Netflix Tightens Ad Tech Ties; Blocklists Cut Advertisers off from Olympics and Euros Coverage; Channel 4’s Social Streaming Sees Staggering Growth

by Aimee Newell Tarín on 21st Aug 2024 in News

On today’s news digest: Netflix Tightens Ad Tech Ties; Blocklists Cut Advertisers off from Olympics and Euros Coverage; Channel 4’s Social Streaming Sees Staggering Growth

Netflix is tightening its ties to ad tech, forging new partnerships to enhance advertisers’ measurement capabilities on its platform. Through partnerships with clean room suppliers Snowflake, LiveRamp and InfoSum, Netflix intends to create a more secure and privacy-safe environment. As a result of the collaborations, those advertising on Netflix will be able to determine audience overlap, post-campaign reach and frequency, as well as last-touch attribution in a secure environment. Snowflake Data Clean Rooms are available for partners already, while InfoSum and LiveRamp’s tech will be made available in the coming months.

Looking back to the Euros and Olympics, news publishers are likely to have missed out on digital ad revenue for coverage related to both sport events as a result of advertisers’ outdated keyword blocklists. Following ad tech Mantis’ comparisons of published online work with known blocklists commonly used by advertisers, it reports that only 43% of Olympics content from this year’s games until 13th August for publishers (not using their platform) was classified as “brand safe”. The use of blocklists – which prevent advertisers’ ads from appearing alongside content containing particular words deemed as unsafe – cut them off from content related to both sporting events due to the blocking of words such as “attack” or “shooting”, which are often used in descriptions of sporting activities. Additionally, many blocklists still had the word “Paris” blocked following terror attacks in the French city, which will have cut advertisers’ ads off from content referencing the 2024 Paris Olympics.

In other news related to streaming, Channel 4 reports that its social audience is seeing staggering growth. The number of UK views on full episodes on its YouTube channel, Channel 4.0, has increased by 331%. Shows such as First Dates and Gogglebox have driven 65 million UK views of full episodes on YouTube during 2024 so far – a huge increase from last year, which saw a total of 50 million UK views for the entirety of the year. The broadcaster’s documentaries have made a splash on YouTube too, with their 38 million UK views having increased by 104% year-over-year. Channel 4’s TikTok account is performing incredibly well too, having generated a total of 456 million UK views (excluding Channel 4 news).