25 Jul 2022 | The Media Leader Staff

100% Media Roundup: 25 July- 29 July

This is a daily digest of news stories from around the media world, updated by The Media Leader team, to ensure you’re 100% up-to-date.

Friday, 29 July

The Independent partners with the NSPCC

The Independent has entered into a partnership with the NSPCC’s Monday Movie Club in support of their Childline service.

The club takes place on a monthly basis, with members attending preview screenings of major movies before they hit cinemas around the country.

Since its launch 10 years ago, the initiative has raised more than £1,000,000 to fund Childline, the free, 24-hour, confidential counselling service run for children and young people

The Independent has committed to funding Childline around the UK for a day, while readers and advertisers will be given the opportunity to win tickets to each screening.

The first screening during the partnership is on Tuesday 2 August and will feature an exclusive preview of Bullet Train, the Sony Pictures movie starring Brad Pitt.

Nielsen reports 2.4% revenue growth, on track to deliver Nielsen ONE

Nielsen reported 2.4% revenue growth to $882m with adjusted earnings per share of $0.46.

The company, which is set to go private after being purchased by a consortium of investors led by Elliott Investment Management and Brookfield Asset Management in March, reiterated its full year financial guidance.

Nielsen stated it was “on track to deliver Nielsen ONE”, the company’s cross-media measurement solution, by the end of this year.

Instagram walks back some changes following criticism

Instagram is walking back some recent changes to the product after weeks of mounting criticism that it was becoming too much like competitor TikTok.

The company is halting a test version of the app that opened to full-screen videos and photos (akin to TikTok) and will also temporarily reduce the number of recommended posts it shows to users.

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri detailed the about-face in an interview Thursday.

The news comes after Mark Zuckerberg told investors in Meta’s Q2 earnings call that Instagram would be doubling the share of recommended posts displayed to users by the end of 2023.

Senator presses Google and Apple on crypto app fraud

Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, sent letters to Apple and Google CEOs Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai requesting information about the companies’ policies to prevent fraudulent app activity.

The letter follows an FBI investigation warning against fake cryptocurrency apps that have scammed investors for more than $42m in losses.

Apple and Google have come under scrutiny for their app store policies in recent weeks, including for allowing TikTok to be downloaded despite it being a potential national security threat.

Roku stock plummets on earnings and revenue misses

Shares of Roku fell over 25% in pre-market trading after the company missed expectations on earnings (-$0.82 versus -$0.69 expected) and revenue ($764m versus $805m expected).

Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood attributed the miss to a “significant slowdown in TV advertising spend due to the macroeconomic environment” in the earnings call.

The company added 1.8 million active accounts in Q2 to end the quarter with 63.1 million users.

Roku has been rumoured as an acquisition target for Netflix.

GroupM UK launches data training for staff

WPP’s media-buying arm GroupM has launched The Edge, a learning qualification to help staff improve in data handling and data-led decision-making.

The 15-month programme is being delivering by education provider BPP and accountancy/consultancy Grant Thornton.

As part of their on-the-job training, GroupM announced that training cohorts will gain an in-depth understanding of data analytics, the importance of data to businesses and forward-looking industry trends, as well as the tasks and processes required to illustrate a data-driven narrative in a client-friendly manner.

The announcement comes on the same week as a survey by MediaSense and the World Federation of Advertisers revealed that talent scarcity in marketing, advertising and media is a major blocker to growth.

Amazon beats revenue estimates, led by advertising and AWS

Amazon beat revenue estimates ($121.23bn versus $119.09bn expected) led by impressive revenue in Amazon Web Services ($19.7bn versus $19.56bn expected) and advertising ($8.76bn versus $8.65bn expected).

The positive advertising numbers provided a boost to the digital advertising market after other digital advertising companies disappointed on earnings.

Facebook reported its first-ever revenue loss on Wednesday while Twitter and Snapchat also disappointed; Google showed slowed advertising growth of 12%, including a significant deceleration in YouTube ad revenue growth to 5%.

Amazon’s stock was up over 12% in pre-market trading on the news.

