Note that this doesn’t count as news, as Apple has already said iTunes Radio would show up on Apple TV.

But now there is proof!

Here’s a short version:

And here’s one that goes 9 minutes. It’s narrated, presumably, by Isaac.

Back? Okay. What would be truly interesting, of course, would be if Apple opened up Apple TV to the rest of the world, so that screen full of apps was replicated many, many times over. Just like Roku does with its Web TV platform.

But note that, contrary to a last-minute flurry of hopeful rumors, Apple did not open up Apple TV at its WWDC conference this month. Just like it has not done for several years now. Instead, there are just a handful of apps from outsiders, like Hulu, Netflix and the Wall Street Journal (which, like this site, is owned by News Corp.).

We still don’t know why Apple hasn’t opened up Apple TV, and it’s a little bit vexing. After all, opening up the iOS platform to outsiders was a crucial step in the iPhone’s evolution.

On the other hand, note that HBO Go did finally come to Apple TV this year, but there’s no HBO app on Apple TV; instead HBO subscribers can beam their shows from their phones and tablets to their TVs using Airplay.

That’s not quite as easy as clicking on an app on the box (for starters, it means you can’t do anything else with your phone while you’re streaming “Game of Thrones” to your TV) but it does point out a way that Apple can flesh out its experiment while it waits to get really serious about this TV thing. One day.

Maybe you can get into the endorsement business.

And Adam Winnick says he can help. Backed by $500,000 in angel money, he is launching Subblime, a site he’s describing as “a social hub for YouTube influencers.” A more practical way of describing the site would be “a place where YouTube celebrities can list stuff they like or have been paid to like.”

Those celebrities have their own pages of lists; here’s one from “WhatsUpElle,” who Winnick lists as a cofounder:

Right now, the money part is embryonic, but Winnick imagines a mix of different ways for YouTubers to profit, from basic affiliate links to more sophisticated cost-per-action ad campaigns. At some point, he thinks he’ll take a 50 percent split of revenue that video celebrities make from his site; for now, the talent keeps 100 percent.

So, all of that makes sense, in a Pinterest-meets-Web-video way. The only question is whether people who are famous on YouTube, who are already figuring out how to sell stuff, want to aggregate on another place to do that.

Winnick says he’ll have embeddable widgets so YouTubers can also sell/endorse stuff on their Tumblrs and other properties. But he argues that there’s a benefit to hanging out with other people who make popular videos, because fans of one video star are likely fans of another: “I give them a platform where they can engage the audience.”

Well, Jay-Z is way too smart for that!

The brand-endorser/value-adder/Beyonce’s husband/musician has a big deal with Samsung to give away free copies of his new album to people who download an app to their Galaxy devices.

So it would totally be embarrassing if he tweeted about that from an iPhone, right?

No problem! As Amanda Lucci notes, sometime between April 3 and today, Mr. Z, or whoever social-messages on his behalf, switched his Twitter account over from iPhone to Android. Disaster averted!

Jay-Z has switched from iPhone to Android since his last tweet, HOW CONVENIENT pic.twitter.com/93ddm7Vos0

– Amanda (@alucci) June 17, 2013

Bonus Jay-Z handset info: As our intrepid Mike “Tats-a-plenty” Isaac notes, Mr. Z, or whoever social-messages for him, wasn’t that attached to iOS, anyway. A little more than a year ago, he (or whoever) was still using a BlackBerry to tweet.

Luckily, because Mr. Z (or whoever) is an infrequent Twitter user, we can see exactly when he switched over: September 2012.

Still! If you’re the kind of person who has an intense interest in all things Apple, you might have found items of interest during Cue’s testimony at Daniel Patrick Moynihan United States Courthouse in lower Manhattan. Particularly the parts where Apple’s attorney asked Cue to talk about Steve Jobs.

I’m not sure why Apple lawyer Orin Snyder wanted Cue to spend time discussing his late boss, because I can’t see how it has any bearing on the case. But, then again, my legal training consists of watching some “L.A. Law” back in the ’90s.

So, in any case, for the record: Apple wants you to know that Steve Jobs wasn’t just into the idea of iBooks and an iBookstore, but was intimately involved in its product design and launch in the fall of 2009 and early 2010.

For instance:

• The “page curls” in the iBook app, which show up when you flip an iBook’s page? That’s Steve Jobs’s idea.
• It was Jobs’s idea to pick “Winnie-the-Pooh” as the freebie book that came with every iBook app. Not just because Jobs liked the book, Cue said, but because it showed off iBook’s capabilities: “It had beautiful color drawings, that had never been seen before in a digital book.”
• Jobs was also specific about the book he used to show off the iBook during his initial iPad demo in January 2010. He picked Ted Kennedy’s “True Compass” memoir, because the Kennedy family “meant a lot to him,” Cue said.

Again: Will any of this have any bearing on the trial’s outcome? Seems unlikely. But we are approaching the end of this process. Closing arguments are scheduled for Thursday.

The Web video service will have exclusive worldwide first-run rights to a new batch of original programming from the studio, though it isn’t spelling out exactly what that programming will be.

The idea: DreamWorks will mine its existing movie portfolio, along with upcoming movies, to create more than 300 hours of new shows. If I were betting, I’d expect to see a “Shrek” series, for starters.

