Need to Know – The latest US media & marketing news: Apple Watch sales dive, AOL eyes Millennial Media & Paramount breaks web movie ban
Morning all, here’s a glimpse at all the media and marketing news you should know today.
1. AOL is reportedly preparing to acquire mobile ad tech company Millennial Media for $300m, claims Tech Crunch. Sources claim that AOL started “kicking the tires” on Millennial weeks ago but things were slowed down by AOL itself getting acquired by Verizon
2. Paramount has broken an age-old ban on early web sales of movies, asserts AdAge. The next 'Paranormal Activity' will hit web 17 days after theater distribution tails off in a move designed to appeal to millenials.
3. Twitter's revenue boss Adam Bain is apparentlty the board's top candidate for next chief executive. Business Insider says someone in the know claims Bain is the “number one candidate that the board is focused on right now,” and that the job is his "to accept or reject.”
4. Meerkat has teamed up with Facebook, says Forbes. The live-streaming app now give users the option to connect to their Facebook accounts and notifies them when their Facebook friends, or the pages they follow on the social network, start or join streams
5. Fashion platform Polyvore and automation site IFTTT are first firms to use Pinterest's Developers Platform, writes Mashable. The online scrapbook site announced in May that it would let third-party developers tap into its data to create new apps and integrations.
6. Sales of the Apple Watch have nosedived since its launch, reports the Register. Shopping-receipt-counting researcher Slice Intelligence claims that daily sales of the product have fallen from 1.3m to 2,500 since the launch date.
7. Yahoo is set to enter the daily fantasy sports market, reports the New York Times. The Silicon Valley company, which has been broadening its range of sports content, said it would host daily and one-week fantasy sports games played for money, starting with Major League Baseball and expanding to other professional sports as their seasons begin.
8. And Facebook is rumored to be building a music-streaming service to compete with Spotify and Apple Music. The service is supposedly still in the initial stages of development, but the social giant is alledgedly preparing to launch of music videos on the site within the next few months
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