Elle UK launches new sections in brand refresh

Elle UK, the Hearst women’s magazine, has launched a design refresh and new sections under the editorship of Kenya Hunt.

Grammy-award winning singer Lizzo features in the September issue, which is themed on “reinvention”.

New sections include ‘The Moment’, an essay connecting fashion to culture and politicsl ; ‘Agenda’, a roundup of what should be on readers’ fashion, art of design radar; ‘First Look’, which looks at what’s next in fashion and culture; ‘Style + Shop’, a buying guide; and ‘In + Out’, an entertainment guide.

Hunt was appointed as editor-in-chief in March, having rejoined Elle UK from Grazia where she was deputy editor, having previously held the same role at Elle.

Thursday, 28 July

Hello! and Clarins launch menopause campaign to empower women

Hello! magazine and beauty brand Clarins have launched a campaign to support women going through perimenopause and menopause.

The “High Time” campaign aims to inform, encourage, motivate and empower a growing community of women experiencing symptoms and to break stigma around menopause topics.

Figures including Saira Khan, Nadia Sawalha, Gabby Logan MBE and Michelle Griffith-Robinson will share personal experiences in a series of impactful videos and content articles that will feature across Hello! Weekly, Hello! Fashion, hellomagazine.com and social channels, culminating on World Menopause Day on 18 October with a celebrity panel discussion.

The core target audience is ABC1 women aged 45- 54 and success will be measured through sales and brand uplifts, as well as by asking women exposed to the campaign if they feel more empowered and confident about the menopause.

Media was supported by Publicis agency Spark Foundry and SPP Media.

Meta ‘cuts funding for US news publishers’

Meta began telling its US news partners on Tuesday that it would no longer pay publishers for their content to run on Facebook’s news tab, according to a report by Axios.

Meta was spending around $200m on three-year deals with publishers since 2019 according to the report, but will not be carrying spending forward as the company tightens its belt and shifts its focus away from news and toward entertainment.

Read more on Meta:

Meta’s ‘transitional’ earnings call: what you need to know

Instagram responds to backlash over TikTokification

The ripple effects of Facebook’s changing Feed

Sky Sports launches integrated campaign to get fans’ hearts racing in UK and Ireland

Sky Sports has launched a fully integrated campaign with tailored spots across TV, OOH, radio, social, direct mail and in-store activations ahead of the kick-off of the Premier League season.

The goal of the campaign, called “Only Live Once”, is to remind football fans of the “emotional rollercoaster” of the live football experience.

The TV campaign will run from 26 July to 18 August and feature a series of 10, 30, 40 and 60 second spots showcasing the best live moments of football with Sky Sports pundits Jamie Redknapp, Jamie Carragher, Gary Neville (pictured- below), Karen Carney and Micah Richards.

Radio and social activations will run from 26 July to 8 September, while OOH material will be live from 1 August to 14 August.

Creative was by Brothers & Sisters and Sky Creative, Sky’s in-house advertising and creative agency.

IAS and Anzu partner to offer in-game advertising quality measurement

Integral Ad Science has partnered with Anzu to enable global brands and agencies to monitor the quality of in-game media investments in mobile gaming environments.

IAS will be able to provide advertisers with invalid traffic (IVT) measurement and reports on viewability through its IAS Signal platform.

Tom Sharma, chief product Officer of IAS said: “This integration sets the platform for quality standards within ad-supported gaming and allows advertisers to better understand and control the quality of their media on Anzu.”

Read more about Anzu here:

NBCUniversal inks global in-game advertising deal

Sky’s revenue decreased 13.8% in Q2

Revenue for Sky decreased 13.8% to $4.5bn in Q2, parent company Comcast reported in its earnings.

Excluding the impact of currency, revenue dipped 3.5% year-over-year.

However, Sky adjusted Ebitda increased 54.1% to $863m thanks in part to a 39.1% decrease in capital expenditure; on a constant currency basis adjusted Ebitda rose 70.7%,

Comcast attributed the decrease to lower direct-to-consumer revenue (-2.4%), content revenue (-16.4%), and advertising revenue (-3.1%), much of which was driven by a change in sports programming licensing in Germany and Italy.