The context: Kids’ shows are a big deal for Netflix, and it used to get a lot of them from Viacom’s Nickelodeon, but that deal expired last month. Now Amazon has exclusive rights to lots of Nick shows like “Dora the Explorer.”

Meanwhile, Netflix has been building up a library of replacement stuff, like a deal to bring Disney shows like “Jake and the Never Land Pirates” to the streaming service.

This is the third deal Netflix and DreamWorks have announced in recent years.

In 2011, the two companies announced a deal to bring DreamWorks movies to Netflix after they appeared in theaters, replacing a deal the studio had with Netflix rival HBO (that will formally kick in next year, when “The Croods” shows up on the digital service). And in February, Netflix announced that DreamWorks would bring a spinoff show from its upcoming “Turbo” feature to the service in December.

Sure, you could hire headhunters, or maybe troll LinkedIn. But if you’re running a big retail company with a big website, why let that valuable real estate go to waste?

Hence this message, on Lululemon Athletica’s home page that went up a few days ago:

Gets the point across, no?

If you click through, you’ll get to a job description page filled with all sorts of fairly clever one-liners. And if you keep going after that, you will indeed get an opportunity to upload your resume, via … LinkedIn, of course.

The company has received 160 applications so far, said CNNMoney.

Lululemon, of course, needs a new CEO because Christine Day, who has the job right now, is stepping down. Given that the apparel company recently made headlines for a disastrous wardrobe malfunction, you might think that Day is stepping down because of the see-through yoga pants problem.

Not so, she told Fortune. But she’s quite coy about why she is leaving, and isn’t bothering to trot out the “spend more time with my family line.” Here’s what she told Fortune — or rather, what she didn’t tell them:

“My values include discretion. While I know everyone would like to know ‘the reason’ [I'm leaving] there are some things that should remain private because the truth is the good things outweighed the bad and by being respectful and grateful one can remember that.”

But let’s say you do see the ad: How will you respond?

AOL says it can tell, in advance. Because it has the ability to read your mind by looking at your face.

Trippy? Scary? Cool? Implausible?

Maybe all of the above?

In any event, AOL says it can deliver on that claim, via a partnership with Realeyes, which describes itself as an “emotional testing platform” that uses “biometric tracking” to gauge responses to videos.

What that means in the real world: AOL and Realeyes get people to watch video ads, on their own PCs, and track their responses via their Webcams. Then they do all kinds of “Minority Report”-level computer magic to figure out what they’re thinking, keying on things like eye movement, etc.

Obviously, AOL can only do this with volunteers, so no need to worry that Tim Armstrong is watching you watch his stuff. Unless you’ve asked him to watch you, via an independent research company.*

Here’s the AOL pitch, which it is incorporating into its BeOn distribution platform:

AOL BEON

Does this stuff really work? You got me. But at the very least, it is intriguing. Also, entertaining!

Here, for example, is some research Realeyes has performed on a Doritos ad that ran during this year’s Super Bowl. Note the big spike in happiness at the 24-second mark:

And then look what created ad viewers’ happiness (but not surprise) in the spot itself:

“Be On integrates Realeyes emotion measurement platform into branded video campaigns
Global partnership brings facial recognition analysis to Be On’s world-class Insights service

14th June 2013, London Be On, AOL’s global branded content business, today announces a worldwide partnership with Realeyes, an emotional testing platform that measures how people feel and react when they view branded video content.

Be On can now offer biometric tracking to determine the emotional impact of a piece of video content plugging into renowned consumer panels such as CINT and Toluna. With this new partnership, brands can measure the emotional impact of their content frame-by-frame at launch or before it goes live. The addition of Realeyes means the Be On Insights package now offers advertisers the most sophisticated measurement tools in branded video in the global marketplace.

LG was one of the first brands to integrate the technology for branded video content with its latest campaign So Real It’s Scary 2. LG trialed over 600 viewers in several markets to track the emotional response to its film, which tests the theory that men cannot go to the bathroom when someone is watching them. Be On and Realeyes showed that the film performed better than 95% of ads and resonated best with the 18-34 demographic, LG’s target audience.

Although confusion was the dominant emotion for the first 45 seconds, happiness spiked strongly at the punch line, far above industry norms and remained highly elevated throughout. These learnings assured LG that the potentially controversial video performed as intended and that the strong creative was worth spending big on when it came to distribution.

With offices in London, Budapest and Boston, Realeyes strengthens Be On’s global offering, giving brands unique access to a huge database of test viewers. All content testing is facilitated through a webcam meaning content can be tested anywhere, anytime and through multiple devices, to a selection of panel users who have explicitly consented to the testing. It is then analysed in real-time to provide brands rich data around six basic emotions and performance criteria such as attraction, retention, engagement and impact. On average, the process from launching the panel testing to campaign analysis takes just 48 hours.

‘We’re delighted to be partnering with Be On to build on their already powerful mix of Insights tools for brands. Measuring the creative strength of any content at scale has been a challenge as it has relied on self-reported surveys and focus groups. With such an explosion in video advertising scale and speed , these methods now struggle to deliver credible feedback on the relationship between consumers and brands,” said Mihkel Jäätma CEO, Realeyes. “Emotions are key to successful communication and our fully automated facial coding platform can reveal subconscious reactions to any video content quickly, and at scale.”

