Amazon-owned IMDb — the popular online database featuring information related to movies, television and video games — is rebranding its recently launched Freedive video service as IMDb TV. Thanks to new deals with MGM, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Warner Bros., the ad-supported VOD service will add thousands of new titles in the upcoming months, essentially tripling the number of TV shows and movies available to U.S. viewers for free. The company also plans to expand its audience with a European launch later this year. Continue reading IMDb Rebrands Its New AVOD Service and Triples Content

Marketing platform Mailchimp just launched its own entertainment division, Mailchimp Presents, to produce short-form original series, movies and podcasts with a focus on the common experiences and struggles of entrepreneurs and small business owners. “These folks are often isolated, thinking about work all the time,” said Sarita Alami, production lead of Mailchimp Presents, and the company’s senior manager of brand marketing. “We have this great opportunity to create content that resonates with them in a way that hopefully reminds them that they’re not alone.” Continue reading Mailchimp Aims For Entrepreneurs with Entertainment Unit

Social giant Facebook revealed that its strategy for building viewership of Facebook Watch is paying off, saying it is experiencing “big momentum” for the platform with original shows such as Jada Pinkett Smith’s “Red Table Talk” and “Sorry for Your Loss” with Elizabeth Olsen. Facebook Watch, since its launch two years ago, has a global daily user base of 140 million people who each spend an average of 26 minutes per day watching videos, nearly double from 75 million daily users in December who watched 20 minutes daily. Facebook has inked a series of partnerships and has more original content on its way. Continue reading Facebook Watch Readies Original Content for Summer, Fall

At Code Conference 2019 in Scottsdale, Arizona, Bond Capital general partner Mary Meeker delivered her annual, highly anticipated Internet Trends Report. The 333-page slideshow looked at trends from the growth of Internet ad spending to digital delivery services in Latin America. One eye-opening fact she reported is that about 51 percent of the world, equaling 3.8 billion people, used the Internet in 2018, up from 49 percent (3.6 billion) the previous year. Smartphone sales are slowing since so many people likely to be online already are. Continue reading Bond’s Meeker Predicts Our Digital Future in Annual Report

AT&T’s ad unit Xandr has launched its ad-buying platform that offers exclusive access to AT&T’s customer data and assists companies in purchasing ad space across formats including mobile and streaming video. The platform, called Xandr Invest, will let advertisers buy ads on AT&T properties such as CNN, TBS and TNT, and will serve as the only ad-buying platform for Xandr’s Community marketplace that also features curated content from publishers such as Philo, Tubi and Vice. AT&T will compete in advertising with Google and Facebook, which combined represented almost 60 percent of the Internet ad market last year, according to PwC. Continue reading AT&T Rolls Out Its Ad-Buying Service for Premium Content

Streaming video service Hulu, co-owned by The Walt Disney Company and Comcast and controlled by Disney, began lowering its CPM advertising rates (the amount charged to reach 1,000 viewers) to lure marketers to commit dollars to its site, according to several sources. Hopeful to boost ad sales, the company is implementing this strategy as major broadcast television networks are expected to secure increased ad commitments for the fall prime time schedules. Although viewers are migrating to streaming video services, marketers have been returning to broadcast TV, which is a known and trusted outlet. Continue reading Hulu Strategizes Ad Sales as Marketers Migrate Back to TV

According to a study by the News Media Alliance, Google earned $4.7 billion last year from the work of news publishers via the company’s search and Google News services (and the estimate is considered conservative since it does not include the value of personal data that Google collects on readers when they click on an article). The estimate is close to the $5.1 billion from digital advertising the entire U.S. news industry generated in 2018. The News Media Alliance is a trade association that represents more than 2,000 newspapers in North America. Its president and CEO David Chavern says journalists deserve a share of the $4.7 billion. Continue reading Study: Google Earned $4.7 Billion From U.S. News in 2018