Total customer relationships decreased by 255,000 to 22.7 million in Q2, amounting to a total H1 loss of 361,000.

In H1, Sky revenue decreased 9.2% compared to H1 2021.

Comcast slides as broadband customers are flat; beats on revenue and earnings estimates

Comcast’s total broadband customers were flat from last quarter, a first for the company.

The telecommunications conglomerate beat earnings expectations ($1.01 per share adjusted versus $0.92 expected) and revenue expectations ($30.02bn versus $29.68 expected), amounting to a 5.1% year-over-year increase in revenue.

Theme parks and studio revenue led growth in the second quarter, helped by Jurassic World Dominion‘s box office success.

Peacock paid subscribers stayed relatively flat at 13 million, but monthly users dipped.

Comcast’s stock slid over 9% in pre-market trading on the news.

Nike splits $1bn global media account between PMG and Initiative

Following its largest global media review in a decade, Nike has appointed IPG Mediabrands’ agency Initiative and independent agency PMG to share its reported $1bn media account.

Initiative will handle Nike’s international integrated planning and buying business, while independent agency PMG will be responsible for its domestic media in North America.

Nando’s appoints Zenith to handle media for UK & Ireland

Nando’s has awarded all digital and offline media planning and buying to Publicis agency Zenith following a competitive pitch.

Zenith will be tasked with driving long-term growth and relaunching Nando’s brand to “further engage its cult following” to make it the UK’s most-loved restaurant amongst Gen Z.

Zenith will also be responsible for all marketing effectiveness measurement for the restaurant brand and work alongside its creative agency New Commercial Arts, appointed in March this year.

TikTok shares new initiatives to ‘strengthen transparency and accountability’

TikTok has announced a number of new initiatives to “strengthen transparency and accountability on our platform”.

They include:

Providing application programming interface (API) access to researchers who will examine public and anonymized data about content and activity to study the TikTok platform and make public its findings.
Providing API access to researchers for studies on TikTok’s moderation system.
Deepening information sharing with TikTok’s Content and Safety Advisory Councils, a group of independent experts who will also be granted API access and access to other confidential information, such as TikTok’s “keyword lists” which are used to help detect and flag potentially harmful content.
Expanding transparency reports with information about countering covert influence operations that could lead to misleading users.

TikTok has come under intense scrutiny from the US government in the past few months for conceding that certain employees in China “might need access to data” after a BuzzFeed News report revealed US data had been repeatedly accessed from China.

Warner Bros. Discovery announces US ad sales leadership team

Warner Bros. Discovery has announced its US ad sales leadership team, which will be lead by chief US advertising sales officer Jon Steinlauf.

The appointees, who will report to Steinlauf, include:

John Dailey will lead cross-company partnerships and new business
Jon Diament will oversee linear and digital sales and revenue for TBS Sports, TNT Sports, Discovery Channel, Adult Swim, Animal Planet, truTV, Science Channel, NBA TV, and Mototrend.
Laura Galietta will lead integrated advertising sales marketing across all digital and linear properties.
Karen Grinthal will oversee linear and digital sales and revenue for Food Network, TLC, TBS Entertainment, OWN, Cooking Channel, Cartoon Network, and WB Syndication
Jim Keller will set strategy for streaming and digital products including HBO Max, Discovery+, CNN Digital, Sports, and oversee Advanced Advertising, Programmatic, TVE, Sites & Social, and VOD
Greg Regis will oversee linear and digital sales and revenue for HGTV, CNN, ID TNT Entertainment, Magnolia Network, Travel, and HLN
Sheereen Russell will continue to lead the company’s DEI content monetization efforts.
Robert Voltaggio will oversee pricing and planning and will also be responsible for sales support, commercial operations, and direct response.
Andrea Zapata will lead research, data, and insights.

Google delays move away from cookies again

Google has once again delayed its move away from third-party cookies in Chrome, the company announced in a blog post Wednesday.

Google’s cookieless future, led by the Privacy Sandbox initiative, has been in development since August of 2019, and in 2020 the company announced its intention to phase out all third-party cookies by 2022.

