Verizon Media Brings NFL Streaming to Fantasy App: NewFronts '19

Football fans will have a new way to stream games this season, as Verizon Media announced it's bringing unauthenticated NFL live streaming to its Yahoo Fantasy Football app, in addition to its Yahoo Sports app. Fans will get all local and primetime games on their mobile devices. Verizon broke the news at its 2019 newfront presentation, where Sam Darnold of the New York Jets helped make the announcement.

News 2 Verizon Media also announced it's partnering with several news organizations to create XR (extended reality) news stories. Allying with USA Today, the Associated Press, Time, and NowThis, Yahoo News and Verizon's Ryot Studio will create immersive news stories that give a deeper understanding of issues. The results will live on Yahoo News. Two of the first stories will give new views on immigration at the southern boarder and fighting fires in California. For advertisers, the company notes, more XR content means more places to insert XR ads. All ads for the area will be created and sold with the Ryot Augmented Reality Ads software development kit.

Other highlights from todays newfront presentations:

Condé Nast

Last year Condé Nast introduced Condé Nast Prime, a collection of top-level premium videos—it's version of YouTube Preferred. This year, it expanded that with a tier called Condé Nast Prime Time. The category includes all its new series, and offers placements on YouTube and OTT platforms. It includes the biggest blockbusters with the highest views, a speaker said.

The publisher also announced Condé Nast Prime Placement, its in-house studio for brand integrations. Viewers can't skip ads when the ad is part of the show, after all.

Condé Nast said it will launch 175 pilots this year. A few notable launches include a sports channel for GQ and a cooking show starring YouTube personality Joe Sugg.

Studio 71

The youth-oriented multi-platform studio showed off new technology for influencer marketing. Studio 71 has partnered with AWS to create a tool that can dig into an influencer's followers and use predictive analysis to determine whether or not they're a good fit for the brand. The platform is called Arrow, and the big idea here is that brands can determine ahead of time in an influencer's followers will "transact," which, depending on the campaign, could mean clicking a link and watching a video, but more likely means making a purchase. Just because an influencer has massive reach doesn't mean their followers will transact, an executive told the audience. Arrow uses AWS's machine learning technology for its decisions.

Studio 71 also debuted a new ad format powered by Snapback. Called Xpand, it places what looks like a standard social media posting into a display ad slot. The audience can respond with likes, shares, or comments, and the ad updates in real-time. It brings the social experience of sharing to ads, the company says.

Photo: Sam Darnold of the New York Jets