Too Much TV?

Roku's on fire. Disney's smartening up to streaming, from Hulu to ESPN to infinity and beyond. Makes sense-- more than half of viewers watch their favorite show from an online source. And apparently, there's too much TV on TV, anyway.Will an intimate gathering hosted by Ms. Linda Yaccarino fix the industry's "measurement woes?" NBC's changing up the metrics used to sell Olympic spots while holding tight to NFL advertisers-- even if protests are hurting ratings.In our humble opinion the solution is ACR-- wait, AC-wut? A buzzword with complexities far below the surface, Wolk spells out what Automatic Content Recognition means for advertisers, TV manufacturers, entertainers, etc-- still curious? In a myth-buster, ball-buster mood? Hit us up to be on the distro list for our ACR White Papers: yoTVREV@gmail.com.5 Key Questions To Ask An ACR Data Wielding Vendor [Forbes]One of the more clever ways companies fake reach and relevance is to conflate the number of ACR-connected devices with active devices. Just because a smart TV with ACR technology is connected to the internet, doesn’t mean it’s active—users have to turn on that ACR client and continue to keep it turned on. Many don’t. Similarly, many have relegated the TV to a spare room or vacation home where it is rarely, if ever, connected. So the third question to ask is how many connected smart TVs that are collecting ACR data are doing so actively, at some level of frequency.NBCUniversal Calls for Media Summit to Fix Industry’s Advertising, Measurement Woes [Variety]NBCUniversal has asked top media buyers, executives at rival TV networks and digital-media outlets, video distributors, ad-tech platforms and even a handful of advertisers to come together on November 28, according to five people familiar with the matter, to talk about a legion of problems the industry just can’t seem to dispel.NBCU Ad Chief Says Anthem Protests Hurt NFL Ratings, But Brands Hold Firm [Deadline]NBCUniversal’s head of advertising, Linda Yaccarino, said that no advertisers have bailed on NFLbroadcasts on NBC. Nevertheless, she does believe anthem protests by players have hurt ratings.NBC to Air 450 Hours of Olympic Coverage on Cable [B&C]NBC is selling this Olympic based on Nielsen’s People 2+ metric instead of households. The People 2+ is more comparable to digital metrics, and NBC is selling its TV and digital coverage of the games together. NBC is also selling based on Total Audience Delivery, which includes both TV viewership and online and mobile.Disney stock drops on lackluster earnings—cable networks take a hit [Fast Co]Disney’s cable networks business took a big hit in the quarter, with operating income decreasing by $15 million compared to the same period last year, hitting $1.2 billion. Disney blamed its channel Freeform for the poor cable showings, which was “driven by lower advertising revenue primarily due to a decrease in average viewership.”ESPN’s new streaming service will launch in the spring and be called “ESPN Plus” [TechCrunch]The service will be called ESPN Plus, and live inside a new app that will be launched by the sports broadcasting network in spring 2018 – much earlier than Disney’s more general subscription streaming service that will launch in 2019.Disney’s Hulu play could turn out to be like Facebook buying Instagram [CNBC]Owning a majority stake in Hulu prepares Disney perfectly to be one of the big players in over-the-top video.Roku soars 26% after smashing first earnings report [TechCrunch]He’s referring to the revenue generated from advertising, licensing and revenue shares with Amazon, Hulu, Netflix and YouTube. Roku’s devices are aimed at cord cutters. Its digital streaming platforms compete with Apple TV, Google Chromecast and more.Research: 52% of Viewers Now Watch Their Favorite Show From An Online Source [VideoNuze] DEJA VOODOO: ESPN GOES OLD-SCHOOL WITH A 'LIVE' COMMERCIAL IN 'SPORTSCENTER' [Ad Age]The latest salvo in the never-ending battle to dissuade TV viewers from skipping out on the ads, live commercials tend to reemerge in cycles. This February, Snickers rolled the dice on a live spot that aired during Fox's presentation of the year's most-watched TV event: Super Bowl LI. NBC in 2016 incorporated live messaging for Oreo, Toyota and Reddi-wip into its broadcast of the musical "Hairspray Live," and that same year saw Target sponsor a four-minute real-time Emmy Awards break featuring singer Gwen Stefani.Survey: 49 Percent Of People Think There’s Too Much TV To Watch [HuffPost]More odd, perhaps, is that the survey found that 73 percent of people believe “more of my total TV time is spent watching shows I really like,” down from 81 percent in 2014.AT&T Pushes Forward on New Advertising Company, As DOJ Presses on Time Warner [Variety]AT&T on Thursday named Kirk McDonald the chief marketing officer of a new advertising and analytics unit it has set up to work with the new Time Warner properties. In August, AT&T said it intended”to build an automated advertising platform that can do for premium video and TV advertising what the search and social media companies have done for digital advertising.”Booking.com Rethinks Digital Advertising in Favor of TV [Skift]The company plans to increase spending on TV by 55 percent, CFO Daniel Finnegan said, adding that the larger spend on television will occur over the next few quarters and have an adverse impact return on investment in the short term.The investments in TV advertising would build a foundation for the future.Nielsen To Incorporate Comcast Set-Top Data In Local TV Ratings [MediaPost]“With this agreement, Comcast becomes the fourth major cable or satellite provider whose non-personally identifiable TV viewing data is being integrated with Nielsen’s comprehensive panel data,” Nielsen stated about the deal -- but it did not disclose how much of Comcast’s data would be incorporated into its local ratings reports, or how it would be represented in its mix of data.AppNexus, Tru Optik Deal Delivers Audiences In 75 Million OTT Households: Tru Optik’s Andre Swanston [Beet.tv]“It’s going to be the first time in the industry that publishers can pre-segment their connected TV inventory, even outside of registered user data, against third-party segments, demos from comScore, their own first-party data, and then have private marketplace deal ID’s to control who has access to that inventory,” Swanston says. In the next 90 days Tru Optik will be revealing more partnerships, in keeping with its original go-to-market strategy.