Taboola acquired New York City-based video ad tech firm ConvertMedia, which deals in outstream ads that appear with contents of an online article but only play when the user scrolls over the image area.  That means Taboola can get its "Content You May Like" advertising into better positions. 

Without much fanfare, big news organizations are flexing their live stream muscles at the political conventions. The Washington Post even employed a robot to take viewers around the convention hall in Cleveland.

Netflix reportedlyt will bring back "Mystery Science Theater 3000," the improbable hit in which a robot and a captive comment on bad B movies, as they play on the screen  Last year creator Joel Hodgson ran a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for 14 new episodes.   

Redbox is apparently getting back into the streaming business. “The company has started to test its new streaming service, dubbed Redbox Digital, with some customers,” Variety reports. Said a Redbox spokesperson: “We are testing a potential new transactional digital VOD and EST offering, with a small subset of our customers, designed to complement our core kiosk rental business.”

Comcast is testing a scheme in which customers can sign up for cable or Internet service just on a weekly or monthly pre-paid basis. It will be available in all Comcast markets by the end of next year

76% believe there's better overall video content around now because of the new competition from streaming sources. 

The new ads show how YouTube music is a way for listeners/viewers to deal with their own issues and reality. The ads have already started their run as pre-roll spots on YouTube. Various musicians, labels, executives etc. claim YouTube pays too little in royalties to artists. 

Twitter's NFL games deal is a huge exception. But most of its new content deals are for only half-interesting video endeavors

Ads take too long to develop on mobile phones, so Google is introducing AMP for ads designed to encourage advertisers to build ads that load faster. There already is a Google  Accelerated Mobil Pages project to get publishers to do the same thing. Lots of research says viewers abandon sites that take too long to develop; the same is true for advertising.  Google says its research shows that AMP Web pages load four times faster than non-AMP pages, and use less data

Growing slower than expected, Netflix added 160,000 U.S. subscribers -- and 1.52 million abroad -- this past quarter. “The company blamed its sluggish growth on an unexpected uptick in churn, possibly due to the company’s decision to end grandfathered prices for longtime users,” Venture Beat reports.