ITV

Tag: Media General

  • Five US broadcasters form news streaming venture NewsON

    Five US broadcasters form news streaming venture NewsON

    MUMBAI: Five major broadcast television stations namely The ABC Owned Television Station Group, Cox Media Group, Hearst Television, Media General and Raycom Media have formed a new venture called NewsON.

     

    NewsON (www.NewsON.us) will provide live and same-day local TV newscasts on demand from leading stations around the country to consumers’ mobile and selected connected TV devices.

     

    The free, advertising-supported NewsON service, which is expected to launch to the public in the fall of this year, will be delivered through apps available for download from mobile and connected TV app stores. NewsON will enable users to watch live and on-demand newscasts from their local markets or from any of the 112 participating news stations, in 84 viewing markets across the country, whose owners have already contracted to deliver their news streams through NewsON. These include stations in eight of the Top 10 U.S. TV markets and 17 of the top 25.

     

    Multiple stations will be available through NewsON in 21 markets, giving viewers the opportunity to “change channels” as they wish. The number of participating TV stations is expected to grow in the months ahead as additional broadcast TV station groups activate their streams into NewsON.

     

    Leading this new venture is Louis Gump, who has signed on as NewsON’s chief executive officer. Gump presided earlier in his career over benchmark-setting mobile businesses for The Weather Company and CNN, before becoming CEO of mobile media and advertising company LSN Mobile. Gump has also served in various capacities within industry organizations including the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Online Publishers Association (OPA), and he served for more than a decade on the board of the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). He will be based in Atlanta where NewsON will scale up its organization.

     

    “The sheer amount of live news coverage – from TV stations around the country – that has been assembled for delivery through NewsON’s apps is unprecedented. Americans place a great deal of trust in their local news teams, who are typically the first informers from the local scene of the biggest news developments around the country. NewsON will bring instant access to live local news to a generation of viewers accustomed to using mobile and connected TV platforms to stay informed,” Gump said.

     

    “And this is just the start,” Gump noted. “We’ll welcome the participation of other TV station owners, as this service only gets better with each additional station.”

     

    A recent study underscores local TV’s leading role as a news source. According to the March 2015 report “Local News in a Digital Age” by the Pew Research Center, local TV stations remain the dominant source of news for Americans in markets both big and small. The appetite for local and neighborhood news, the staple of TV station newscast coverage, is up to twice the appetite for national and international news, the study found. 

  • Videa launches automated television advertising platform

    Videa launches automated television advertising platform

    MUMBAI: Videa, a Cox-backed supply-side platform bringing automation and data-driven decision-making to broadcast television, is slated to debut at the National Association of Broadcasters Show in Las Vegas next week. Videa is currently working with seven key broadcast partners including Gannett, Raycom, Media General, Graham Media, and Cox as well as major advertising agencies including Carat / Amplifi and Starcom, to enhance and simplify the buying and selling of television advertising.

     

    First launched in beta in December 2014, Videa has worked with station groups, agencies and rep firms across the spot TV ecosystem to build an automated television solution that optimizes advertising campaigns and enables workflow efficiencies and data enhanced audience targeting.

     

    For broadcasters, Videa provides a powerful set of products and services driven by insightful reporting tools to enhance their existing sales channels and bring new sources of demand to spot television. By leveraging Videa’s platform, stations can offer features such as transparent pricing, enhanced data, yield and schedule optimization, and improved stewardship. Videa’s platform works across existing sales channels and offers buyers advanced access to the entire premium TV inventory schedule.

     

    As part of its launch, Videa has also inked a key partnership with Mediaocean, the leading software platform provider for the advertising world, to provide agencies unprecedented speed, efficiency and transparency to traditional local broadcast media transactions. As part of the agreement, Videa will be the supply partner for broadcast inventory that will be initially available through Mediaocean’s Spectra.

     

    “Our goal is to continue to make spot television more efficient and more powerful and believe the partnerships we have in place with the broadcasters, agencies, rep firms and Mediaocean are integral in achieving that goal. The Videa platform arms local stations with the same capabilities as large networks, helping them efficiently and effectively sell more spot television advertising at scale – something we will continue to do as we evolve our product to include more audience targeting capabilities,” said Videa president Shereta Williams.

     

    “The ability to access traditional television advertising using automation provided by Mediaocean and Videa is a critical step forward in convergence. Embracing this change is essential to success and we are continually evolving to offer our clients a central converged ecosystem. The first step was enabling media buyers to access TV and digital from one platform, and now by partnering with Videa we are offering clients the technology to buy and sell broadcast in the most efficient way,” added Mediaocean vice president, product and partner solutions Cordie DePascale. 

     

    Videa is the only TV supply-side platform that provides a broad range of tools to manage sales channel conflict, as well as yield optimization tools. Local broadcasters can now leverage automation and data to enhance existing selling approaches and increase the demand for their inventory while providing advertisers with automation and analytics to reach target audiences with greater speed and accuracy.