“Since its inception, Realeyes has brought something completely new to online video advertising,” said René Rechtman, CEO, Be On. “Brands need to produce content which cuts through the noise and emotional testing at scale is a vital step in the process of getting that content right for your audience. The addition of Realeyes to the Be On offering gives brands an unparalleled 360° service, which will revolutionise the branded video marketplace.”

The partnership adds to Be On’s comprehensive and market-leading Insights package, which includes the metrics of brand uplift, competitor benchmarking, audience visibility, social buzz and emotional engagement analysis.

René Rechtman and Mihkel Jäätma will be presenting from the main auditorium at Cannes Lions on Sunday 16th June at 4pm C.E.T.”

* It is worth noting that several people who say they know how tech works would tell you that it is very easy for hackers to take control of your Webcam and watch you without your consent. Prior to Edward Snowden, I only took their claims half-seriously. Now I’m considering taping an envelope over the top of my MacBook.

Well, that’s over.

Facebook is killing off its “sponsored results” ad unit, just a year after launching it (and less than a year after its formal launch). This is part of the Great Facebook Ad Slimdown of 2013 that the company announced last week, where it will be killing off some of its 27 different ad units.

(Update: A Facebook rep clarified that after sponsored results go away, the company will still be selling search ads. If you type a query into the company’s search box, then click on the “Web search” option, you’ll see a page that includes sponsored links from Microsoft’s Bing engine. And it may add additional search ads down the line.)

Facebook said it has yet to figure out how many of those ad units it is actually going to execute, so apparently it will be making a series of announcements in the coming weeks. Stay tuned! (This has a very “Hunger Games” feel to it, right?)

Recall that lots of smart people said that Facebook search ads would be a natural winner, and that chatter got even louder once Facebook announced its “Graph Search” upgrade. But apparently they underwhelmed.

As always, this is yet another good reminder that Facebook’s ad strategy is under construction, so it’s likely to continue experimenting with stuff, and tossing out the ones that don’t work. If advertisers are cool with that experimentation, then no worries. But if they lose patience with it …

Here’s Facebook’s official explanation of the axing:

“In keeping with the goal of streamlining our ad products, starting in July advertisers will no longer be able to buy sponsored results. We’ve seen that most marketers were buying sponsored results to advertise their apps and games, and we already offer mobile app install ads and Page post link ads on desktop to achieve these same goals.”

And here’s what a Sponsored Result ad looked like in search results (it’s the one for Marvel):

Do you still want your MTV? And, if so, do you want it on your iPhone or iPad?

Then here you go. This is the second “TV Everywhere” app from corporate owner Viacom, following on the heels of a Nickelodeon app it launched this spring.

Like the Nick app, the free MTV app will let some pay TV subscribers watch some of the channel’s shows for free. And, like the Nick app, there are extra goodies, too.

In MTV’s case, there is a set of “second screen” features, like Twitter filters, that you’re supposed to use while watching MTV broadcasts on your TV. And a bunch of non-TV content, produced by something MTV is calling its “connected content lab.”

On deck: Versions that will work on Android, and later Xbox 360, as well as more apps for other MTV/Viacom channels, like VH1 and CMT.

The most important thing to note is that this is another small step from promise to reality in the evolution of “TV Everywhere.” The promise, recall, is that people who pay for cable TV (or satellite TV, or telco TV) should be able to watch TV shows on any device they want, whenever they want.

We’re still a long way from that because of a mix of contractual, business and tech issues. And even moves like this are only partial steps. MTV/Viacom says that about 50 million pay TV customers will have access to the programming on its apps. But subscribers to at least three different major pay services — Comcast, Dish and Charter — won’t be able to watch the shows (for now).

And even if you have a pay channel that does have a deal with Viacom, you won’t be able to see everything the channel has put out. Remember that it has different “windows” of content with other distributors — like Amazon — which means that different outlets will have different catalogs at different times.

Meanwhile! The extra video goodies that MTV has added in here are kinda fun. MTV is branding a group of them as “MTV Other,” which in my mind reads as “You think ‘Vice’ is cool? Well look at this raunchy stuff we would totally put on TV if the TV guys weren’t such squares.”

Here’s a sample, which you won’t want to look at if you don’t like swearing, or unpleasant use cases for hot dogs. (On the other hand, if you’re a fan of Minnesota’s own Har Mar Superstar, you should definitely watch.)

The Web TV startup would like to raise a big investment round, or find a buyer. It has been looking for cash or an exit since February, when it hired media banker Allen & Co., according to people familiar with the company.

Boxee has raised around $30 million since 2008. Its most recent funding round was more than two years ago, when it picked up $16.5 million.

When the company first hired Allen, it was looking for another $30 million, hopefully from a strategic investor. Alternately, the company has been pitching itself as a software/hardware solution to potential buyers like cable and satellite TV providers.

You can make a case for a deal like that in broad terms: Lots of pay-TV companies are looking at new ways of getting their programming on TV sets, and some have started to do it. Comcast subscribers, for instance, can now get their TV via an app on Microsoft’s Xbox 360; earlier this year, Time Warner Cable and Roku announced a distribution deal.

