Viacom Partners With AmEx To Forecast Purchase Intent

What Happened
Viacom has teamed up with American Express to launch a new ad product called Vantage Intent, designed to help marketers forecast purchase intent and reach the right audiences across platforms. It allows Viacom clients to tap into AmEx’s over $1 trillion of transaction data to create predictive audience segments that match AmEx’s data with Viacom’s viewership data, all based on anonymized forecasts and models to protect AmEx customers’ privacy.

Why Brands Should Care
Viacom has been making a conscientious effort in courting data partners in order to improve its ad products. Earlier this year, the media conglomerate reached a new multi-year deal with comScore for better cross-platform measurement, and later partnered with Roku to offer advertisers valuable data on the streaming audience. As Viacom continues to improve its ad offerings, brands should take advantage of the new tools available to devise and run more effective, data-driven campaigns.

 


Source:  Ad Exchanger

Viacom Partners With Roku To Offer OTT Viewing Data

What Happened
Viacom will soon offer advertisers a peak into the coveted viewing data of over-the-top streaming services. In partnership with best-selling streaming device maker Roku, which Viacom invested in earlier this year, the media conglomerate will allow access to audience data from Roku, which will inform Viacom advertisers of what Roku users are streaming and help them target particular audience segments via Roku’s full-screen video ad network.

What Brands Need To Do
With viewers increasingly choosing on-demand viewing over linear TV, advertisers have been curious about the viewing data that SVOD services are collecting. But since many of those services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are not ad-supported, the data is rarely made available for brand advertisers. This partnership should enable Viacom advertisers to gain some valuable insight into the audience behavior on streaming services, and brands would be smart to explore this opportunity.

To read more on how brands can deal with TV’s shift toward streaming platforms, please check out the Appified TV section in our Outlook 2016.

 


Source: Variety

Viacom Inks Data Deal With ComScore For Cross-Platform Measurement

What Happened
Viacom has reached a new multi-year deal with comScore to leverage the latter’s vast data on digital audiences to help advertisers target specific audiences across the various Viacom properties. Last year, comScore merged with TV audience measurement firm Rentrak to better compete with Nielsen. With this new deal, marketers are able to access the audience data from comScore via Viacom’s Vantage platform, and use it to target and track audiences across linear TV, digital, and VOD services within Viacom’s media network.

What Brands Need To Do
As digital and OTT distribution channels continue to grow, consumers’ TV and video consumption is increasingly fragmented. Therefore, brand advertisers should embrace the new data-driven tools Viacom offers to better measure and serve content and ads across multiple devices and channels.

To read more on how brands can reach shoppers on OTT platforms with shopping apps and branded content, please check out the Appified TV section in our Outlook 2016.

 


Source: AdWeek

Viacom Puts Data Front And Center Amid Upfront Talks

What Happened
Viacom, owner of cable channels including Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, and MTV, claims that 80% of its upfront deals this year will offer marketers access to its audience data in some way. Aiming to make that data a central part of its upfront deals to appeal to marketers, Viacom says it is rolling out five new products designed to simplify and expand the reach of buying target audiences, allowing ad-buyers to automate targeting based on buying intent and more granular data points. For example, Vantage Instant Audience enables marketers to tap into audience segments already identified by Viacom, while another product, Vantage Target Discover, aims to help marketers find potential customers through Viacom’s behavioral data.

What Brands Need To Do
As more and more brand advertisers start to look beyond basic demographic information, audience data is essential for advertisers seeking to identify and reach their target their audience in the increasingly fractionalized media space. Similarly to Viacom, NBCUniversal also launched new targeting tools last month to help marketers tap into its audience database and target them across multiple platforms. As more audience data becomes available, TV advertisers should take advantage of the new targeting tools that the networks are offering and leverage them to create and implement more effective brand campaigns.

 


Source: AdWeek

Viacom And Snapchat Join Forces With Multi-Year Ad Deal

What Happened
Old-school media giant Viacom and hot messaging app Snapchat have joined forces in a multi-yeara ds and content deal, the companies announced Tuesday. With the deal, Viacom will bundle the Snapchat ads with its own TV inventory and sell them independently. Moreover, Viacom will also add more channels to Snapchat’s Discover platform, and give Snapchat exclusive access to Viacom-sponsored events like the VMAs on MTV channel. Previously, Snapchat already surfaced content for Viacom-owned networks Comedy Central and MTV.