Google’s YouTube unveiled a new policy in its latest attempt to clean up the content of the popular video platform. The policy bans videos “alleging that a group is superior in order to justify discrimination, segregation or exclusion,” as well as those that deny violent events happened, such as the Holocaust or the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Discrimination includes age, gender, race, caste, religion, sexual orientation and veteran status. With this policy in place, YouTube has begun to remove thousands of videos to rid its site of bigotry, extremism and hate speech. Continue reading YouTube Enacts Policy to Ban Noxious Videos, Hate Speech

The dominant video-streaming provider in India is Hotstar, which debuted four years ago by media conglomerate Star India. Its 300 million monthly users gravitate to the mobile-first platform to watch cricket, TV shows and movies. Now owned by The Walt Disney Company, Hotstar’s usage is 10 percent larger than that of YouTube, India’s second largest video streaming platform. Only three million of Hotstar’s users are paying subscribers, but that’s still more than those paying for Amazon and twice as many as those subscribed to Netflix. Continue reading Disney’s Hotstar: India’s Dominant Video-Streaming Platform

At this week’s WWDC in San Jose, California, Apple introduced an anonymous login system and tools that prevent apps from tracking the user’s location, in an attempt to gain the high ground among big tech companies targeted by regulators for privacy issues. Apple also differentiated itself from Facebook and Google, which rely heavily on tracking users’ behavior and activity. The company’s next mobile operating system, iOS 13, slated to debut this fall, will allow users to log into apps without giving up any personal information and generate “automated and random” email addresses. Continue reading Apple Promotes Privacy Features at Developers Conference

Facebook-owned photo- and video-sharing app Instagram announced yesterday that it plans a change to its advertising strategy that involves more sponsored ads from social influencers. Instagram will offer brands the ability to promote creators’ branded content in users’ feeds, regardless of whether or not those users follow the influencers creating the content. The move could be lucrative for popular influencers who generate revenue promoting products and services, but may prove frustrating to average users who will subsequently see more unwanted ads in their feeds. Continue reading Instagram Plans to Introduce More Ads From its Influencers

U.S. tech giants are expected to become targets of in-depth antitrust investigations to determine if any companies have become too large and may be stifling competition. According to sources, federal agencies have agreed to distribute the investigative responsibilities. The Justice Department reportedly has authority over looking into Apple and Google, while the Federal Trade Commission will have oversight of Amazon and Facebook. In addition, the House Judiciary Committee plans to examine competition in digital markets and the growing power of the tech industry. Continue reading Government Expected to Take a Closer Look at Tech Giants

Spotify is working on a new feature called “Social Listening” that would allow multiple people to add tracks to a social queue so they could all listen to the same songs from different devices in different locations. According to screenshots shared by an app researcher, users can add songs to the real-time playlist for a communal listening experience after scanning their friends’ QR-style Spotify Social Listening codes. The feature, not yet released, is essentially a jazzed-up version of Spotify’s Collaborative Playlists for now, but in the future Spotify could possibly upgrade it for synchronized playback. Continue reading Social Listening: Spotify Developing a Shared Music Queue

Google has doubled-down on a change made in January to Manifest V3, Chrome’s extensions system, that would prevent the effective functioning of current ad blockers. Despite backlash to the change by extension developers and power users, the company said that only enterprise users will be able to continue to use such ad blocking software. Manifest V3 includes other changes, such as a tweaking of the permissions system. Now, all extensions must use the “minimum set of permissions necessary” when requesting access to data. Continue reading In Google Tweak, Only Enterprise Customers Can Block Ads

Hulu, which recently revealed that it has 28 million customer accounts, has provided additional details on its subscribers. The streaming video service offers an ad-free $11.99 per month tier, but the majority of its users pay $5.99 per month for the ad-supported plan. Hulu claims 82 million total viewers (2.9 viewers per account), of which 70 percent pay for the ad-supported plan. The company generated nearly $1.5 billion in ad revenue last year. Since advertising is vital to keeping its subscribers, Hulu strives to present ads via viewer-friendly models. Continue reading Majority of Hulu Subscribers Opt For the Ad-Supported Plan