And Boxee’s most recent product, a “cloud DVR” box, works along those same lines. When the company rolled it out last fall, it positioned the device as a way to store and play broadcast TV, which users could get for free with an antenna. But sales have been tepid, and the company has concluded that its only real chance for success would be via partnerships with pay TV providers, who could offer users a full compliment of programming.

Any kind of link-up with a traditional TV provider would make for an awkward press release from Boxee, since the startup, based in New York and Israel, has spent years positioning itself as a tool for cord-cutters and cord-nevers. But if you can’t beat ’em …

jnumber9 / Shutterstock.com

Is Time Warner Cable blocking some TV programmers from selling their stuff to online video outlets?

Yes we are, says Time Warner Cable.

Here’s the company’s response to a Bloomberg piece today, which said that one of the country’s biggest cable TV operators had distribution agreements which would penalize TV networks that tried to do deals with “over the top” Web TV providers.*

Short version: “Everyone does it, and we’re hardly the worst offender.” Longer version, via an emailed response from the company’s PR office:

“It is absurd to suggest that, in today’s highly competitive video marketplace, obtaining some level of exclusivity is anticompetitive. Exclusivities and windows are extremely common in the entertainment industry; that’s exactly how entertainment companies compete. This is why, for example, you can only watch Fast and Furious 6 in a movie theater (not in your living room), Sunday Ticket on DirecTV, and the new Arrested Development episodes on Netflix. In fact, the amount and scope of exclusivity and windowing in Time Warner Cable’s arrangements with programmers pales by comparison to that found between other players in the entertainment ecosystem.”

So does this explain why would-be cable competitors, like Intel, have yet to reach deals with programmers?

Not really, according to industry executives I’ve talked to.

Their argument: Time Warner Cable has deals that penalize some programmers from selling to new outlets. But it doesn’t have those deals with the biggest programmers, like Discovery, Viacom and Comcast’s NBCUniversal  – which are the ones that an Intel, or an Apple, or whomever, would need to sign on to launch a competitive TV product.

“Can you imagine [News Corp. COO] Chase Carey signing a deal like that?” said an industry executive familiar with the cable industry. (News Corp., which owns Fox, Fox News and other TV networks, also owns this website).

In general, those programmers are at least interested in selling to new entrants like Intel, because they’d like as many people buying their stuff as possible. They were also happy to sell programming to satellite TV providers when they showed up 20 years ago, and they were also happy to sell to telco TV providers when they showed up 10 years ago.

The gates to new Web TV deals, I’m told, are more basic: Intel, or whoever wants to buy TV from the programmers, will have to buy it the same way everyone else does — in bundles that don’t allow much flexibility. And the programmers expect the Web video guys to pay more than everyone else, because they’re the new kids on the block.

What will be interesting to see is how lawmakers and regulators respond to Time Warner Cable’s admission.

The company clearly doesn’t think they are violating antitrust regulations. Its 12 million subscribers make Time Warner Cable the country’s second biggest cable TV player, behind Comcast; overall there are about 90 million pay-TV customers in the U.S. But if their actions prevent most of the country from watching programming on a new outlet, how will that go over in Washington?

Perhaps John McCain will have something to say about that.

* Bloomberg’s piece followed a research note from BTIG Research analyst Rich Greenfield, who raised the same issue without identifying Time Warner Cable.

Image courtesy of jnumber9 / Shutterstock.com

The paper is calling its version “Sponsored Views,” and in English that means “little text boxes you can buy on our op-ed page.” They look like this:

The main difference between this and other “native” ads is that they are being pitched to advertisers specifically as a way to interact with stuff the Post has already published. “Don’t miss your chance to respond at a moment’s notice,” says the Post’s ad for its ad.

You can see what it looks like, way, way down on this page, after the end of the editorial on housing finance reform, past the six links for other Washington Post stories, and beyond the ad selling reprints.

And like most “native ads” or “sponsor content” or whatever you want to call them, these seem fairly innocuous but also not very effective. You would have to be very, very dim to think that this was “real” Washington Post content. But, per above, you would also have to work pretty hard to find the ad/message/content, anyway. In fact, there is a big push in Web publishing now to stop running ads anywhere “below the fold” on Web browsers, since almost no one sees them.

But the most newsworthy thing about the Post’s move is how un-newsworthy it is. In the olden days, like a couple years ago, “Sponsored Views” might have been treated to a round of teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing about What It All Means. But by now there’s no doubt what it means: Web publishers really need more ad money, and they’ll jump through lots of hoops to get it.

[UPDATE: A Waspo pr rep points out that this isn't the company's first foray into native ads: Earlier this year the launched something called  BrandConnect, which runs on the site's homepage. See? This stuff is old hat now.]

And Comcast, the country’s biggest pay TV provider, says it will do the same thing, along with lots of other ideas you’ve seen elsewhere: Voice control, integration with third-party apps like Pandora, “social TV” features, etc.

Here’s Comcast CEO Brian Roberts previewing his company’s upcoming X2 platform yesterday at the cable industry’s annual convention. If you want to save time, you can skip the preamble and move ahead to the 3:48 mark. And if you’re in a real rush, you can skip the video entirely and skim the press release.

