Roku Recommendations to provide a new space for sponsored content: The CTV company is offering brands the opportunity to sponsor recommendation videos for content across its channels to help it expand on its recent sponsored content investments.
In December, we published our first forecast for Pluto TV ad revenues. Pluto TV, a free streaming service operated by ViacomCBS, will receive $786.7 million in net US ad revenues in 2021, a 77.7% increase over the previous year. In 2022, Pluto TV’s net US ad revenues will surpass $1 billion annually for the first time.
TV rebounded temporarily last year: Lockdowns and the election helped TV reverse its longstanding trend of losing viewership hours in the US, but only for the year—it'll keep losing time spent this year and into the future.
On today's episode, we discuss five milestone changes in how Americans are consuming media. We then talk about multiscreen behavior, newspaper readership trends, and movie studios figuring out the right theatrical release strategy. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer director of forecasting Oscar Orozco and forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence Peter Vahle.
The pandemic was responsible for a number of digital shifts in the UK—chief among them has been the move to connected TV (CTV) use. The UK was already one of the leading markets in Europe for CTV use, with usership levels broadly mirroring those of the US. The pandemic super-charged things, though, leading to substantial upward revisions to our forecast. In February 2020, we estimated that there would be 38.6 million CTV users in the UK that year; our revised forecast a year later pegged that number at 41.4 million, up 2.8 million.
Edelman's Trust Barometer shows the tech industry is rapidly losing trust worldwide, and most acutely in the US. The report details how trust is declining across specific technologies as well, including 5G, AI, IoT, and VR.
We expect there will be 159.1 million monthly mobile phone gamers in the US this year, up 1.2% from 2020. That’s 89.5% of all US digital gamers, making mobile phones the leading device by a significant margin.
Spotify takes on Clubhouse: The company is entering the live social audio space with its Locker Room acquisition—but Spotify is still primarily a listening-focused app, which could hurt its ability to compete against social-focused competitors.
T-Mobile throws in the towel: The telecom giant will sunset its skinny bundle TVision next month, joining many other companies that have failed to crack this difficult yet growing market.
Axios and The Athletic consider a merger: The two media upstarts’ talks may include jointly building a portfolio of high-quality publishers and selling business subscriptions—the latest effort by media companies to diversify revenue streams.
A universal Universal streaming service: NBCU is reportedly considering launching a Universal-branded subscription streaming service in response to fears that the Peacock brand lacks global appeal.
Live sports is staple programming for Canada’s broadcasters, but streaming has provided a viable alternative for the more digitally inclined. Almost a quarter of adult sports viewers in Canada said they watched sports content via livestreams, compared with 60% who reported following sports via live TV, per a January 2021 survey by YouGov. Canada lags behind the 39% average for sports streaming across the 32 markets YouGov polled, but it was roughly on par with similar digital economies. For example, 17% of respondents in the US and 24% in the UK said they watched sports this way.
Disney delays its theatrical return: Straight-to-streaming releases and shorter theatrical windows are dimming hopes of a full movie industry recovery this year. Worse, some changes may be permanent, further hurting the entertainment industry’s ad spending growth.
Roku to launch in-house branded content: The streaming-first branded ad studio is Roku’s latest move to ramp up its advertising segment as marketer interest in CTV booms.
Microsoft wants to buy Discord: It’s the tech giant’s third attempt at tapping into a younger user base, but the third time could be the charm—Discord has a lot of synergies with Microsoft’s existing communications and gaming services.
Once relegated to the children’s market, virtual characters are entering the mainstream in China. Fictional as these digitally rendered avatars may be, they hold real jobs, from pop star to influencer, to even news anchor. And they’re becoming increasingly interactive and humanlike, thanks to improvements in technologies such as AI, motion capture, and virtual reality (VR). Recent advancements in augmented reality (AR), in particular, have enabled virtual avatars to step out of social media and make live appearances alongside flesh-and-blood celebrities.