AdExchanger’s Alyssa Boyle reports Warner Bros. Discovery spent a year running more than 50 campaigns past VideoAmp, iSpot, Comscore, Innovid and Samba, and found the impression count for the same campaign nearly doubling from one vendor to the next. This time it is a seller publishing the spread. At Advertising Week New York, eMarketer’s Asa Hiken reports, CTV ad leaders called for unified measurement across streaming platforms, and Nielsen says it is building a cross-platform suite for early 2027.

With no agreed count, everyone used their own. Digiday’s Seb Joseph reports Amazon found about a fifth of a brand’s sales value lands after the usual attribution window, and wants a full year credited, and eMarketer’s Gadjo Sevilla that it blocked Meta’s Muse agent from its store. MediaPost’s Wayne Friedman reports Comcast’s own research found big-screen ads delivering 36% more viewing time and 2.2 times the brand recall of social. TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez reports OpenAI added display ads to ChatGPT with DoubleVerify and IAS pilots. Digiday’s Alyssa Mercante reports Dhar Mann says CMO pledges already exceed his $100 million creator-deal target, with no contracts expected that week. And at Skydance, Deadline’s Dade Hayes reports Gerry Cardinale saying most of the $6 billion in savings won’t be layoffs; four days later TheWrap’s Lucas Manfredi reported the co-CEOs telling staff to expect “difficult decisions”.

The buyers are building a count of their own. eMarketer’s Peter Clark reports Chobani spent several years building an in-house mix model to judge its retail media partners, and MediaPost’s Ray Schultz that a GrowthLoop study found 85% of advertisers plan to raise retail media spend while doubting the measurement. Adweek’s Bill Bradley reports Hallmark Media signed iSpot to validate delivery and tie its streaming ads to site visits, box-office sales and store purchases.

What it costs you: when the same campaign can be counted nearly twice as large depending on who counts, the vendor is part of the price. Before the next renewal, ask which vendor counted your impressions, and what the other four would have said.

The fight ended on October 3, when TheWrap’s Lucas Manfredi reported Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín signing the settlement with 12 state attorneys general. Variety’s Todd Spangler reports the merged company closing on October 6 as Skydance Corp., and Manfredi that the banks had finished a roughly $52 billion debt sale in a week. The Hollywood Reporter’s Alex Weprin had the team: Ynon Kreiz as co-CEO, on what The Ankler’s Sean McNulty reports is a $31.5 million signing bonus, and Casey Bloys over streaming. Deadline’s Nellie Andreeva added Channing Dungey over the cable networks, and Puck’s Matthew Belloni reported Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy out at Warner Bros. film.

Then the company gave two answers about the bill. Deadline’s Dade Hayes reports Gerry Cardinale saying most of the $6 billion in savings would come from tech stacks and real estate, not jobs; Manfredi reports Ellison and Kreiz telling their first town hall to expect “difficult decisions.” The Hollywood Reporter’s Aaron Couch reports Ellison promising to outspend Disney and Netflix and keep backing original films, and The Ankler’s Richard Rushfield reads the De Luca and Abdy exit as the opposite. The Ankler’s Claire Atkinson has analysts warning that $80 billion of debt leaves no room for error. Last week the question was what the promises would cost. This week the company exists, and its own executives gave two accounts of the bill.