NBA’s esports league pivots to creator-led media company
Simon Owens reports that NBA Take-Two Media CEO Andrew Perlmutter is rebuilding the NBA 2K esports league as a media company, shifting from team-based tournaments toward creator-led shows after the NBA and Take-Two found audiences preferred individual streamers over organized competitions.
Hollywood coalition pushes Congress to force streamers to share content spend
Puck reports that a new coalition including CAA, WME and UTA is lobbying Congress for fin-syn-style rules forcing streamers with 10 million-plus U.S. subscribers to direct half their content spending to independent producers.
Kevel raises $52M Series D, eyes retail-media M&A
AdExchanger’s Allison Schiff reports that Kevel raised a $52 million Series D, bringing total funding past $100 million, with CEO James Avery saying the retail media infrastructure company plans to use some of the cash to acquire adjacent vendors as consolidation hits the crowded sector.
Comscore launches monthly report tracking ad exposure across TV platforms
Comscore is reporting that its new Score Report shows broadcast platforms capture 43.2% of Share of Ad Exposure Time, versus 34.5% for cable and 22.3% for streaming, despite streaming’s larger viewership base.
iHeart’s Pittman knocks rivals’ big podcast talent spending
Axios’s Kerry Flynn and Christine Wang report that iHeartMedia CEO Bob Pittman called out “exuberance” in podcast talent deals, pointing to rivals paying more than shows can earn back.
YouTube sweetens creator incentives to narrow TikTok’s social commerce lead
eMarketer’s Grace Harmon reports that YouTube is expanding creator incentives for shoppable content as it works to close the social commerce gap with TikTok Shop.
Publicis, WPP headcounts diverge even as both lift revenue per employee
Ad Age’s Jess Nagamoto reports that Publicis and WPP took opposite paths on staffing last year, with one holding company adding thousands of employees while the other cut even more.
Comscore: YouTube and Tubi lead streamers in share of ad exposure time
Digiday’s Tim Peterson reports that Comscore’s new Score Report measures TV and streaming companies’ share of audiences’ ad exposure time, rather than just viewing time, finding YouTube and Tubi topping the ranking.
Comscore’s new monthly report finds streaming lags in ad exposure share
Comscore is reporting that its new monthly Score Report shows broadcast platforms hold 43.2% of Share of Ad Exposure Time, cable 34.5%, and streaming just 22.3%, despite streaming’s growing viewership.
UK creator partnership spend to top £1.2bn in 2026, IAB UK says
The Media Leader’s Charli West reports that IAB UK forecasts UK creator partnership spend will hit £1.2 billion in 2026, up 26% year-on-year from £966 million in 2025.
Comscore argues linear TV should ditch age and gender as default currency
Comscore is reporting that linear television is beginning to adopt digital’s audience-buying playbook, shifting from broad age-and-gender demos toward qualitative attributes like purchase intent, lifestyle and brand affinity.
Coinbase drops Wavemaker for indie shop Noble People after five years
Ad Age’s Ewan Larkin reports that Coinbase ended its five-year media agency relationship with WPP’s Wavemaker, moving its business to the far smaller independent shop Noble People.
Citi pitches transaction data as predictive ad targeting tool
MediaPost reports that Beet.TV interviewed Citi’s Mike Venable about Citi Commerce Media, the bank’s new retail-media entity announced last month.
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.