Digest: Meta Hikes Ad Prices; AI Agents Cannot Act on Your Behalf Without Platform Permission, Rules US Judge; IPA Unveils...
Meta announced a 2%‑5% fee increase for ads delivered in Austria, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey and the UK, citing local digital service taxes. A California federal judge ruled that AI agents cannot access a platform’s systems without the platform’s explicit permission, making such actions potentially illegal under computer‑access statutes. The ruling stems from Amazon’s lawsuit against Perplexity and is currently preliminary. Meanwhile, the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s IPA released a Pricing Playbook to help agencies modernize pricing models amid shifting market dynamics.
EXCLUSIVE: NewsGuard Taps Startup Pangram to Identify AI-Generated News and Misinformation
NewsGuard has launched an AI content farm detection tool built with Pangram Labs’ proprietary models to spot sites that mass‑produce AI‑generated news without disclosure. In its first rollout, the system helped flag roughly 3,000 AI farms, more than double the...
Naseeruddin Shah, Nana Patekar, Sanjay Kapoor Lead Indian Streamer Amazon MX Player’s Most Expansive Slate Yet, Topping 150 Shows for...
Amazon MX Player, India’s free streaming service with 250 million monthly viewers, announced its most ambitious 2026 lineup. The slate features over 150 new and returning titles across drama, action, reality and its micro‑drama MX Fatafat vertical. High‑profile projects such as...
VFL Inks Broadcast Deals with Foxtel, Seven, ABC, and SEN
The Victorian Football League has secured broadcast agreements with Foxtel, ABC, Seven and SEN, promising the competition’s biggest audiences in decades. Foxtel will stream 16 matches on Kayo Sports across the first 13 rounds, while ABC returns to VFL TV...
How Medical Creator Nick Norwitz Grew His Substack Paid Subscribers From 900 to 5,200 Within 8 Months
Harvard‑trained physician Nick Norwitz leveraged his Metabolic Health YouTube channel to drive a dramatic surge in paid Substack subscribers, climbing from 900 to 5,200 in eight months. Partnering with creator‑management firm Shorthand Studios, he applied A/B testing, refined branding, and...
Looper Survey: Streamers Set to Dominate Sports Media Rights
A Looper Insights survey of sports‑media executives finds global streamers poised to dominate sports rights by 2026, with Amazon Prime Video emerging as the clear front‑runner. Forty‑one percent of respondents said streaming platforms will hold the greatest structural power, edging...
Summit Announces AirLux Studio Signaling
Summit Technology Group unveiled AirLux Studio Signaling, a network‑based on‑air light replacement that uses PoE‑powered touchscreen displays. The platform integrates natively with Axia Livewire consoles, automatically reflecting status cues such as On‑Air, Recording, or Production in Progress. A centralized web...
Fox, ESPN on Improving Live Sports Experience With DTC
Fox One and ESPN Unlimited are refining their direct‑to‑consumer (DTC) platforms to tackle sports‑viewing fragmentation, ingestion hurdles, and personalization demands. Fox targets the 60 million cord‑less households, offering the same lineup as pay‑TV and a joint ESPN bundle at $39.99 per...
Giddy Up: The Most Syndicated Radio Show in Australia Is Expanding
Craig Hutchison’s Sports Entertainment Network has expanded its flagship Giddy Up program, now broadcasting live for four hours, five days a week on Racing.com via 7plus. The show, hosted by Gareth Hall, is Australia’s most syndicated radio show, airing across...
QMS Adds 24 Digital Sites Through New AOM Outdoor Media Deal
QMS has signed a new agreement with AOM that adds 24 digital out‑of‑home assets and three premium static sites to its national network, effective 1 May. The rollout spans New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and South Australia, with additional Sydney static...
Salem Media Posts $35 Million Financial Loss Amid Lower Revenue in 2025
Salem Media Group reported a 10.5% drop in 2025 revenue to $212.7 million, largely driven by $24 million in asset sales. Despite lower operating costs, the broadcaster posted a $34.6 million net loss, a swing of 313.9% from the prior year’s profit....
EditShare To Highlight Analytical AI Capabilities At 2026 NAB Show
EditShare will demonstrate its latest AI‑powered media operations and high‑performance NVMe storage at the 2026 NAB Show in Las Vegas. The company is emphasizing Analytical AI, which automatically extracts speech, faces, text and scene data to enrich video files with...
