Week in Review: TV Flexes its Profit-Generating Power, The Trade Desk Cuts 15 Percent of Staff, and Disney+ Agrees M6 Content Deal

September 6, 2026

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In this week’s Week in Review: TV flexes its profit-generating power, The Trade Desk makes global staff cuts, and Disney partners with M6.

The Week in Tech

Google Avoids Breakup in Ad Tech Antitrust Trial

The US court overseeing Google’s ad tech antitrust trial has said that Google does not have to sell off AdX, bringing an end to the prospect of the search giant’s ad tech business being broken up. The decision follows Judge Leonie Brinkema’s ruling last year that Google had wilfully monopolised both the publisher ad server and ad exchange markets. The judge has now rejected the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) attempt to force a sale of the ad exchange, but accepted most of the tech giant’s proposed behavioural remedies. Read industry reaction on VideoWeek.

FTC Sues Amazon Over Alleged Ad Auction Manipulation

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is suing Amazon for alleged manipulation of ad auctions, the WSJ reported on Monday. The lawsuit, joined by a bipartisan group of more than 20 state attorneys general, claims that the tech giant deceived advertisers by secretly raising the minimum price they had to pay to place ads promoting their products. According to the filing, the alleged scheme has netted Amazon $20 billion from advertising customers since 2019.

Apple Hit with £2 Billion ATT Lawsuit in the UK

A new £2 billion class action lawsuit has been filed against Apple in the UK, claiming that its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework has harmed thousands of UK app developers. App Tracking Transparency, brought into force in 2021, requires apps distributed via Apple’s App Store to ask for explicit permission to use Apple’s advertising identifier. But many in the industry have argued that Apple has applied much harsher restrictions to third parties than to its own products. The lawsuit, led by a former senior director for antitrust at the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, claims that publishers weren’t given enough time or information to be able to adapt and prevent losses to their businesses.

Sony Bolsters Ads Business with FAST Offering on PS5

Japanese tech giant Sony this week launched ‘Live TV on PS5’, a new free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) service available on its PlayStation 5 games console. Live TV on PS5 is currently only available in the US, but Sony says it plans to expand the product to Canada and other regions in the future. Sony describes the new offering as “a free ad-supported experience from Sony Pictures Television”, suggesting the platform is owned by the company’s TV production unit. But Live TV on PS5 will draw on content from a number of other production businesses, while many of Sony’s most popular series are seemingly absent, presumably due to existing deals with third-party platforms. Read more on VideoWeek.

Gracenote Brings Content Signals to The Trade Desk for CTV Buys

Gracenote, Nielsen’s content metadata unit, has announced a partnership with The Trade Desk to bring content-level data to programmatic CTV buys. The integration enables advertisers using the demand-side platform (DSP) to use Gracenote’s content IDs, metadata and standardised taxonomy to target criteria beyond the genre level. Gracenote said the collaboration marks its first integration with a DSP, giving advertisers “greater control over content-based planning and targeting, as well as direct access to programme-level reporting within The Trade Desk.”

Snap Rolls Out Unified Attribution for Combined Performance Metrics

Snap has announced the global rollout of Unified Attribution, combining Snapchat platform metrics and mobile measurement partner (MMP) cross-channel performance metrics into one unified view. The product is now available to app advertisers using AppsFlyer or Adjust, with support for additional MMPs underway. Adjust CEO Andrey Kazakov said the rollout helps advertisers “better understand results, optimise campaigns, improve ad spend efficiency and make informed decisions that drive growth.”

Yahoo Launches In-Flight Outcomes in UK and Europe

Yahoo DSP has launched In-Flight Outcomes (IFO) in the UK and Europe, the demand-side platform announced on Wednesday. IFO enables advertisers to connect programmatic media to real-world business outcomes including purchase data, according to the company, in order to auto-optimise campaigns in real time. “In-Flight Optimisation cuts down the feedback loop from weeks or months to a matter of hours, allowing marketers to optimise campaigns, increase ROI, cut out wastage and better identify core customers,” said Alice Beecroft, Senior Director of Global Strategy & Partnerships at Yahoo DSP. “Whether it’s retail media, CTV or AI-powered ads, we’re enabling advertisers to make better decisions while campaigns are still running.”

TiVo Announces Platform Updates

Connected TV operating system TiVo this week announced a range of platform updates at the IFA conference in Berlin. Among TiVo’s announcements were an expansion and redesign of its free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) offering, new live sports discovery features, a new AI-powered search function, and a partnership with IRCODE based around computer vision. TiVo also announced the appointment of Tal Bone, previously chief technology officer at VIDAA, as general manager of the TiVo OS platform.

