If connected golf carts aren’t weird enough for you, let’s just discard reality altogether and generate videos with synthetic people. That’s what Synthesia has been doing for several years, and now offer at the crazy-low cost of $30 per month for up to ten minutes. You can try it for free here or see my own attempt here. They just raised 50 million presumably real dollars.
Here’s something to debate if your holiday party gets boring: are golf cart screens out of home (OOH) media or connected TVs? Apparently, the answer is OOH, since programmatic OOH ad seller Place Exchange just inked a deal to sell ads on 33,000 interactive golf cart screens. Extra trivia points: the screens are managed by Shark Experience, which was developed by champion golfer Greg Norman.
It’s a quiet news day, Dear Reader. The most excitement I can offer is a $165 million Series H from integration platform SnapLogic, which brings total funding to $371 million and values them at $1 billion. That’s nice but you already knew that integration is a booming industry.
It’s tough to get brand safety right, but the industry keeps trying. IPG Mediabrands announced a new set of tools to find and block inappropriate ad placements, while IAS expanded its suitability measurements to include standards from the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). Meanwhile, DoubleVerify admitted a mistake made brand safety on X/Twitter look worse than it really was in October 2023 and March 2024.