Daily News Roundup

Criteo shares dropped by 24% after reporting sluggish, down-trending Q2 earnings. And sports streaming distributor FuboTV’s earnings for last quarter are a mixed bag.

People Inc. holds the line on ad revenue as quality inventory gets harder to find in a sea of AI slop. Plus: BMW is running a first-of-its-kind campaign featuring in-car Spider-Man takeovers.

Holdcos get creative with M&A; striking a balance with influencer marketing; and social influencers are given marketing titles at brands.

Big agencies wrestle with offsetting the rising cost of token consumption. Plus: OpenAI shared policies on how brands can apply ad credit to campaigns.

Serves You Right The ad industry has found a new audience to bombard with ads: AI bots. Time recently began serving ads to bots in an attempt to monetize its growing bot traffic. The ads are formatted as FAQ-style brand content and labeled as sponsored. Influencing agents may eventually become even more important than influencing […]

Freewheel will begin reporting show-level data; Xbox will let users stream games for free if they watch ads; and Meta and Google can develop AI ads without even a prompt.

Eyewear company Blacksheep claims that Google replaced its site with a lookalike domain that led to an error page, causing the brand to lose its position in organic search.

Some holdcos will pay AI costs in exchange for principal inventory commitments; Google will require Ads API customers to have passkeys; and microdramas struggle with the ethics of AI likenesses.

Google’s changing up Max; CTV buyers are “addicted to siloing;” and Bluesky’s AI investments may be moot.

Paramount+, unlike Netflix, announces a subscription-free option; Havas announces plans to go AI-first; and Faire’s Promoted Listings platform targets wholesalers, rather than individual customers.

Sports are where the money is; Reddit’s rethinking its AI licensing strategy; and data targeting has its darker sides.

Kraft Heinz’s deal with Disney represents a food marketing trend; how buying location data is a legal loophole for the government; analysts rain on OpenAI’s ad parade.

The purported best ways to counter ad fraud; CPG brands struggle in the face of GLP-1s; and the open web might be meeting its end.

Everything is an ad network, including sports arenas; Apple Ads is getting an upgrade; and Patreon blocks bots from its free content.

Google has to hand over some of its AI features to competitors; when LLMs will (or won’t) be critical; and publishers are productizing GEO offerings.

Private equity is hungry for challenger ecommerce marketplace players. Plus: Brands and creators aren’t thrilled with TikTok Shop’s AI-generated shoppable videos.

Megaphone becoming part of Spotify’s Ad Server impacts campaign setups; IAB finds 43% of buyers have little confidence in CTV ad supply quality; and Netflix’s ad-filled MLB Home Run Derby broadcast gets panned.

Meta’s AI creative products still need work; the role of humans in agentic media buying; and how Vizio TV owners can opt out of sharing data with Walmart.

Netflix considers live TV channels; Ofcom tells social media to cool it with the scam ads; and Meta gets weirdly nonconsensual with its AI images.

Intuit shakes up its media business; the OpenAI ads pilot continues to expand; and the MLB seems to have changed its tune on gambling.

Everybody wants a bite of next year’s FIFA World Cup; Warner Bros. Discovery ventures into the Amazon; and ChatGPT has its favorite influencers just like we do.

Criteo has two potential buyers; publishers consider blocking Google’s joint AI-scraping/search-indexing bot; and Microsoft’s billion-player gaming goal might make sense for mobile.

Creator marketing is taking over the B2B space; Reddit develops AI tools to fight spam; and Comcast-owned Sky will acquire ITV’s Media & Entertainment unit.

Paramount consolidates its ad tech and product teams; Meta execs are still figuring out the role of AI; and FIFA and World Cup sponsors lean on influencers.

OpenAI’s hiring priorities hint at the nascent ad platform’s future direction. Plus: Cloudflare unveils tools to categorize crawlers.

Retail media ramps up CTV partnerships to extend ecommerce audiences off-site; LaLiga’s piracy crackdown hits legit sites in Spain; and OpenAI mulls third-party ad measurement.

Comcast separates NBCUniversal and Sky from its broadband and wireless business; Omnicom is all in on M&A; and startup Whatnot bets on livestreamed shopping.

Apple abandoned its ad network; Did Cannes Lions abandon its creators?; and CMOs decide how much to abandon creative budgets.

Since Publicis Groupe is acquiring LiveRamp, many brands will likely find themselves in the market for a new independent vendor for audience and identity data. Plus: FIFA’s controversial ad-filled hydration breaks twice per every World Cup game.

The Tech Revolution Will Be Televised  Every business considers itself a tech company these days. Remember Allbirds sneakers pivoting to AI? In the entertainment industry, the line between tech and media is growing especially murky. Legacy entertainment studios own streaming platforms, and tech companies produce their own films and shows.  Unfortunately, a showdown between Hollywood […]