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Making a mountain. Paramount Global’s CBS brand will be broadcasting Super Bowl LVIII from Las Vegas on February 11th. As part of the run up, Paramount is planning to transform the Mirage’s famous volcano into the Paramount mountain to promote the conglomerate’s catalog of entertainment properties.
An avalanche of interest. In prior years, Super Bowl ad inventory has typically been available right down to the final minutes before kickoff. Not so this year. CBS is reporting they have “virtually sold out” of all ad inventory for the game. This year’s 30-second spots were reportedly priced between $6.5 and $7 million.
Artificial? Sweet!
This is NOT Black Widow. Scarlett Johansson has filed suit against an AI app developer for using her name, likeness, and AI-generated voice in an online ad. The ad, generated by AI itself, begins with actual video of Johansson then transitions to AI-generated photos of the actress while a voice meant to sound like the actress narrates.
This is NOT Ford Prefect. Elon Musk has introduced a new startup company boasting an AI chatbot built to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Dubbed “Grok,” the new chatbot has been designed to “answer questions with a bit of wit” modeled after popular novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”
This is NOT me watching Beverly Hills, 90210 on Paramount+. While other streamers, notably Netflix and Disney+, have recently cracked down on password sharing, Paramount+ has notably announced no plans to discourage the practice. The company’s CFO recently downplayed the impact of password sharing on subscriber growth noting Q3 saw 2.7 million new net subs for the premium streamer.
This is NOT a radio. As habits are evolving, it is no longer uncommon for TVs to be used as radios. Among Americans aged 13+, 6.9% of audio listening is done through CTV devices or gaming consoles according to Edison’s Share of Ear study. The rate of increase has nearly doubled since 2020. Though TVs make up a good portion, Edison cites that mobile phones will be the “primary battle zone” for listeners.
Block It Out?
Ad blocker blocker. YouTube’s announcement threatening to ban anyone using ad-blocking software to skirt having to pay for the streamers ad-free premium plan seems to have had an impact. Namely, Ad-blocking software companies are seeing hundreds of thousands of uninstalls of their products.
Stealth snacking. Doritos has introduced Windows-compatible software that it claims will silence the tell-tale snacking sound of crunching for online gamers. Like everything these days, this sound-cancelation plug inpurportedly uses AI trained by thousands of corn-chip-generated crunches.
A place for everything. 70% of Netflix, Disney+, and Max streamers subscribe to ad-free tiers. Quite the opposite is true for Hulu and Peacock subscribers where 57% and 64% are on ad-supported plans. The survey conducted in June 2023 among 4,000 participants 18+, breaks out different subscriber behaviors by platform as well as traditional media and demographic.
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