Playboy Just Named Its First Openly Gay Editor-in-Chief. He Wants to Change the Brand’s Pornographic Reputation Amid a ‘Sex Recession’
Playboy announced Phillip Picardi as its chief brand officer and editor‑in‑chief, making him the first openly gay leader of the iconic men’s lifestyle brand. The appointment follows a broader editorial overhaul that includes a revived print edition, a Substack newsletter,...
Bell, Telus Reach Distribution Agreement for Oxygen True Crime, USA Network, New CTV Specialty Channels
Bell withdrew its April 2025 complaint after reaching a distribution agreement with Telus for five discretionary channels—Oxygen True Crime, USA Network, CTV Nature, CTV Speed and CTV Wild. The dispute originated from Bell’s claim that Telus favored Rogers’ new channels...
Audio Academy Mentoring Scheme Reveals 2026 Cohort
Audio Academy has announced its 2026 Mentoring Programme cohort, comprising 22 mid‑career professionals from across the UK radio and audio sector. The six‑month scheme pairs each mentee with a senior industry mentor, offering one‑to‑one guidance, seminars and leadership training. Supported...
Final Thoughts on Liquid Cooling Bubble Up
The article reviews liquid‑cooling technology as it moves from high‑end transmitters and particle accelerators into broadcast and consumer‑grade equipment. It contrasts anti‑freeze pumps for FM transmitters with deionized‑water loops used in megawatt‑scale systems, and highlights all‑in‑one (AIO) PC coolers as...
How The Kyiv Independent Is Growing Membership Through Relationship-Building
The Kyiv Independent, launched just before Russia’s invasion, has scaled from an 18‑person startup to a leading English‑language outlet with over 27,000 paying members and three million monthly readers. In 2025 the newsroom recorded a 78% increase in membership while...
Grammarly Says It Will Stop Using AI to Clone Experts without Permission
Grammarly announced it will permanently disable its Expert Review AI feature after criticism that the tool cloned the voices of prominent writers without consent. The company, in partnership with Superhuman, is reimagining the feature to give experts explicit control over...
Univ. Of Illinois Selects Grass Valley for Hybrid IP Game-Day Production Hub
The University of Illinois partnered with Grass Valley and integration firm Tab M Solutions to complete Phase 1 of a hybrid IP broadcast production hub for Fighting Illini Productions ahead of the 2025 football season. The system employs a hybrid SMPTE ST 2110/SDI architecture, deploying...
Libsyn Reveals 2025 “Surge”
Libsyn, a leading podcast hosting platform, reported a 48% year‑over‑year increase in advertising revenue for 2025, driven by 4.8 billion ad impressions and record creator payouts. The company also disclosed that upfront advertiser commitments have doubled heading into 2026. In conjunction...
Spain Named Country of Honour at the 2026 Banff World Media Festival
Spain has been named the Country of Honour for the 2026 Banff World Media Festival, recognizing its rapid ascent as a global hub for premium content. The designation follows a breakout year featuring hits such as *Berlin* and *La mesías*,...
Mediagenix Taps Semantic Intelligence to Accelerate Content Monetization
Mediagenix announced an upgrade to its Semantic Intelligence engine, aiming to turn raw title and rights metadata into actionable commercial insight for studios and networks. By embedding advanced semantic modeling—originally built by its 2024 acquisition Spideo—into its Title Management platform,...
YouTube Makes More Ad Revenue Than NBCU, Disney, Paramount and WBD Put Together: ‘New King of All Media’
YouTube generated $40.4 billion in ad revenue for 2025, overtaking the combined $37.8 billion earned by Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. Financial analysts at Moffett Nathanson value the platform at $500‑$560 billion, positioning it as the world’s largest media company by ad sales. The...
With Newpress, Iz and Johnny Harris Incubate Video Journalism for the Creator Era
Johnny and Iz Harris have launched Newpress, a production company and community platform designed to incubate creator‑journalists. The venture, built on the success of Johnny Harris’s 7.5 million‑subscriber YouTube channel, already backs three flagship shows that blend deep‑dive reporting with high‑production...
