Ad tech rebuilt itself around identity resolution and clean rooms once third-party cookies disappeared. Coverage here spans SSAI, programmatic CTV, ad-supported tier economics, frequency capping, and the measurement approaches replacing the old playbook.
JioHotstar's head of entertainment sales, Bhaskar Ramesh, details the platform's scaled advertising strategy in India, integrating entertainment, sports, and CTV. The platform aims to reach 50 million CTV devices and is launching a new ad product called "Launchpad" for product visibility. This strategy offers advanced ad solutions for streaming professionals, emphasizing outcomes-based advertising on CTV.
Ad exchanges, including Google and Index Exchange, are increasingly using dynamic take rates, a method where they take a larger cut from high bids to subsidize lower bids. While presented as innovation, this practice is estimated to reduce publisher revenue by approximately 6% and shifts costs to premium advertisers, ultimately benefiting the exchanges' growth metrics by crowding out other buyers for inventory that would have sold regardless. The author suggests this trend will worsen and calls for advertisers to demand transparency on commission structures.
Independent ad tech vendors like PubMatic and Index Exchange are differentiating themselves by adopting unique cloud infrastructure strategies, either owning and operating their own servers or offering containerized DSP deployments. This approach aims to reduce costs for high-volume programmatic advertising and enhance capabilities for audience targeting and curation, directly challenging reliance on public cloud providers. The article discusses the benefits and trade-offs of these 'on-prem' strategies versus public cloud usage for ad tech infrastructure.
US CTV ad spending is projected to reach $53.42 billion by 2026, with B2B advertisers increasingly using CTV to target professional audiences. The article highlights that effective CTV advertising for decision-makers requires high-quality B2B audience data and AI to navigate fragmented streaming environments. Eyeota is mentioned as a vendor providing regulatory-compliant audience data solutions for the CTV ecosystem.
CTV advertisers are increasing scrutiny on video budgets, pushing publishers to actively demonstrate campaign performance. Retail media giants like Walmart and Amazon are integrating video advertising to directly link impressions with sales data. Publishers are leveraging AI and data capabilities to provide greater media efficiency and demonstrably better performance to advertisers.
The article discusses the shift in the TV industry towards streaming as the dominant screen, driven by ad-supported models, live sports, and AI, which is reshaping media business models and increasing global CTV ad spend. Netflix's ad-supported plan is highlighted for its growth, reaching 250 million monthly active users and expanding internationally. The report emphasizes the role of AI in transforming CTV into a commercial platform through real-time data analysis and dynamic creative advertising.
MiQ's Moe Chughtai highlights that the TV industry's sell-side lags marketers in adapting to accelerated consumer purchase decisions. He suggests leveraging cross-platform signals, including ACR and set-top box data, combined with AI, to create comprehensive consumer insights for improved ad effectiveness beyond traditional impression currencies. The article emphasizes the underutilized potential of location intelligence and AI's role in empowering campaign managers to analyze data directly.
AgileSoftLabs details the evolving OTT monetization landscape in 2026, emphasizing the necessity of hybrid strategies combining SVOD, AVOD, TVOD, and FAST channels. The article highlights how subscription fatigue and shifting consumer behaviors demand flexible platform architectures, supported by AgileSoftLabs' Streamly Plus, which can manage multiple entitlement states simultaneously. It also outlines common monetization mistakes and provides a decision framework for operators based on content type and audience.
Nielsen and Mediaocean have partnered to integrate Nielsen's audience measurement solutions with Mediaocean's Prisma platform. This collaboration allows marketers to apply consistent audience definitions for data-driven TV advertising across planning, activation, and measurement workflows. Additionally, Nielsen is expanding integrations with data providers like S&P Global Mobility and MRI-Simmons to offer enhanced audience segments beyond traditional demographics.
FIFA is reducing broadcast rights prices for the 2026 World Cup in Asian markets like India and China due to unfavorable time zones, with deals dropping significantly. Despite these regional challenges and piracy issues, FIFA expects record overall broadcast revenue, driven by lucrative deals in North America and Europe and the tournament's expanded match schedule.
YouTube is rolling out new monetization features and advertising formats aimed at creators and advertisers. This expansion provides creators with more revenue generation opportunities and offers advertisers new avenues to reach audiences within the platform.
