Welcome to Ad Age’s NewFronts 2023 newsletter. We’ll be sharing a daily roundup of events, interviews and sessions from Interactive Advertising Bureau's dog-and-pony show throughout the week. You can find all of Ad Age's NewFronts coverage here.
Special Report: NewFronts
NewFronts Day 2—protests outside of Peacock and AI advancements
Tuesday's rain didn't stop the hype or the comedic jabs at rivals
WGA strike protesters outside of Peacock NewFronts presentation.
Credit:
Parker Herren
Advertisers brave the weather
Despite a rainy morning, Samsung Ads’ bright-and-early NewFront drew a sizable crowd to its Samsung 837 retail/event hybrid venue, Ad Age's Parker Herren writes. While the presentation was also livestreamed, Ad Age was told the space reached capacity at just under 300, with some attendees forced to an upper-floor balcony space.
During its presentation, the CTV operator showed off multiple new measurement products, including panel-based data to target viewers across Samsung screens, and new ad products, such as a shoppable ads capability—the latest streaming platform to jump on the rising trend alongside the likes of Peacock and Roku.
Protesters picket outside of Peacock
Outside of Peacock’s NewFronts presentation, Writer’s Guild of America members protested amid a strike over disagreements on pay and job security in the streaming era, Herren writes. The strike, which has already shut down late-night shows, is poised to impact conversations around this year’s negotiations.
The NBCUniversal-owned streamer’s presentation included already-announced products, such as shoppable ads, as well as new branded content opportunities and a spin on pause ads.
AI news
Snap is incorporating ads into its new AI chatbot, the company announced at its presentation. The social platform will begin testing sponsored links in My AI, which is similar to how Microsoft is testing ads in Bing, Ad Age’s Garett Sloane writes.
David Roter, Snap’s VP of global agency partnerships, also touched on some other ways AI could factor into Snapchat, at one point promising “mobile video powered by conversational intent.” But exactly what that means is vague. It sounds like AI could help deliver video recommendations based on signals it detects from users in chat.
Roku will use AI to place a brand’s creative against what the company called an “iconic plot moment” in its content library, Herren writes. AI will search for these moments within shows and match them up to a brand’s message, according to Julian Mintz, head of U.S. brand sales. So an apparel ad, for example, could appear when Tim Gunn makes a critique during “Project Runway.”
Snap’s Trump impersonator swipes at TikTok
Matt Friend, who has built a following doing comedic impressions on Snapchat with the help of transformative AR filters, opened Snap’s NewFront with a couple of jabs at TikTok. Friend joked he had booked a gig for TikTok in Montana, but the show was canceled, Sloane writes. “If you know, you know,” he quipped. Of course, we know Montana’s state government is debating banning TikTok.
The Snap star didn’t stop there: In a demo of how he uses Snap’s augmented reality to play different characters, Friend showed a video of himself impersonating Donald Trump on Snapchat. Friend, as Trump, sang the praises of Snap, specifically referencing how it wasn’t owned by “China,” using Trump’s specific pronunciation.
The rest of Snap’s show was hardly as political, but the app was trying to differentiate itself from most other social apps highlighting the tight curation it uses to clamp down on misinformation and unsafe material in videos.
If you missed our Day 1 roundup, you can catch up here.
