Twitter is now making its TV Timelines feature available to more users in an attempt to draw in more TV fans, networks and advertisers. TV Timelines, which aggregates TV-related content with a dedicated page for each TV show, is accessed via a separate interface within the Twitter app. When Twitter first debuted TV Timelines, it was only available to a select group of users and for a handful of TV shows. After several months of experimentation, Twitter has tweaked the feature, including adding shortcuts to users’ tweets. Continue reading Twitter Tweaks TV Timelines, Expanding Pages and Availability

TV technology is getting closer to monitoring and analyzing our facial expressions in order to distinguish between boredom and enthusiasm to better understand our viewing tastes. Software from media startup Affectiva could usher in a new frontier in television viewing, one in which our devices watch our reactions and offer content suggestions or enable brands to provide more targeted ads. If consumers are willing to allow their emotional data to be gathered, movie and TV show recommendations from Netflix, for example, could become more relevant. Continue reading Facial Monitoring Software Could Impact Your TV Experience

Facebook is the latest company to accede to the demands of advertisers and allow independent measurement firm Moat to determine if ads are actually being viewed. Up until now, Facebook and Google have both used internal measurement tools, which several advertisers — Unilever among them — have found to be an unsatisfactory solution. That’s the reason that Unilever, for example, has pulled back ads on Facebook and Google. Twitter has recently also permitted Moat to ascertain viewability figures. Continue reading Social Platforms Allow Third Party Verification of Ad Viewability

Salesforce.com just introduced IoT Cloud, a service that will allow customers to monitor data relayed by smart devices. As the Internet of Things becomes more of a reality — sensors are now found in a wide array of devices and machines — companies need to gather and make sense of the data that those sensors generate. Emerson Electric announced its plans to use Salesforce’s IoT Cloud to combine data from its smart thermostats with weather forecasts to help its users manage their heating and air conditioning. Continue reading Salesforce Debuts IoT Cloud to Monitor Data of Smart Devices

Mobile video and messaging app Snapchat has become increasingly appealing to advertisers, who are using sponsored geofilters to turn their users into brand ambassadors. Although Snapchat still hasn’t built out its basic advertising infrastructure, advertisers are signing up to run fledgling campaigns in which people can add geofilters only when they are in specific locations. Among the brands that have launched such campaigns are Nike, GE, Target and McDonald’s. Some videos generate between 30 and 50 million views. Continue reading Sponsored Geofilters on Snapchat Draw in Advertising Dollars

Forty-five million small business use Facebook Pages, and the Silicon Valley company is now upgrading the app to make it easier for them to make money with the feature by reaching mobile users. The upgrade includes a tabbed mobile layout, so businesses can display storefront sections and let visitors shop for products or look at a list of services. The new Pages also makes it much easier for a user to contact the small business in question, with Call Now, Send Message and Contact Us graphics bigger, more prominent and colorful. Continue reading Facebook Builds Pages into Digital Mall for Small Businesses

Brands want a way to connect to viewers who peruse laptops and smartphones while watching major sporting events. Major digital players such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Snapchat are looking for ways to monetize increased online activity during those same events. It’s a match made in heaven, and it’s going live just as the National Football League season begins. Google plans on offering ads to be placed alongside football-related search results, but the company isn’t alone in making plans to capture advertising dollars. Continue reading Live Sports Are Generating More Opportunities for Online Ads

For an additional $4 ($11.99 per month), Hulu is offering an ad-free option to streaming movies and TV shows. Those who prefer to pay $7.99 will still have to sit through ads. The move could help Hulu better compete with popular streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon that do not include advertising. It could also present the company with an opportunity to increase its revenue in order to invest in more content. This could prove vital since premium cable networks such as HBO and Showtime are making their programming available outside traditional cable bundles. Continue reading Hulu Introduces Ad-Free Option to Streaming for Additional $4

Directly targeting AT&T, Sprint is now offering DirecTV subscribers a year of free cell phone service. The offer, which started August 28 and ends September 30, includes a plan with unlimited talk, text and up to 2 gigabytes of data per month, plus a one-time $36 activation fee, but not the cost of a smartphone. Sprint’s move is an attempt to foil AT&T’s plan to turn DirecTV subscribers into AT&T subscribers, a key motivation for the wireless company’s $49 billion acquisition of the satellite TV provider. Continue reading Sprint Offers Free Service to Lure DirecTV Subs From AT&T

Twitter is taking a page from Facebook’s playbook by opening its mobile ad network to a larger group of marketers. Whereas Twitter’s service was formerly restricted to a small group of clients that could buy ad campaigns running on its own service and third party apps in its MoPub mobile advertising exchange, now all advertisers with dedicated Twitter account managers can widen their campaigns beyond Twitter. Newly renamed “Twitter Audience Platform,” the product will also feature more video ads. Continue reading Twitter Pushes Video for Newly Expanded Mobile Ad Network

The video platform skirmishes just heated up with news that Comcast is about to launch its own, dubbed Watchable. The streaming video platform will feature content from a list of major publishers, including NBC Sports, AwesomenessTV, Refinery29 and The Onion as well as two companies it has already invested in, Vox and Buzzfeed. Deals are non-exclusive, allowing publishers to also post on Facebook, one of Comcast’s chief rivals in online video. Comcast is also up against YouTube and Verizon’s as-of-yet unnamed video platform. Continue reading Comcast to Debut Latest Streaming Video Platform, Watchable

The National Football League and Twitter already have a relationship, but in a new deal, Twitter users will be able to enjoy an increased amount of footage beginning with the start of pre-season football. The NFL has just signed a multi-year deal with the social network to add more game highlights from pre-season games through the 2016 Super Bowl, breaking news, analysis, game recaps, behind-the-scenes video and other footage of interest to football fans. The relationship between the two companies began in 2013. Continue reading NFL and Twitter Expand Partnership With More Video and Ads

Paramount Pictures is looking to experiment with two October film releases — “Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension” and “Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse” — by shortening the length of time it takes to make them available to watch at home via digital platforms. AMC and Cineplex are joined by several smaller operators in participating in the new approach. However, Cinemark (the nation’s third largest exhibitor) and Regal Entertainment Group (the No. 1 chain in North America) have declined. Continue reading Paramount to Experiment with Flexible Film Release Window

Comcast has turned to its theme park portfolio, which it acquired four years ago with its purchase of NBCUniversal, as a serious source of revenue. The company just committed to invest $1.6 billion to expand the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park in California — featuring a snow-capped Hogwarts Castle — and build a $3.25 billion theme park in Beijing, in partnership with Chinese companies, slated to open in 2019. Comcast invested $100 million for a new “Transformers” ride at Universal Orlando in 2013. Continue reading Comcast Commits to Theme Parks with Billions in Investment

Twitter recently introduced new tools designed to help marketers identify events appropriate for their brands, create advertising content relevant to those events, and target users who would be interested in such events. For example, an advertiser could use Twitter’s event calendar to research the Oscars, the Olympics or Mother’s Day, and the users who would be interested in those events, and then review which tweets resonated best with those users in the past in order to help build an effective ad campaign. Continue reading Twitter Pitches Event-Based Ad Tools for Targeting Audiences