Comscore and YouTube have expanded their partnership by integrating Comscore Campaign Ratings (CCR) with YouTube Shorts and In-Feed inventory, making available a range of additional ad data specific to those outlets, across connected TV, mobile and desktop. In the months ahead, the toolkit will also add measurement of Masthead inventory. YouTube has been connected to CCR for standard video inventory and YouTube TV since Q4 2021. YouTube Shorts is a fast-growing part of the Google-owned video ecosystem, averaging over 70 billion daily views, according to YouTube and Comscore. Continue reading YouTube, Comscore Integrate Campaign Ratings with Shorts

The House of Representatives has introduced a bill that would make it illegal in the U.S. to distribute TikTok under its current ownership. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act “prevents app store availability or web hosting services in the U.S. for ByteDance-controlled applications, including TikTok, unless the application severs ties to entities like ByteDance that are subject to the control of a foreign adversary,” according to a sponsor statement. Violators would be subject to a penalty of $5,000 for every U.S. user that “accessed, maintained or updated” any “foreign adversary controlled applications” from its platform. Continue reading House Intros a Bill to Penalize App Stores Distributing TikTok

After a tumultuous two-year slump, Bitcoin rebounded this week when it briefly reached a new all-time high exceeding $69,000, marking a more than 300 percent rise since November 2022 when the price was below $20,000. The prior record of just below $68,790 dates back to November 2021. The 2024 rally comes on the heels of regulatory action approving rules that make it simpler for individuals to invest in Bitcoin by allowing some large investment firms including BlackRock, Fidelity, Grayscale and Valkyrie to add it to their funds, making it easier for the average investor to choose it as a portfolio option. Continue reading Bitcoin Hits Record $69,000 High Following SEC Rule Change

CES 2024 attracted more than 135,000 attendees to Las Vegas where 4,300 companies filled 2.5 million square feet of exhibit space. Technology that empowers creators, a new generation of displays, and the promise and peril of artificial intelligence dominated the show. After several years of incremental advances, market development built on maturing technology, and over-hyped trends, this year felt different with an energy that suggests the beginning of a new era. Among the major themes were embedded AI, vehicle tech, digital health, screens and XR, and numerous policy and regulation topics. ETC@USC attended the conference for live reporting on products and services. Our post-show report features extensive coverage and perspectives related to key creative, business, and technology areas. Continue reading ETC’s CES 2024 Report: Creators, Displays, and AI Innovation

Filmmaker Gary Hustwit and artist Brendan Dawes aspire to change the way audiences experience film. Their startup, Anamorph, has launched with an app that can reassemble different versions of the same film. The app debuted with “Eno,” a Hustwit-directed documentary about the music iconoclast Brian Eno that premiered in January at the Sundance Film Festival, where every “Eno” showing presented the audience with a unique viewing experience. Drawing scenes from a repository of over 500 hours of “Eno” material, the Anamorph app would potentially be able to generate what the company says is billions of different configurations. Continue reading Generative Tech Enables Multiple Versions of the Same Movie

Anthropic has released Claude 3, claiming new industry benchmarks that see the family of three new large language models approaching “near-human” cognitive capability in some instances. Accessible via Anthropic’s website, the three new models — Claude 3 Haiku, Claude 3 Sonnet and Claude 3 Opus — represent successively increased complexity and parameter count. Sonnet is powering the current Claude.ai chatbot and is free, for now, requiring only an email sign-in. Opus comes with the the $20 monthly subscription for Claude Pro. Both are generally available from the Anthropic website and via API in 159 countries, with Haiku coming soon. Continue reading Anthropic’s Claude 3 AI Is Said to Have ‘Near-Human’ Abilities

Apple has been fined $1.95 billion by the European Union after the bloc’s executive body, the European Commission, found the iPhone maker in violation of antitrust law by using its App Store market dominance to stifle music streaming competition. The EC found that Apple suppressed the ability of app developers to communicate with iOS users about alternative music subscription services available outside the App Store. The fine stems from a 2019 complaint from Spotify that triggered an investigation into Apple. Spotify hailed the result as a win for consumers and “an important moment in the fight for a more open Internet,” while Apple has vowed to appeal. Continue reading Apple Fined $1.95 Billion by EU for Music Streaming Antitrust

