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The Refresh News: June 23 - TV Takes the Spotlight: Cannes 2025’s Battle for the Future of Streaming Advertising
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- [00:00]
John Doe
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- [01:11]
Kate Smith
Did TV steal the show from AI at Cannes this year? It certainly seemed like it, given the sheer volume of announcements regarding partnerships and integrations that were rolled out these past couple of weeks. I'm Kate with marketexture and this is the Refresh, your weekly download on what went down in advertising. The Today is Monday, June 23rd and this week we're looking at the deals that are reshaping the TV landscape, including announcements from Amazon, Disney, Omnicom, Walmart and Comcast. At the end of this episode, we'll also take a step back and talk briefly about what these partnerships and integrations mean for the broader advertising landscape. So let's get into it, starting off with Amazon, who made two moves that were all about inventory and data access to support transparency and precision within campaigns. The first was the announcement of an exclusive partnership with Roku, giving Advertisers access to Roku's logged in user base directly through the Amazon DSP. As Amazon Ads VP Kelly McLean put it, the deal brings unprecedented precision at scale and allows advertisers to activate on deep insights to identify audiences and better tie ad exposure to performance outcomes. Alongside this partnership, they also announced an integration with Disney's Real Time Ad Exchange, or Drax. This gives Amazon DSP users access to inventory across Disney, Hulu and espn, along with the ability to combine Amazon's commerce data with Disney's logged in audiences. Advertisers will also be able to tap into Disney's magic words tool an AI powered targeting product that uses scene level metadata to align ad to emotions, mood or key moments, maximizing the higher viewer attention that happens during these moments, like a change in his leading on the scoreboard or a game ending touchdown. On Disney's end, they're ramping up who's cutout to participate in their Disney Live Certified DSP program, adding 12 new DSPs. Disney Live Certified DSPs have demonstrated the ability to handle the dynamic nature of live events, including real time adjustments based on game situations like going into overtime. Not to be left out, Omnicom is also striking deals with Disney working with them and the Trade Desk to deliver programmatic ads and live events, which will also be powered by ad products like Magic Words onto Netflix, who just added Yahoo to its short list of DSPs that have direct inventory access. They're also rolling out a new AI enhanced ad product focused on dynamic ad placement, using Generative AI to blend ads or brands into show content. Netflix has also said these ads could be inserted when a show is paused and may contain an overlay or call to action. And they are not alone in this endeavor. The Trade Desk announced a similar virtual product placement capability through a partnership with Rembrandt, a generative AI creative vendor. Similar to Netflix, Rembrandt's tech scans video scenes and identifies where branded content can be seamlessly embedded, even in influencer and creator content. Virtual product placement or dynamic ad placement in show content has been in the works for a while now, with the most recent attempts coming around the 2022 upfronts. Just before OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT, then Amazon, Peacock and Triplelift had all tried their hands at the tech. The hype fizzled, but with generative AI taking off, these opportunities may finally come to fruition. Next up we have Walmart, and similar to Amazon's partnerships with Roku and Disney, Walmart has teamed up with NBCUniversal to enable access to their vast stores of shopper data. The partnership will give advertisers the ability to create more precise audience targeting and cross platform measurement outputs within live sports content across streaming and linear campaigns. Finally, we have Comcast, who seems to have adopted the mantra of the best things come in threes, with a trio of announcements this week. The first, Comcast Advertising is working with MasterCard to connect TV ad exposure to aggregated anonymized purchase data, helping both national and local advertising advertisers measure outcomes like sales lift. Next, their universal ads platform is teaming up with Marpipe to launch dynamic product ads that will pull from live product catalogs, creating personalized shoppable ads and streaming environments. And finally, Freewheel is expanding its attribution capabilities with the launch of the Freewheel Identity Network, improving identity resolution and match rates. They're also partnering with PlaceIQ for location based targeting and foot traffic attribution. Alright, let's wrap things up with a quick exploration of what these announcements point to and why they're being made. Now, we've all been around long enough to know that nearly nothing in the world of business, PR or communications is by accident, especially in terms of timing. Which means that it's no happy accident that these announcements are being made leading up to and during Cannes, especially as ad tech has begun to take center stage. Not only are major brand advertisers available to wine, dine and ideally commit to spending their budgets with you, but the rest of the industry is watching too. From home. Of course our time, attention and ad spend is flowing towards streaming tv, but one of the major hindrances has been getting as much out of the channel as its digital counterparts. When they do invest, advertisers must choose where to spend their money and more importantly, with who. With so much opportunity, AKA money sitting on the table, HDSP is battling to be the go to platform of choice for advertisers to buy TV and video through. And if you're not convinced, just look at recent challenges to the trade desk from Amazon and Viant. In this battle, what was once a differentiator exclusive or premium inventory access has now become table stakes. Alongside this, the stakes have been raised. Advertisers are after platforms that can help them transform their TV and video campaigns into full funnel performance oriented endeavors. And in this next battle, data has become the new differentiator. Not only who can access the most of it, but who can actually do something with it. And sure, we've been infusing data into our TV buys for a while now, but it's the proximity or direct access to high quality data these partnerships provide that enable the accuracy and immediacy advertisers need. A more direct line in improves advertisers ability to segment and target audiences with precision, generate creative that responds to a moment in real time and build a robust picture of performance. These factors will matter even more in a future where an increasing number of impressions are transacted programmatically, including those within live events. In March of 2024, Disney set a goal of having 75% of ad revenues come from programmatic sales. With its Disney Real Time Ad Exchange Drax playing a pivotal role. The winners of the battle for TV dominance will be defined by whoever can most effectively help advertisers turn TV into a full blown performance marketing channel. But I also think they'll be determined by whoever can use the tech that's available to them in really smart ways that don't just achieve an outcome, but create relevant, meaningful experiences for advertisers and their audiences across a variety of video environments. There's still plenty to unpack about where TV and video are headed, and no doubt more than a few partnerships blossomed over rose tinted conversations or during late nights at the gutter bar that will continue to shape that future. But for now, that's all we have time for for this week's the Refresh. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll catch you next.