Recent cross-platform campaign analysis from InnovidXP highlights how the combination of FOX (with its news, sports and entertainment content) and Tubi will enable advertisers to scale a wide range of desired audiences across content types. It shows the value of ‘Tubi Unique Content Categories’ in building incremental reach, harnessing genre-based environments that are contextually relevant to the advertiser. Findings have shown that, on average, eight out of ten Tubi households cannot be reached with broadcast linear TV. Innovid says buyers will be able to achieve incremental audience reach averaging 75+% when adding a Tubi buy to a FOX linear campaign.

“As more viewers engage with content across multiple screens, it remains vital that we continue to work with our ad partners and provide them with the necessary data and insights that further display the value of converged TV and the engaged audiences and concentrated impact FOX delivers,” says Dan Callahan, Senior Vice President, Data Strategy & Sales Innovation at FOX. “Our partnership with Innovid is another step forward in expanding and delivering cross-platform measurement solutions that further align with our advertisers’ objectives.”

Tyler Fitch, Senior Vice President, Advanced TV & Partnerships at Tubi, adds: “For more than a year, Tubi has been working in lockstep with Innovid to quantify the unique reach that streaming delivers to advertisers beyond linear [broadcast] – providing top TV advertisers with actionable insights. Tubi and Fox have a shared vision to create the optimal environment for advertisers to efficiently reach the right audiences across multiple platforms and screens. InnovidXP brings this vision to life with consistent, accurate and scalable cross-platform TV measurement.”

Jo Kinsella, President, InnovidXP, concludes: “Fox and Tubi are redefining the way advertisers approach TV investments by prioritising analytics that prove the value of converged TV. We are thrilled to support this collaborative effort to unite linear and streaming with cross-platform audience measurement, and we look forward to delivering advertisers the insights and metrics that matter today.”

Tubi is available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand Mexico and a small number of other markets (but not in Europe).

Both FOX and Discovery have said they will use Roku’s watermark solution to verify their inventory, and ad technology providers Google, HUMAN, Basic Technologies, Innovid and Magnite, have announced they will be integrating the technology after it is rolled out. Roku-owned OneView will be the first ad buying platform to offer inventory automatically validated by the solution.

Louqman Parampath, VP of Product Management at Roku, said “As America’s No. 1 TV Streaming Platform, we are uniquely positioned to help the industry preempt device spoofing. This is powerful and free technology that will help advertisers accelerate their shift to TV streaming with even more confidence.”

Bill Murray, Vice President of Programmatic Solutions, Discovery, commented “Roku’s Advertising Watermark assures our advertiser clients that they are buying genuine Discovery inventory on Roku devices. We’re excited that Roku has brought its data, operating system, and ad technology together to easily prevent ad spoofing.”

Ad verification platform DoubleVerify analysed over a trillion CTV ad impressions across 80 markets between May 2020 and June 2021, and found significant adoption of spoofing scams over bot scams by fraudsters. Bot scams experienced a 44% drop, and over the period observed 36% of all CTV fraud was conducted through spoofing. DoubleVerify reports that, in Q4 2021, 18% of unprotected CTV ads traded programmatically were either invalid traffic or fraud.

NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are the latest blockchain phenomenon to have made waves on the internet, with attitudes towards the crypto-based tokens ranging from excitement to skepticism to derision. Unlike a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, where one bitcoin is precisely equivalent in value to any other bitcoin, NFTs are non-fungible, meaning that each token is unique and cannot be traded for another qualitatively identical token. Most NFTs are part of the Ethereum blockchain, which is a cryptocurrency similar to bitcoin or dogecoin, but which also supports NFTs.

Typically the acquisition of NFTs involves gaining ownership rights to a digital asset, such as an image, gif or small video clip, on the blockchain (although original media owners mostly retain rights to use and distribute the asset, but cannot sell another NFT for it). Many NFT advocates have compared acquiring tokens to the purchase of artwork or collecting rare trading cards. In October, Mike Winkelmann – who creates digital art under the pseudonym “Beeple” – sold an NFT of his work for $69 million.

Introduced by Fox, The MaskVerse will allow crypto-fans to build their own collection of limited-edition digital masks for characters across all six seasons of The Masked Singer.  Players will be able to participate in a voting game to predict contestant eliminations in the TV show, giving them opportunities to buy Gold Mask packs, complete the full collection and win special prizes. Fans will create digital wallets through the Eluvio blockchain to function as a digital vault for their MaskVerse NFTs, and can purchase tokens via credit cards or cryptocurrency while still being able to transfer their NFTs to third-party wallets.

Aside from launching Blockchain Creative Labs (with a $100 million seed investment) and unveiling The MaskVerse, Fox has also demonstrated its interest in NFTs by teaming up with WWE to launch a marketplace for trading tokens based on the sports company’s catalogue of wrestling intellectual property.

The astonishing prices some NFTs have sold for seems to have attracted the attention of other entertainment mega-companies. ViacomCBS has partnered with the NFT company Recur, to develop and sell tokens based on its catalogue of films and TV shows. The companies will launch a platform in early 2022, selling digital assets from CBS, Nickelodeon, MTV, BET and other channels.

ViacomCBS’s Consumer Products President Pam Kaufman said, “Voracious collectors and first-time NFT buyers alike will find unique opportunities to own a piece of their favorite franchises.”

Similarly WarnerMedia-owned CNN will rollout its own NFTs through an offering called “Vault by CNN”, and Lionsgate has signed a partnership agreement with NFT company Autograph to bring tokens to market based on major franchises such as The Hunger Games, Mad Men and John Wick.

“NFTs present a tremendous opportunity for mixed-reality world building experiences, deepening user engagement and interaction and fostering a community for our hundreds of millions of global consumers to create one-of-a-kind digital collections and Autograph is the optimal destination for this discovery,” said Jenefer Brown, Executive VP & Head of Lionsgate Global Live.