In the summer of 2021, Google pushed that deadline back to 2023.

And the company now intends to begin phasing out third-party cookies in Chrome in the second half of 2024.

Meta sees first ever revenue decline

Meta reported a 1% year-over-year decline in quarterly revenue for the first time since the company went public in 2012.

The tech behemoth missed expectations on earnings ($2.46/share versus $2.59/share expected), revenue ($28.82bn versus $28.94bn expected), and monthly active users (2.93 billion versus 2.94 billion expected).

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg attributed the weak earnings to the broader economic downturn that is impacting digital advertising business, and stated on the earnings call that he will push for the company to “get more done with fewer resources” as the company slows its hiring and puts lower-priority projects on the backburner to cut down on costs.

The tough financial news was compounded on Wednesday when Meta was sued by the Federal Trade Commission to block Meta from buying virtual reality company Within in an antitrust suit.

Wednesday, 27 July

Havas Sports and Entertainment Italia signs multi-year agreement with FILA

Havas Sports and Entertainment Italia, the sports marketing team of Havas Media Group, has signed a global partnership with sports and leisure footwear and apparel company FILA.

The partnership, which began this month, includes the management and development of rights related to athletes and sports properties and the promotion of FILA’s brand globally.

FILA will also rely on Havas Sports and Entertainment’s expertise as a strategic advisor, in addition to receiving access to the team’s properitary sponsorship tools.

Spotify grows users to 433 million, beats Q2 revenue guidance

Spotify grew its userbase to 433 million active listeners in Q2, above its expectations of 428 million users, the company announced in its earnings release today.

Premium subscriptions also rose to 188 million, eclipsing estimates of 187 million.

The overall subscription growth amounts to a 19% increase year-over-year.

Spotify also beat guidance on total revenue, earning $2.91bn versus $2.85bn expected.

Notably, Spotify’s ad-supported revenue increased 31% year-over-year to $366m, reaching an all-time high as a percentage of Spotify’s overall revenue (13%).

In a January interview with The Media Leader, Spotify EMEA sales chief Rak Patel stated he expected that long-term advertising would make up at least 20% of Spotify’s revenue.

The music and podcast streaming company has had a tumultuous year, receiving backlash in the winter over platforming misinformation via The Joe Rogan Experience and losing the Obamas to podcasting competitor Audible.

Spotify’s stock rose over 6% in pre-market trading.

UEFA Women’s Euros semi-final attracts peak of more than nine million viewers

The UEFA Women’s Euros semifinal between England and Sweden last night averaged 6.72 million viewers on BBC One.

The match, which kicked off at 8pm, gained 42.5% share of the timeslot and viewing peaked at 9.45pm with 9.33 million viewers (individuals 4+).

There were also 28,624 spectators in attendance at the match Bramall Lane in Sheffield with England winning 4-0 to go through to the final on Sunday.

Read more on UEFA Women’s Euros viewing figures here:

Record England Euros win attracts 4m peak audience

UEFA Women’s Euros nets more than 2.5 million viewers

Sky Glass set to launch in Ireland in August

Sky’s streaming TV, Sky Glass, will be available in Ireland from 25 August.

Sky Glass removes the need for a satellite dish or set-top box, and also provides cinematic sound, high picture quality and access to streaming apps in one place.

JD Buckley, Sky Ireland CEO, said: “Following its hugely successful launch in the UK, we are thrilled to announce that Ireland will be the second market to launch Sky Glass. The launch of Sky Glass here marks a significant milestone in Sky’s 25-year history in Ireland and follows our recent announcement that Sky Mobile is coming to Ireland in 2023, as well as the opening of our four new flagship retail stores.”

Read more on Sky Glass here:

Sky’s first streaming TV launches

Through a (Sky) Glass, but rather darkly?

Chris Cuomo to host primetime show on NewsNation

Former CNN primetime anchor Chris Cuomo will join NewsNation, a 24/7 cable news outlet owned by Nexstar Media Group, according to reports.

Cuomo left CNN after eight years at the outlet in November 2021 after it was revealed he had been personally involved in managing his brother and former New York governor Andrew’s sexual harassment scandal, a story that was covered on CNN.

