“YouTube is the only place where viewers can find everything they want, and we’re always looking for new ways to provide viewers a central destination to more easily find, watch, and share the content that matters most to them," YouTube said in a statement since shared with other media outlets. "We are currently running a small experiment that allows viewers to watch free ad-supported linear channels alongside the wide variety of content we offer on the platform.”

Producing more than $7 billion in revenue the third quarter alone, YouTube is the biggest ad-supported video company in the world, and its entry into the FAST market would be a big deal.

Every weekday we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, the always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company. (Scroll down to watch them all.)

A few highlights: H&M says “Let’s move” in a high-energy spot for its H&M Move sportswear line. (Jane Fonda, who has been helping to promote H&M Move since last summer, makes a brief appearance.) Maserati hypes its Grecale SUV. And Kristen Bell, the new mental health ambassador for Hers, talks about ending the stigma surrounding mental health care.

In the near-term, the GroupM experts implied the U.S. marketplace will become increasingly complicated by an array of alternative currency vendors pitching to be used as the primary or secondary basis for advertisers TV, as well as cross-media, advertising buys, which could create marketplace confusion.

Even with its big success, “Avatar” continues to spend well on national TV -- $3.03 million for the most recent two-week period, according to estimates from iSpot.tv.

Now some six months after it aired its first TV commercial, total national TV spend for "Avatar" is now at $34 million from 8,294 commercial airings, resulting in 2.2 billion impressions. The bulk of those impressions -- 436 million -- came from NFL football, college football, and the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

The other day, global creator commerce company Whalar announced a first-of-its-kind full-funnel measurement solution for the creator economy. The strategic collaboration includes, according to a release, some of today’s most forward-thinking platforms – Element Human, GWI, NetBase Quid, Nielsen, Tubular Labs, and VidMob.

Every weekday we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, the always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company.

Every weekday we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, the always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company.

CTV ad spending is riding a wave of consumer adoption and platform launches. By 2025, spending will reach $34.49 billion, more than double the 2021 total of $14.44 billion. This means that, as a function of overall digital video ad spending, CTV will approach one-third in 2025 from roughly one-quarter in 2021. This escalation is driven by increased cord-cutting, more time spent on CTV, device companies like Roku and Vizio doubling down on their ad businesses, and the proliferation of ad-supported video platforms despite continued momentum in subscription-based ones

NBCUniversal has tapped iSpot.tv, a company that aims to help advertisers verify the reach and impact of their TV and streaming ads, as it seeks to better quantify how consumers are viewing ads across different mediums.

Firm data is hard to come by, but iSpotTV numbers showed a ~50% bump in national TV ad impressions for sportsbooks in NFL Week 18, compared to Week 17.

That jump might have been driven by New York, though iSpot’s John Casillo warned it could stem from increased viewership around the final week of the regular season.

In New York specifically, FanDuel accounted for 34% of TV ad impressions in the first nine days of January. That was slightly ahead of Caesars (29%) and DraftKings (27%.)

“This is not a shift away from one panel-based system to another, but a definitive step toward embracing the metrics brands already use to evaluate media companies,” said Kelly Abcarian, executive vice-president of measurement & impact at NBCUniversal Advertising and Partnerships.

“We have an obligation to deliver consumers a great experience and an obligation to our customers and shareholders to utilise measurement systems that adequately capture the reach, attention, and outcomes we deliver.

The Times report states that this is more than just a bluff, as NBCU is hoping a successful test leads to switching to iSpot.tv’s data going forward. That would certainly mark a major shift, and it’s all tied back to NBC and other networks being dissatisfied with how Nielsen calculates non-traditional viewing. Considering that’s a growing portion of viewership, especially in key demographics, and that it’s only going to be more important going forward.

NBCUniversal is moving forward with its plans to expand its measurement partnerships, announcing a multi-year deal with iSpot.tv that will see the measurement company become one of its preferred partners for quantifying and unifying cross-screen media consumption, reach and impressions. iSpot.tv’s ability to support NBCU’s audience verification initiatives will be put to the test in what the company called a “massive pilot” to include both the 2022 Olympic Winter Games and Super Bowl LVI. iSpot.tv, which touts the ability to provide second-by-second measurement of ads and verified impressions for programming and advertising, will be expected to deliver metrics that can be used as an alternative currency among buyers and sellers.

NBCUniversal has named iSpot.tv a preferred measurement partner in a multiyear pact that touches across its One Platform portfolio, according to an announcement.

The media giant will enact a "massive pilot" of iSpot.tv's audience verification tools for ad campaigns and program ratings around upcoming broadcasts of the 2022 Olympic Winter Games and Super Bowl LVI. Agency partner Publicis Media is the first media holding company to test the new measurement suite.

Chevrolet’s “Adventure Is Everywhere” ad highlighting multiple Silverado models racked up over 196.8 million TV ad impressions per iSpot.tv, making it the single most-seen automotive spot during the week of Jan. 2-8. A quarter of those impressions came from NFL games, while The Big Bang Theory, The Kelly Clarkson Show and Jeopardy! each delivered about 7 million TV ad impressions. iSpot’s Creative Assessment survey data showed the ad had 90% brand recognition (the percentage of survey respondents who remembered it was a Chevrolet ad after watching it), above the automaker industry norm of 80%.

The real impetus for this much-needed development however, can be found in these two quotes.The first is from Paramount Global President John Halley via Adweek: “If there’s a narrative that we want to unwind, it’s that NBC is an iSpot shop and Paramount’s a VideoAmp shop. We’re both working towards enabling both of those things in addition to Comscore and Nielsen One.”

Conversely, new premium streaming channels have been getting ample brand exposure on their sister traditional TV networks.

For instance, NBCUniversal’s Peacock TV received $193.6 million in national TV brand media value (exposure on NBCU networks) over the last 12 months from on-air promo advertising, according to iSpot.tv -- all while Peacock spent $26.6 million on paid advertising during that period.

Samba, along with companies like iSpot and VideoAmp, is looking to take share from Nielsen, especially given the mounting need for clarity about viewership of programming and advertising in the streaming era. Traditional metrics from the linear era, while never supremely reliable, at least functioned as a universal standard for the industry. In the streaming era, there is much less universally accepted data in circulation.

Whalar, the creator economy, empowering users with the same type of measurement they use for paid media, but now for creator marketing. The launch is in collaboration with platforms like Element Human, GWI, NetBase Quid, Nielsen, Tubular Labs and VidMob.

Unlike mobile, where audiences are conveniently split between Android and iOS, people have all sorts of CTV platforms in their households. On top of that, CTV devices are often used by multiple people, complicating the process of targeting, frequency capping and measurement.

This complexity can lead to accidents. Take the recent case where GroupM and iSpot reported a $1 billion loss of ad money because the devices serving the ads were switched off. In this case, neither the apps nor the streaming devices could have known whether the smart TVs were on or off.