Brightcove Upgrades Video Platform with Agentic Capabilities

Brightcove, a streaming tech business, has unveiled Brightcove Gen 2, the next generation of its video platform. The company calls the update “the most significant evolution of the Brightcove experience in years,” including expanded monetisation tools, new localisation and accessibility capabilities, and AI-powered features that help automate workflows and reduce manual work. The upgrade also introduces the AI Agentic Hub, enabling AI agents to analyse video data, generate insights, and take action on those insights across the platform.

Silverpush and Happydemics Partner to Measure Brand Impact of Contextual Campaigns

Silverpush, a contextual intelligence company, has announced a partnership with Happydemics, a brand lift measurement firm, to prove the brand impact of contextual campaigns. The partnership allows Silverpush to provide clients with independent validation of how targeted ads perform amongst target audiences across YouTube, social, CTV and OLV channels. “Real human response is the signal that gives advertisers confidence that campaign performance is translating into genuine brand impact,” said Happydemics CMO Virginie Chesnais. “Together with Silverpush, we’re making it easier for brands to validate the effectiveness of contextual advertising by measuring that signal against meaningful brand metrics.”

Magnite Scales Live Scheduler for Sports Monetisation

Magnite, a sell-side ad tech business, is scaling its Live Scheduler solution ahead of returning sports leagues this autumn. The product allows media owners to signal upcoming live events in advance, giving buyers time to plan and execute campaigns with verified live inventory. Since launching Live Scheduler in November, the company says 37 media owners globally have used the technology to schedule and monetise over 4,000 live events, including the FIFA World Cup, NFL Monday Night Football, and the NHL Playoffs.

The Week in TV

VodafoneThree Leans on Streaming Bundling for New TV Offering

Just over a year after the £16.5 billion merger of British telco groups Vodafone UK and Three UK, VodafoneThree has announced the launch of a new TV offering, which will go live next month. The move will add another major player to the UK’s pay-TV market, alongside the likes of Sky, Virgin Media O2, and BT. VodafoneThree sees a TV offering as a way to drive overall revenue and subscription growth, providing opportunities to cross-sell its TV bundle to mobile and broadband customers, according to the Financial Times. Read more on VideoWeek.

Illegal Streaming Costs £1.4 Billion in Lost Revenue Each Year

Illegal streaming costs the UK sport, TV and film industries at least £1.4 billion in lost revenue every year, according to a new report called ‘The Price of Piracy’, produced by WPI Economics, and backed by groups including Sky, the BBC, the Premier League, Formula 1 and the City of London Police. The research found that almost one in three UK adults (around 16.8 million people) say they have used illegal streaming to access content within the past three months. “This report should act as a wake-up call: intellectual property theft and illegal streaming is a serious threat and urgent action is needed,” said Sir John Whittingdale, MP and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Intellectual Property.

BBC’s Matt Brittin Proposes YouTube-Style Content on iPlayer

Matt Brittin, BBC director general, has proposed bringing user-generated content (UGC) to the public service broadcaster’s iPlayer service. Speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival, Brittin said the BBC “should have a public service algorithm”, and suggested the PSB makes “iPlayer 2.0” into a YouTube-style platform that hosts appropriate content from creators. He added that iPlayer “should do it in a way that’s not biased towards the incentives of a US tech company or commercial interests. It should be biased towards what we want public service to be all about.”

TF1 Launches Business Partners in SME Push

French broadcaster TF1 is continuing its push to attract spend from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with the launch of TF1 Business Partners, a network of partners which will help SMEs create, optimise, and manage their campaigns on the TF1 Ad Manager self-serve platform. “By combining the simplicity of TF1 AdManager, the power of TF1+, and the expertise of certified partners, we are empowering SMEs to access high-performing and measurable advertising solutions, previously reserved primarily for large advertisers,” said Dimitri Marcadé, deputy MD in charge of advertisers at TF1’s sales house TF1 PUB.

Disney+ Sees Significant Growth in the UK

Disney+ reached 8.9 million UK households in Q2 this year, according to Barb’s latest Establishment Survey, a significant increase from 7.8 million in Q1. And 3.6 million homes had access to the ad-supported tier, up from 2.8 million. Netflix and Amazon both saw marginal increases in the reach of their ad-supported subscriptions, though both also saw small reductions in their total reach.

Bundesliga Matches Will Stream on Jamie Vardy’s YouTube Channel in UK&I

German football league Bundesliga is expanding its creator-led coverage in the UK and Ireland for the 2026-27 season, Broadband TV News reported last week. The expansion will see seven matches streamed on Jamie Vardy’s ‘Having A Party’ YouTube channel, in a live show produced by Banijay UK label Workerbee. “The fans don’t just want to watch football anymore, they want to experience it with the people they already know and trust,” said Workerbee CEO Rick Murray. “Jamie has built an incredible community around the podcast, and thanks to our Bundesliga partnership, we can bring that audience closer to some seriously big games.”