The one thing that X2 won’t do, of course, is give customers the ability to watch TV without paying for a TV subscription, or let them break the TV bundle into smaller chunks, so that people who don’t care about sports don’t need to pay for ESPN, etc.

But then again, none of the pay-TV outsiders that want to wrest control of your living room from Comcast have done that, either — not even Google.

Improving the TV’s interface is an engineering problem that you can solve with time and talent; remaking the TV business is the truly difficult task.

Asa Mathat | D: All Things Digital

It took a while, but Apple is finally ready to announce its iRadio service. It should get a formal introduction at Apple’s WWDC event today, and a launch later this year.

We don’t know if Apple is actually calling iRadio “iRadio.” But at this point we do know quite a bit about the streaming music service:

• Apple has been trying to launch it since last fall, but only started getting the formal backing of the big music companies in the last few months. Sony, the last big holdout, signed on late last week.
• iRadio is meant to be a “Pandora-plus” offering: It will be free, and will give listeners more control over their music than Pandora or other Web radio services, but not as much as paid subscription services like Spotify or Google Play Music All Access (they really call it that).
• Like most digital music services, Apple will pay the music owners a fraction of a penny every time someone plays one of their songs. Unlike most digital music services, Apple also plans to sell advertising, and will give music owners a cut of that, too.

If you’re trying to gauge iRadio’s prospects, it’s that last part that should be most interesting. Because it sets up the possibility that iRadio could work very well for Apple — by creating a sticky feature that keeps people using its iOS platform instead of jumping ship to Google/Samsung/Amazon/whomever — but end up disappointing music owners, who are still looking to replace the giant pile of money that Napster and file-sharing evaporated way back in 1999.

The problem: If Apple wants to generate real ad money for iRadio, then that means it has to try to crack the market for radio ads. And that is a very, very un-Appley business.

Radio is a $14 billion industry that has proven remarkably resilient to digital. It doesn’t really matter what kind of precision targeting the Internet offers — the bulk of that $14 billion comes from local ad sales, which means you need to get ad reps reaching out to car dealers, grocery stores, etc.

And it’s a slog. Pandora, by far the biggest player in Web radio ads, has been diligently trying to build out an ad business for a long time. It is on track to do something like $630 million this year. Google and Yahoo have both tried digital audio ads, and bailed out.

Meanwhile, Apple’s previous forays into ads, which started off when the company bought Quattro three years ago and launched iAd, haven’t amounted to much. And at the D: All Things Digital conference last month, CEO Tim Cook sounded profoundly unenthusiastic about ads.

Again: Apple could end up with a goose egg for iRadio revenue and still consider the service a success. If iRadio helps sell more iPhones, or keeps iPhone users from ditching their handsets for a Google X phone or whatever, then it’s well worth the hassle. But it’s hard to see this making real money for the people who own the songs.

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Asa Mathat / AllThingsD.com

The deal comes shortly after Apple signed a deal with Sony’s recorded music arm, and in time for Apple’s WWDC event on Monday.

Sony/ATV CEO Marty Bandier said his company has signed “a two-year introductory deal,” which will give his company 10 percent of any ad revenue Apple generates from his music.

Bandier believes his deal is the highest paying of any digital music publishing pact. Billboard reported the agreement earlier today.

The deal means that Apple now has agreements with all three major music labels. Apple had been pushing music executives to come aboard in advance of its annual developer conference next week, so you should expect to hear an official announcement Monday.

It’s still possible that Apple may have hurdles to clear. As of earlier this week, the company had yet to sign up Sony/ATV, Sony’s music publishing arm. (Update: That deal is now done.)

But the gaps between Sony/ATV and Apple were supposedly smaller than the ones Sony Music and Apple were looking at a few days ago. I’ll update on that deal if I learn more. Apple has previously signed on Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group, the two other major labels.

In any case, Apple isn’t expected to actually launch iRadio at its WWDC event. Instead, it’s expected to tell developers about the forthcoming service, which should function like an enhanced version of Pandora — that is, it will be a free streaming music service that gives users more control of their songs than standard Web radio, but less than full on-demand services like Spotify.

Apple has been trying to launch iRadio — or whatever it will call the service — since last fall, but has been haggling with music owners over payments. Its most recent dispute with Sony was focused on songs that radio listeners skipped: Sony wanted to get paid for any of its songs Apple served up to listeners, even if they didn’t end up hearing the whole recording.

But the music industry in general has been receptive to the iRadio concept: The industry may have bottomed out from its Napster-induced fall, but it’s still very eager for any new forms of digital revenue.

Shutterstock/Uros Zunic

When Facebook was getting ready to go public last year, it told investors that advertising on the social network was a work in progress.

Which meant it didn’t really know the best way to turn its hundreds of millions of users into ad dollars — even though it was already generating billions of ad dollars.

Turns out, you can’t accuse the Facebook folks of false advertising.

Today the company is overhauling its ad strategy in the name of “simplification” — and in turn, dumping lots of products and tactics it has announced over the past couple years.

That means it’s going to trim down a list of 27 different ad units it sells today (though getting Facebook executives to explain exactly what they are cutting leads to unintentionally comical responses).