NewsNation was previously known as WGN America until it rebranded in 2021 after Nexstar acquired it from Tribune Media in 2019.

Cuomo’s NewsNation show will begin airing this fall.

Hulu criticized for refusing to run Democratic political ads

Hulu is being harshly criticized by Democratic campaign groups for refusing to run political ads on topics of abortion access, gun control, and climate change.

The streaming service has policies against running content it deems controversial.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee accused Hulu of “outrageous political censorship”.

BREAKING: @Hulu is REJECTING our ads calling out GOP attacks on abortion access and gun safety. Their shady policies amount to outrageous political censorship.

Americans deserve to know the truth about these issues, and Hulu has no right to block it. https://t.co/xEfpgASoBU

— Senate Democrats (@dscc) July 25, 2022

Earlier this year, Hulu’s parent company Disney came under intense political scrutiny for its response to Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, which prompted staff walk-outs.

After CEO Bob Chapek eventually took a public stance against the bill, the company came under attack by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis.

Colgate becomes first sponsor of E4’s Married at First Sight UK

Colgate Max White Ultra will be the exclusive sponsor of Married at First Sight UK across linear, digital and social.

Channel 4 said this was the biggest and most integrated sponsorship deal of the show to date.

The deal includes product placements of Colgate Max White, Palmolive and Sanex products on the series on E4 and All 4, as well as spin-off show MAFS: Afterparty.

Colgate will be the show’s first branded social sponsor and has purchased the right to use Married at First Sight UK branding across its social media and website. It will use the most exciting moments from the series on socials to reach an 18- 34 audience through targeted distribution.

The sponsorship was brokered by media agency Wavemaker and 4Sales.

Married at First Sight UK in 2021 was E4’s highest rating non-scripted programme ever and the third most-streamed show on All 4 in that year.

Netflix to expand The Gray Man into franchise

Off the back of a successful opening weekend for spy-thriller The Gray Man on Netflix, the streaming giant is cementing plans to turn the film into a franchise.

The Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans-led film had the fifth-best opening for a Netflix streamer in terms of viewing hours, behind The Adam Project, Red Notice, Don’t Look Up, and The Kissing Booth 3, according to reports.

The film has received mixed reviews from critics and currently holds a 48% rating on aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Both a sequel and a spin-off are now currently in development at Netflix.

Meta to raise price of its Quest 2 VR headset by $100 next month

Meta’s Quest 2 VR headsets will receive price hikes in August, with the 128GB version now slated to cost $399.99 and the 256GB version costing $499.99.

The two-year-old devices are not seeing any hardware overhaul to cause the price to increase, but rather Meta has cited increasing production costs as the core reason for the change.

Meta reports earnings later today.

Mail Metro Media launches ‘industry-leading’ diversity research for advertisers

Mail Metro Media, the advertising arm of DMG Media, has launched “The Diversity Factor” research to enable advertisers to better understand and engage with diverse audiences.

The large-scale generational and community-focused project provides insights on ethnic minority, LGBTQIA+, disabled and working-class communities across Great Britain.

The research surveyed 2462 individuals on identity, global concerns and thoughts on brands and advertising.

This follows Mail Metro Media’s 2020 research project The Generation Factor, in collaboration with the Diversity Standards Collective, which concentrated on common and distinct experiences between generations.

Ad Net Zero announces second global summit in November

Ad Net Zero, the advertising industry’s initiative to reach net zero by the end of 2023, will hold its second global summit on 9 and 10 November.

Ad Net Zero supporters can attend in person and it will also be broadcast live from Park Village to an international audience.

The first global summit was broadcast live from STV in Glasgow during COP26 and united more than 2000 advertising professionals from around the world with the objective of accelerating advertising’s positive action in response to the climate crisis.

Google misses earnings expectations, remains buoyant

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, reported earnings per share of $1.21 versus $1.28 expected and revenue of $69.69bn versus $69.90 expected.

