Commenting on the latest deals with Tubi and The Roku Channel, TVREV analyst Alan Wolk told Fierce he thinks it’s a smart move for all involved.

“The key is that it appears that the channels will carry WBD branding on them, which is essentially free advertising for WBD, a way of saying ‘If you like this, there’s more like it on Max,’” Wolk said via email, referring to the reported front-runner name of ‘Max’ for WBD’s forthcoming premium streaming service.

Madhive, which operates a self-service platform for TV advertising, has hired Kristin Wnuk as Senior Vice President of Sales. In this new position, she will build on Madhive’s success powering streaming campaigns for local broadcasters and advertisers, continuing to drive adoption of the company's infrastructure solution for modern TV advertising.

After partnering with Sailthru — a Magnolia company and the leading personalized marketing automation SaaS solution for retailers, publishers and media — HoneyBaked Ham gained the sophisticated customer insight they were looking for, as well as a more holistic view of the customer journey.

They now have one system that connects all their data and allows them to see what’s popular among customers, alongside much stronger insight into what leads a customer to complete their purchase. They’ve also managed to create more personalized emails which reduce churn and, crucially, time wasted by customers and staff.

Simple though it may be, the campaign was effective. Though it’s too early to determine EMV (earned media value) across social media, according to Tribe Dynamics, the firm that calculates the metric, the ensuing online chatter was quick and obvious. “Damn, I wish I’d thought of that,” one marketer wrote on Twitter. Consumer reception was positive, too: “Not me wanting to buy everything from Skims because they got the two women from White Lotus as a part of the campaign,” another Twitter user wrote.

Here’s a snapshot of TV by the numbers for the week of Jan. 23-29, highlighting the most-watched shows and networks with data from Inscape, the currency-grade smart TV ACR data provider and data technology division of Vizio with insights from a panel of more than 20 million opted-in TVs. Data is linear, live TV only and includes all episode types (new and reruns). Rankings are by percent share duration (i.e., time spent watching).

The NFL Conference Championship games accounted for 7.31% of watch-time during the week, putting it squarely in first place in our program ranking.

A recent study by Cheetah Digital concludes that around 62% of users reject this type of targeted ads, and the real figure may be even higher. Considering these misgivings, it seems clear that the message from a company that advertises its products or services in this way can be contradictory.

He joined CBS commentating for the NFL shortly after his retirement and also managed to star in a large number of commercials. These include ads for Google Home, a series of ads for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association promoting — you guessed it — beef, Subway, Pizza Hut, Corona beer, and the 2021 Super Bowl Skechers advertisement (via iSpot.tv).

Every weekday we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, the always-on TV ad measurement and attribution company. (Scroll down to watch them all.)

A few highlights: Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl stars in a Crown Royal Super Bowl commercial teaser. (Ad Age’s E.J. Schultz has the backstory on the campaign in our Big Game blog: “Super Bowl 2023—tracking commercials and other brand plans.”) Kevin Bacon and his daughter Sosie Bacon help Hyundai hype the all-electric Ioniq 6. (Once again, Ad Age’s E.J. Schultz has the backstory: “Why Super Bowl auto ad spending is trending down.”) And a little girl has some imaginative theories on why her family’s new Volkswagen Atlas has two extra seats.

In particular, TV spending is on the rise. Travel brands spent $105.6 million on TV in December, a 49% uptick over the year-earlier period, and with a spend of $89 million during the first 20 days of the current month, were also on track to exceed January 2022 numbers as well, ad measurement firm iSpot.tv found.

National Football League games, and big viewing audiences, are typically popular with drugmakers looking to advertise product brands. However, this year, Pfizer’s broader Covid vaccine encouragement and treatment awareness advertising led the pharma charge by a wide margin during both NFL regular season and postseason national broadcasts, according to real-time TV ad tracker iSpot.tv.

Pfizer spent almost $90 million during the regular season and another $18 million during the playoffs ahead of all pharma companies and brands, iSpot reported in a tabulation for Endpoints News.

TV and soundbar maker VIZIO has announced a new AutoUpdate for 2023 for its TV user interface and mobile app to provide users with a more streamlined control and navigation experience.

From Kaitlyn Collins, VP of Product Marketing for VIZIO: “At VIZIO, the customer experience has been and always will remain the primary focus of everything we do,…We are dedicated to providing exceptional value with our products, even beyond the original purchase. By delivering new features and capabilities to VIZIO users with our free AutoUpdates, we amplify the value of our TV lineup.”

“We're very sensitive to viewers' privacy, it is absolutely front and center to everything we do at VIZIO Ads,” states Travis Hockersmith, Group Vice President, Platform+ as VIZIO Ads. “We know, for example, if they have explicitly opted in to ACR detection We know what they've watched with, but we don't collect any PII or Personally Identifiable Information on those users, or pass that information in any way that would violate the privacy that our viewers expect.”

Still some competitors don’t seem too worried about Roku smart TVs. Mike O’Donnell, CRO at Vizio, suggested during a January investor conference that the smart TV maker isn’t overly concerned with competition from Roku TVs, noting the company's own long-standing relationships with retailers including Walmart and Target that give it favorable placement.

That includes innovating with sustainability at the forefront, phasing out fur in its manufacturing, and forging intentional partnerships, like with Polar Bears International—a 10-plus-year relationship in which a percentage of sales from a collection goes back to the organization that’s dedicated to the conservation of polar bears and the sea ice they depend on—and expanding in the South Asian market, too. The brand further supports those living in the High Arctic by sending them materials that would otherwise be incredibly costly for them to purchase. And within the three years since the launch of Humanature, the response has been “globally phenomenal,” particularly among millennials and Gen Z.

Data from global video measurement and analytics platform Tubular Labs show that from January 1 to 15, the Network's official YouTube channel (GMANetwork) has outperformed ABS-CBN's in terms of views.

GMA Network tallied a total of 167 million views, leading over ABS-CBN Entertainment's 158 million views.

ISpot has had a webpage on the commercial since January 23, 2023, but only seemingly for the teaser version of it. It invites people to tune in to the Super Bowl LVII on February 12 to “see if Tony will go down in the history books as a golf champion.”

The most-seen automaker ads in 2022 were Nissan: Today Is Made For Thrill - Why Wait for Tomorrow? (0.86%), Nissan: 60 Years In 60 Seconds (0.85%), Dodge: We Only Do Power (0.80%), Kia: Beachcomber (0.73%) and Subaru: Well Adventured (0.71%).

The biggest TV ad impressions increases among top 15 brands, 2022 vs. 2021 included Hyundai (up 8.34%), Cadillac (up 3.31%) and GMC (up 0.61%), per iSpot.tv.

After soaring for years, streamers' national TV advertising has seen a pullback in some TV ad metrics since the start of the new 2022-2023 season in September.

Total estimated paid advertising/media value for national TV advertising dropped 5% to $869.8 million in the period from September 28, 2022 through January 28 of this year, according to iSpot.tv.

Songtradr hired Amber Morris as its global account director for TikTok. Morris brings over 11 years of experience building and managing relationships with agencies, brands, media companies and production studios.