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YouTube skippable ads

YouTube has launched a new advertising format branded ‘TrueView’ that allows viewers to skip adverts they aren’t interested in. The new advert format will play ads for just five seconds before the viewer can skip and in some cases it will be possible to choose which advert appears. Advertisers will only pay for the adverts […]

December 3, 2010

SeeSaw Ad Selector

VOD service SeeSaw has launched Ad Selector in the UK, which enables users to choose the ad they watch before streaming a programme. In what the online TV service from Arqiva is claiming as “a landmark first for the UK,” consumers will have the opportunity to choose from three separate ads by an individual brand […]

November 25, 2010

Online TV viewers will tolerate more ads

Turner Broadcasting has released research, conducted with Magna Global, which the company says indicates a willingness by online video viewers to watch higher ad loads. Online streams of TV shows could support as many ads as broadcast television shows, Turner says. The test had Turner assigning visitors to its TNT and TBS websites. The first […]

November 24, 2010

Google’s TV Ads for FiOS TV

US network Verizon has become the latest partner for Google’s TV Ads platform, carrying the adverts on its pay-TV service FiOS TV.  Allowing time for technical bedding and planning, Verizon is expected to start delivering Google TV Ads on FiOS TV in early 2011. Having lost NBC Universal as a partner in recent weeks, the […]

November 22, 2010

Motorola backs BlackArrow ad targeting

BlackArrow, a company that provides advertising products for “new TV” platforms, has raised funding from Motorola through its investment arm, Motorola Ventures. The company says that the investment is an extension of BlackArrow’s previously announced $20 million Series C funding round earlier this year. Terms of Motorola’s investment were not disclosed. To date BlackArrow has […]

November 17, 2010

Content King only if you own it

ITV’s revenues and profits are resurgent, proving again that it has the world’s simplest business model and that you are just unlucky if you end up running it (or any other FTA commercial channel) in an advertising down turn. But the new management team says it doesn’t want to ride its luck and has set […]

November 16, 2010

Polsat buys out parent company

Cyfrowy Polsat SA, Poland’s biggest satellite television broadcaster, has agreed to buy Telewizja Polsat SA, its parent company which is also controlled by billionaire Zygmunt Solorz-Zak  , for 3.75 billion zloty ($1.3bn). Cyfrowy will pay 2.6 billion zloty in cash and the rest in the form of 80 million new shares valued at 14.37 zloty […]

November 15, 2010

Ex Ofcom man calls for Comms reform

Former Ofcom partner and ITN CEO, Stewart Purvis, has called for quick action on ITV, a reversal of European regulation, and relaxation of advertising and impartiality rules, in a speech delivered for the RTS (Royal Television Society) Fleming Memorial Lecture 2010. Entitled ‘Calling Time on Analogue Regulation – an agenda for the next Communications Act,’ […]

November 12, 2010From Colin Mann in London

European ad recovery lifts RTL Q3

Europe’s biggest commercial broadcaster RTL Group has posted a lift in third-quarter operating profit driven by strong performance in Germany, France and the Netherlands and said the fourth quarter has started well. The Luxembourg-based company reported that EBITA was E133 million, up 47.8 per cent. Group revenue rose 8.8 per cent to E1.16 billion. RTL […]

November 9, 2010

ITV says ad rules mean it makes rubbish

ITV could invest more in arts, factual programming and drama were it not for regulations, its managers has told a Lords committee.  Archie Norman, new chairman of the UK’s largest commercial broadcaster, and Adam Crozier, chief executive, told the communications committee that ITV had been driven into a “ratings rat race” by regulations, particularly the […]

November 3, 2010