And instead of asking advertisers to pick an ad unit, it will ask them to tell Facebook what they want to accomplish, and then Facebook will help them figure out the best approach. Sort of like telling a waiter that you’re in the mood for fish, I think.

The bigger point, which Facebook is reluctant to spell out in language that a normal human could understand, is that it has been changing its overall approach to ad-selling. That is: Instead of arguing that Facebook ads should be different from regular ads because they’re “social,” they are letting marketers buy traditional ads and layer “social context” on top of them, if they want to.

This is a shift from the messaging Facebook was pushing, with great fanfare, in the spring of 2012, after it rented out New York’s Museum of Natural History. Back then, it was telling marketers that their ads should really be “content” that users would share on their own. If advertisers wanted to, they could amplify their results by buying more reach.

New model: Buy ads on Facebook. And then Facebook users might make them social, which will give them more reach.

During the press conference the company hosted today, I went around with Facebook reps a couple times about whether this was a pivot or an evolution. You can guess which term the company preferred.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. After all, Facebook is still on track to do something like $6 billion this year, so you certainly can’t say this is an act of desperation.

Still, Facebook’s overarching pitch — to both advertisers and investors — is that it was going to reinvent ads, in a way that only the world’s biggest social network could do.

But last year the company rolled out its Facebook Exchange, which let advertisers buy some Facebook ads the same way they buy them on any other Web site. Now they’re changing their approach to the rest of their ad inventory, as well — in a way that will look much more familiar to advertisers. The trick will be making sure they don’t become too familiar.

Asa Mathat | D: All Things Digital

In April, Twitter linked up with ad giant Starcom in a deal worth “hundreds of millions” over a few years. Now it has another one, with Starcom’s rival WPP.

WPP’s press release doesn’t mention a dollar value, but the broad strokes sound similar to the earlier pact: A “global strategic partnership” that will “see the launch of new data products and services, the integration of Twitter data into key WPP media and analytics platforms, training for staff in the application of these new capabilities and a partnership approach to key clients and markets.”

In English: Twitter will try to make it very easy for WPP to spend a bunch of money on the service, and WPP has likely committed to spending a bunch of money on the service.

Note that we’ve seen similar pacts with new media companies and ad giants before, notably Google.

And, again, this is the kind of pact that’s very nice to have as you prepare to go public. Not that Dick Costolo says he spends any time thinking about that. Here’s the Twitter CEO insisting that’s the case at the D: All Things Digital conference last month.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130606/twitter-signs-its-second-big-ad-deal-this-time-with-wpp/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130605/the-c-i-a-invests-in-narrative-science-and-its-automated-writers/ http://allthingsd.com/20130605/the-c-i-a-invests-in-narrative-science-and-its-automated-writers/#comments Wed, 05 Jun 2013 11:00:03 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=329123 Narrative Science has already proven that its robot writers can make sentences that are good enough for newspapers and internal company reports. Now they’re going to work for the CIA.

The Chicago-based startup, which uses computers to turn structured data sets into prose, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from In-Q-Tel, the venture firm that invests on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency.* The money comes along with a deal to put Narrative Science’s automated writers to work for the CIA and “the broader intelligence community.”

Narrative Science had previously raised $6 million. While it made its initial splash by figuring out how to create sports stories based on box scores, without the need for human intervention, it has been making most of its money creating prose most people won’t ever see: Daily reports for the likes of financial services firms, or a large fast-food chain, etc.

But I still think the notion of automated stories for newspapers and other publishers is both fascinating and unsettling, so I like to keep in touch with the company, even as it focuses on enterprise sales.

If you’d like to see an example of their stuff, you can head to Forbes, which is using Narrative Science to create automated earnings reports and previews, like this look-ahead at Smucker’s prospects for tomorrow.

And as far as the CIA and like-minded agencies, you can imagine lots of places where Narrative Science could go to work. Those guys have a lot of data, and it would probably be helpful to have some of that sorted into sentences and summaries. It would be great to show you an example of that work, but obviously that’s not gonna happen.

But here’s a fun scene from “Homeland.” No computer could have created that eye thing Claire Danes does:

* Normally I don’t bother to write about funding rounds where the companies won’t tell you how much money they’re raising. But then again I don’t normally write about the CIA taking equity stakes in the startups I cover. First time for everything!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130605/the-c-i-a-invests-in-narrative-science-and-its-automated-writers/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130604/cord-cutting-is-real-and-the-cable-guys-are-still-in-great-shape-for-now/ http://allthingsd.com/20130604/cord-cutting-is-real-and-the-cable-guys-are-still-in-great-shape-for-now/#comments Tue, 04 Jun 2013 17:46:55 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=328871 Craig Moffett is one of Wall Street’s most respected cable-watchers. And for a long time, Moffett was skeptical about cord-cutting. Now he’s not.

Actually, he turned around sometime in the last year — in August, when he was at Bernstein Research, Moffett put out a note acknowledging that cord-cutting/cord-nevering was real, in some form. But now Moffett has his own research company, and he has put out his first mega-report on pay TV, and he has repeated the same conclusion, so it’s going to get a lot of attention.

