Agency & Consulting
Fashion and beauty creators shouldn’t be typecast
At Glossy Pop NYC, veteran creators and athletes described shifting from single-lane influencers into strategic brand partners with input on product and creative.
Cream Skim: Channel 4 makes Nivea-backed branded format for YouTube, not TV
Channel 4 has partnered with Nivea’s Black & White deodorant on a branded entertainment format built for its YouTube channel rather than linear TV.
Women athletes lean on creator playbook to close the pay gap
Women’s sports revenue is climbing but individual athlete pay lags, so athletes are building creator businesses to close the gap.
Hey Hoser! YouTube unveils nine-show Canadian creator slate at TIFF
YouTube announced nine original programs from Canadian creators at a TIFF-adjacent event, spanning sports, food, reality and scripted comedy. Kareem Rahma will also bring Subway Takes north of the border with Subway Takes Toronto, set to premiere in 2027.
TV ad impressions fell 3.73% in H1 2024, iSpot finds
Total TV ad impressions across streaming and linear fell 3.73% to 4.23 trillion in the first half of 2024, per iSpot.tv.
Tech brands triple NFL ad share as Starlink debuts on linear
iSpot’s Week 1 NFL scoreboard shows tech, AI and cloud brands hit 6.21% share of voice, up from 2.20% a year ago. Starlink, absent from linear TV last season, ranked 27th of 149 brands by impressions.
Nielsen launches quarterly tracker for smart speakers, VR and new platforms
Nielsen debuts MediaTech Trender, a quarterly survey of 2,000 U.S. consumers tracking emerging devices like smart speakers and VR. Early data show smart speaker household ownership hit 24% in Q2 2018, up from 22% the prior quarter.
Podcast industry presses IAB for measurement overhaul as ad spend lags listening
At the IAB’s Podcast Upfront, executives praised rising investment in the channel but warned that ad spend still trails actual consumption. Speakers called for modernized, standardized metrics to close that gap and better reflect podcasting’s growth.
Why time spent no longer equals value in media
Doug Shapiro argues time-spent metrics, long treated as a proxy for value, are breaking down as monetization per hour diverges widely across media, and AI’s cheap content and compression tools will widen the gap further.
DoubleVerify adds conversational AI layer to its measurement platform
DoubleVerify launched Ask Neura, a natural-language interface built into DV Pinnacle that lets advertisers query fraud, brand suitability, viewability, and attention data instead of relying only on predefined reports.
Gemini overtakes Perplexity as No. 2 AI referral source
Statcounter says Google Gemini hit 8.65% of global AI chatbot referrals in March, up from 2.31% a year earlier, passing Perplexity’s 7.07%. ChatGPT still leads with 78.16%, while Claude jumped from 1.37% to 2.91% in one month.
Commerce media’s incrementality push takes aim at last-click attribution
At Commerce Media Exchange, brands and platforms argued for moving past conversion credit toward measuring whether advertising actually drove incremental sales. The shift reflects growing distrust of attribution models that reward media already destined to convert.
Chris Paul Dunks with Data, launches NBA analysis series backed by Genius Sports data
Chris Paul’s Ohh Dip!!! Entertainment, with Connor Schell’s Words + Pictures, will produce a 30-to-45 minute digitally native series using Genius Sports’ official NBA data and visualization tech, distributed mainly through Paul’s social channels.
Streamers are rebuilding cable, one FAST channel at a time
The Verge traces how streaming, born to kill cable’s bundle and scheduled grid, is now recreating both through FAST channels, bundled subscriptions, and ad tiers as platforms chase the attention war.
Retail media networks lean on Amazon’s playbook as Walmart Connect scales
Walmart, Target and Kroger are each building retail media networks modeled on Amazon’s high-margin ad business. Walmart Connect’s advertising made up nearly a third of Walmart’s operating income in the third quarter of 2024.
Prediction markets drive sports betting’s TV ad surge
Betting brands spent $269.8 million on national linear TV through August 31, up 40% year over year, per iSpot data shared with AdAge.
The Ankler’s Wakeup: ESPN locks up Joe Buck, Roku bulks up bundles
ESPN signed Joe Buck to a six-year, $108 million extension that bumps his annual pay from $15 million to $18 million and keeps him on ABC/ESPN’s Super Bowl calls through 2031.
EMarketer: AI disruption is speeding advertisers’ shift to CTV
EMarketer reports that advertisers are flooding into connected TV as linear TV continues its decline, and generative AI tools are accelerating that migration by reshaping planning and buying.
Versant’s playbook: use linear cash flow to buy time for digital pivot
Spun out of Comcast in January 2026, Versant now has freedom to invest its cable cash flow into sports rights, digital platforms and tangential assets like golf-simulator maker Full Swing.
Ankler: insiders skeptical of Ellison’s threat to move studios out of L.A.
The Ankler reports growing chatter that David Ellison could relocate Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio operations out of Los Angeles, but sources inside both companies say they aren’t taking the threat at face value.
Paramount, states near deal with CNN monitor, film-release floor
Paramount and states seeking to block its $110 billion Warner Bros. deal could settle as soon as this weekend. Terms under discussion include independent content monitoring of CNN and a commitment on the number of theatrical releases per year.