TV ad tech firm, Madhive, has appointed tech veteran Darien Ford as its Chief Technology Officer. In this role, Ford will oversee Madhive’s engineering practice to build on the market adoption of the company’s next-generation TV advertising software infrastructure, which powers billions of local and regional streaming ad placements for its clients each week.

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.

An estimated $390,659 of national TV advertising, according to iSpot.tv, has been spent so far by the political action committee since March 31 -- with 119 commercial airings through April 6, amounting to 103.9 million impressions.

Similar estimates for online gambling/gaming have been reported via iSpot.tv this year -- $119.9 million in TV spend and 11 billion impressions.

The biggest event of the year was around the NFL’s Super Bowl in mid-February where over $15 million was spent in total national TV advertising.

Wunderkind is a performance marketing company that works with brands to analyze their customers’ behavior and then deliver individualized messaging. The company secured $76 million in Series C funding that will be put toward company growth and product expansion. With this new capital, Wunderkind has raised more than $135 million in financing to date.

Kantar BrandZ, the organisation that ranks and showcases the most valuable brands across six continents, has released its 2023 Top 40 most valuable Australian brands of today report, with brands ranging from new arrivals to those that have been part of Australia’s brandscape for generations.

The process now involves a change to the way permissions are granted to the branded content tool. Brands must now log their Instagram account and grant access to their account (often through a third-party service like CreatorIQ).

“Overall, the QSR results showed a very clear embrace of creator-led marketing strategies that support brands’ broader marketing efforts, as well as the massive opportunity that exists in the industry to better engage with the creator community,” said Brit Starr, SVP of Strategy at CreatorIQ. “Despite Starbucks and McDonalds existing at opposite ends of the TV ad-spend spectrum, they were nearly neck-and-neck in creator-led EMV totals.”

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.

In 2022, Disney’s 20th Century Fox spent $84.7 million in national TV advertising: For its Marvel Entertainment, it spent $61.2 million; Disney Pixar, $29.0 million; Walt Disney Animation, $20.7 million; and Walt Disney Pictures, $1.0 million, according to iSpot.tv.

Songtradr Inc made an agreed bid for music streaming technology developer 7digital Group (LON: 7DIG) and the 0.695p a share cash offer values the company at £19.4m. The share price had not been at that level since September 2021.

USA Network snuck into second place with new competitive reality series Race to Survive Alaska, while Food Network snagged third, fourth and fifth to promote, respectively, Ciao House, Spring Baking Championship and Tournament of Champions.

So Nielsen will continue to serve as the TV ad industry’s ruler for this year’s upfront. But the industry will continue to inch toward alternatives to Nielsen’s traditional age-and-gender-based measurement.

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.

Along with the official sponsors, among the top-spending advertisers were NetJets, State Farm, Sleep Number, Reese’s, Amazon Studios and Capital One, per iSpot.tv estimates. Disney also used the Slam as a means to promote ABC’s afternoon broadcast of the NCAA Division I women’s basketball championship between LSU and Iowa. All told, the Slam doubled the amount of ad revenue ESPN collected during the previous week’s analogous time slot.

Nearly three out of four marketers think their organization excels at personalization, but only 34% of consumers think the same, according to a March 2022 report by Sailthru. In other words, not only do organizations struggle to foster personalized experiences, but they also struggle to understand their customers well enough to know they're missing the mark.

There’s a familiar name at the top of iSpot.tv’s top 10 drug ad spending list in AbbVie’s Rinvoq, but newly approved meds from the likes of Pfizer, Bristol Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly are storming up the rankings.

Rinvoq, AbbVie’s big-selling JAK inhibitor, took its normal top spot in March with a spend of $32.4 million for the month, up from $24.8 million from February.

Publishers have always competed for readers, and never has that competition been more fierce than in the digital age.

Clearly, much of this competition is focused on creating quality content. Without that, there’s no step two. But content alone won’t get the job done, no matter how great it is. Like any other business, publishers need to focus on the reader experience as well.

Send regular newsletters that include updates on new app features, promotions, and other relevant content.

Use email automation tools such as Mailchimp, Constant Contact, or Campaign Monitor to personalize and schedule your email campaigns.

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.