Latest in AVOD

Advertising is headed for its roughest year in more than a decade due to COVID-19, but major media agency GroupM says the decline in ad spending won’t be as bad as it could have been. In its mid-year forecast, released Tuesday, the company predicts total advertising spending without political ads will reach $207.9…

Roku has added a live, on-screen program guide to its free, ad-supported Roku Channel, enabling it to more closely emulate the experience of watching linear TV. In addition to the guide, Roku is adding more than 30 new channels to the existing lineup of 100-plus viewing options that can be accessed via the Roku…

EXCLUSIVE: Endemol Shine Group and top TV maker Vizio have reached a deal to bring four channels dedicated to Endemol unscripted programming to Vizio’s ad-supported smart-TV platform. Two of the 24-hour channels, streaming on Vizio’s SmartCast platform, center on individual shows: Deal or No Deal and Wipeout. The DIY…

Overall time spent streaming has more than doubled since March, when the U.S. and other countries largely shut down due to COVID-19. But growth has been slower for ad-supported players than for ad-free subscription ones, a pattern Barclays analyst Kannan Venkateshwar said Friday proves consumers are getting more…

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, which runs ad-supported streaming networks like Crackle, reported a mixed bag of first-quarter results, with record viewership during the onset of COVID-19 but also advertising uncertainty. The company reported an all-time high number of visits to Crackle and Popcornflix in…

Peacock's launch during this unusual period did not involve a sudden scramble for advertisers since it had ten long-term deals in place with major sponsors that have not dropped out or pulled back as others have across the television landscape. Matt Strauss, chairman of Peacock and NBC Universal Digital Enterprises…

AVOD service Tubi said it will become accessible in 30,000 hotel room as of Tuesday through a deal with Enseo, a tech comany with an in-room entertainment platform. Tubi offerings include over 20,000 movies and television shows from over 250 content partners including most major Hollywood studios. It's available in…

Tubi, which bills itself as the “world’s largest” ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) service, said it reached 25 million monthly active users as of December 2019. Total view time on the free platform by the end of last year reached 163 million hours, the company announced in a press release, an increase of 160% over…

Pluto TV, the free, ad-supported streaming service owned by ViacomCBS, will launch in Latin America at the end of March. Pluto TV Brazil is expected to launch by the end of 2020. ViacomCBS Networks International announced the expansion Monday. Pluto was acquired by Viacom in January 2019 for $340 million. The service…

Tubi, one of the leading U.S. players in ad-supported streaming, will expand its service into Mexico later this year through a deal with TV Azteca. The expansion comes as the startup also prepares to enter the UK market later this year. TV Azteca, one of the world’s two top producers of Spanish-language television…

Two top executives at Pluto TV gave an update on the top ad-supported streaming player’s progress and fielded questions about the increase in competition during a NATPE keynote appearance Tuesday. Chief Business Officer Jeff Shultz and Amy Kuessner, SVP of business partnerships, each offered takes on the burgeoning…

Ad-supported streaming company Tubi has reached a distribution deal with Vidaa International, a subsidiary of Hisense, the No. 3 maker of televisions in the world. When the deal starts this spring, Tubi’s library of 20,000-plus movie and TV titles will be seen on Hisense's new Vidaa platform in the U.S., Canada…