What Musk’s $1 billion Skydance stake means for CNN, CBS, HBO
TheWrap’s A.J. Katz reports that Elon Musk’s reported $1 billion investment in Skydance, confirmed after a smaller prediction by John Malone, raises questions about editorial independence at CNN, CBS News and HBO.
Sarandos marks Netflix’s 10 years in Korea days after CCO shakeup
The Hollywood Reporter’s Patrick Brzeski reports Ted Sarandos traveled to Seoul for a two-day fan event marking Netflix’s decade in Korea, days after the streamer replaced CCO Bela Bajaria and cut roughly 1,000 jobs.
WPP Media, Amazon study ties Prime Video ads to measurable sales lift
Advanced Television reports that a six-month WPP Media study with Amazon Ads found Prime Video streaming ads drove a mean lift in modelled business outcomes of plus 1.65 percent across eight UK brands, with the top campaign reaching plus 6.63 percent.
QVC leans on TikTok livestreams to drive holiday comeback
Modern Retail’s Julia Waldow reports that QVC is pairing 60,000 annual hours of live TV with 200 weekly hours of TikTok livestreams for its 40th holiday season, after emerging from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in August with debt cut by more than $5 billion.
McCann elevates creative chief Ordóñez to global chairman
Ad Age’s Brian Bonilla reports that McCann promoted Chief Creative Officer Andrés Ordóñez to global chairman, the latest shift in Omnicom’s ad network.
IAB study: in-store is commerce media’s biggest growth bet, hardest to connect
Campaign US’s Will Russo reports that a new IAB and SMG study found 46% of commerce media professionals see in-store as the sector’s top growth frontier, yet 40% call it the hardest channel to connect, with only 14% consistently planning unified multichannel campaigns.
Omnicom’s Q3 2026 results locked behind Campaign paywall
Campaign’s Elena Lewis reports on the key charts behind Omnicom’s Q3 2026 results, but the full analysis is restricted to Campaign Knowledge subscribers. The article page shows only sign-in and subscription prompts, with no financial detail visible to non-subscribers.
Mapping Skydance’s newly merged Paramount-Warner Bros. IP empire
TheWrap’s Umberto Gonzalez reports that Skydance’s closed merger gives David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz control of DC, Star Trek, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones and more, with a mandate to scale output to 30 films a year.
Stagwell buys Freestar, folding publisher ad sales into its holdco
Digiday’s Seb Joseph reports that Stagwell has acquired Freestar, the ad sales partner for publishers like Fortune and Boston Globe Media, folding it into its Owned Media unit.
Chronicle Media’s Ubiquity claims predictive audience modeling for creators
Tubefilter reports that Chronicle Media beta-tested its AI tool Ubiquity with more than 50 marquee clients over six months, claiming it can predict audience size and niche preferences before a project launches, with 94-98% accuracy when tuned to a franchise.
Amex cuts 3,500 jobs, joining Netflix and Barclays in Q4 layoff wave
The Ankler’s Sean McNulty reports that American Express is cutting 3,500 jobs, or 5% of staff, adding the card giant to a growing Q4 layoffs list that already includes Barclays and Netflix.
Airwave brings ad sales in-house, ending partnership with True Native Media
Podnews reports that Airwave is launching an in-house ad sales operation covering more than 120 million monthly video views and podcast downloads, taking over full sales duties in 2027 from longtime partner True Native Media.
Walmart taps Muppets to unify holiday ad push across Q4
Marketing Dive’s Peter Adams reports that Walmart built its holiday campaign, “A Who Knew Carol,” around a Muppets Christmas Carol parody starring Walton Goggins as Scrooge.
Heineken, Amazon Fire TV launch ‘Pubscription’ app for pub nights out
MediaPost’s Teresa Buyikian reports that Heineken piloted Pubscription in the U.K. with Amazon Ads’ Brand Innovation Lab, an app that lets drinkers search nearby pubs by mood and invite friends.
Opinion: AI research and dark social are breaking B2B ad measurement
AdExchanger Guest argues that B2B buying decisions are shifting into AI assistants, private messages and dark social that ad tech can’t observe, leaving attribution models crediting only the visible fraction of a buyer’s journey.
Meta’s TikTok link ban threatens creator ad campaigns, buyers warn
Adweek’s Mark Stenberg, Trishla Ostwal and Kendra Barnett report that Meta is blocking links to TikTok across its apps, a move media buyers say makes sense as a competitive block.
WPP Media study ties streaming VOD ads to measurable sales lift
Advanced Television reports that WPP Media, working with Amazon Ads, ran a six-month study testing whether advertisers who shifted TV budgets to streaming-on-demand saw real business results.
Disney+ picks up UK second-window rights to ‘The Walsh Sisters’
Deadline’s Stewart Clarke reports that Disney+ has acquired UK second-window rights to RTÉ and BBC comedy-drama The Walsh Sisters, airing after its BBC run, in a deal brokered by distributor Cineflix Rights alongside sales to Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Balkans and Israel.
B2B marketers urged to copy B2C’s creator playbook before LinkedIn crowds it
The Drum’s Mel Henson reports that panelists at Cvent Connect Europe, including LinkedIn’s Terry Rand and The Goat Agency’s Cameron McIntyre, say B2B brands should treat creators as partners valued for expertise, not reach, before the market fills up.
Trump administration seeks to vacate 2019 TikTok child privacy settlement
MediaPost’s Joe Mandese reports that the Trump administration is appealing a district court judge’s rejection of a proposed settlement with TikTok over charges the app collected personal data from children under 13.
Netflix users are opening the app less, internal data shows
Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw reports that Netflix customers are opening the app on fewer days per month than they did a couple years ago, per people familiar with the matter. The company tracks engagement internally using a metric called QPD, or qualified play days.