions this year by announcing its latest adtech tie-ups. Disney+ has tied up with The Trade Desk while Netflix has tied up with Microsoft.

Both streaming platforms previously operate on an ad-free subscription basis, but have shifted to these ad-supported ones following competition and expansion to other regions, including Asia-Pacific. Disney+ had announced its intention to do so by late this year, and Netflix as well after reporting substantial loss in subscriptions in 2021.

In the tie-up between Disney Advertising and The Trade Desk, advertisers can access Disney’s portfolio of premium supply, rooted in secure data collaboration and powered by automation through Disney’s Clean Room technology.

In addition, said agreement will enable a first-of-its kind integration between Disney’s proprietary ‘Audience Graph’ and the open-source identity framework, Unified ID 2.0, within a secure environment. As a result, buyers will be able to discover more addressable, biddable inventory across the Disney portfolio, all validated by Disney’s proprietary Audience Graph.

Rita Ferro, president for advertising sales at Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution, said, “Disney Advertising had a bold vision backed by proven results from the start, and we’re thrilled to continue to deliver on our commitment to power greater automation and addressability for our customers through this expanded deal with The Trade Desk.”

She added, “We have spent years investing in our data and technology strategy to create innovative solutions for advertisers to engage their audiences with greater precision and accuracy in a privacy-focused way. This first-to-market capability sets the stage to empower access to the Disney portfolio, validated by powerful audience insights, in a way that’s automated and accessible.”

Meanwhile, Tim Sims, chief revenue officer at The Trade Desk, commented, “With this agreement, Disney and The Trade Desk are pioneering a new approach to audience addressability in a post-cookie environment. By creating interoperability between Unified ID 2.0 and Disney’s Audience Graph, we are unlocking the opportunity for our customers to activate their first-party data at scale programmatically, against some of the world’s most premium content, across all channels. As a result, advertisers will be able to deliver relevant advertising, while ensuring consumers have more control of their own privacy.”

On the other hand, the partnership between Netflix and Microsoft is that it allows marketers to look to Microsoft for their advertising needs and will have access to the Netflix audience and premium connected TV inventory. All ads served on Netflix will be exclusively available through the Microsoft platform.

Greg Peters, COO at Netflix, said, “Microsoft has the proven ability to support all our advertising needs as we together build a new ad-supported offering. More importantly, Microsoft offered the flexibility to innovate over time on both the technology and sales side, as well as strong privacy protections for our members.”

He added, “It’s very early days and we have much to work through. But our long-term goal is clear: More choice for consumers and a premium, better-than-linear TV brand experience for advertisers. We’re excited to work with Microsoft as we bring this new service to life.”

United States – Global streaming giant Netflix has announced its second wave of layoffs amidst its weak performance this year. This new wave of layoffs included 300 staffers–the majority of which are from the US and the rest are from other countries.

Netflix had already laid off around 150 employees in May after reporting the platform lost around 200,000 subscribers in its most recent quarter.

“While we continue to invest significantly in the business, we made these adjustments so that our costs are growing in line with our slower revenue growth,” Netflix told Reuters in an exclusive statement.

In another report from Reuters, Netflix said that they are now in talks with several companies for advertising partnerships, including reportedly with Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google; and with Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal for marketing tie-ups.

“We’re not adding ads to Netflix as you know it today. We’re adding an ad tier for folks who say ‘hey, I want a lower price and I’ll watch ads’,” Ted Sarandos, co-CEO at Netflix, said during the recently-concluded Cannes Lions 2022.

Netflix’s move into ad-supported subscription stems from their first quarter 2022 earnings call in April this year, where they reported the company’s slow growth.

“Our revenue growth has slowed considerably as our results and forecast [show]. Streaming is winning over linear, as we predicted, and Netflix titles are very popular globally. However, our relatively high household penetration – when including the large number of households sharing accounts – combined with competition, is creating revenue growth headwinds,” the company said in its letter to shareholders.

During the earnings call, Wilmot Reed Hastings, co-CEO at Netflix revealed that one way to increase the price spread is advertising on low-end plans and to have lower prices with advertising. This is despite his reluctance to deal with advertising complexities.

“I’m a bigger fan of consumer choice. And allowing consumers who would like to have a lower price and are advertising-tolerant get what they want makes a lot of sense. So that’s something we’re looking at now,” Hastings said.

Singapore – Sports content provider beIN Asia Pacific has tapped media and content management solutions provider Globecast to provide multifaceted media processing and delivery services to the sports provider’s Asia-Pacific division, including playout and OTT platform hosting.

Through the partnership, Globecast will be providing a wide range of services including cloud and on-prem playout, sports contribution services and content management. The company is also supplying satellite, fibre and IP streaming distribution. Globecast will also host the sports provider’s OTT platform for the region as well as providing the ability to create and distribute pop-up channels as and when required.

Shakunt Malhotra, managing director of Globecast in Asia, said, “Our cutting-edge facilities and technology setup is designed to fully support the needs of valuable, fast-moving sports content. We are very pleased that a company of beIN SPORTS reach and scale recognises the value we bring to the market across multiple services all managed by a single, integrated global supplier. We will ensure each and every fan gets the most immersive experience possible.”