Viant Technology Inc. has partnered with Ad Fontes Media to introduce a news reliability-based targeting system for Connected TV advertising via IRIS_ID. This integration allows advertisers to programmatically target news programming at the content level based on reliability and bias frameworks. The partnership follows Viant's strong Q1 financial report and a recent acquisition of TVision to enhance data, measurement, and activation capabilities.
Dentsu Group has expanded its partnership with Magnite in Sweden, focusing on premium video and connected TV activation. This collaboration aims to strengthen Dentsu's media technology capabilities in a growing market segment. The article also touches on Dentsu's stock valuation based on this and other factors.
BIA Advisory Services forecasts significant growth in CTV/OTT and Digital Out of Home (DOOH) ad revenue for local radio stations, reaching $5.1 billion and $2.5 billion respectively by 2026. This trend enables radio stations to leverage existing sales forces to integrate CTV/OTT ad inventory and cross-platform activations into their offerings, creating new revenue streams.
Confiant, a cybersecurity company for advertising, is seeking a remote JavaScript Engineer to develop and maintain its client-side SDK for malvertising detection. This role involves optimizing performance and integrating security threat intelligence into ad environments to protect users and ensure content integrity. The SDK is crucial for detecting and blocking malvertising, scams, and compliance risks before they reach end users.
Global social media ad spend is projected to reach $480 billion by 2030, with Facebook remaining the platform marketers rate highest for importance and ROI. Despite this, marketers plan significant budget increases for Connected TV (CTV) advertising in 2026, leading all other ad channels, reflecting a shift in ad spending. The report also highlights Meta's ad pixel deployment on over 2 million websites and the growing role of AI in social advertising workflows.
Beet.TV has announced its series of industry events and content partnerships for 2026, which will cover key topics relevant to streaming professionals. Highlighted events include the AI Media Summit, IAB NewFronts, and CES, focusing on areas like AI, commerce media, and advertising. The series features collaborations with companies such as Criteo, DeepIntent, Cuebiq, Equativ, Tatari, Swoop, Seedtag, The Trade Desk, Channel Factory, FreeWheel, Future Today, Intuit SMB MediaLabs, and Best Buy Ads.
iSpot.tv offers various advertising measurement solutions for Peterson Custom Solutions LLC, encompassing creative assessment, audience measurement, and business outcomes. These tools provide insights into ad effectiveness, media optimization, and campaign attribution crucial for streaming professionals to analyze their advertising spend and performance across different platforms, including streaming publishers.
The 2026 Audio Advertising Awards recognized campaigns by British Airways Holidays, Netflix, and Topps, highlighting creative audio advertising and brand partnerships. Key categories included creative direction, host-read ads, and campaign launches, with winners leveraging platforms like podcasts and radio to reach target audiences. The awards also featured an "Audio AdTech Solution" category for Goodstuff and Azerion's work for Fever-Tree, demonstrating effective attribution and ROI in audio advertising.
Free smart TV applications are reportedly transforming connected TVs into web-scraping proxies for AI data collection, raising concerns about user privacy and data security. This practice impacts the CTV ecosystem and presents compliance challenges for streaming professionals. The article highlights how AI is being covertly used to gather data through installed apps.
Performance by TBWA has developed Adirect, an AI-powered platform that automates TV ad buying, and ITV, an AI service for video ad production, to reduce costs and increase accessibility for small and medium-sized businesses. The company aims to level the playing field for digital marketing through TV advertising by leveraging AI and data. These platforms streamline the process from ad campaign setup to video creation and distribution, including to global streaming channels via Google and Amazon networks.
YouTube permanently demonetized Bernth's Burnt Guitar Academy channel after the required physical AdSense address verification letters failed to arrive post-relocation. This administrative failure, which has no digital alternative, led to months of withheld payments and ultimately full demonetization, despite the creator's efforts to resolve the issue with YouTube support.
YouTube Shorts has achieved the first MRC brand safety accreditation for short-form video advertising, providing audited controls and measurement processes for advertisers. This allows media buyers to use pre-bid risk filters and suitability tiers for campaigns, although some placement-level exclusions are still unavailable for Shorts ads. The accreditation establishes a new benchmark for brand safety in the short-form video ad market.
Andrew Gazdecki reported that a SaaS platform designed for YouTube A/B testing and optimization achieved $206,000 profit on $211,000 annual recurring revenue, demonstrating over 85% profit margins. This platform helps creators grow their channels through optimization tools. The report highlights the profitability of specialized tools for creator monetization within streaming ecosystems.
