"He'd start saying things about the computer and I'm going, 'I have no interest.' Do you believe it? So that was the end of that." - Diane Keaton on dating Steve Jobs
This week we’re trying a new format.
TVREV Originals party in the front, some TL;DR on industry developments in the back.
TL;DR: Paramount+ introduced “streaming fixed units,” allowing brands to reserve an ad spot in a specific episode for the first 7 days, with programmatic filling remaining slots afterward. The move aims to give advertisers a mix of mass reach (event-style alignment) and precision targeting in one format.
TL;DR: CTV companies are enabling brands to repurpose social or influencer video ads onto TV inventory, reducing the creative production burden for smaller advertisers. Early tests suggest this approach can yield meaningful lifts in awareness, consideration, and favorability.
TL;DR: Roku is now integrated into the FreeWheel Streaming Hub, strengthening its partnership with FreeWheel and making Roku’s premium CTV inventory more directly accessible to buyers via FreeWheel. This deeper alignment enables smoother workflows, more transparent demand paths, and shared monetization tools across direct and programmatic channels.
TL;DR: Amazon announced the first wave of brand partners for its inaugural NBA streaming coverage, featuring advertisers like State Farm, PepsiCo, and Toyota. The deals showcase Amazon’s expanding CTV ad ecosystem, blending live sports, retail media data, and shoppable ad opportunities across Prime Video and Freevee
TL;DR: CleanTap used a Raspberry Pi and dummy HDMI setup to impersonate a CTV device and reportedly got 100% of its spoofed impressions accepted into live programmatic auctions. Even when verification vendors flagged those impressions as invalid, CleanTap says some still passed through, exposing weaknesses in upstream fraud filtering.
TL;DR: Instacart partnered with TikTok to let creators and brands link directly to shoppable Instacart pages, turning social content into retail media touchpoints. The integration extends Instacart’s data reach into video and CTV-adjacent environments, strengthening its full-funnel appeal for advertisers.
TL;DR: Retail media networks are extending into CTV to connect on-site shopping data with off-site video ads, enabling seamless targeting and attribution across the full customer journey.
TL;DR: The Trade Desk is expanding into on-site retail media ads, letting advertisers buy placements directly on retailers’ websites — a move that puts it in direct competition with Criteo. The shift blurs lines between programmatic and retail media, and signals The Trade Desk’s intent to own more of the commerce-driven CTV and retail ad ecosystem.
TL;DR: Retail media is expanding beyond e-commerce into CTV, social, and digital video, driven by retailers’ first-party data and advertisers’ demand for measurable results. It’s becoming the backbone of modern advertising, connecting commerce, content, and data across the full consumer journey.
