AT&T

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Peacock Measures Its Feathers Ah, there’s nothing that says autumn like the fresh scent of outcome-based measurement on TV! NBCU now has a proprietary program called Total Investment Impact that tracks how ads drive sales, reports Digiday. The program also looks at how other, non-ad-related […]

AT&T is reportedly exploring a sale of Xandr, the ad tech unit it launched in 2018 with lofty ambitions to transform the TV advertising industry with data and automation. The talks are still preliminary and a deal may not go through, per The Wall Street Journal, which broke the news. Xandr made a big splash […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Brian Chap, founder of Tech Recipes. Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple may have some of the best data on the market, but they lack the ability to provide the most […]

This Isn’t Even My Final Form Will Sony acquire anime streaming service Crunchyroll from AT&T and pair it with its existing service Funimation? According to The Information, the big sticking point keeping that dream from happening is the price: AT&T reportedly wants $1.5 billion. While the initial move to offload Crunchyroll began in May, it […]

This article is sponsored by Xandr. Recent growth in streaming video viewership around the world has been stunning, leading many advertisers to question how and where to reallocate or complement linear TV budgets, or extend digital display and video into streaming video. But the landscape is rife with confusing acronyms, layers of opaque content licensing […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Are You Committed? Advertisers want more flexibility in upfront deals this year. Cancellation options are a big topic, with buyers pushing for the right to cancel a higher percentage of their commitments closer to air date, agency executives tell Digiday. Advertisers also want “expansion […]

When Xandr launched in 2018, it had a grand vision to be the data-driven platform and ad marketplace for the TV industry. But from the start, industry insiders were skeptical that plan would ever come to fruition, and few were surprised when Xandr announced last week it would fold into WarnerMedia. “We kind of thought […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Google Play Wins Apple and Google have taken heavy flak for their 30% revenue cut for apps downloaded from their respective app stores. But the two powerhouse mobile operators may have won the war last week, when Epic, the game developer behind the megahit […]

With no live sports on the schedule, AT&T lost nearly 900,000 paid subscribers across its premium TV business, which includes DirecTV, U-verse and AT&T TV. That’s nearly double the number of Q1 2019 paid subscriber losses, which were around 544,000. Total pay TV revenue was $10.5 billion, down 7.2%. Sports have long been considered paid […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Pretty Good, Eh? File this one under, “Not an April Fools’ joke.” Postmedia, one of the largest Canadian news media conglomerates, is making all of its online content free this month, thanks to a partnership with Mary Brown’s, a fried chicken chain based in […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Mobile Response People forced into quarantine, isolation or however you want to put it are boosting overall content consumption in the United States. Live television is still down year over year, from three hours and 44 minutes per day to three hours and 27 […]

Xandr CEO Brian Lesser has resigned, Reuters reported. Xandr did not respond to AdExchanger’s request for comment. There’d been rumblings within the advertising community about Xandr not living up to expectations. AT&T’s ad unit missed internal revenue projections and was off-pace to meet goals it set for later this year, multiple sources told AdExchanger. The […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. The Cost Of Content AT&T is still bleeding pay-TV subscribers as it beefs up its investment in HBO Max, which is driving losses in the short term. Consolidated revenues for the quarter were $46.8 billion but would have been $48 billion without the HBO […]

Corporate siblings WarnerMedia and Xandr are full steam ahead on data-driven TV sales. Just look at this year’s upfront, where the AT&T subsidiaries will go to market together for the first time. The companies have been inching their way toward a joint offering over the past year and a half in an effort to sell […]

The advertising industry today is largely the product of tremendous M&A activity. AdExchanger looked at the acquisitions that made the biggest impact in the past decade. Impact can mean many things. Some of these startups flourished under their new owners, showing worth far more than their deal price. Others, purchased during their downfall, reflect the […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Distribution Dilemma AT&T is leaning into its 34 million HBO subscribers to drive sign-ups for its forthcoming HBO Max streaming service. But it may face roadblocks in working with competitive cable providers on distribution, Digiday reports. AT&T has yet to sign on any distribution […]

AT&T rolled out the red carpet for investors Tuesday in true Hollywood fashion – with a flashy event at Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank, California, to unveil its HBO Max streaming service. In a presentation resembling the upfronts, AT&T revealed that HBO Max will launch in the United States in May 2020 with 10,000 hours […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Political Unrest There’s dissent brewing in Menlo Park. The New York Times reports that more than 250 Facebook employees recently signed a letter addressed to Mark Zuckerberg slamming the company’s decision to let politicians lie in ads on its platform. The impassioned letter pleads […]

Xandr on Friday acquired the linear TV supply-side platform Clypd, its second acquisition since AT&T bought AppNexus and launched the data-driven advertising group last year. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Clypd had raised about $31 million since it was founded in 2012, and the German broadcaster RTL Group is a lead investor. Even […]

Despite Xandr’s positioning as the TV platform of the future during its Relevance Conference in Santa Barbara last week, agency buyers want to see more progress toward that goal. Certainly, Xandr has the right assets and strategy to create a programmatic marketplace for TV. Over the past year, Xandr launched a publisher network called Community, […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Move Over Rick Welday is stepping out of his shoes as Xandr president and likely right into a position at either AT&T or WarnerMedia. The change comes as AT&T begins to bring the three pillars of its new media empire – communications, advertising and […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Satellite Down Little over a week after activist investor Elliott Associates criticized AT&T’s operations, including its $67 billion DirecTV acquisition in 2014, the satellite unit might be on the chopping block. AT&T is considering “parting ways” with DirecTV, according to The Wall Street Journal. […]

Longtime AppNexus President Michael Rubenstein will leave the business at the end of the year. Rubenstein is the latest top executive at AppNexus to leave since the company was acquired by AT&T under its Xandr unit for $2 billion in June 2018. Founder and CEO Brian O’Kelley left the company in October 2018. Rubenstein joined […]

This post is sponsored by Xandr. As the fragmentation of media viewing habits continues unabated, technology platforms must help evolve buying practices to reach interested consumers however they access content. In order to ensure buyers’ unique objectives are met across screens, customization and flexibility are paramount. This summer, AT&T’s Xandr unit introduced Xandr Invest, a […]

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Stay Tuned UK broadcaster Sky TV released findings from a five-year study of 52,000 commercial breaks. The company found that when addressable ads were served for the first three ads in a commercial break, channel switching rates dropped by almost half compared to linear […]

There’s yet another content streaming service joining the fray: AT&T TV will enter beta testing in Q3, offering viewers an internet delivered TV option, the company said during its Q2 earnings call today. If AT&T TV’s service takes off, it will open up a new pool of OTT inventory for buyers. IP TV services can […]

WarnerMedia’s announcement Wednesday that three of its top sales executives would leave as part of a reorg reflects changing times in the business of network TV. Donna Speciale, president of ad sales, Dan Riess, EVP of Turner Ignite, and Frank Sgrizzi, EVP of portfolio sales and client partnerships, are leaving WarnerMedia one year after its […]

Updated 8:00 PM EST to reflect a statement from WarnerMedia CRO Gerhard Zeiler WarnerMedia’s president of ad sales, Donna Speciale, is leaving the company as part of a broader ad sales reorg. The Information first reported the development. Speciale, who has been president of Turner’s ad sales business for seven years, took on the role […]