AdPlayer.Pro announced that its ad platform has scaled to 551 million daily ad requests and now supports vertical video formats (9:16 aspect ratio) across InPage, InBanner, and a redesigned Interstitial Video Ads 2.0. This update provides infrastructure capacity for peak programmatic demand and enables publishers to monetize vertical creative increasingly common from social platforms and AI-generated content. The player supports IAB standards like VAST, SIMID, OMID, and OpenRTB 3.0, and includes features like real-time reporting and API-enabled configuration.
PlayBox Technology has released a new white paper detailing the convergence of SCTE-104/35, VAST, AI, and 6G technologies in broadcast monetization, particularly in enabling addressable TV advertising. The paper highlights projected global CTV ad spend reaching $52 billion by 2029 and how these technologies facilitate a shift from mass-reach to precision ad delivery. It also explores the role of AI in markerless SCTE generation and emotional contextual targeting, alongside the importance of privacy compliance through Data Clean Rooms for the evolving advertising landscape.
Sportradar Group AG has extended its exclusive data and audiovisual betting rights deal with the All England Club for Wimbledon. This agreement provides real-time data feeds and low-latency video streams to global sportsbook partners, enhancing live markets and micro betting capabilities. Sportradar will also supply integrity services and distribute over 40,000 tennis matches annually to its clients.
Amazon Prime Video will offer a pay-per-view live stream of the Portugal vs Chile friendly match in the UK for £2.99, while US audiences can watch on Fox Sports 2, Fox Deportes, or Fubo. This highlights diverse content monetization and distribution strategies for live sports globally.
Scope3 has partnered with InMobi and Glance to integrate "agentic seller" capabilities into its Interchange platform, aiming to facilitate AI-based buyer agents' access to specific mobile audiences. This collaboration seeks to differentiate Scope3's infrastructure for next-generation programmatic advertising by focusing on commerce-focused supply, including Glance's AI-native commerce environment. The initiative aligns with AI-driven trends in media buying, enabling advertisers to utilize AI-mediated workflows for curated inventory.
PHȲND is promoting its ad-supported cloud gaming strategy for smart TVs at industry events to engage advertisers and expand its presence in the connected TV advertising ecosystem. The company aims to position cloud gaming as a measurable channel for advertisers to reach consumers and secure commercial deals. This strategy aligns PHȲND with the broader shift towards interactive media and connected TV advertising.
Rembrand is emphasizing its generative AI strategy for in-content advertising on connected TV (CTV), positioning embedded ad integrations as an alternative to traditional, interruptive commercials. The company highlights automated creative workflows and performance metrics such as 100% viewability and a 2x engagement lift compared to standard ads. This move aims to capitalize on the shift towards AI-assisted monetization in streaming and improve ad effectiveness for marketers.
The article analyzes the fragmented and expensive current streaming landscape in New Zealand, particularly for sports, leading to increased piracy and consumer dissatisfaction. It highlights how streaming services like Sky Sport Now and DAZN are "double-dipping" by charging high subscription fees while aggressively forcing users to watch unskippable advertisements. The analysis argues that the focus on Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) by media giants, coupled with limited content options for sports fans, is driving consumers toward illegal IPTV services.
Bigg Boss personality Bandagi Kalra criticized JioHotstar for an excessive number of ads and poor audio during her streaming of 'Dhurandhar 2: Revenge.' Her social media post highlighted rising user frustration with the increasing presence of advertisements on streaming platforms. This incident reflects broader user sentiment against ad-supported streaming models being adopted by various platforms.
The article explains why premium OTT platforms still include ads during live sports streaming, despite offering ad-free tiers for other content. This is attributed to the high cost of sports rights, the deep integration of sponsorship into broadcast production, and the significant engineering challenges of delivering ad-free streams to millions of concurrent users during live events.
After Party Studios plans to produce fast-turnaround scripted content for YouTube, following its acquisition of Sister. This move signals a focus on ad-supported streaming and leveraging IP for rapid content creation within the industry. The strategy aims to capitalize on advertiser demand for accessible, high-volume content.
This article discusses the perception and future of retail media, highlighting concerns that it could become 'mid' due to over-reliance on sponsored products and Amazon's dominance. Industry experts, however, argue that non-Amazon and offsite retail media markets are substantial and growing, with potential for omnichannel reach, and that retailers need to invest seriously to capitalize on the opportunity. Major companies like Amazon, Walmart, and Target are generating significant ad revenues, indicating retail media is becoming a key profit center.