From Rented Audiences to Engaged Communities: Why Participation Is the New Moat for Publishers
Publishers are abandoning reliance on social platforms and rented traffic as Google’s zero‑click search results erode referral visits. The article argues that participation‑driven experiences—embedded comment streams, community tools, and real‑time interaction—create a defensible moat. By shifting engagement to owned properties,...
Eight Out of Ten PMax Advertisers Are Now Running CTV Ads
Eight out of ten Performance Max advertisers are now seeing connected‑TV impressions on YouTube, a shift driven by Google’s expanded CTV capabilities. Since Q2 2025 the platform has auto‑generated TV ads from product‑feed images, and in January 2026 introduced shoppable CTV formats...
Coors Banquet Returns to Live Sports Marketing Following Growth Spurt
Coors Banquet has logged five straight years of volume growth, driven largely by Gen Z and younger drinkers. To capitalize on this momentum, Molson Coors is boosting its media budget with a double‑digit increase and re‑entering live‑sports advertising during the 2026 MLB...
$40B Lost to Sound and Sports Piracy: New Government Report
The United States Trade Representative released its 2025 Notorious Markets report, highlighting $40 billion in annual losses from music and sports piracy. The 61‑page document catalogs dozens of high‑profile piracy sites such as DHgate, MegaCloud, Private Layer and The Pirate Bay,...
NextAud.io Announces Exclusive Agreement with AdsWizz to Sell Streaming and Podcast Inventory in MENA Region
NextAud.io has signed an exclusive agreement with AdsWizz to become the sole sales representative for streaming and podcast inventory across Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, while also acting as AdsWizz’s preferred reseller in...
FreeWheel Launches AI Agent Infrastructure for Premium Video Ads, Pilots with PMG
FreeWheel unveiled an AI agent infrastructure built on its Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server and a suite of Intelligence tools, embedding artificial intelligence directly into premium video ad transactions. The platform enables real‑time workflow automation, performance monitoring, and decision‑making for...
CBS Sports Turns to University of Cincinnati’s Control Room and Staff for Two Big 12 Men’s Basketball Broadcasts
CBS Sports partnered with the University of Cincinnati to produce two Big 12 men’s basketball games from the school’s on‑campus control rooms, marking the second university‑based linear broadcast after Kansas State. CBS supplied its front‑bench producers and directors while Cincinnati...
US Streamers Take 75% of Europe’s Online Viewing, Says Mediavision
U.S. streaming services now account for about 75% of online video viewing across Europe, according to Mediavision and the Digital Production Partnership. Local platforms collectively hold only around 25% of the market, with notable variation—Finland’s domestic services capture 43% while...
AI Podcast Start-Up Rebel Audio Comes Out of Stealth Mode, Taps Mark Burnett as Adviser (EXCLUSIVE)
Rebel Audio, a Nashville‑based AI podcasting start‑up, has emerged from stealth mode with a $3.8 million seed round and the addition of TV legend Mark Burnett as its first adviser. The company unveiled an invitation‑only beta of its AI‑driven platform at SXSW,...
Why Russia’s Pro-War Military Bloggers Remain a Valuable Source on the Invasion of Ukraine
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has left independent reporting from the Russian side virtually nonexistent, prompting a surge of pro‑war “voenkory” military bloggers on Telegram. These channels, some with millions of followers, range from state‑embedded correspondents to active soldiers, veterans, volunteers,...
OpenX & TVision Launch First Supply-Side Attention Targeting Solution for CTV
OpenX and TVision have introduced OpenX Attention Targeting, the first supply‑side solution that lets advertisers bid on CTV inventory based on real‑time viewer attention scores. The offering merges TVision’s passive, person‑level panel data with OpenX’s bid‑stream signals, delivering predictive engagement...
Amanda Habrowski Back In Detroit to Lead Alt 98.7 Mornings
Detroit native Amanda Habrowski is returning to Audacy’s ALT 98.7 (WDZH) to host the morning show, "Amanda in the AM." After two decades in markets like Fort Wayne, Portland and Las Vegas, she most recently served as Content Director and afternoon host at...
Google Releases 'Merchant Center' For All Agencies In U.S., Canada
Google has made its Merchant Center for Agencies generally available across the United States and Canada, delivering a unified command‑center interface for managing multiple client product feeds. The redesign, shaped by agency feedback, replaces the legacy Multi‑Client Account system with...
RAG Shows Its Work. That’s Not the Same as Being Right.