In the past, Moffett and other analysts (along with most of the pay-TV business) had argued that the pay-TV business was drooping because of the recession and the real estate bust. But now the economy seems to be getting a bit better, and it looks like housing may have bottomed out as well, but pay-TV subscriptions are still dropping. Unlike other analysts, Moffett thinks the industry still grew — barely — last quarter, but he figures its growth rate still shrank 0.3 percent, its largest drop ever:

It’s important to note that Moffett still isn’t convinced that cord-cutting is all about people dropping cable for some combination of Netflix, Apple TV, YouTube, Amazon, etc. The TV Industrial Complex is still super-strong, and it’s hard for most people to imagine breaking free of it. He figures that most cord-cutters don’t have broadband at all, but are so cash-strapped they are simply making do with rabbit-ear TV, just like in prehistoric times.

But he does figure that the trend will accelerate, for whatever reason, over the next few years:

So, if cord-cutting does pick up, aren’t the cable guys screwed?

Not exactly, Moffett argues. Cord-cutters who are dropping their cable TV subscriptions in favor of the Internet still need to get the Internet, and they’re probably getting that from the cable guys. And the broadband business is a strong, high-margin business that makes up the biggest chunk of the cable guys’ revenue:

Moffett’s worry for the cable guys: If people really do move away from pay TV in significant numbers — or even pay less for TV, with some sort of smaller TV bundle or a la carte option — and shrink the video revenue the cable guys are getting, they’ll want to make it up with higher broadband fees.

If they can do it by moving to “usage-based pricing,” where your bill increases along with your Internet video consumption, then there’s no problem. It might even be a better outcome for the cable guys than the present.

But despite some chatter about this in the past few years (including efforts by Comcast and Time Warner Cable to introduce “caps” on broadband usage that they don’t expect most customers to exceed), the cable guys really haven’t moved to that model. Presumably, they still think they have time to do so. If they’re wrong, they may really have a problem.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130604/cord-cutting-is-real-and-the-cable-guys-are-still-in-great-shape-for-now/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130604/google-climbs-on-the-native-ads-bandwagon/ http://allthingsd.com/20130604/google-climbs-on-the-native-ads-bandwagon/#comments Tue, 04 Jun 2013 15:45:26 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=328726 “Native ads” are the hottest new/old idea in online ads: Messaging marketers pay for that’s supposed to look a lot like “real” content. They’re what we used to call “advertorials,” and they’re often quite easy to mock, but both advertisers and publishers seem to want them, so here we are.

And now, here’s Google: The search giant is getting into the native ads business by making it easier for publishers to run and track the ads on their sites, via its DoubleClick display ads platform.

Google has quietly been testing out the concept with a handful of publishers like Forbes. Now, in a blog post by Neal Mohan, Google’s display ads boss, the company is formally acknowledging that it’s going to make native ads a part of its business:

Making native native … to DoubleClick. Recently, “native formats” have emerged as an important new model. They provide new types of brand experiences, like sponsored stories, that are unique to each publisher. We are investing in models like this to connect advertisers and publishers in a meaningful way, which we believe also creates real value for users. In the coming months, we’ll be developing this technology and in making it seamless for publishers who want to have flexibility in implementing native formats and making the most of them on their properties.

The native ads announcement is part of a suite of product news Mohan is making, most of which won’t mean much to normal humans (and for the rest of you, there’s AdExchanger). He’ll be getting into a bit more detail in a talk he’s supposed to give this morning, though I wouldn’t expect him to spend much time on it.

I think that’s in part because Google doesn’t have its full native ads offering ready quite yet. Right now, for instance, Google won’t help publishers create native ads — if Forbes wants to run its “BrandVoice” units on its pages, it’s going to have to make them itself. But when I talked to Mohan yesterday, he suggested that this might change down the road.

Also of note: If you Google “Google” and “native ads,” you’ll find a bunch of stories about Google warning publishers about the dangers of native ads — including this video from Google search guru Matt Cutts, published just last week. In short, Google has been warning publishers that if they run deceptive native ads, or monkey around with the links in those ads, they could get penalized by Google’s search arm, as well as the Google News team.

If you’re a cynic, you might conclude that Google is telling publishers that the only kind of native ads they should be running are the ones that Google helps them serve up. Not so, said Mohan: He argues that his team has no contact with Cutts and his group. And that, in any case, it’s up to individual publishers and advertisers to make sure their advertorials are kosher.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130604/google-climbs-on-the-native-ads-bandwagon/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130604/hola-dora-amazon-locks-up-the-viacom-kids-shows-netflix-doesnt-have-anymore/ http://allthingsd.com/20130604/hola-dora-amazon-locks-up-the-viacom-kids-shows-netflix-doesnt-have-anymore/#comments Tue, 04 Jun 2013 13:01:32 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=328687 Netflix doesn’t want Viacom shows like “Dora the Explorer” and “Spongebob Squarepants” — or at least not at Viacom’s asking price.

But Amazon is happy to pay up: Jeff Bezos and company have locked up some of the cable programmer’s best-known kids’ titles, along with a pile of other TV shows from networks like MTV and Comedy Central.

