As Digital Advertising Climbs Toward $50 Billion This Year, Marketers Battle Fraudulent Visitors
Billions of dollars are flowing into online advertising. But marketers also are confronting an uncomfortable reality: rampant fraud.
About 36% of all Web traffic is considered fake, the product of computers hijacked by viruses and programmed to visit sites, according to estimates cited recently by the Interactive Advertising Bureau trade group.
So-called bot traffic cheats advertisers because marketers typically pay for ads whenever they are loaded in response to users visiting Web pages—regardless of whether the users are actual people.
Months of off and on negotiations led to Comcast's agreement to buy TWC for $45.2 billion in stock last month, thwarting Charter's monthslong pursuit. In Thursday's filing, the discussions between the various companies were detailed. While the broad outlines of the discussions were previously known, the filing cast new light on when Comcast got involved in the takeover battle. Liberty and Charter's approaches to TWC were reported in mid June, but Comcast's interest stayed quiet until late November.
A panel discussion at the 2014 IMG World Congress of Sports the examined the unique qualities of the Los Angeles market picked up on a discussion from the day’s opening session about whether there’s any end in sight for rising rights fees.
Chris Bevilacqua, co-founder of Bevilacqua Helfant Ventures, said, “Since I’m aligned typically with the sellers, I have a selfish interest to say the rights are going to keep going up. But having said that, I believe that. Everybody can just go and look at the quarterly earnings reports to all of these big media companies. It’s record profitability, record shares. The business itself keeps growing and sports is a real driver.”
The Arizona Diamondbacks landed what was an eye-popping $250 million rights fee from Fox Sports Net a scant seven years ago. They are likely to come close to tripling the value of that deal when it expires at the end of 2015.
The D-backs’ situation shows how much leverage pro teams have gained through the years, thanks to the emergence of options. They could launch their own regional network. They could partner with a distributor on a new RSN. Or they could sign another straight rights deal with FS Arizona.
“It’s night and day compared to when we last struck a deal,” D-backs President and CEO Derrick Hall said last week after spending an afternoon at spring training with executives from Fox Sports Net. “Not only monetarily with numbers that have increased dramatically, but with the different avenues we can travel, the landscape has truly changed in our favor.”
The move allows the Fox Sports-owned sales group to continue with a sales strategy it calls “surround the fan,” meaning packaging national TV spots on regional sports networks, in-arena signage and video ads on concourse TVs.
The new deal will see HTS sell ads on concourse screens in more than 50 MLB, NBA, NFL and NHL venues. HTS already sells in-arena signs, promotions and sponsorships for more than two dozen professional teams. It also handles national ad sales for almost all regional sports networks.
The U.S. multichannel segment posted its first full-year decline in subscriptions, according to SNL Kagan estimates for cable, DBS and telco offerings at the end of 2013. While seasonally driven quarterly declines have become routine for industry watchers, the annual dip illustrates longer-term downward pressure even as economic conditions gradually improve.
According to the tally for the trio of platforms, service providers collectively shed 251,000 in 2013, dipping to 100.18 million combined subs. The industry added 40,000 video subscriptions in the fourth quarter, slightly weaker on a year-over-year basis and not enough to offset the broader downward momentum.
Los Angeles baseball is at the center of the latest showdown between pay-TV distributors and sports networks.
This time the fight is over the new Dodgers-owned cable channel, SportsNet LA. The network wants pay-TV distributors to fork over the highest-ever carriage fee for a regional sports channel of its kind, with a monthly charge per subscriber beginning at more than $4 and likely escalating to over $5 in coming years, according to people familiar with the situation.
Combined Company Will Have Clout in TV-Viewing Data, Carriage Fees, Set-Top Boxes
ComcastCorp.'sCMCSA -0.58%proposed takeover ofTime Warner CableInc.TWC -0.27%has sparked fears across the media industry that the combined giant would have too much influence over everything from cable industry pricing to the broadband-related services consumers can access.
Justin Verlander and the Tigers have delivered for Fox Sports.
The Detroit Tigers soon will be back on local television, and the baseball team's continuing popularity is expected to translate into another record year of revenue for Fox Sports Detroit.
The regional cable network, which pays the team $50 million annually to air its games, is forecasted to see its overall revenue grow to nearly $168 million in 2014 from last year's $154.2 million, according to figures provided by New York City-based research firm SNL Kagan.
FSD's cash flow is expected by Kagan to improve to $43.7 million in 2014 from $39.4 million in 2013.
The increased revenue is fueled by the network's ability to eke out new advertising revenue despite a limited inventory of 30-second spots, and substantial growth in how much it collects in fees it charges cable and satellite providers for the right to carry its Tigers broadcasts.