The earnings miss was seemingly better than anticipated after a sell off of digital advertising companies last week caused by Snapchat and Twitter’s poor financial performances—Alphabet’s stock rose over 4% in pre-market trading.

Advertising revenue for Google slowed to 12% growth ($56.3bn), with notably lagged 5% growth for YouTube.

In response to stiff competition from TikTok, YouTube has began monetizing YouTube Shorts, it’s short-form video content, which SVP and chief business officer Philipp Schindler called “encouraging” in the company’s earnings call.

CFO Ruth Porat attributed the quarter-on-quarter deceleration in YouTube and network advertising revenues to pullbacks in adspend.

Tuesday, 26 July

Unilever reveals ecommerce sales now 14% of turnover

Unilever has reported €29.6bn turnover in its half-year earnings, an of 14.9% year-on-year.

The FMCG brand reported the billion+ Euro brands in its portfolio accounted for more than 50% of this total turnover, growing 9.4% compared to 2021.

Alan Jope, Unilever’s chief executive officer, said it had made “further progress against strategic priorities”, with ecommerce sales now making up 14% of turnover, up from 6% in 2019.

Underlying sales growth grew 8.1% and underlying earnings per share increased 1% year-on-year (including currency impact of 4.9%).

Looking ahead, Unilever predicted underlying sales growth would be above the range of 4.5% to 6.5% previously predicted.

The company also said it would continue to invest in “the health of our brands”, and in the first half of this year it increased absolute brand and marketing investment and said it would commit to again invest “competitively” in marketing, research and development and capital expenditure in the second half of this year.

Motorway to co-sponsor BT Sport’s Premier League coverage

Motorway, the used-car marketplace, will co-sponsor BT’s broadcast of Premier League, UEFA Europa League and UEFA Europa Conference League for the 2022/23 season.

The sponsorship agreement was brokered by Omnicom media agency MG OMD and Sky Media and will cover 127 live games across BT Sport’s coverage from 6 August.

The deal includes a series of whistle to whistle five and 10-second idents before games, during half-time and after games, plus sponsorship across livestreams via the BT Sport App and BT Sport website.

This partnership is expected to reach 19% or 5.70 million of the ABC1 audience and follows Motorway’s standalone sponsorship of Guinness Six Nations in 2022 and 2023 on ITV.

Octave Audio appoints ex-Acast exec as new podcast lead

Octave Audio has appointed Matthew Rouse (pictured, below) as podcast lead.

He will be in charge of developing Octave Podcasts which provide brands with targeted access to aggregated podcast audiences at scale through first-party data.

Rouse joins Octave Audio from Acast, where he was campaign manager for a year and also has previous roles at Mindshare where he spent 10 years as well as Universal McCann, Initiative and ITV.

Octave Audio is a joint venture between News UK’s Wireless and Bauer Media, two of the UK’s leading commercial radio operators.

BBC’s Our Next Prime Minister brings in average 3.53 million viewers

The Conservative Leadership debate on BBC One last night attracted a peak audience of 3.61 million viewers at 9.45pm, according to BARB overnight figures.

The televised debate between remaining two candidates, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, took peak 22.1% share of the timeslot between 9pm and 10pm.

Tremor International to acquire adtech company Amobee

Tremor International, a global CTV, video, and data company has announced it will acquire adtech company Amobee for a total consideration of $239m.

The acquisition will enhance the technology offering and business footprint across Tremor’s core growth drivers, as well as expand the companies global presence and reach.

Tremor will take on an additional $100m worth of debt to help finance the transaction, which is expected to close during Q3.

TBS cancels Full Frontal with Samantha Bee after 7 seasons

Warner Bros. Discovery’s pay TV channel TBS has canceled late-night political comedy show Full Frontal with Samantha Bee after seven seasons on the air.

TBS called the cancellation a “difficult, business-based” decision in a statement to Variety.

The move comes amid a transitional period for late-night TV — Conan O’Brien left TBS in June of 2021 and it was announced earlier this Spring that The Late Late Show’s James Corden would also be ending his run on CBS.

Amazon to raise Prime prices across Europe

Amazon has announced it is raising the price of Prime across Europe come September.

