Univision Communications said it's partnering with AOL to provide a data-driven, self-serve module to support the Hispanic broadcaster's linear programmatic TV ad buys. The module -- called "ONE by AOL: TV" -- would "provide advertisers access to premium TV inventory, including new fall programming, at scale," Univision said Monday in a news release. Advertisers would be able to produce a media plan within the "platform that takes into account real-time audience attributes and campaign learnings beyond traditional TV buying metrics," the broadcaster said. As a result, advertisers would be able to better "plan, purchase, and measure" their investments, Univision said. “Data-driven buying lets clients tap into our engaged, exclusive audience in a more targeted way, leveraging our premium programming and new shows in each content vertical and on all platforms," said Keith Turner, Univision advertising sales and marketing president, in the release. The module will be available to advertisers in Q4, the broadcaster said.

As Facebook faces congressional inquiries into allegations that one of its website features is biased against conservative content, Vice President-Global Operations Justin Osofsky in a Thursday blog post sought to shed more light on how the Trending Topics module works (see 1605100032 and 1605110048). He said an algorithm, not people, identifies popular topics, "ones that have a high volume of mentions and a sharp increase in mentions over a short period of time." The algorithm also uses an external RSS website crawler to spot breaking news, but it doesn't "consider perspective or politics" and has checks and balances regardless of a story's ideological slant, he said. Then there is a team of Facebook employees who review the algorithm's results, he said. The team confirms the topic is tied to a current real-world news event, writes a topic description, applies a category label such as sports or science, and checks whether it's a national or international breaking news story covered by most or all of 10 major media outlets, Osofsky said. The list of Trending Topics is then personalized for each user through an algorithm based on several criteria. "Not everyone sees the same topics at the same time," he wrote. The social network's guidelines don't "permit the suppression of political perspectives" nor prioritize one viewpoint over another, and the company hasn't directed any reviewers to suppress conservative news, he said, directly contradicting allegations in a recent Gizmodo story from ex-contractual employees. Osofsky said Facebook is taking the reports seriously and "found no evidence to date that Trending Topics was successfully manipulated, but will continue the review of all our practices."

ProSource alliance partner CI Edge will host a half-day meeting on “Excellence in the Commercial Integration Market” at the ProSource spring meeting set for Monday-Friday at the Marriott Laguna Cliffs Resort and Spa in Dana Point, California. The event will be divided into two parts: retail-focused topics for Pro-level dealers during the first part of the week, and residential and commercial integration sessions during the second half, ProSource said. The group expects more than 300 vendors and Pro- and Power-level dealers to attend, including recent vendor and brand additions Autonomic Controls, HiFi Man, Interlogix, Master and Dynamic, QMotion, Soundcast and Vantage.

Comcast's recent announcement that it would include set-top box functionality in some Samsung smart TVs (see 1604200047) validates the FCC set-top proposal, agency Chairman Tom Wheeler said at a news conference after the commission's open meeting Thursday. Comcast “is proving our point,” he said, since the arrangement involves a third-party device performing the function of a set-top. That comparison is specious, since Comcast and Samsung were able to privately negotiate that deal, and work out stipulations about respecting copyright and data and similar concerns, Commissioner Ajit Pai said in a subsequent news conference. Since there would be no such arrangements under the FCC proposal, it would be “like the wild West,” Pai said. Wheeler said the FCC proposal would allow all companies to accomplish what Samsung and Comcast did, and keep the deal from being withdrawn. Comcast has made similar arrangements in the past, but it didn't lead to change in the market, he said. “What Comcast giveth, Comcast can taketh away,” he said. “We’re glad that Chairman Wheeler has noticed that the marketplace is already producing real technology solutions” for watching pay TV without a set-top, emailed the Future of TV Coalition. “But these market-driven, app-based solutions bear no resemblance to the sweeping, Google-backed mandate he has proposed.” Comcast's deal with Samsung involves an app that is very different from what the FCC is proposing, a pay-TV industry official told us. The Samsung device won't have any ability to change Comcast's user interface or advertising, the official said. The “groundswell” of opposition should persuade Wheeler that the FCC to “take some time” instead of “barreling ahead,” Pai said. Comcast didn't comment.

