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Home » Ad Age Digital Conference Courts the Web

Ad Age Digital Conference Courts the Web

The Ad Age Digital Conference, now in its fifth year, took over the New World Stages complex in mid-town April 6th & 7th for its annual two day event.

Like prior conferences, the talk fest had sold out before it began, indicating the draw that all-things-digital continues to have for the city’s ad community. The 700 some attendees–that’s folks from agencies, clients, marketers and creatives appearing over two days–hope to figure out how to best use the billions of ad dollars that still haven’t found adequate translation from the established TV ad market to the hyperspeed growth of online and smartphone worlds.

Small wonder; the numbers are impressive. Ad spending for video on the web is expected to grow 55-percent this year, with a projected 400-percent increase within five years in the total amount of video shown on the web. YouTube alone served out 8.5 billion streams of video this past January alone, according to stats released by Tremor Media at the conference.

Ad Age, the New York-based magazine, did a good job in filling panels with enthusiastic folks who run top agencies, manufacturers, and web category kings like Google and TMZ. Yes, that’s right. TMZ’s co-founders Harvey Levin and Jim Paratone came from their LA lair to talk up the advertiser friendliness of their growing web, TV, and soon radio empire.

Seems the gossip gatherers wanted to establish their bona fides before many of the folks who might bring national clients their way. The two TMZ execs trotted out their experience at established local and national news operations to highlight their approach to celebrity news.

Harvey Levin claimed his team gave no quarter to the personal handlers that he claimed other news relied on. One reason? Levin reeled off crew members who he discovered with prior jobs such as pumping gas (now a cameraman) and catering (now a trusted show producer).

TMZ’s numbers made a good argument for American’s continuing love of all things celeb: the company touted its statistics rating it number one for impressions on the web and now on smartphones. How big is that? The most recent numbers offered notched them at 58 million impressions across all three spaces (TV, web, smartphone) for the most recent month’s numbers.

One panel brought out the difficulty of bringing any change to one part of this new media world: cable packaging. Addressing a change long pleaded for by consumers, marketing execs from Microsoft, Samsung, GroupM and Boxee agreed that even though startups like Hulu and Boxee were allowing millions to “cut the cable” and “pick shows and not networks”, cable networks would not be unbundling their offerings “any time soon.”

“The studios make money from both the cable networks and the advertising that runs on their shows,” said GroupM’s Mike Bologna, director of emerging media said at the session Beyond the Box: Cord Cutting, Content and the Future of TV. “The money is good. They see no reason to give up their bundled approach.”

About Dan Ochiva

New York City-based journalist and NYCPPNEWS founder Dan Ochiva writes and consults on film, video, and digital media technology.

Community & Partner Links

How Sony’s New Virtual Sound Technology Can Change How We Hear Films

Kami Asgar and Jessica Parks are post-production heavyweights who work with major studios, namely Sony. As a sound designer (Asgar) and as a post executive (Parks), their collective resume touches on everything from Apocalypto to Grandma’s Boy to Venom.

Parks has recently shifted her focus from supervisor to hands-on sound design, and we talk about how it’s never too late to pivot on your career path and find the thing you love doing wherever you are in life.

Click on this link to read the rest of the article on No Film School’s site.

NJ – Governor Murphy signs $14B Incentive Program Bill – the NJ Economic Recovery Act of 2020

 Film tax credits — amending existing programs to include provisions for so-called New Jersey film partners and New Jersey film-lease partners and allowing an additional $200 million of tax credits annually over 13 years.

Click this link if you want to read the full article on the Lexology site. http://bit.ly/35NtDx6

Film Commish announces date for production restart

In her December 18, 2020 news update, MOME Commissioner Anne del Castillo announced that the Film Office is now accepting permit applications for production activity that begins on July 27th.

She also announced awards now (Awkwafina) and more. To read all of the Film Commish’s bloggy sort of news column, click here.

Stimulus Offers $15 Billion in Relief for Struggling Arts Venues

The coronavirus relief package that Congressional leaders agreed to this week includes grant money that many small proprietors described as a last hope for survival.

For the music venue owners, theater producers and cultural institutions that have suffered through the pandemic with no business, the coronavirus relief package that Congress passed on Monday night offers the prospect of aid at last.

To read the full article on The New York Times’ site, click here.

If you want to start production, here’s the latest news from the Mayor’s Office

Phase 4 production guidance is available on the Film Permit website. All production activity, whether it requires a Film Permit or not, must comply with New York Forward Industry Guidance.

For more information see, please refer to the State Department of Health’s Interim Guidance for Media Production During the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency. Please review the guidelines and FAQ before submitting permit applications. The Film Office is operating remotely, so please allow additional time for Film Permit processing.

The above paragraphs contain links to the various FAQ – just mouse over the relevant words.

Nikon to Stop Making Cameras in Japan

Nikon has fallen on hard times as of late as its camera sales have cratered, and now there’s a new indicator of how dire its financial situation is: the company is reportedly pulling the plug on making cameras in Japan after over 70 years of doing so.

To read the full article on Petapixel’s site, click here.

NVIDIA Uses AI to Slash Bandwidth on Video Calls

NVIDIA Research has invented a way to use AI to dramatically reduce video call bandwidth while simultaneously improving quality

What the researchers have achieved has remarkable results: by replacing the traditional h.264 video codec with a neural network, they have managed to reduce the required bandwidth for a video call by an order of magnitude. In one example, the required data rate fell from 97.28 KB/frame to a measly 0.1165 KB/frame – a reduction to 0.1% of required bandwidth.

To read the rest of this article on Petapixel, click this link.

 

 

 

Union Health Plan Dodges Film Workers’ Suit Over Virus Relief

Law360 (October 9, 2020, 5:22 PM EDT) — The Motion Picture Industry Health Plan’s board can’t be sued under ERISA for allegedly flouting its duties when it relaxed plan rules in response to COVID-19, a California federal judge has ruled, nixing a proposed class action filed by two cinematographers who still couldn’t qualify for benefits.

In an order entered Thursday, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner granted the board of directors’ motion to dismiss Greg Endries and Dee Nichols’ Employee Retirement Income Security Act suit accusing board members of breaching their duty to treat all plan participants fairly.

Endries and Nichols, members of Local 600 of the International Cinematographers Guild, said in July that the board left them and others “out in the cold” in its attempts to address the problems COVID-19 caused for plan participants.

But Judge Klausner agreed with the board’s contention that the case, which alleged a fiduciary breach, should be tossed because plan administrators don’t act as fiduciaries when they amend health care plans.

Read the full article on the Law360 site by clicking here.

Russo Brothers Received Close to $50 Million From Saudi Bank

Anthony Russo and Joseph Russo photographed at the PMC Studio in Los Angeles for the Variety Playback Podcast.

The Russo brothers, directors of the all-time top grossing film “Avengers: Endgame,” quietly secured a roughly $50 million cash infusion for their production company AGBO from Saudi Arabia earlier this year, multiple sources tell Variety.

In a deal brokered and closed at the beginning of the pandemic, the Russos received the investment from an undisclosed Saudi bank in exchange for a minority stake in the brothers’ Los Angeles-based shop.

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