Blueface Ltd. is seeking a Senior Product Manager in New York to join its FreeWheel Streaming Hub Team, focusing on programmatic advertising and AI model implementation. This role emphasizes advanced ad-decisioning and machine learning integration within streaming workflows. The position highlights the industry's ongoing demand for expertise at the intersection of ad tech and AI.
This article discusses the challenges B2B SaaS marketers face with programmatic advertising attribution due to fragmented data and long sales cycles. It details how to implement robust tracking infrastructure, multi-touch attribution models, and integrate DSP data with CRM outcomes, positioning platforms like Cometly as solutions. The piece emphasizes moving away from last-click attribution to models that better reflect programmatic's role in the buyer's journey and addresses issues like third-party cookie deprecation with server-side tracking.
TikTok is developing "Smart Symphony," an AI-powered ad tool targeting a 2026 release. This tool aims to automate ad generation, potentially reshaping creative workflows and ad production efficiency in CTV advertising.
First-party data adoption is rapidly growing among brands, with 71% increasing their datasets, driven by privacy regulations and 2.9x revenue lift. Despite increasing adoption of Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) by marketers, an execution gap persists, as 52% of marketing teams lack ownership of their data strategy. The global CDP market is projected to reach $10.3 billion by 2026, indicating continued investment in this infrastructure.
Google has paused its plan to deprecate third-party cookies in Chrome until 2025, instead implementing new user privacy controls. This shift reinforces the industry's move toward privacy-first, identity-driven marketing, with companies like Experian offering solutions to help marketers adapt to a cookieless future. The change is significant for marketers, including those in streaming, who rely on targeting and measurement.
The Trade Desk is seeking a Senior Manager, Inventory Development, to cultivate publisher relationships and bolster its presence in transparent access and addressability across the open internet. The role focuses on driving the adoption of identity strategies, including Unified ID 2.0, and supporting clean supply initiatives through IAB standards. This position is key to growing programmatic inventory access and value for The Trade Desk.
Fox Corporation is seeking a Senior Product Manager for Emerging Technology (Ad Tech) to lead the development of AI capabilities, including LLMs and generative AI, for its ad sales and operations. This role focuses on leveraging intelligent systems to enhance media planning, sales enablement, campaign execution, and yield optimization within the ad tech ecosystem. The position requires translating AI advancements into scalable, production-ready advertising products that improve revenue performance and operational efficiency.
Nielsen and Mediaocean announced a collaboration to integrate advanced audience measurement for data-driven linear TV campaigns into Mediaocean's Prisma platform. This partnership aims to provide marketers with consistent audience definitions across ad planning and measurement workflows. The integration will officially launch in September 2026.
This article provides a foundational guide to ad servers, explaining their history, function, and types (first-party and third-party) in managing and delivering online advertising campaigns. It details how ad servers work from a technical perspective and lists several popular ad server providers in the industry. The piece highlights the ongoing strategic importance of ad servers in the evolving AdTech landscape, including programmatic, retail media, and CTV.
Fox Corporation is seeking a VP of Ad Sales Strategy for its new direct-to-consumer subscription streaming platform, "FOX One," within Tubi Media Group. This role will be responsible for defining and scaling the advertising business, monetization strategy, and go-to-market approach for the new service.
This article from Chief Marketer highlights the evolving landscape of ad technology, focusing on the potential for agentic measurement to redefine the ad market and the problem of pirated sports streams distorting TV ratings. It also touches on how bots affect content owners and the use of 'wrapped' insights for audience segmentation.
Osmos has published an analysis providing a decision framework for Retail Media Networks (RMNs) on whether to build, buy, or hybridize their ad tech stack by 2026. The guide outlines five deployment models, a weighted scoring rubric, a total-cost-of-ownership model, and a vendor comparison to help RMN operators meet IAB's 2026 commerce media network differentiation demands.
Roku is hiring a Senior Machine Learning Engineer for its Ad Engineering team in Bengaluru, India. The role involves developing a generative AI-powered video creative platform to enable advertisers to create high-quality video ads at scale. This new platform aims to improve the speed and scalability of CTV advertising on Roku.
EDO has launched Ad EnGage Optimize, an AI-powered suite designed to autonomously adjust live convergent TV campaigns by optimizing frequency, creative, and targeting. The product, part of EDO's Ad EnGage platform, aims to recover significant portions of ad budgets by acting on outcomes data in real-time. It features five distinct modules, including an Agentic Integration layer that connects with existing client AI workflows via the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