Netflix Renews All its Podcasts

Netflix has announced a new selection of original podcasts, as well as renewals of its full slate of existing podcasts, with more than 60 titles now available on the streaming service. The new shows will include series from comedian Katt Williams and author Harlan Coben. “Podcasts are a way for members to get more of the genres, stories and personalities they love,” said Brandon Riegg, Vice President, Nonfiction Series at Netflix. “No matter where or when you want to listen or watch, we have a curated selection of podcasts representing the best of true crime, sports, comedy, food, and storytelling of every kind.”

ZDF Launches Ad-Free Themed Channels

ZDF has launched more than 15 ad-free ‘ZDF Channels’ on its streaming service, the German public broadcaster announced on Tuesday, in themed categories such as films, crime and nature documentaries. The content of the individual channels is selected by an algorithm and updated daily, according to BTN. “The new ‘ZDF Channels’ make discovering our content even easier,” said Tina Kutscher, ZDF’s Head of User Products. “Whether crime, nature or a favourite programme, users can be inspired and stream a wide range of content around their favourite topic in lean-back mode. This makes our diverse offering even more accessible to many users.”

Unifast Media Expands Portfolio with HelloYou.TV Streaming Channels

European specialist FAST and CTV ad network Unifast Media has announced an expansion of its publisher portfolio, agreeing an ad sales partnership with HelloYou TV. The deal will see Unifast Media represent HelloYou TV’s portfolio of largely sports-focused channels including Real Madrid TV, W-Sport, Super Sport 1, Play TV and Western Bound in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and the DACH region.

The Week for Publishers

Trump Backs OpenAI in New York Times Lawsuit

US president Donald Trump’s administration has weighed in on the ongoing court case between news business the New York Times and AI mainstay OpenAI, suggesting that maintaining US-based AI businesses’ position in the global AI race should supersede concerns around unfair use of publisher content. The Times filed the case back in 2023, claiming that millions of its articles have been used without permission to train OpenAI’s models. But a filing from the Trump administration seemed to describe the Times’s claims as “a misunderstanding of fair use doctrine”, according to the Guardian, which would “thwart such creative and scientific progress while hindering American prosperity and economic mobility”.

GQ Expands Video Push with Weekly Interview Series

Condé Nast-owned men’s lifestyle publication GQ is pushing further into video, this week unveiling ‘One More Question’, its first video interview series. One More Question, hosted by GQ’s top interview journalist Zach Baron, will run weekly sit-down interviews with notable people working across film, music, sports, and culture. The series will be available globally on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

USA TODAY Pins Job Cuts on Falling Search Traffic

American magazine publisher USA TODAY is making an unspecified number of job cuts and reorganising its audience team, according to an internal memo reported by New York Times journalist Ben Mullin, changes which the company says have been made necessary in part by falling search traffic. “Search traffic is under pressure, and platforms are increasingly keeping user experiences to themselves instead of sending them back to us,” said the note, penned by Monica Richardson, SVP at USA Today.

World Cup Had Muted Impact on UK Publishers’ July Traffic

The majority of the UK’s 50 most popular news websites saw a year-on-year decrease in traffic in July, according to Press Gazette’s analysis of Ipsos iris data, despite the latter half of the men’s World Cup taking place across the month. The BBC and ITV, which both held broadcast rights for the competition, saw gains in total traffic of 7.6 percent and 24.2 percent respectively. But other major publishers, including top ten newspapers the Guardian, the Sun, and the Mirror, all saw year-on-year declines.

Reddit Launches Tool for Targeting Engaged Video Viewers

Social sharing website Reddit on Tuesday announced the launch of a new ’15-second Engaged Video Views’ optimisation goal and billing option, enabling advertisers to specifically seek out users who are more likely to watch video ads for an extended period of time. Reddit tools will determine which users are more inclined to engage with video ads, and advertisers will only be charged for impressions where the ad is watched for at least 15 seconds (or to completion for ads which are shorter than 15 seconds long). The platform claims that Alpha testers saw a 71 percent rise in video completion rate when using the product.

EU Antitrust Regulators Ask Publishers About Google’s AI Opt-Outs

EU competition regulators are speaking with publisher groups about Google’s proposed tools which would allow websites to specifically opt out of being scraped by the tech giant’s AI crawlers, Reuters reported this week, as part of an ongoing investigation. Google announced plans to offer an opt-out following a ruling from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, which stated that Google must let publishers effectively block their content from being ingested by AI tools, without also having to withdraw from Google Search. The EU is asking publishers whether they would make use of such an opt-out, and what factors would affect this decision. The European Commission launched a probe last year into possible anticompetitive conduct by Google in how it uses online content within its various AI offerings.