In the UK, the price is jumping £1/month from £7.99 to £8.99 or annually from £79 to £95, a 20% increase.

It is the first time Prime’s price will increase in the UK since 2014.

In France, the price is jumping 43% €49/year to €69.90/year; Germany will see a 30% annual increase and Spain and Italy a 39% increase.

According to a report from Reuters, Amazon is attributing the rising prices to “increased inflation and operating costs”.

Facebook introduces music revenue sharing for creators

Facebook has introduced music revenue sharing, making it easier for creators to monetize their videos that use licensed music from popular artists.

Under the revenue share policy, video creators will receive 20% of revenue share on eligible videos, with a separate undisclosed share going to music rights holders and to Meta, respectively.

Creators must be eligible for in-stream ads in their content and meet Facebook’s monetization eligibility standards in order to access the feature.

Monday, 25 July

NFL launches NFL+ streaming service

The National Football League has launched its exclusive subscription service, NFL+.

The service offers access to live local and primetime games on mobile and tablet devices, live game audio for every game of the season, and a library of NFL programming on-demand and ad-free.

The main subscription will cost $4.99/month or $39.99/year.

A second subscription tier will also add access to full and condensed ad-free game replaces across devices as well as a “Coaches Film” feature for $9.99/month or $79.99/year.

Dentsu X retains top spot as world’s fastest growing media agency in global RECMA rankings

Dentsu X, the Dentsu international media agency, has secured number one position as the world’s fastest-growing media agency for the fourth year in the row according to RECMA.

RECMA’s overall activity volume rankings report, which examines more than 900 media agencies in 64 countries, found Dentsu X registered 28.4% year-on-year agency growth.

Dentsu X also placed third for “non-traditional activity” in the rankings.

RECMA is an independent research company reporting and tracking media agency performance around the world.

NewsGuard demotes MSNBC.com’s rating

NewsGuard has updated MSNBC.com’s rating to 52 out of 100, putting it squarely in its “red”, or untrustworthy, category alongside the also recently updated Fox News (which received a 57 out of 100).

The ratings company and adtech watchdog stated the reasoning for the change is that “the most opinionated programming on the cable outlets, often based on clearly false claims, is now so extensively published and heavily promoted on the websites that a significant portion of the websites’ content fails to adhere to basic journalistic practices.”

Disney+ to premiere first UK original in September

Streaming service Disney+ has announced its first UK original series, rom-com thriller Wedding Season, will premiere on the platform on 8 September.

The show will also simultaneously debut on Star+ in Latin America and Hulu in the US.

TalkSport scores exclusive package to stream live commentary of Premier League matches in the Republic of Ireland

TalkSport has secured a digital audio rights deal to stream live commentary of Premier League matches in Ireland for the next three years.

The deal will cover 2022/23, 2023/24 and 2024/25 seasons and mean fans can listen to at least 91 matches broadcast live each season on Saturdays at 12.30pm, 3pm and 5.30pm, with occasional 7.45pm kick-off matches as well.

This deal opens up partnership opportunities to target Irish fans through Wireless’ national agency sales team, urbanmedia, from title sponsorship to bespoke commercial opportunities on Saturday’s live show, Premier League Live.

UK to host Eurovision song contest next year in Ukraine’s place

The UK will host Eurovision 2023 on behalf of Ukraine, the European Broadcasting Union and the BBC have confirmed.

As Ukraine’s Kalush Orchestra won this year’s competition and would normally host next year’s event, however safety concerns around the Russian invasion posed “too great a safety risk”.

Statement on the #Eurovision Song Contest 2023 from Tim Davie, BBC Director-General https://t.co/CSPCfFNuJS pic.twitter.com/YSRH8AZvZ4

— BBC Press Office (@bbcpress) July 25, 2022

The last time the UK hosted the singing contest was in Birmingham in 1998 following Katrina and the Waves’ 1997 victory.

France deputies vote to end licence fee for public service broadcaster groups

The French Assembly has voted to end licence fee funding to public service broadcaster groups as part of its corrective finance bill.

The licence fee was previously set at €138-per-household with at least one TV set, which was on course to pull in €3.2 billion in 2022.

