Tubi, the free, ad-supported service formerly known as Tubi TV, has hired Mark Rotblat as chief revenue officer, who will head up global sales and partnerships.

Rotblat joins Tubi from Adobe Systems, where he was senior director of agency sales and activation for Adobe Advertising Cloud. He was also part of TubeMogul's founding team (Adobe acquired TubeMogul, a company focused on programmatic advertising tech and services, in 2016 for $540 million).

RELATED: Tube Mogul Sold to Adobe for $540M

Rotblat also joins Tubi in the wake of a “C” round of funding that pushed total funding raised by the AVOD specialist past $35 million. Lionsgate, MGM and Stanford University are among the backers of Tubi, which recently landed a strategic investment from Tegna.

RELATED: Tubi TV Raises $20M More

“With deep experience in the complexities of programmatic advertising and go-to-market sales strategies, Mark provides the right leadership and industry insights for our sales teams,” Farhad Massoudi, Tubi’s founder and CEO, said in a statement. “We are thrilled to have Mark join us as CRO, where his expertise will keep us well-equipped to help our partners grow their advertising revenue in the years ahead.”

Rotblat holds an MBA from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and a BS from Duke University, and resides in the Bay area with his wife and children.

Adding a content-discovery tool to the mix, Tubi has introduced a personalization engine to its free, ad-supported VOD service.

Tubi said its new platform, which will help to surface content from its library of more than 7,500 titles, uses A.I. and deep learning technology to program and personalize its AVOD offering.

The service has also introduced an onboarding process (initially on iOS devices) that can “fast-track” a new user into its new personalized experience, which continues to evolve based on viewing behavior.

Tubi said it new content personalization engine is based on algorithms and technology that were developed in-house.

“Machine learning is essential for streaming services by providing a customized experience for each consumer.  If you are not leveraging machine learning to delight your audience, you don’t have a future,” Farhad Massoudi, Tubi’s founder and CEO, said in a statement.

Tubi has raised $35 million so far, and counts Lionsgate, MGM and Stanford University among its backers.

RELATED: Tubi TV Raises $20M More

Popcornflix, an ad-supported over-the-top VOD provider, has inked a deal to add five morning shows from O2 Media to its U.S. library that have been running on Lifetime.

The new additions include The Balancing Act, Designing Spaces, Mission Makeover, All Mixed Up, as well as the VOD premiere of Access Health, a show that premiered on Lifetime last fall.

Popcornflix, a free VOD service that competes with offerings such as Crackle and TubiTV, inserts pre-roll, mid-roll and banner ads in all movies and TV shows using Google’s DoubleClick platform.

The new programming from O2 Media is Popcornflix’s first in the lifestyle genre. Popcornflix supports platforms that include the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, Roku, iOS, Android, Windows 8, as well as Samsung, Bravia, Panasonic smart TVs. The company has plans to launch soon on the Amazon Fire TV platform and on the Google Chromecast.

“As the Popcornflix audience grows, it is crucial to keep expanding our library with new genres and fresh content,” David Fannon, EVP of Popcornflix, said in a statement. “These shows represent our commitment to give our users a diverse and exciting viewing experience. We are proud to make O2 Media’s popular morning shows available for free streaming anywhere from your phone, to your computer, to your TV.” 

Popcornflix, a service of Screen Media Ventures, launched in March 2011 by tapping into a deep library of independent films that originated from the DVD boom in the early 2000s. It’s offered in more than 50 countries.

“We thought there was space that was available in the A-VOD marketplace, so we crated Popcornflix… to utilize our library of more than 2,000 films,” Fannon, a former A&E executive, said in a recent interview.  “I look at Crackle as what we can be, and that’s where we’ll be at the next step…The space is open. It’s the wild west right now.”

For 2015, he said the plan is to ramp up consumer marketing and to strike partnerships that yield bigger films and some exclusives for Popcornflix. 

Amazon is preparing to launch a new ad-supported video streaming service “early next year” that will operate separately from Amazon Prime, a subscription-based service that features a large OTT library, theNew York Postreported Friday.

The Wall Street Journalreported in March that Amazon was considering an ad-supported video and music streaming service, but today’s report suggests  that Amazon is closing in on a launch. 

Amazon has implemented some advertising into the Amazon Instant Video service, but has not outlined any plans for something beyond that.

“We currently offer the first episode of some television shows free with ads through our First Episode Free feature on Amazon Instant Video, and there are display ads on some short videos such as movie and game trailers,” an Amazon spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. “We’re often experimenting with new offers and experiences for customers, but we have not announced any plans to offer an ad-supported video streaming service.”

Amazon’s Prime Instant Video offering already competes with subscription-based OTT  services such as Netflix and Hulu Plus, but a new advertising-based offering could enable  Amazon to put more heat on other free, ad-supported online VOD services such as Sony-owned Crackle and TubiTV, which launched in April. Depending on the quality of its ad-supported library, Amazon’s purported new offering might also lock horns with MVPD-delivered VOD. 

Amazon has not disclosed how many customers are on its Prime service, though the NY Post notes that RBC Capital analyst Mark Mahaney believes it’s in the neighborhood of 50 million.

Although Netflix continues to dominate fixed wireline broadband traffic, Amazon Instant Video has been gaining ground, according to a report issued this week by bandwidth management firm Sandvine.

Looking to bridge online ad models to the television, adRise TV, the company that operates the recently launched free VOD service TubiTV, said it has completed its first skippable ad campaign featuring ads for the Lexus LS.

The skippable ad-unit, consisting of both a 15-second and 30-second, ran on more than 15 connected TV platforms, including Roku, the Xbox 360, and the Amazon Fire TV box, adRise said, noting that it conducted the trial from June 2 through July 13.

adRise, which partnered with marketing communications agency Team One on the project, was paid only for ads that were not skipped. Despite the ad-skipping element, the Lexus ad still achieved a 73% completion rate, the company said.

adRise believes that the enablement of ad-skipping, already popular on online platforms such as YouTube, provides a powerful tool for advertisers because it helps them know if they are engaging with the right audience, and gives them assurance that they only pay for ads that perform. In exchange, adRise charges a premium price when an ad is not skipped.

“We’re bringing tools that online advertisers love to the traditional big screen medium,” Farhad Massoudi, CEO of adRise, said.

With the trial with Lexus completed, he said adRise is now introducing the option to all of its advertisers, hoping to kick off more campaigns with the skippable ad feature in the coming months.

adRise’s ad-supported Tubi TV service  launched in April, and currently supports Web browsers, iOS devices, the Roku platform (pictured above), Xbox 360 and Amazon Fire TV. The company expects to add Android devices and support for the Google Chromecast adapter soon.

The service, which competes with Crackle, currently offers about 4,000 hours of content, and is slated to expand to more than 20,000 titles by the end of this year or by early 2015.