Under The ICE
One of the strange anecdotal reoccurrences from the corporal crackdown by masked ICE agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is that said masked agents sometimes reference a protester or person who’s filming them by name.
A few agents have openly said that they’re using facial recognition tech. But commercially available mobile tracking data has become one of the important tools in ICE’s arsenal, too, The New York Times reports.
The agency is flush with cash; it now has a larger budget than the FBI. To the point that ICE has, in fact, acquired two mobile data-capture companies, including Penlink, a longtime Department of Homeland Security vendor. The company tracks and maps purchasable or scrapable data from data brokers, pictures or videos posted on social media and geo-fencing, to name a few. Penlink’s tech can even delve into or extract info from someone’s phone, such as contacts, calendar events, chat messages and more.
Indeed, ICE currently has a “Big Data & Ad Tech” request for information (although the RFI closes at 10 am EST this morning), which is meant to find experts “to better understand how the industry’s commercial Big Data and Ad Tech providers can directly support investigations activities.”
Do Not Adjust Your Television Sets
The most popular shows with US audiences increasingly originate on major streaming platforms. That’s according to the annual film and TV report from Luminate, the Penske-owned data supplier for Billboard’s charts.
When looking at original TV content on major streaming platforms, total viewing hours leapt from 16.9 billion in 2024 to 20.4 billion in 2025. This increase was driven by “more massive streaming hits across more platforms than we’ve seen in the past,” analyst Tyler Aquilina tells Variety.
But, as overall viewing grew, Netflix’s share of viewing hours in this category dropped below 59% for the first time in recent years, while its competitors boasted slightly larger shares (except Disney, which lost 6% of viewing time since 2022).
However, streaming media’s high engagement is belied by the fact that the number of US-produced debut TV episodes declined 11% year over year overall, and 31% for unscripted content. In fact, the only subgenre that grew last year was sports documentaries – possibly because sports inventory is such a hot commodity among advertisers.
TV trends are semi-hopeful, which is good for an industry beset by corporate consolidation and shrinking production volume. After all, more competitive streamers and more original programming means better options on the ad sales side.
Cease TV
Google has issued a cease and desist letter to Kantar Media and Barb, a British audience research organization, the Guardian reports.
“It does seem odd that YouTube has spent so much effort trying to convince advertisers that they are TV, and so gain the benefits of that reputation,” says Lindsey Clay, CEO of Thinkbox, the TV body owned by ITV, Sky, Channel 4 and UKTV. “But the moment there’s some TV-like scrutiny they go legal to avoid it.”
The issue stems from Barb having collected info on 200 specific YouTube channels as a way to manufacture cross-channel measurement ratings. YouTube gave access to this data, but now says that Barb’s individual-level reporting violates its terms of service.
So the measurement of YouTube has been paused, leaving UK advertisers in the lurch.
“YouTube has a long track record of providing access to third parties for research and reporting,” according to a YouTube spokesperson.“All third parties must respect the necessary terms of service and policies when using our application programming interfaces.”
But Wait! There’s More!
Should news publishers be on Apple News? A UK report finds mixed results. [Nieman Lab]
Luxury fashion brands are leaning into what AI tools can’t do: creating emotional connections and experiences. [Glossy]
Did the US power play over TikTok actually do anything to protect Americans’ data? [Tech Policy Press]
Meanwhile, here’s the letter TikTok sent to advertisers after the US rollover messed up all their ad campaigns. [Adweek]
OpenAI is retiring its more conversational (read: sycophantic) ChatGPT-4 model again. [Business Insider]
Why Microsoft is being punished by the market for its AI infrastructure spending, but Meta isn’t. [Morning Brew]
