Yelp is introducing more than 20 new updates to improve the experience for community members and business owners. Included are AI-powered summaries that make it easier to find businesses, an updated Yelp Elite badge for reviewers who are passionate about specific subjects, and a new visual home feed and search experience geared toward discovery. For those seeking services, the new “Request a Quote” and “Projects” features are available. Artificial intelligence will also power market and competitive insights for business owners, while AI-powered smart budgets provide recommendations to optimize ad spend, “helping local businesses grow.” Continue reading Yelp Adds 20 Features Plus AI to Help Users and Businesses

In 2023, U.S. audiences streamed the equivalent of 21 million years of video, according to Nielsen, which says that’s a record, surpassing by 21 percent the 17 million years’ worth of video streamed in 2022. Apple TV+’s “Ted Lasso” was the most streamed original, while “Suits” was the most-streamed show in a single year. Its 57.7 billion viewing minutes on Netflix and Peacock surpassed “The Office,” which generated 57.1 billion viewing minutes on Netflix in 2020. According to Nielsen’s Gracenote, “audiences had 90 different streaming services to choose from at the end of last year, up from 51 at the start of 2020.” Continue reading Nielsen: 21 Million Years Worth of Video Was Streamed in 2023

Hulu has revised its Terms of Service in an effort to ban password sharing amongst friends and family members outside of a subscriber’s primary personal residence. Hulu has been announcing via email that subscribers will have until March 14 to comply. According to the revised Terms of Service: “If we determine, in our sole discretion, that you have violated this Agreement, we may limit or terminate access to the Service and/or take any other steps as permitted by this Agreement.” The move by Hulu follows what has been reported as a successful crackdown on password sharing by Netflix in addition to a record number of subscribers in the fourth quarter. Continue reading Hulu Is Joining Netflix in Cracking Down on Password Sharing

Amazon this week began serving advertising to Prime Video customers who did not elect to pay an additional $2.99 per month in addition to the basic annual Prime membership of $139 per year or $14.99 per month. Adding commercials is estimated to potentially bring in more than $3 billion a year for Amazon, which is expected to have 2023 revenue of around $567 billion. The surplus will come in handy to pay out $1 billion a year over 11 years for the rights to NFL’s “Thursday Night Football.” The ad-supported Prime Video service launches in the U.S., Canada, UK and Germany, with Mexico, France, Italy, Spain and Australia following later in the year. Continue reading Amazon Stands to Gain $3 Billion a Year from Prime Video Ads

Nvidia is introducing a new AI feature for its RTX GPUs called RTX Video HDR that upgrades standard video into high dynamic range color space for customers that have an HDR10-compatible monitor running on Windows with HDR enabled. Announced at CES, the technology is now available for download through Nvidia’s January Studio Driver update. “PC game modders now have a powerful new set of tools to use with the release of the Nvidia RTX Remix open beta,” which combines “full ray tracing, Nvidia DLSS and Nvidia Reflex” with “generative AI texture tools so modders can remaster games more efficiently,” according to the company. Continue reading Nvidia GeForce GPUs Using AI to Boost SDR Content to HDR

Google has come up with a new approach to high resolution AI video generation with Lumiere. While most GenAI video models output individual high resolution frames at various points in the sequence (called “distant keyframes”), fill in the missing frames with low-res images to create motion (known as “temporal super-resolution,” or TSR), then up-res that connective tissue (“spatial super-resolution,” or SSR) of non-overlapping frames, Lumiere takes what Google calls a “Space-Time U-Net architecture,” which processes all frames at once, “without a cascade of TSR models, allowing us to learn globally coherent motion.” Continue reading Google Takes New Approach to Create Video with Lumiere AI

After announcing in 2020 plans to launch a movie and TV show rental marketplace, media streaming platform Plex is finally taking the plunge. Following what has been described as “false starts,” including delays due to COVID-19, news broke at CES 2024 that the company will go public with its rental offering in February. The streaming media software maker has confirmed it will enter the TVOD (transactional video on demand) market to augment the ad-supported streaming that is its primary revenue source. Plex reportedly has “most studios” onboard, though it has yet to specify which ones. Continue reading FAST Platform Plex to Roll Out Movie, TV Rentals Next Month

Getty Images and Nvidia are expanding their AI partnership with the addition of the text-to-image platform Generative AI by iStock, designed to produce stock photos that can be used by individuals or enterprise customers. Built on Nvidia Picasso, a foundry for custom AI models, and trained exclusively on data from Getty Images’ proprietary creative libraries, Generative AI by iStock “has been engineered to guard against generations of known products, people, places or other copyrighted elements,” Getty explains, adding that “any licensed visual that a customer generates comes with iStock’s standard $10,000 USD legal coverage.” Continue reading CES: Getty Rolls Out iStock Generative AI Powered by Nvidia

