Roku in talks for exclusive MLB Sunday broadcasts: A shift from NBC to Roku could reshape sports streaming landscape.

Streaming makes ad spending gains, Netflix experiences growing pains, and advertisers encounter a soft upfront market.

It’s been an upfronts season like none other as digital creeps into linear’s territory and the Writers Guild of America writers’ strike rages on. “We’re kind of at an inflection point,” said our analyst Paul Verna. From a buyer’s market to tumult at NBCUniversal, here are five trends Verna noted from upfronts so far.

TikTok is launching ad product Pulse Premiere, an extension of Pulse that allows publishers like Condé Nast, Buzzfeed, and NBC to make money off of ads featured by all of their own content, according to the Wall Street Journal. The new product is part of TikTok’s efforts to make the platform more appealing to publishers, even as risks of a US ban loom.

Before the pandemic, Roku, Hulu, and YouTube made up about half (45.9%) of the US connected TV (CTV) ad market. That market has expanded significantly. Despite solid US CTV ad revenue growth across all three companies, their combined share will account for around one-third of the $26.92 billion that will go to CTV in 2023.

Following a few turbulent years, upfront TV ad spending will maintain momentum from last year.

This second annual benchmark evaluates seven Canadian financial institutions across six feature categories and weights their scores according to the results of a survey of mobile banking users in Canada.

This year, Peacock will hit 64.3 million US viewers, up 25.0% from 51.5 million the year before. The Comcast-owned streaming platform will continue to grow as it rivals established competitors.

Peacock made audience gains as the streaming space gets more crowded.

BetterHelp bested other US podcast advertisers in 2021 and spent $76.9 million on podcast placements that year. This was nearly triple the outlays of NBCUniversal, the second-biggest spender, at $27.7 million. All told, the top 10 podcast advertisers invested close to $300 million.

Payments Ecosystem: This year will reveal how providers must adapt to lasting pandemic-driven digitization across payments channels, ranging from in-store retail to B2B ecommerce.

On today's episode, we discuss the fallout from Netflix's Q4 earnings and what the immediate future looks like for the streaming giant. We then talk about what to expect from NBC's overlapping broadcasts of this year's Super Bowl LVI and Beijing Winter Olympics, along with what to make of streaming players focusing their attention on kids' shows. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Paul Verna.

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How Olympic viewers streamed the opening ceremony

The Olympics sees viewership decline: Despite the drop, NBC netted a profit on its ad sales.

Addressable and programmatic TV ad spending continues to rise as the TV industry undergoes technological change.