Paris-based startup Mistral AI has made an immediate splash in the world of artificial intelligence, securing partnerships with IBM, Microsoft and others nine months after its launch. The company is offering natural language processing models, including its flagship Mistral Large, which becomes only the second LLM (after OpenAI) to land a commercial berth on Microsoft’s Azure cloud, where Meta Platforms’ Llama 2 is available in preview. Boasting “top-tier reasoning capacities” and sophisticated conversational capabilities, Mistral Large specializes in “reasoning, analysis and generation (RAG), is multilingual and supports up to 32,000 tokens.” Continue reading France’s Mistral AI Makes Its Global Debut on Microsoft Azure

In its continuing effort to expand in-app shopping activity, TikTok is testing an option to allow users to automatically identify products in their uploads — a march toward making all objects shoppable. The test lets select users toggle to “Identify Similar Objects” within a video. When activated, the AI-powered ISO highlights matching products that can be purchased in-app. TikTok has been exploring the feature for deployment in the United States this past year. TikTok parent ByteDance has for some time been using the in-stream shopping feature in the platform’s Chinese sister platform, Douyin. Continue reading TikTok Tests Feature Designed to Streamline In-App Shopping

Bluesky — Jack Dorsey’s alternative to X (formerly Twitter) — has been quietly ramping up, recently opening for general public sign-ups while adding hashtag support and the ability for users to host their own servers. The company last month appointed Aaron Rodericks to the newly created position of head of trust and safety, a title he held at Twitter before Elon Musk purchased it and decimated the division (which he now co-heads with X CEO Linda Yaccarino). The technical updates will make it easier for users to sort threads for topics of interest and takes a big step toward federation and allowing users to freely move their accounts. Continue reading Bluesky Opens to the Public Ahead of the Presidential Election

Comcast ad tech company FreeWheel is launching a programmatic solution it says will change the way marketers implement their TV ad buying. Called Allocation Module, it is rolling out ahead of the 2024 Upfronts and NewFronts. Central to the new solution is what FreeWheel says is its ability to give marketers more control over their ad spending across various ad channels after it’s been committed. FreeWheel’s Allocation Module “offers demand-side platforms a better way to gauge whether or not they are bidding enough, in real time, to meet their clients’ ad spend commitments,” the company says. Continue reading FreeWheel Adds Programmatic Ad Buying in Time for Upfronts

Ad tech platform Vibe has raised $22.5 million in a Series A funding round led by venture firm Singular. Vibe plans to use the funds to “continue building a more efficient streaming TV advertising ecosystem and become the No. 1 connected TV ad resource for small and midsize businesses,” or SMBs. Vibe, which calls itself the “Google Ads of streaming,” says its technology “radically democratizes access to streaming TV advertising for SMBs with an easy-to-use ad platform mimicking the power and ease-of-use of Google or Meta, but for CTV and OTT.” Continue reading Ad Firm Vibe Looks to Serve as the ‘Google Ads of Streaming’

ZTE has launched what it calls the world’s first AI-powered, eyewear-free 5G 3D tablet, the Nubia Pad 3D II. The 12.1-inch LCD display supports 2,560 x 1,600 resolution and 144Hz refresh rate. Powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, the Nubia Pad 3D II is equipped with an AI eye-tracking engine that utilizes “high-speed visual sensors and eye-detection algorithms” to enhance response speed and enable accurate synchronization with the users’ eyes in real-time “for a more natural and realistic 3D display experience,” ZTE says. The device also converts 2D to 3D with Neovision 3D Anytime technology. Continue reading ZTE Unveils Glasses-Free Android Tablet, the Nubia Pad 3D II

Lightricks, the company behind apps including Facetune, Photoleap and Videoleap, has come up with a text-to-video tool called LTX Studio that it is being positioned as a turnkey AI tool for filmmakers and other creators. “From concept to creation,” the new app aims to enable “the transformation of a single idea into a cohesive, AI-generated video.” Currently waitlisted, Lightricks says it will make the web-based tool available to the public for free, at least initially, beginning in April, allowing users to “direct each scene down to specific camera angles with specialized AI.” Continue reading Lightricks LTX Studio Is a Text-to-Video Filmmaking Platform

On the heels of ElevenLabs’ demo of a text-to-sound app unveiled using clips generated by OpenAI’s text-to-video artificial intelligence platform Sora, Pika Labs is releasing a feature called Lip Sync that lets its paid subscribers use the ElevenLabs app to add AI-generated voices and dialogue to Pika-generated videos and have the characters’ lips moving in sync with the speech. Pika Lip Sync supports both uploaded audio files and text-to-audio AI, allowing users to type or record dialogue, or use pre-existing sound files, then apply AI to change the voicing style. Continue reading Pika Taps ElevenLabs Audio App to Add Lip Sync to AI Video