Amazon is rolling out Matter Casting, which lets customers cast directly from supported streaming apps on iOS and Android to Fire TV and Echo Show 15 devices. Viewers can begin watching a movie or browse for a Prime Video show on their phone, then cast it to a compatible Fire TV or Echo Show screen. Amazon called the CES announcement “an industry-first demonstration of implementing Matter Casting,” referring to the open-source Matter standard protocol for connectivity between smart home and IoT devices. Amazon is a founding member and active contributor to the Matter standard. Continue reading CES: Amazon Offers Casting from Prime Video App to Devices

Consumer Technology Association VP of Marketing & Communications Melissa Harrison moderated a CES discussion about the evolution of the connected TV (CTV) from the point of view of marketers. Hisense USA Senior VP of Brand Marketing David VanderWaal noted the pandemic’s impact on TV viewership. “In 2020, 47 percent of people reported watching movies on TVs; in 2023, it’s now 64 percent,” he noted. “More people want to have big screen entertainment.” At digital marketing firm The Trade Desk, Executive VP and CMO Ian Colley reported that 2023 was the “tipping point” for more people watching streaming rather than linear TV. Continue reading CES: Marketers on the Future of the Connected TV Ecosystem

Xgimi wants to bring the IMAX experience to your living room. The China-based company has unveiled what it says is the first long-throw home projector to earn certification as IMAX Enhanced, a designation previously limited to premium units. Xgimi’s Horizon Max projector is intended for mass market viewing enthusiasts. The IMAX Enhanced specifications include Dolby Vision and DTS:X sound. The Horizon Max promises 3,100 ISO lumens brightness and a contrast ratio of 2,000:1. Pricing was not disclosed at the CES 2024 product announcement, but the projector is expected to ship in the second half of this year. Continue reading CES: Xgimi Announces First IMAX Enhanced Home Projector

Audiences are migrating from broadcasting to streaming, and Google just announced its decision to phase out third-party cookies. What’s a marketer to do? At CES, Disney, Pfizer and GroupM marketers discussed how they plan to evolve in a changing landscape. The Walt Disney Company’s Lisa Valentino emphasized the need for interoperability of data across platforms, with the consumer at the center. GroupM debuted its Ad Innovation Accelerator to “strategize and create scalable ad formats that are designed to be ubiquitous across ad-supported streaming environments.” Partners include BrightLine, Disney, KERV, NBCUniversal, Roku, Telly and YouTube. Continue reading CES: Marketers Shift Tactics in Streaming, Post-Cookie World

During a CES 2024 panel on “Amazon Streaming: Clay Tablets to Streaming TV — The Evolution of Storytelling,” moderator Carly Zipp, who is Amazon global director of brand marketing, asked panelists for their favorite stories, recounting that her son replaced her bedtime stories with ChatGPT. Lauren Anderson, Amazon Studios head of AVOD originals and unscripted programming, picked the story of Tracy Chapman’s song “Fast Car.” “It shows how stories can resonate through generations, genres, geographies, and ethnicities,” she said. For GroupM global CEO Christian Juhl, the stories of Hans Christian Andersen were formative in his childhood. Continue reading CES: Marketers Look at Evolution of Storytelling with AI Twist

LG Electronics’ CineBeam Qube projector weighs just 3.28 pounds, measures 5.3 x 3.1 inches, and doubles as a “stylish art object.” It packs a big picture punch, projecting in 4K Ultra HD (3,840 x 2,160) for images measuring up to 120 inches. Its RGB laser light source delivers pictures the company says are sharp and clear, boasting a 450,000:1 contrast ratio and DCI-P3 color gamut coverage of up to 154 percent. The CineBeam Qube boasts an old-timey rotator handle reminiscent of crank projectors of yore. It’s also a home entertainment center, running on the LG webOS 6.0 platform, with access to streaming services including Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and YouTube. Continue reading CES: LG Unveils New Compact CineBeam Qube 4K Projector

Impact and opportunity surfaced as the dominant theme of a full day of Digital Hollywood sessions devoted to artificial intelligence at CES 2024. We are in a period of disruption similar to the early 90s when the Internet went mainstream, said Forbes columnist Charlie Fink, moderating a panel of industry leaders from CAA, Paramount, HTC, Nvidia and Google. Yet despite the transformation already underway, panelists agreed that this is neither the first nor last technology to shift the status quo, more the latest example of inevitable change and adjustment. The current conversations around AI at CES are a refreshing departure after a few years of evolutionary, not revolutionary tech confabs. Continue reading CES: Digital Hollywood Session Explores AI at Inflection Point