Amazon’s ad business grew 60 percent this quarter (DigiDay) In its fourth-quarter earnings today, Amazon reported that “other” revenue, which mostly means advertising, plus its co-branded credit card agreements, increased to $1.7 billion in the fourth quarter. That’s 60 percent growth year over year.
Why Mobile Video Ads, Already Surging, Could Get A New Boost Next Month (AdAge) Nearly 77 percent of all video spend will be executed programmatically come 2017, according to eMarketer, and a large chunk of those dollars (80 percent) will be spent on mobile come 2019.
Advertisers rethink YouTube influencer strategies after YouTube cuts small creators (DigiDay) YouTube wanted to reassure advertisers it had brand safety under control earlier this month when it said that creators with fewer than 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of view time would be unable to earn ad revenue.
China’s big streaming shift: Paying instead of pirating (CNN) New technologies and a long-running crackdown on pirated content mean members of the country’s growing, smartphone-wielding middle class are increasingly willing to pay to stream videos and music online.
Google Is Testing a New App That Would Let Anyone Publish a Local News Story (Slate) A website first spotted online Thursday describes Bulletin as “an app for contributing hyperlocal stories about your community, for your community, right from your phone.” It’s designed to make it “effortless” to tell “the stories that aren’t being told” via your smartphone.