The move is one of the overlooked parts to Disney’s massive carriage deal with Dish Network, which was announced last week. The long-term Dish Network deal includes rights to an over-the-top service, restrictions to Dish’s ad-skipping service, and launch agreements for SEC Network and Longhorn Network.
Company: Fox Sports Media Group Title: SVP, digital Age: 36 Where born: Phoenix Education: Stanford University (B.A.), University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business (MBA) Career background: Founder and CEO, Yardbarker; business development at Walt Disney Internet Group and at Plumb Design Family: Wife, Hilary; daughters Vera (5) and Helena (8 months)
Favorite apps: Fox Sports Go, Paper, Snapchat, MOG, Sonos, Instagram. Favorite way to unwind: Hiking, swimming, good wine, and lounging with my family. Worst habit: Growing unruly beards. Cause supported: Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. Person in the industry I’d most like to meet:Mark Cuban. I have a fear of … : Becoming disconnected. Most adventurous thing I’ve ever done is … : Bull riding, in high school, before I valued my own skull. 2014 will be a good year if … : It’s as half as good as 2013 was (new job, new network, new city, new house, new baby).
When Fox Sports early last year promoted Pete Vlastelica to senior vice president of digital, the former Yardbarker co-founder and chief executive came in with an aggressive, six-point battle plan for the year ahead. Among his priorities for 2013 were to align the company’s TV and digital operations, launch a new platform, improve Fox Sports’ digital audience measurement, rework its advertising strategy, bulk up the digital staff, and have some fun in the process. Altogether, it represented a seismic shift for a company that had decent raw reach thanks in part to its partnership with the MSN portal but, by its own admission, was not a digital-first organization.
In retrospect, Vlastelica admits that what was termed as the Fox Sports Digital Gameplan was “a little presumptuous.” But now, 12 months later, Vlastelica has checked off each goal on his list. Fox Sports last summer launched a new FoxSports.com as well as the authenticated Fox Sports Go streaming platform that acts in direct concert with Fox Sports 1 and the company’s broadcast operations and is now firmly part of the TV Everywhere landscape. A new digital leadership team under Vlastelica is in place. And brand marketers have begun to take notice of the new Fox Sports Digital, evidenced in part by the 31 companies purchasing inventory last month during a glitch-free live stream of Super Bowl XLVIII, more than twice the number that bought into last year’s game.
SBJ Podcast: Executive Editor Abraham Madkour and project editor Mark Mensheha talk about the Forty Under 40 selection process and the class of 2014.
For Vlastelica, the shift has been personal in addition to corporate. He came to Fox Sports when the company purchased Yardbarker in October 2010, and the self-proclaimed digital entrepreneur has had to learn to be more of a traditional media executive along the way.
“I was a startup guy, and I still think of myself as an entrepreneur,” Vlastelica said. “I guess I’m morphing into a media executive, but I’m trying to bring the best of both worlds, where we have the risk-taking and aggressiveness of a startup but with the resources and expertise of a big operation like this.”
DIRECTV subscribers in the Pac-12 Conference's footprint will have to keep up on how the majority of the conference's men's basketball tournament unfolds via ESPN.com, online message boards or a friend's TV, as the satellite provider and conference network have yet to sign a carriage agreement. The conference's four-day tournament tips off in Las Vegas on March 12, and the Pac-12 Network will be the sole broadcaster of eight of the tournament's 11 games, including the entire first round, three of the four quarterfinals games, and one of the semifinals games. FOX Sports 1 will broadcast one quarterfinal, one semifinal and the championship game nationally.
Dish NetworkCorp.DISH +0.07%has agreed to curtail the use of a controversial ad-skipping feature on its latest digital video recorders for ABC shows, as part of a new long-term programming deal with ABC ownerWalt DisneyCo.DIS -1.67%, the companies confirmed late Monday.
As part of the deal, Disney granted Dish online video rights to its flagship TV channels on terms that would allow Dish to launch an Internet-based TV service, something Dish has talked about in the past. Disney said it was the first time it had granted such rights.
A FOX Sports Supports partner, Special Olympics is the
world's largest sports organization for children and adults with intellectual
disabilities — providing year-round training and competitions for more than 4.2
million athletes.
FOX Sports North and FOX Sports Wisconsin are proud to
have ongoing partnerships with their local chapters and have an annual tradition
of supporting the Polar Bear Plunge—a major fundraiser for Special Olympics
Minnesota and Special Olympics Wisconsin.
Despite the recent subzero Midwest temps, the two regions
still had over 30 participants and
raised more than $5,000 combined. Read
on for additionalFROZEN details…
That theme of Fox Sports 1 competing with ESPN proved to be irresistible to members of the business press, many of whom drew parallels with Fox News’ 1996 launch that took on an entrenched CNN.