This system is set to be replaced by a percentage of VAT, bringing in a total of €3.7 billion.

French senators will debate this matter further on 1 August, before it goes to a joint committee.

Meta commits $150m over three years to Oversight Board

Meta has committed an additional $150m over three years to its Oversight Board, a group of 40 global independent experts that advise the company over content and policy decisions.

The purpose of the board is “to promote free expression by making principled, independent decisions regarding content on Facebook and Instagram and by issuing recommendations on the relevant Facebook Company Content Policy”.

The board previously received $130m in funding when it was founded in 2019.

The news comes as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and outgoing COO Sheryl Sandberg, among others, are set to be deposed in a lawsuit regarding the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Primetime January 6 Committee hearing grabs over 17m viewers

An estimated 17.7 million viewers watched the primetime January 6 Committee hearing last Thursday, according to figures from Nielsen.

That is less than the previous primetime hearing, which received around 20 million viewers across TV outlets on June 9.

The daytime hearings, of which there have been six, have averaged 11.2 million viewers.

UKTV Ventures agrees £1m airtime-for-equity deal with KinKind

UKTV’s investment fund, UKTV Ventures, has invested £1m in plastic-free toiletries company, KinKind, in an airtime-for-equity deal.

As a result of the deal, KinKind, which aims to help UK families eliminate plastics from their bathrooms, will launch its first UKTV ad campaign on 1 September to an audience of 26 million monthly viewers across the broadcaster’s seven linear channels: Dave, W, Gold, Alibi, Drama, Yesterday and Eden.

In return, UKTV will gain an equity stake in the business.

This follows recent investments in e-commerce booking site easyGuide and social media platform, WeAre8.

BBC, TalkTV and Sky to host Conservative Leadership debates over coming weeks

The final two Conservative Leadership candidates, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, will take part in another live debate on BBC One tonight.

The debate will be hosted by Sophie Raworth in front of an audience of 80- 100 people in Stoke-on-Trent, and also be simulcast on BBC Radio 5 Live.

The next debate will be a joint broadcast from TalkTV and The Sun at 6pm tomorrow, co-hosted by The Sun‘s political editor, Harry Cole, and TalkTV’s political editor Kate McCann.

Sunak and Truss will face other again in a debate hosted by Kay Burley, set to air on Sky News on 4 August. This comes after both candidates previously pulled out of a televised debate with other candidates, Penny Mordaunt, Kemi Badenoch and Tom Tugenhadt, on the channel last week

The first leadership debate aired on Channel 4 on 15 July with Krishnan Guru-Murthy, and the second was on ITV on 17 July, hosted by Julie Etchingham.

Meta adds 18+ tag for Horizon Worlds

Meta has updated its metaverse policy to allows users to create worlds with mature content to be created within Horizon.

Content that is sexually suggestive, that promotes the use of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, gambling, and other age-restricted activities, as well as intense or excessively violent content, will now be allowed in the Horizon metaverse if it is marked as Mature.

Such content was previously banned on the platform.

Restrictions in place remain: explicit pornography and the use of illegal drugs, for example, will still be disallowed.

Ebiquity registers 10% organic revenue growth year-on-year

Ebiquity, the media investment analysis company, has reported revenue of approximately £37m in its latest trading update for the six months up to 30 June 2022.

In this update, Ebiquity reported the Group’s profitability “improved significantly” and anticipates underlying operating profit of more than £4.6bn, an increase of at least 100% on the same period last year.

The company also stated acquisitions of Media Management LLC and Media Path were completed in April 2022.

Net debt was listed at £12.9m, with cash balances of £9.3bn and gross debt of £22.2m.

Additionally, Ebiquity mentioned it is currently in discussions regarding “the divestment of its small Russian subsidiary”.

Looking forward, Nick Waters, Ebiquity CEO, said while there were increasing macro-economic challenges, there were potential opportunities for Ebiquity as this would mean marketers would scrutinise all media investments “more thoroughly” for cost, quality, and effectiveness.

Ebiquity’s interim results are planned to be announced on 22 September 2022.