The Guardian Shutters Classifieds Arm

UK newspaper the Guardian is closing down its classifieds business Guardian Jobs, the company announced this week, citing fundamental changes in the UK jobs market. “While the business has been managed very well by the team, the UK recruitment landscape has fundamentally shifted lately with vacancies at their lowest level in five years, and we have taken the difficult decision to close Guardian Jobs,” said Imogen Fox, the Guardian’s chief advertising officer. Fox said that every active ad campaign or job listing currently on Guardian Jobs will be fully delivered as the board winds down.

The Week for Brands & Agencies

WPP Plans Up to 1,000 More Job Cuts

British agency holding group WPP is planning to cut up to 1,000 more jobs, the Financial Times reported this week, adding to a tally of around 11,000 jobs which have been cut since the start of last year. This new round of layoffs is set for the second half of this year, according to the FT, and comes as part of WPP’s ongoing restructure under CEO Cindy Rose, who marked one year in the role on Tuesday. WPP is also looking at closing down one of its three offices on the south side of the River Thames in London, according to the report.

Omnicom Media Combines Hearts & Science and Mediahub into Hearts United

American advertising group Omnicom this week announced the launch of Hearts United, a new media agency brand within its Omnicom Media division. Hearts United is the combination of Omnicom’s Hearts & Science with Mediahub, which was owned by IPG prior to its merger with Omnicom. The holding group says Hearts United will be defined by four principles: outcomes-oriented, predictive by design, ecosystem mastery, and focused & senior-led. At launch, the new agency brand operates across 40 markets, and represents around $8.1 billion in 2025 billings.

Publicis Wins PepsiCo’s Global Media Account, and Backs Out of Coca-Cola Pitch

Food and drinks business PepsiCo has appointed French marketing group Publicis Groupe to handle its global media account, Adweek reported this week, tasking it with building a new ‘One PepsiCo’ media model to service the brand’s portfolio of products. The move unifies PepsiCo’s media duties across markets, and means that rival group Omnicom will lose PepsiCo’s media business in several major markets, including the US and UK. As a result of the win, Publicis has reportedly backed out of an ongoing media pitch for The Coca-Cola Company, presumably to avoid a client conflict, although Publicis already handles Coca-Cola’s media duties in North America.

WPP Seeks Sanctions in Richard Foster Court Case

WPP has asked for the court overseeing its legal case against Richard Foster, an ex-employee who claims he was wrongfully terminated after raising concerns about alleged illegal activity within the company, to dismiss Foster’s legal team and impose monetary sanctions on the plaintiff. The request is made in relation to a filing made by Foster a few weeks ago which contained sensitive information about WPP. The filing claims that Sony, a client of WPP, had itself conducted an investigation into the agency group, and had identified illegal practices. Last week, WPP asked for this filing to be sealed. Now, the company says that redacting and sealing those documents won’t be enough to counter the damage they’ve already done.

B2B Marketers Turn to Short-Form Video to Reach Gen Z Buyers

Gen Z’s affinity for short-form video is well documented, and there are implications for B2B marketers looking for Gen Z buyers, according to new global research from LinkedIn. Reaching these young buyers is a priority, as nearly 90 percent of marketers surveyed in the UK said their company’s future growth depends on successfully influencing Gen Z and millennial decision-makers. And 51 percent said that short-form and immersive video is the most effective way to engage Gen Z buyers, while 37 percent highlighted the importance of content from trusted voices.

Hires of the Week

Havas Promotes Patrick Affleck in Village Network Restructuring

Havas has promoted Patrick Affleck to Havas Village UK & Ireland CEO, where he will oversee operations in London, Manchester and Dublin, as part of a restructuring of the Havas Village network. Affleck has served as Havas Media Network CEO since 2020.

LiveRamp Appoints Mail Metro Media’s Hannah Barnett

LiveRamp, a data collaboration business, has named Hannah Barnett as Vice President, Brand Sales, UK & MENA. Based in London, Barnett will be responsible for driving brand sales growth and deepening relationships with brand clients. She previously served as Chief Client Officer at Mail Metro Media.

Hawk DSP Hires Yahoo’s James Fenn

Hawk, an Azerion-owned DSP, has appointed James Fenn as Enterprise Business Director. The ad tech firm said the appointment reflects increased demand as advertisers scale their omnichannel programmatic investments. Fenn joins from Yahoo, where he served as Client Direct Lead.