Meanwhile, Sabil Salim, vice president for media technology and operations at beIN Asia Pacific, commented, “As a major sports broadcaster with a wide array of live events, we had to ensure that we partner with a media services company that can meet our requirements and align with our goals. This isn’t only about the very impressive technical capabilities Globecast has demonstrated, it’s also about the fact the company has a significant background in sports.” 

He added, “This is very much about the quality of the content – vital to sports fans – and the fast, flexible way this can be gathered, processed and played out across multiple languages and cultures. They genuinely understand the demands of sports fanatics, which is at the heart of what we do.”

beIN APAC is part of the beIN Media Group and is headquartered in Singapore. It operates in 11 countries across the Asia-Pacific region – Australia, New Zealand, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Timor-Leste and Singapore.

Bangkok, Thailand – LaLiga Pass, the over-the-top (OTT) platform offering of Spanish football division LaLiga, will be made available to fans in Thailand, giving them access to LaLiga Santander and LaLiga SmartBank matches.

LaLiga Pass has also been made available to fans in Indonesia as part of the Asian offering of the OTT platform.

Through LaLiga Pass, fans in both countries will become the first in the world to have LaLiga Pass available for their mobile devices and televisions, a step that allows LaLiga to get even closer to its fans, making them owners of the content and allowing them to enjoy an increasingly personalised fan experience.

Along with live coverage of every LaLiga Santander and LaLiga SmartBank match, LaLiga Pass users will also have access to match round-ups, documentaries, videos of the best goals and saves, interviews and other exclusive content designed for each country.

In addition, each matchday will feature three LaLiga Santander matches narrated in the local language, something that only LaLiga Pass users will be able to enjoy.

Alfredo Bermejo, digital strategy director at LaLiga, said, “One of the keys of the entertainment sector is to be able to offer a high degree of personalisation, to speak to each fan in their own language and to provide them with quality content adapted to their tastes and needs. We believe that LaLiga Pass, and all the technology behind it, is a big step in this direction and will be a great option for those who want to enjoy LaLiga and everything that surrounds it.”

Furthermore, LaLiga Pass will also represent a new business model that will both improve the fan experience and attract more LaLiga fans as well as provide a technology that can be commercialised and exploited by other companies through LaLiga Tech.

Oscar Mayo, executive director at LaLiga, commented, “LaLiga Pass is a logical step in our audiovisual strategy. Over the last few years we have strived to improve the experience for fans watching LaLiga from different parts of the world and we now want to take things a step further by allowing them to have more control over what they watch, offering more and better content, and telling more stories around LaLiga and its clubs in those countries.”

New York, USA – NBCUniversal, a popular global media and technology company, has unveiled a new partnership with Anzu.io, an in-game advertising platform to further enrich NBCUniversal’s capabilities in growing entertainment areas like gaming and esports. 

NBCUniversal enlists the strategic partnership with Anzu as a global sales partner and the exclusive third-party seller in the US and UK. Now, NBCUniversal’s clients will be able to run non-intrusive, in-game ads across Anzu’s cross-platform gaming inventory— which spans mobile, PC and consoles—and use interactive, data-driven, contextual, and programmatic in-game advertising solutions, all with the high standards of privacy and brand safety they’ve come to expect from NBCUniversal’s One Platform.

Moreover, partners will also have access to Anzu’s full suite of leading adtech integrations as well as its robust measurement—including ad viewability, brand lift measurement, audience verification, data enrichment, and fraud detection—powered by Anzu’s partnerships with trusted industry leaders like Moat, Comscore, Human, Lumen, and Kochava.

Krishan Bhatia, president & chief business officer of NBCUniversal, shared, “NBCUniversal continues to reach consumers at scale on any platform and on every screen. In addition to streaming, gaming is one of the fastest growing ways to reach young audiences.” 

“This partnership with Anzu will allow our marketers to engage with an audience of over three billion gamers worldwide, and we’re only getting started,” Bhatia added.

As part of the deal, Anzu will be able to access the power of NBCUniversal’s One Platform, including its client and agency relationships, and marketing teams. Meanwhile, Anzu’s cross-platform ad monetization solution will help game developers generate significant revenue while respecting their players and adding to the overall gaming experience.

Itamar Benedy, co-founder & ceo of Anzu, commented, “We’re excited to bring our best-in-class tech and exclusive inventory to one of the world’s leading ad sales teams. This new partnership means more brands and agencies will be able to take advantage of our solution to reach an engaged and untapped audience within the world’s most popular titles while preserving the gamer experience. We also believe, over the next few years, most Fortune 500 brands will incorporate gaming into their ad strategies and the partnership with NBCUniversal brings us a step closer to this becoming a reality.”

This latest partnership announcement comes in the run up to NBCUniversal’s tech developer conference, ONE22 taking place on March 22nd, where the company is expected to announce its latest capabilities and partnerships in the data, technology, and measurement space.