What Brands Need To Do
The new ad deal signals Snapchat’s continuous efforts to monetize its platform by expanding its ad offerings with Viacom’s help,whereas Viacom can leverage it to reach Snapchat’s young-skewing users, who are increasingly shunning traditional media in favor of digital and mobile videos. For brands seeking to connect with teens and young Millennials, working with Viacom to get on Snapchat may be a good option worth exploring.

 


Source: WSJ

Viacom Teams Up With A YouTube Channel To Target Millennial Moms

What Happened
In a bid to target millennial mothers, Viacom has teamed up with the top parenting channel on YouTube “What’s Up Moms” to put the latter’s branded videos on its cable networks. The first branded video, which features creative ways to use Hershey’s Chocolate during the holiday, debuted on Monday on Viacom’s cable channels and digital platforms at the same time as on YouTube. The video is a collaboration between Viacom Velocity, Viacom’s creative content arm, and the creators behind What’s Up Moms. Two more spots are slated to air next year, and will feature different brands.

What Brands Need To Do
This marks the first case of a national media owner partnering with a YouTube channel and its niche content creators in order to produce branded videos. Brands looking to create branded content for a specific demographic should consider collaborating with niche content makers who have a proven track record in reaching a demo.

Plus, with some help from YouTube’s now widely available shoppable ads, brands with great video content should have a pretty good shot at finding interested audiences and effectively move them down the sales funnel on YouTube.


Source: AdWeek

Viacom Teams Up With TiVo For More Audience Data

What Happened
Viacom is about to offer advertisers a lot more audience data that goes beyond the usual metrics that Nielsen provides. Striking a new partnership deal with TiVo, Viacom will be able to use its set-top box data from over 2.3 million households using TiVo devices to boost Viacom Vantage, its ad tool that allows advertisers to target their buys based on consumer habits.

What Brands Need To Do
Following Comcast’s recent move to tap its set-top boxes for more viewer data, Viacom is likely hoping that this move will help increase the value of  its ads in the face of its declining ratings. For brands advertising on Viacom networks, this new partnership should provide them with better targeting tools and more accurate audience insights to help reach their desired audience segments.

 


Source: The Hollywood Reporter

The Traditional TV Industry Has Reached A Tipping Point

What Happened
This past week has been a particularly awful one for the TV industry. Over $35 billion was lost in market value across seven major media companies, whose weak earnings results this week highlighted the seismic change from linear TV towards on-demand viewing. For example, Viacom Inc., the owner of youth-oriented channels like Nickelodeon and MTV, reported a sharp 9% quarterly decline in its domestic advertising revenue, and its market share resultingly plummeted 21% in two days. Losing its tight grip on the advertising dollars, it seems safe to say that the TV industry has reached a tipping point.

What Brands Can Do
As the audience, especially younger generations, continues to migrate from the ad-supported traditional platform towards OTT on-demand platforms that have little to no ads, marketers and brands will have to follow the eyeballs. This also means that brands need to develop a more comprehensive digital strategy and campaign approaches. As for those in the traditional TV industry, launching an on-demand platform to cater to the changing viewer behaviors should be a top priority. Moreover, differentiation through unique, quality content would be key for survival.

 

Source:Wall Street Journal

Yahoo! Launches Yahoo Screen

Yahoo’s ongoing revamp continued with its recent announcement of Yahoo Screen, an iOS app that compiles all of its entertainment content for streaming.  The library includes an extensive Saturday Night Live archive and select Comedy Central programming including the Colbert Report and the Daily Show.  More than 1,000 hours of comedy programming is currently available to stream on the service.  Other content comes from ABC News, GQ, Wired, Major League Baseball, UFC, among others.  The app is designed to be highly gesture based, with swipes playing a key role.  With more and more companies entering the streaming space, are we about to see a leap of innovation in web based multimedia programming?

Sony & Viacom Reach Internet TV Deal

Viacom has tentatively agreed to let its popular cable channels be carried by Sony’s new Internet TV service, according to an article in the New York Times. The deal – between a major programmer and a technology company – is one of the first of its kind, and is a reaction to consumer attention shifting online. That said, the paid package will likely be bundled in the same way as TV so the online streaming won’t be too much of a gamechanger in the end. Intel and Google are reportedly working on similar services, but for now it looks like Sony and Viacom are leading the charge.