The Media Rating Council's new duration-weighted impression standard, which will become the currency for valuing video advertising across media in 2021, is confusing and controversial to most ad execs, but to the extent that they understand it, they believe it is the right way to go. Asked what effect it will have on how they value discrete media, the ad industry believes it will have the greatest positive effect on online and over-the-top (OTT) video and the most negative impact on mobile video.

Can brands break free of the restrictive effects of corporate upfront time-buying, with its emphasis on garnering the lowest overall CPMs, even at the cost of disregarding the mindset and demographic targeting needs of the brands? Likewise, is there a way for the time sellers to maximize their total ad revenue yields in the upfront while controlling marketplace pricing and still offering advertisers the buying flexibility they crave? The answer is yes, and here's how it would -- or could -- work.

While strong women characters abound on ad-supported TV, many of them are defined by their central relationships with male characters. Netflix's "Jessica Jones" has the distinction of being Marvel's first female lead and title character in either television or movies. It stars Krysten Ritter, one of the most casually charismatic actors on television. In this week's edition I analyze the significance of this series as it enters its third and final season on Netflix.

The average person will spend 800 hours using the mobile internet this year, according to the 2019 edition of Zenith's Media Consumption Forecasts. "That's the equivalent of 33 days without sleep or pause," the agency notes, adding that by 2021, per capita consumption with mobile internet will rise to "930 hours, or 39 full days."

Nielsen is projecting "billions of dollars in sales" for legal cannabis and cannabis-infused products in the U.S. in a new analysis published this week. The analysis also stratifies consumers into different segments based on their reasons for using cannabis products, but overall, health-related issues are the No. 1 factor with recreational uses taking a relatively minor position.

Americans consider "made-up news" a serious problem, ranking it ahead of violent crime and just behind U.S. economic disparity, but they don't blame journalists for it, according to an important piece of benchmark research released today by the Pew Research Center. While most Americans don't blame journalists for the proliferation of "fake news," a majority believe journalists are most responsible for fixing the problem.

Boosted by record political spending, the U.S. advertising economy is projected to expand 8.2% in 2020, according to GroupM's latest forecast. The report, "This Year Next Year: U.S. Media Forecasts," the first to be authored by Brian Wieser since he took over as global president of business intelligence for GroupM, estimates that after factoring political spending out of the mix, the "underlying" expansion of the U.S. ad economy will be about half that rate of growth -- 4.8%.

With 59% of advertisers projecting they plan to increase their ad spending on advanced TV formats and platforms in the next 12 months, according to a survey conducted by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the trade association has released an advanced TV "market snapshot" to help the demand- and supply-side navigate a term encompassing OTT, as well as a variety of other "non-linear TV" options. Entitled the "Advanced TV Matrix," the reference document does a good job of breaking down and delineating the most common terms and concepts falling under the advanced TV catch-all, albeit from the point of view of ...

Fortnite, the wildly popular social gaming app, is having a profound impact on the media consumption of American consumers, and now a new report from National Research Group (NRG) benchmarks it. The study, "Fortnite, The New Social Media?," is based on a survey of 1,500 American consumers conducted in March and found that after adopting Fortnite, the game occupied 21% of their "free" time spent with media.

With the youngest members of the "TV Generation" turning 50 this year (and the oldest approaching 70), it's ironic that the press and much of the advertising industry still think of adults 18-49 as the key demographic segment for evaluating television viewing. In this week's edition, I examine the impact these generational shifts are having on the audience composition of television.