The Justice Department Vs. AT&T And Time Warner; Senators Test Facebook's Safeguards

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here.

A Matter Of Time

The Justice Department is prepping for potential litigation in case the government isn’t able to agree on a settlement for the $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner by AT&T, sources tell The Wall Street Journal. Shares of both companies are down, though it would be a surprise if approval didn’t come through. That the news leaked to the WSJ could very well be a negotiating tactic. The fate of the AT&T-Time Warner deal has implications for the programmatic world, however. AT&T has deep roots in programmatic as one of the biggest buyers and as a major seller, and in August brought on Brian Lesser, former CEO of Xaxis and then GroupM North America, to lead development of an ad platform built in large part around Time Warner assets [AdExchanger coverage]. On the off chance the merger fails, would AT&T’s ad ambitions dampen? More.

Campaign Vets

Senators are getting their hands dirty investigating Russia’s interference in the US presidential election. Sens. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) created a Facebook page for a fake political group that targeted thousands of DC journalists and politicians with paid messages. In just 24 hours, the senators reached 1,369 US politicians and 1,407 DC-based journalists. Warner said he was shocked to see that “there was literally no mechanism on [Facebook] for us to [prove] we were who we said we were.” But, as Axios media reporter Sara Fischer points out, reach doesn’t necessarily equate to impact. “In the political advertising world, you would need to serve at least 7-10 viewable impressions to a person over a short window, two-four weeks, to even begin driving intent or action,” she says. More at Axios.

A Working Knowledge

Since the beginning of 2016, Hulu has been building up an ad-sales research team drawn from agencies, broadcasters, research firms and digital media companies. The team supports sales with campaign insights and connects with measurement vendors like Millward Brown, Nielsen Catalina Solutions and Samba TV, reports Sahil Patel at Digiday. Almost 80% of Hulu viewing is on a connected TV, which is a blind spot for the industry, says head of ad-sales research Julie DeTraglia. “But we have a lot of great first-party data, and we can educate the industry about viewing habits there and what that means for marketing partners who spend with us and what it means for the TV industry as well.” More.

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