Crunchyroll, the Sony-owned anime streaming service, has launched its first FAST channel in the US. The 24/7 Crunchyroll channel will be available on Amazon’s Freevee, LG Channels, the Roku Channel and Vizio WatchFree+.

iSpot Gains MRC Accreditation for Measuring National TV Ad Occurrence

The US broadcaster-backed currency joint industry committee (JIC) has granted “conditional certification” to Comscore, VideoAmp and iSpot. The JIC evaluated the measurement firms’ levels of transparency and access to census-level data. Early next year, the JIC will decide which contenders receive full certification as currencies. The certified companies will have access to the JIC’s streaming data product, including first-party data from Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal.

The bankruptcy filing reveals that the company owes money to between 200 and 999 creditors, including a fairly comprehensive list of major ad tech businesses, and the firm’s rent for its World Trade Center offices. The 30 companies owed the highest amounts are:

This could be down to NBCUniversal’s deal with iSpot, used by clients for some of their Upfront buys this year, across linear networks and the Peacock streaming service. NBCU has been vocal in its criticism of Nielsen since 2016, and last year formed a group called The Currency Council to accelerate adoption of different currencies.

Samba TV has offloaded its media sales to ad tech firm MiQ, in order to focus on its data and measurement business. The move anticipates the upfronts season where Samba, along with measurement specialists iSpot and VideoAmp, will position themselves as alternatives to de facto currency Nielsen.

But while the measurement firm worked on bridging its digital and linear metrics, its competitors were stealing a march. Broadcasters struck deals with rival measurement companies – Warner Bros. Discovery with VideoAmp; NBCUniversal with iSpot – trialling the alternative currencies during the 2022 upfronts season.

VIZIO Builds Census-Representative ACR PanelVIZIO has built a census-representative panel using automatic content recognition (ACR) data from its subsidiary Inscape. Measurement provider Innovid will use the “National Representative Panel” (NRP), which has access to ACR data from approximately 21 million smart TVs.