HBO

After a prolonged will-they, won’t-they phase between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix swooped in with an $83 billion offer on Friday to acquire the Warner Bros. side of the business.

The metaverse hype is over; Apple Maps forays into advertising; and streamers vie for HBO Max and the WBD studio archive.

YouTube finds new ways to crack down in ad-blockers; the Better Business Bureau takes swipes at AI marketing; and Gen Z only trusts digital-native brands.

For CTV advertisers, Warner Bros. Discovery’s first earnings report of the 2025 fiscal year was a bit of a mixed bag.

In today’s newsletter: Netflix is the only profitable streaming service; Meta’s automated support software frustrates advertisers; and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission may designate Amazon a “distributor of goods.”

Under The Hood When Gary Numan sang, “Here in my car, I feel safest of all,” he didn’t know about the rapacious data collection practices of modern-day automakers. Ars Technica reports that, late last week, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) sent letters to 14 car companies, including Ford, GM, Honda and Hyundai, asking pointed questions about […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Begun, The Clone War Has The robots are taking over, and publishers are fighting back. A growing list of media outlets are attempting to stop AI bots from copying their content, CNN reports. Last week, The New York Times, Reuters and CNN led […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Looking For ADvice No one likes cruddy TV ads. But how much of a problem are they, really? Enough for Comcast-owned FreeWheel to unveil The Viewer Experience Lab at Cannes in partnership with research company MediaScience. The lab will test consumer responses to […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Inside Track How can I track you? Let me count the … hundreds of thousands of ways. The Markup analyzed a spreadsheet linked to a public page on Microsoft-owned Xandr’s website, and it was quite the trove of audience data. The spreadsheet contains […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. To The Max On Tuesday, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) officially launched Max, its new streaming service that combines HBO Max and Discovery+ content. But the launch had some technical difficulties. Subscribers complained on social media about the app crashing, streams freezing and difficulties […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Currency Contest Can the TV industry’s currency debate get any hotter? (For something so in the weeds, that is.) Guess so. Nielsen has formally repudiated the broadcaster-backed joint industry committee’s (JIC) video standards agreement. In a letter to OpenAP, the data vendor behind […]

For advertisers itching to use automatic content recognition (ACR) to target their messages to gamers on their CTVs, 2023 may be their year. The expected expansion of in-game advertising to console games this year should unlock more applications of ACR data in gaming.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. BuzzCuts BuzzFeed is laying off 12% of its workforce, Variety reports, based on an SEC filing. The reduction will apparently help BuzzFeed “weather an economic downturn that I believe will extend well into 2023,” writes CEO Jonah Peretti in a memo.  BuzzFeed’s revenue […]

Streaming has a Hispanic underrepresentation problem. Hispanic Americans account for nearly 20% of the US population, but Latino actors were cast in only 5.5% of the roles in digital programming during the 2019-2020 broadcast season. The representation gap is even wider in streaming TV than it is in broadcast, where Latino actors accounted for 6.3% of all roles.

The latest weapon in the streaming wars is HBO’s “House of the Dragon.” But behind the glamour of this high-profile project, the bean counters are busy cutting costs, as streaming services rationalize after the pandemic. Plus: the lowdown on the latest privacy lawsuit against Oracle.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Did The Oracle Get It Wrong? Is it time to call it on Oracle Advertising?  The group had painful layoffs this summer and has fallen behind rivals, Insider reports.  Oracle spent $4 billion to package BlueKai, Datalogix, Moat and more into what’s now […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Don’t Hate, Verifi … cate  The newspaper company Gannett, best-known for publishing USA Today, misrepresented ads in programmatic auctions over the course of nine months until just last week. In many cases, the inaccurate ads were seemingly bound for the flagship USA Today site […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. An About-Face Six years ago, Google and Facebook had won the digital ad market, or so said Stratechery’s Ben Thompson. After Meta’s latest earnings, he reflects on that prediction: The duo did consolidate most online ad revenue. And Google has outgrown everyone else […]

WarnerMedia’s HBO Max and HBO gained nearly 3 million subscribers in the first quarter of 2021, and the company is bullish about launching an ad-supported version of the streaming service in June. During its Thursday earnings call, WarnerMedia parent company AT&T said that the total number of domestic HBO Max and HBO subscribers combined topped 44 […]

AT&T’s WarnerMedia saw the number of activations on its HBO Max streaming platform double in Q4 to 17.2 million from the third-quarter of 2020, thanks in large part to the success of “Wonder Woman 1984.” During its earnings call on Wednesday, AT&T said that the total number of domestic HBO Max and HBO subscribers topped 41 […]

When Emily Giannusa watches television or streams something, it’s research. As VP of digital marketing at HBO, Emily has worked on campaigns for “Game of Thrones,” “Westworld,” “True Detective,” “Veep” and, most recently, “Euphoria,” an Emmy-nominated series for the Gen Z audience. The word authenticity gets tossed around a lot, but marketing “Euphoria” really did […]

AT&T rolled out the red carpet for investors Tuesday in true Hollywood fashion – with a flashy event at Warner Bros. Studio in Burbank, California, to unveil its HBO Max streaming service. In a presentation resembling the upfronts, AT&T revealed that HBO Max will launch in the United States in May 2020 with 10,000 hours […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Move Over Rick Welday is stepping out of his shoes as Xandr president and likely right into a position at either AT&T or WarnerMedia. The change comes as AT&T begins to bring the three pillars of its new media empire – communications, advertising and […]

There’s yet another content streaming service joining the fray: AT&T TV will enter beta testing in Q3, offering viewers an internet delivered TV option, the company said during its Q2 earnings call today. If AT&T TV’s service takes off, it will open up a new pool of OTT inventory for buyers. IP TV services can […]

“On TV And Video” is a column exploring opportunities and challenges in advanced TV and video. Today’s column is written by Ryan Christiansen, co-founder and CEO at Ntooitive Digital. The ability to track and effectively target consumer actions has never been more essential to marketers seeking to unleash the power of cross-platform digital advertising. With […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Grow Big Or Go Home HBO is at a crossroads and its new corporate manager plans to make a change, a recording from a recent company-wide town hall meeting suggests. John Stankey, the AT&T executive who now oversees the Time Warner media properties, says […]

To even the most casual observer, AT&T’s $85.4 billion bid for Time Warner appears to accelerate the multiyear land grab between telcos like Verizon and the media and ad tech hybrids like AOL. Although the deals have obvious similarities – both AT&T and Verizon are mobile carriers seeking to grow subscribers and diversify their infrastructure […]