Hearst Television announced today that its free streaming service, Very Local, is now available on Vizio smart TVs.

Very Local provides round-the-clock local news in Hearst Television markets nationwide. Viewers can also stream Very Local original series that encompass food, travel, adventure, dating and true crime—all with an emphasis on stories from viewers' hometowns, and content relatable to communities everywhere.

A few highlights: Nike serves up the “final round” of its continuing campaign featuring LeBron James battling Father Time. (Ad Age’s Adrianne Pasquarelli previewed the kickoff of the campaign on Oct. 18: “Nike pits LeBron James against Jason Momoa’s Father Time in new teaser.”) Crown Royal calls attention to its partnership with Uber Eats centered around a tip-matching activation. And Taco Bell hypes the return of Nacho Fries.

Live viewing hours are 10:00 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. EDT. Thanks to explore.org along with Polar Bears International, Frontiers North Adventures, Parks Canada and the Churchill Northern Studies Centre for coming together and making this available.

“Connected TVs continue to be a driving force behind turning the TV screen into a full-funnel marketing tool, bringing together the premium environment of television with all the tools digital has and more," said Adam Helfgott CEO of Madhive, which supports the SSAI protocol and began working with local broadcaster TEGNA in 2017 on streamlining campaign planning, buying, and measurement to give broadcast sales better returns. Through its self-service ad serving platform, advertisers can customize and automate the buying process into a single operating system that ad and operations teams can use to increase revenue.

PBI is monitoring polar bears across the Arctic, in part to determine the effects of climate change on animal behavior and physical condition, as well as population trends. One program has tracked polar bears fitted with GPS ear tags or collars that transmit locations to researchers to gain insight into the animals’ movements. York says, “Our understanding of polar bear biology, ecology and behavior is critical to long-term conservation and may aid on-the-ground efforts such as human-bear conflict management.”

“We have transformed from a hardware company to an integrated hardware and software entertainment company. By owning the hardware and distribution of entertainment as well as the data that flows through it allows us to really focus on the consumer experience the second VIZIO products are turned on.,” observes Katherine Pond, Group Vice President, Platform Content and Partnerships at VIZIO. “I think the genesis of WatchFree+ was really a result of us looking at what consumers wanted, and then figuring out a way that we could fill that need. WatchFree+ also gives us the opportunity to be able to serve ad supported entertainment that will meet the needs of our content, brand and agency advertiser partners.”

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: In a golf-themed spot, Delta Air Lines says, “No matter how good you get, there’s always room for better.” Barry Sanders, Baker Mayfield, Derrick Henry, Bryce Young and DeVonta Smith star in the latest installment of Nissan’s continuing “Nissan Heisman House” campaign. And an animated kangaroo and unicorn help hype Australia as a vacation destination in a Tourism Australia commercial with the tagline “Come and Say G’day.”

One hurdle for Felix is that Chili’s cut back on mass media marketing during the pandemic. The brand has barely spent on national TV ads since March 2020, according to data from iSpot. In 2019, Chili’s outlaid more than $38 million on television, but hasn’t allocated any this year. Meanwhile, competitors such as Applebee’s resumed spending.

However, being able to be part of saving the polar bears through our partnership with Polar Bears International in Canada really motivated us and pushed us to continue, and convinced us that this was the right move in starting Cloversoft.

Retail marketers should now be getting their contacts list in order. While it’s not the most exciting of tasks, it is essential. It’s also imperative to clean up contacts lists to improve email deliverability. According to Cheetah Digital’s 2022 Consumer Trends Index, email continues to sit comfortably as U.K. consumers’ preferred channel for receiving offers, content, incentives, and rewards from brands. In fact, when it comes to driving sales, email beats paid social and display advertising by up to 128% in the U.K.

VIZIO has introduced My Watchlist, a new feature that allows viewers to add their favorite TV shows and movies from different streaming services into one central location on VIZIO SmartCast TVs. To add shows and movies to My Watchlist, users can search for a title, actor or select the “+ Watchlist” button on the content detail page of each title. Once added, a dedicated My Watchlist row will appear on the SmartCast Home Screen. When ready to begin viewing, the user selects the preferred title and is immediately launched into the service.

Or maybe investors should have been listening to Lightshed Partners’ Rich Greenfield. For the past six months, the outspoken media analyst has been warning that studios that ignore their ad base in favor of streaming do so at their own peril. Data from iSpot.tv, which monitors television ad spending, showed that big companies like the Home Depot, Macy’s, and automakers Chevrolet, Toyota and Volkswagen have literally dropped off the nation’s top 60 major advertisers list.

Yukon-based Alysa McCall, Polar Bears International staff scientist and director of conservation outreach, is stationed in Churchill for the week living and working on a Tundra Buggy provided by Frontiers North Adventures.

“As the sea ice is declining in areas around the world, polar bears are spending more time on land like they are here in western Hudson Bay,” McCall said in a Zoom interview. “When polar bears spend more time on land, they get hungrier and are more likely to go searching for food where they shouldn’t — and that includes communities.”

CreatorIQ, the influencer marketing platform advancing the creator economy, today released exclusive insights into creator-led campaigns on TikTok, gained through its first-party data integration with the social video service.

CreatorIQ gave Datacenter Weekly a first look at new research that shows just how rapidly TikTok has been rising as a platform for brand-driven influencer marketing. A few key data points from a study it will release next week:

• More than half—52%—of brand campaigns tracked on the CreatorIQ platform included TikTok influencer activations in August 2022. That’s up from 31% in August 2021. (CreatorIQ works with more than 800 brands, as well as agencies and agency holding companies including WPP and IPG.)

With a 17.4% week-over-week increase in TV ad impressions, an energetic ad from Dodge zooms into first place from fifth the previous week on iSpot.tv’s ranking of most-seen car commercials. Major League Baseball games delivered the top impressions count, with more than double compared to last week.

An ad industry trade journal, iSpot.tv, listed shows which grew the most in terms of national impressions. WWE Friday Night SmackDown appeared in that list.

Alan Wolk is co-founder and lead analyst at the consulting firm TV[R]EV. He is the author of the best-selling industry primer, Over The Top: How The Internet Is (Slowly But Surely) Changing The Television Industry. Wolk frequently speaks about changes in the television industry, both at conferences and to anyone who’ll listen.

Wolk's Week in Review is an opinion column. It does not necessarily represent the opinions of Fierce Video.

On November 2019’s World Kindness Day, Upton announced her collaboration with Canada Goose to aid in polar bear conservation, writing in part, “It gives me great pleasure to work with Canada Goose and the Polar Bears International to secure a brighter future for Polar Bears.

According to Tribe Dynamics, in 2019, Higher Dose had over $348,000 of earned media value. In 2020, that figure rose to $1 million. “Higher Dose’s significant 197% EMV surge in 2020 stemmed largely from the addition of numerous high-profile creators to the brand’s community,” said Conor Begley, co-founder of Tribe Dynamics, a CreatorIQ company.

“Of the brand’s top-10 EMV-driving advocates in 2020, five were influencers with over 1 million followers, and all but one had mentioned the brand [on social media in] the previous year.” This trend was reflected across Higher Dose’s’s fanbase more broadly; after generating just 4% of the brand’s EMV in 2019, influencers with 1 million-plus followers accounted for 30% of its total EMV in 2020.