Agency & Consulting
Medill study: local TV news shows early signs of a newspaper-style crisis
TVREV reports that Northwestern’s Medill Local News Initiative, in its newest State of Local News report, has for the first time analyzed local TV news production and consumption, finding consolidation and retransmission pressure echo newspapers’ earlier decline.
Smart TVs stick to a handful of apps despite streaming sprawl
The Measure’s Eleanor Semeraro reports that streaming TVs used an average of 3.5 apps per month in Q2 2026, per Inscape data.
Fox’s $22 billion Roku deal clears shareholder vote
TVREV’s Jason Damata rounds up that Fox’s $22 billion acquisition of Roku has secured shareholder approval from both companies, and the deal is still expected to close in the first half of 2027.
TVREV op-ed: TV modernizes measurement but can’t own the IP relationship
TVREV’s Emanuele Landi argues that as broadcasters build attribution tools like Lantern and MediaLytics, proving ad impact better, the content’s relationship with audiences shifts once IP spreads to YouTube, TikTok and creators, who capture the fandom ads cannot inherit.
Chartbeat: search traffic to publishers keeps shrinking in Q3
The Measure’s Jon Lafayette reports that Chartbeat’s third-quarter data shows pageviews from search engines continuing to decline across regions, with North America falling to just 12% of pageviews from search, down from 13% in Q2.
Cuebiq exec: location data industry will shrink before AI measurement matures
The Measure interviews Cuebiq Chief Commercial Officer Zora Senat, who says regulatory pressure will shrink the location-data industry and push out bad actors before AI agents layer onto deterministic data sets.
Netflix makes monetization a top priority as viewing time slides
The Verge’s Emma Roth reports that Netflix’s Q3 2026 shareholder letter names monetization improvement as a top priority, alongside entertainment value and new technology.
Political ad buyers still treat CTV like broadcast, op-ed warns
AdExchanger’s guest columnist Mark Jablonowski argues that campaigns spending part of $11 billion in midterm ad dollars on connected TV keep using broadcast-era targeting instead of precision tools.
Netflix adds Trade Desk programmatic access and new conversion tools
Adweek’s Mark Mwachiro reports that Netflix updated its Ad Suite with an enhanced Conversion API and new Netflix Pixel giving advertisers access to more than 20 lower-funnel conversion events.
Retail media’s fragmentation problem, from a brand buyer’s seat
The Media Leader’s Rob Edwards argues retail media’s growth has outpaced its coherence, leaving brands to reconcile different audience definitions, data and measurement across networks.
Rushfield’s open memo to Netflix’s new content chief, Peter Rice
The Ankler’s Richard Rushfield offers Peter Rice unsolicited advice for running Netflix content, including killing binge-release and empowering producers, as the company faces a stock drop of more than 40 percent since last year.
TVision: Coca-Cola’s AI holiday ad scored above-average attention
Adweek’s Ashley R. Cummings reports that TVision CEO Yan Liu, speaking at a Viant-Adweek Exchange event in New York, said Coca-Cola’s AI-generated “Holidays Are Coming” ad earned a Creative Attention Score of 101, edging out the brand’s typical average of 100 despite public backlash.
Hello Sunshine’s PE collapse signals Hollywood star-deal reckoning
The Ankler’s Ashley Cullins reports that Reese Witherspoon is buying back Hello Sunshine alongside Mediawan for less than 10 percent of the $900 million valuation Blackstone-backed Candle Media paid in 2021.
Bad Wolf CEO: streaming budgets won’t keep climbing
The Hollywood Reporter’s Etan Vlessing reports that Bad Wolf co-founder Jane Tranter, speaking at Rome’s MIA Market, said premium drama budgets have reset permanently as American streamers pull back spending.
Publishers’ post-Google playbook: subscriptions, AI deals, reorgs
Digiday’s Kimeko McCoy reports that Axios, The Verge, Politico, The Wall Street Journal and Time are each rewriting operations for a post-search era, from subscriber-linked AI chatbot access to restructured audience teams to ads served against AI agent traffic.
A screenwriter’s side hustle became a multi-business writing empire
Simon Owens’s Media Newsletter reports that Simon Owens interviewed Amy Suto, a former Hollywood screenwriter who left the industry to build a paid Substack newsletter with more than 1,000 subscribers, a freelance job platform called Cozy Jobs, ghostwriting work, and self-published novels.
Comscore and TuneIn preview 2026 State of Audio report
Comscore is reporting that its 2026 State of Audio report, built with TuneIn, examines listening habits, format shifts and expectations for ad-supported audio, with a live webinar unpacking findings set for October 22.
Forbes joins Google’s paid AI pilot as referral traffic drops 45%
Digiday’s Jessica Davies reports that Forbes has joined Google’s paid News AI pilot, giving Google expanded content rights in exchange for payment plus citation data on how its content performs across AI-driven discovery experiences.
Epson used Amazon’s full-funnel stack to escape the search-ads trap
Next in Media’s Mike Shields reports that Amazon’s Charlotte Maines and Amerge’s Laura Abadias discuss how Epson linked Fire TV, Prime Video, and Amazon Marketing Cloud to launch its LightStudio projector.
StackAdapt exec: AI chatbots are becoming the new shopping aisle
Retail TouchPoints’ Christiana Marouchos argues conversational AI assistants like ChatGPT now shape product discovery, citing eMarketer data that 37.1% of US shoppers plan to use AI tools for holiday gift research and 63.3 million will get chatbot shopping help this year.
MediaPost: Netflix needs franchise IP, maybe via studio M&A
MediaPost’s Wayne Friedman argues that Netflix’s real fix for weakening engagement isn’t microdramas or podcasts but buzzy branded franchises like Marvel or Star Wars, achievable through acquiring a studio such as Lionsgate or Sony Pictures.
Facebook Marketplace taps ‘Nobody Wants This’ for a cross-promo ad
Ad Age’s Tim Nudd reports that Facebook Marketplace built an ad around Netflix’s “Nobody Wants This,” with Kristen Bell racing through a train station searching for a man named Noah.
Edward Berger: Netflix shook up Hollywood, now studios may return the favor
Deadline’s Jesse Whittock reports that director Edward Berger, speaking at Rome’s MIA Market, said the movie business “needed Netflix to wake up” from complacency with a real disruptor.