TiVo and PBS Distribution are among seven new members of the Digital Entertainment Group, the DEG said Monday. Other new DEG members are Giant Interactive, Giraffic, Midnight Oil, MusicWatch and My Eye Media, the DEG said. The seven new member companies “represent the evolving nature of the home entertainment industry,” DEG said.

Verizon deployed OpenStack network function virtualization (NFV) in five data centers, the carrier said in a news release Monday. The project started in 2015, and additional deployments are underway in other domestic data center and aggregation sites, Verizon said. The carrier plans to deploy NFV internationally over the next several months, and in edge network sites by year end, it said. Verizon partnered with Big Switch Networks, Dell and Red Hat to develop the OpenStack pod-based design. It went from concept to deployment of more than 50 racks in five production data centers in less than nine months. The NFV project is a step toward building Verizon’s next-generation network, said Adam Koeppe, vice president-network technology planning.

More than 103,000 people attended the NAB Show, NAB said in a news release Thursday. Preliminary attendance numbers show 103,012 people were registered attendees at the convention, a number extremely close to the 103,119 that attended the 2015 NAB Show, said the release. The 2016 attendance numbers include 26,893 international visitors from 187 countries, and 1,608 news media attendees.

Uber announced a partnership with ECPAT-USA, a group that fights the commercial, sexual exploitation of children. The transportation company was expected to sign a voluntary guidelines "focused on helping travel and tourism companies prevent child sex tourism and trafficking of children," Uber said in a Wednesday news release. It said that it's the first company in the sharing economy to take the ECPAT-USA pledge. Uber said it will share educational materials and update online resource pages "that describe physical and behavioral indicators" of exploited children with the company's drivers. Drivers can also get expert resources from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and National Human Trafficking Resource Center, Uber said. ECPAT is an acronym for end childhood prostitution and trafficking.

SES and Rutgers University's School of Engineering started work on content delivery network development meant to show and quantify the effectiveness of SES' CDN overlay in meeting demand for online video distribution, SES said in a news release Monday. The demonstrations will start by using satellite for linear and on-demand over-the-top delivery of content to wireless test beds at Rutgers' Wireless Information Network Lab, with the second stage being a national demo of satellite-based CDN involving multiple universities and test beds, it said. Steve Corda, SES vice president-business development North America, said the Rutgers demos "are designed to compare the scalability and reliability of a satellite-based CDN with terrestrial networks," saying it will "explore intelligent content caching and routing to determine when it makes sense to deliver over-the-top video via satellite or terrestrially, and when to cache that content at the network edge."

It’s “not that easy” staging a tech show in China, “so we took our time,” said Christian Goke, CEO of IFA organizer Messe Berlin, at a Sunday news conference in Hong Kong on the eve of the IFA-produced inaugural CE China show in Shenzhen (see 1511250013). “We will see where the journey goes and where the path leads us,” Goke said. “We want to duplicate the IFA approach. We have turned IFA around over the last decade, which has given us time to get a better understanding of what we want to achieve, which is to create a brand show in China.” At IFA’s last count, there were nearly 30 tech trade shows in China, “but mostly for local governments or companies,” said Jens Heithecker, IFA executive director. “There is the space and need for an international show, but our first goal is the domestic market. We can develop from there.” Opinions were divided within Messe Berlin whether to use the IFA name for the show it’s calling CE China, Goke said. “But we decided it would have been presumptuous and misleading to call the show IFA China,” he said. “We need to differentiate from the Berlin show. We want to duplicate the IFA approach, but with special emphasis on brands in China. We will stress the brand show aspect and put the brands first.” Goke said Shenzhen “is the natural choice” of venue for CE China, and “we are here for the long run.”