Amazon’s Prime Instant Video will be the only paid streaming service with the rights to many of those shows, including Nick Jr. programs like “Dora,” “The Backyardigans” and “The Fresh Beat Band.”*

The move isn’t surprising, as Netflix had said in April that it wasn’t going to renew an old deal for Viacom’s shows. Those shows came off the service in late May – shortly after Netflix added some more kids’ shows from Disney.

And Amazon has already shown a willingness to outbid Netflix for stuff it thinks will help differentiate it from its bigger competitor, like an exclusive pickup for “Downton Abbey.” A person familiar with Amazon said the “multi-year, multi-national” Viacom deal represents the company’s biggest licensing outlay to date.

When Netflix and Amazon started competing in streaming video, there was lots of overlap in their catalogs — the studios were very happy to sell the same stuff to multiple bidders. But if things keep going in this direction, Netflix and Amazon may end up looking like HBO and Showtime, with each service promoting its own original content, along with exclusive rights to different sets of other people’s movies and TV shows.

The question for the studios and networks that are selling their old stuff is what happens as the digital guys get pickier: In the best-case scenario, the new stream of cash those services have provided keeps flowing at the same rate, as they outbid each other for exclusives. On the other hand, they might decide they’re better off keeping more money for the stuff they make themselves.

* The Amazon deal won’t affect the Nick app Viacom introduced this spring, which gives some pay TV subscribers access to recent shows, or its Nick Jr. app that’s supposed to come out later this summer, Viacom said.

Amazon and Viacom Announce Multi-Year Video Licensing Agreement;
Adds a Selection of TV Shows Available Exclusively on Prime Instant Video

Prime Instant Video is adding thousands of episodes from Nickelodeon, Nick Jr., MTV and COMEDY CENTRAL — including a collection of subscription TV shows customers won’t find anywhere else — with favorite kids shows like Dora the Explorer, Go, Diego, Go!, Blue’s Clues and The Backyardigans, all available to Kindle Fire customers with FreeTime Unlimited

Multi-year deal will bring Amazon customers the TV shows and movies they want to watch, when they want to watch them, and on any device they want to watch them on — including Kindle Fire, iPad, iPhone, Roku and more

SEATTLE and NEW YORK — June, 2013 — Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Viacom Inc. (NASDAQ: VIAB and VIA) today announced an expanded multi-year, multi-national digital video licensing agreement to bring hundreds of TV shows and thousands of TV episodes from Viacom to Prime Instant Video. This deal includes a collection of TV shows that customers won’t find on any other digital video subscription service. Prime members will now have unlimited instant streaming access to popular kids programming such as Bubble Guppies, The Backyardigans, Team Umizoomi, Blue’s Clues and Victorious, along with top-rated shows from MTV and COMEDY CENTRAL like Awkward, Tosh.0 and Workaholics. Prime members will also have access to future episodes of Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants, Fairly Odd Parents, Fresh Beat Band and more. LOVEFiLM customers in the UK and Germany will get some of the same great shows later this summer.

Select shows from Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. will be available in Kindle FreeTime Unlimited, a service built just for kids that gives them the freedom to explore all their favorite books, games, educational apps, movies and TV shows, while providing parents with the tools they need to manage their kids’ screen time.

“Kids shows are one of the most watched TV genres on Prime Instant Video,” said Bill Carr, VP of Digital Video and Music for Amazon. “And this expanded deal will now bring customers the largest subscription selection of Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. TV shows online, anywhere. With programs like Dora the Explorer, SpongeBob SquarePants, Bubble Guppies and The Backyardigans there are hundreds of great shows for kids and parents to choose from. In addition, we are bringing customers popular shows from MTV and COMEDY CENTRAL like Key & Peele, Workaholics, Awkward and Teen Mom 2, with the promise of more shows from these networks in the future.”

“We are thrilled to be extending and deepening our relationship with Amazon,” said Philippe Dauman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Viacom. “This innovative agreement will provide Prime members with access to even more of our best programming from our major television brands, including many digital video subscription streaming exclusives. Amazon has created a unique, brand-friendly environment for streaming entertainment and consumer products and we are excited to work with Amazon to bring customers shows they love.”

Prime Instant Video offers more than 41,000 movies and TV episodes for Prime members to stream on Kindle Fire, Kindle Fire HD, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Roku, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii and Wii U, among other connected TVs and devices — all at no additional cost. Also as previously announced, later this month Prime Instant Video will become the exclusive home to PBS hit series Downton Abbey as well as the highly anticipated CBS summer series Under the Dome, with each episode of the latter added just four days after initial broadcast. To sign up for Amazon Prime, visit www.amazon.com/primeinstantvideo.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20130604/hola-dora-amazon-locks-up-the-viacom-kids-shows-netflix-doesnt-have-anymore/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20130603/rhapsody-expands-napster-in-europe/ http://allthingsd.com/20130603/rhapsody-expands-napster-in-europe/#comments Mon, 03 Jun 2013 23:00:43 +0000 Peter Kafka http://allthingsd.com/?p=328589 Rhapsody International is expanding its presence in Europe, and will begin offering its Napster streaming music service in 14 countries, including Sweden, France and Spain. The U.S.-based company had previously offered its 9.95€ per month subscription service, which competes with Spotify and Deezer, in the U.K. and Germany.

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