Hot List: Biting The Hand That Feeds You

Written By Alan Wolk

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” — Flannery O’Connor

In a surprising move for a show that gets a whole lot of traction from people watching YouTube clips the next morning, SNL went after YouTube advertising hard in their cold open this week, calling out both the randomness of the interruptions and the low-rentness of most of the ads.

It’s a reminder that while more people may watch YouTube on their TVs than Netflix, the platform still very much feels like something that is not TV. 

For now.

This may prove to be scant solace for streaming companies though, if they can’t get their acts together and figure out measurement, identity, transparency and a whole host of other issues that plague the industry.

Because Google, if nothing else, seems to have all that under control and they are most definitely gunning for all those TV ad dollars, given that YouTube is, by their account, TV.

So what’s a streamer to do?

Well for starters, there is contextual targeting, which holds great promise as a way for CTV to get out from under these issues and you can learn all about it in our FREE Special Report—which you can download here.

It will make great reading during those two weeks of Christmas, Hanukkah and New Years where most of us will be taking a well-deserved break before hurtling headlong into CES.

Big thanks to sponsors Anoki, Wurl, Gracenote, IRIS TV and KERV ai for their support.

Here’s what you missed in TVREV this week:

Tim Hanlon explains why local TV news needs to move forward.

Alan Wolk suggests YouTube comes next after TV, and looks at the Omnicom/IPG merger in the Week in Review.

Eleanor Semeraro analyzes a new Inscape report, showing the shift to streaming only continued in 2024.

Brandon Katz helps us understand how despite having a smaller library, Apple TV+ still sees revenue increase… for now.

Trent Wheeler from Gracenote explains the value of a standardized taxonomy in the first Innovator Spotlight from our aforementioned contextual report.

Alan Wolk

Alan Wolk veteran media analyst, former agency executive, and author of "Over The Top. How The Internet Is (Slowly But Surely) Changing The Television Industry" is Co-Founder and Lead Analyst at TVREV where he helps networks, streamers, agencies, brands and ad tech companies navigate the rapidly shifting media landscape. A widely published columnist, speaker and industry thinker, Wolk has built a following of 300K industry professionals on LinkedIn by speaking plainly and intelligently about TV and the media business. He is also the guy who came up with the term “FAST.”

https://linktr.ee/awolk
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