The IAB’s annual digital content event, set for May 1-4, will feature several new presenters this year, including Americano Media, Cafe Media, DirecTV, LATV, Revry and Teads.

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.

Welcome to our weekly snapshot of TV by the numbers, highlighting the most-watched shows and networks for Mar. 27 through Apr. 2, with insights from Inscape, the currency-grade smart TV ACR data provider and data technology division of Vizio. Data is linear, live TV only and includes all episode types (new and reruns). Rankings are by percent share duration (i.e., time spent watching).

VIZIO is in the early growth phase to expand its user base. The connected TV ad spending is still on the rise at a high rate.
Management's guidance suggests a more competitive environment in Q12023 as it indicated further gross margin compression in the platform+ segment.
The company does not have a strong market position, and the potential upside return of VZIO stock is not high enough to offset the downside risk from the competition.

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.

VIZIO has expanded its partnership with AMC Networks to bring more of the network's critically acclaimed programming to the VIZIO ad-supported ecosystem.

This move is expected to benefit both viewers and advertisers. The partnership expands on the recent addition of the AMC+ premium app, and the available AMC content on WatchFree+ which now includes nine free streaming channels and 159 on-demand titles.

TVREV’s Alan Wolk noted the distinct approach for Tubi in a recent column on Fierce Video, saying that Tubi “defies the whole ‘FAST is linear’ narrative” and noting that when a user opens the Tubi app they first see on-demand offerings and need to click to get to linear channels.

“It’s something you might have heard here once or twice—that FASTs have both linear and on-demand, and that consumers actually like both and like having both options,” wrote Wolk.

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.

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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.

Almost three quarters of consumers in Germany are “very pessimistic” about the rising cost of living (72 percent) and the economic outlook (61 percent). The immediate consequence: consumers change their buying behavior. 69 percent of German consumers plan to make fewer spontaneous purchases this year. 48 percent want to research longer, 49 percent want to wait for special offers/sales and 43 percent use loyalty benefits.

2. Wunderkind $76.0M
Round: Series C
Description: Wunderkind enables brands to better recognize their customers online, providing 1-to-1 marketing at scale. Founded by Andreas Spartalis, Brooke Partelow, Cole Sharp, Namik Abdulzade, and Ryan Urban in 2010, Wunderkind has now raised a total of $151.9M in total equity funding and is backed by Silicon Valley Bank, Neuberger Berman Group, Primary Venture Partners, Battery Ventures, and Western Technology Investment.

Spending on ads is typically greater around the beginning and end of each year, as consumers reevaluate financial goals at the start of a new year, while a lack of premium broadcast programming in the summer tends to make third-quarter spending lower, according to television-ad analytics company iSpot.

WWE also has a deal for its WWE “Friday Night Smackdown” on the Fox Television Network.

National TV ad revenue for the previous 12-month period was estimated at $54.3 million, according to iSpot.tv.

In more positive news, theatrical marketers have been more efficient with their national TV spending in 2023 -- with 13% less ad spend than the year before, according to estimates from iSpot.tv.