As the major media companies' SVOD war gets underway, a survey of American consumers conducted by Hub Entertainment Research indicates Disney+ may be the big winner, at least in terms of initial subscription trial. The study, which was conducted before the service announced a free one-year trial for Verizon wireless subscribers, found 24% of U.S. consumers were likely (and 15% would definitely) subscribe to Disney+.

A third of Americans believe they already have 5G mobile phone connectivity, even though there currently is only relatively limited and spotty 5G coverage in the U.S. The finding is part of a digital media "knowledge test" conducted by Highspeedinternet.com to understand the current sophistication of American consumers about all things internet. Not surprisingly, American consumers flunked.

While traditional media will continue to lag overall economic growth, total ad and marketing expenditures will keep pace with it globally and will actually outpace it in the U.S. through 2023, according to the latest edition of PQ Media's Global Advertising & Marketing Revenue Forecast 2019-23. The big story, of course, is the accelerated growth of digital media and marketing expenditures -- although PQ projects that will begin to come in line with overall economic growth by around 2023.

Ownership of smartphones has jumped 25% among American teens and 70% among tweens over the past four years, giving the young cohorts unbridled access to digitally connected content, and also impacting the time and attention they spend with media. That's the top line from public advocacy group Common Sense's latest "census," a report on tween and teen use of screen-based media in America.

The TV industry has always had big events, confabs and stunts designed to create some early buzz for upcoming series, and given the role that super heroes, sci fi, and fantasy have played in programming development in recent years, it's probably no surprise that Comic Cons have emerged as a Mecca for new TV show launches. In this week's edition, I analyze the role the major comic cons are having on TV buzz.

The buzz in the ad trade press may be about brand marketers shifting to shorter-form units, especially for digital video buys, but a new study from direct-response TV ad research company DRMetrix shows that when it comes to "brand-direct" advertisers, the trend is in the other direction. Forty-five-second units in particular have been on the rise, jumping 584% in 2018, and an average of 245% annually for the 2015-2018 period it analyzed. While some long-form ad units -- including :90s and :240s -- ebbed in 2018, the overall trend is longer-form.

With AT&T (WarnerMedia) ramping up the buzz for the 2020 launch of its HBO Max OTT spin-off service, the equities research team at UBS created a nifty chart for organizing the relative positioning and price vs. ad market models of the major SVOD and AVOD services to date. Like HBO Now, HBO Max clearly is going after the ultra premium part of the marketplace and for the broadest possible subscriber base.

Time spent by the average American with digital media continues to climb, mostly as a result of increased access via mobile devices, according to a compendium of digital media usage stats released Monday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau as part of a stage-setter for the simultaneous release of its first half Internet Advertising Report.

Direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands may seem to come out of nowhere for many of the establishment brands they compete with, but new data from media tracker MediaRadar indicates they're also creating incredible volatility and disruption among themselves. Four of the top 10 D2C brands -- DoorDash, Poshmark, Touch of Modern, and Third Love -- in its most recent report, representing D2C brand spending during the second quarter of 2019, weren't in the ranking last year.

Adding out-of-home media to a campaign's mix boosts weekly audience reach by as much as 100% or more depending on the medium, according to a study being released Monday by the Out-of-Home Advertising Association of America. The study, which was conducted by MRI-Simmons and included results from its massive Winter 2019 National Consumer Study, as well as a custom online study of 2,400 respondents, found modest incremental audience reach from adding out-of-home to ubiquitous media such as mobile to more than doubling the reach of newspapers.