At the Generative AI Summit Austin, Ramkumar Shanker warned that the death of third‑party cookies forces publishers to monetize first‑party signals, not identifiers. He advocated using large language models combined with Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG) to infer reader intent and provide...
From ‘Plant Daddy’ to Plant Retailer: How Kossi Tchenawou Turned Social Media Influence Into a Community-Driven Business
Kossi Tchenawou, a former RE/MAX franchise consultant, turned his TikTok hobby of houseplants into a 400,000‑plus follower creator brand known as “Plant Daddy.” Leveraging a three‑E framework—education, engagement, entertainment—he launched OnlyPlants, a Denver storefront that opened in just 14 days...
NAB Applauds FCC Chair, Sen. Mike Lee for Sports Rights Inquiry
The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) welcomed the FCC’s Media Bureau public notice seeking comment on the state of sports television, with a comment deadline of March 27, 2026. The inquiry, supported by FCC Chair Brandon Carr and Senator Mike Lee, aims...
Gold Studios: Founder Eddie Gold on Blending Entertainment, Creators, and Brands
Gold Studios, founded by former ad‑agency exec Eddie Gold in 2020, now supports over 400 comedy and sports creators across London and New York. The company operates five divisions—Talent, Live, Originals, a creative agency, and the newly added Arena—blending talent...
FCC Green-Lights Connoisseur’s Bakersfield Exit
The FCC has approved Connoisseur Media’s acquisition of four Bakersfield radio stations from Alpha Media, finalizing a debt‑assumption merger announced in November 2025. The regulatory clearance removes the final hurdle for Connoisseur to integrate the assets into its portfolio. This...
A Series From Arrowverse Creator Greg Berlanti Featured Two Future Marvel Stars
Greg Berlanti’s early drama series Everwood featured future Marvel stars Emily VanCamp and Chris Pratt. The WB show ran from 2002‑2006, following a neurosurgeon’s family adjusting to small‑town life. Both VanCamp and Pratt later headlined major Marvel projects—Sharon Carter in...
ESPN’s Ryan McGee to Keynote the 2026 SVG College Summit, May 27-28, Atlanta
ESPN senior writer and SEC Network host Ryan McGee will deliver the keynote address at the 2026 Sports Video Group (SVG) College Summit in Atlanta on May 27, followed by his role as master of ceremonies for the SVG College Sports Media...
New York Bill Would Force Social Media Companies To Limit Online Fraud
New York lawmakers have introduced the SAFE Platforms Act, which would require social‑media companies to strengthen fraud‑reporting tools, disclose advertisers' legal identities and implement a know‑your‑customer (KYC) verification for advertisers and payment methods. The bill aims to curb online scams...
West Virginia Bill Would Limit State Use Of Ad Agencies That Utilize Trust Rating Services
West Virginia is poised to pass the First Amendment Preservation Act, which would bar state contracts with advertising agencies that rely on media trust‑rating services such as NewsGuard. The measure cleared the House Judiciary Committee and now moves to the...
March Madness Sponsors Are Already Off The Bench
As the NCAA tournament approaches, major sponsors are already rolling out fresh creative. State Farm debuted a commercial featuring Duke twins Cameron and Cayden Boozer on Selection Sunday, while Unilever’s Degree deodorant enlisted NBA star Chet Holmgren and WNBA legend...
Creators Work, but Measurement Doesn’t — Yet
Creator marketing has become a primary growth engine, with U.S. ad spend projected at nearly $44 billion this year, outpacing other digital media. However, the measurement infrastructure lags, relying on fragmented platform metrics, affiliate links, and isolated brand lift studies that...
Line of Duty Star Kelly Macdonald's "Impressive" And "Taut" Drama Now on Netflix
The Victim, the four‑part courtroom drama starring Kelly Macdonald, has been added to Netflix after its 2019 BBC One run. The series follows Anna Dean, accused of conspiring to murder a man she believes killed her son, and delves into...
NumberEight and SoundCast Partner to Power Smarter, Privacy-First Podcast Advertising Across Europe
NumberEight, an ID‑less audience intelligence firm, has teamed up with audio monetization platform SoundCast to embed its predictive Affinity Audiences across SoundCast’s European podcast inventory. Early tests show a 132 % lift in addressability and a 78 % improvement in targeting accuracy...