In this week’s Week in Review: IAB Tech Labs works on a framework to protect against AI bot scraping, Brian O’Kelley backs AI-powered contextual startup Classify, and WPP outlines new data partnerships through Open Intelligence.
Top Stories
IAB Tech Lab Launches Framework to Protect Publisher Revenues in AI Age
IAB Tech Lab, an industry body which creates tech standards for the ad industry, this week proposed a new framework which would create a standardised way for digital publishers to receive compensation whenever their content is used by a large language model (LLM) or AI agent.
The framework, launched at the IAB Tech Lab Summit, includes mechanisms for companies to control how their content is integrated into LLMs and AI agent services. It is designed to empower publishers to establish fair deals with AI businesses for use of their content, combating unapproved content scraping by AI bots.
“It is clear that AI agents powered by large language models are shifting how users engage with content,” said Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab. “While this is a promising new way for people to access information, we have also seen data showing publisher traffic decreases at 15 percent or higher, and revenue is down. Meanwhile, AI platforms are growing on the back of open web content, impacting publisher revenues and misrepresenting advertisers. This initiative is about giving publishers and brands a path forward that is fair, enforceable, and grounded in technical standards.”
At the event, Tech Lab also announced the launch of its ‘Containerization Project’, which seeks to standardise Container technology for Open RTB. Tech Lab says this would allow the industry to build more efficient programmatic tools, and would better cater to new innovative programmatic solutions.
Brian O’Kelley Backs New AI-Powered Contextual Company Classify
Classify, an ad tech firm founded by former Facebook exec Brendan Norman and backed by Scope3 CEO Brian O’Kelley, announced its official launch on Tuesday. The business offers AI-driven data products for contextual targeting and curation, including a content classification and curation engine called ContentGraph.
“Having scraped and classified most of the open web, ContentGraph instantly builds hyper-precise URL-level contextual segments,” according to the company, with these segments accessible “across most DSPs through PMP.” Classify is also a partner in Scope3’s agentic AI platform. “The intersection of regulatory upheaval, technological readiness, and advertiser desperation has created a rare window of opportunity,” said Brendan Norman. “It is our mission to ensure the world’s content is searchable, organised, and monetisable while respecting privacy.”
O’Kelley has been vocal about the potential for AI to shake up the ways content is classified for advertising purposes. While current frameworks typically involve using taxonomies to put content and publications into categories which can be quite broad, O’Kelley says that AI agents could analyse content and suggest relevant advertising opportunities in a much more sophisticated manner.
WPP Media Announces Slew of Commerce and Media Partnerships
Shortly after announcing the launch of AI-powered data platform Open Intelligence, WPP Media outlined a number of new integrations with commerce media businesses and premium media companies, which the company says will help marketers more effectively navigate a fragmented media landscape and flattened purchasing funnels.
“Sequential journeys, broad demographic bets, and probabilistic predictions have collapsed under the weight of fragmentation, regulation, and rapidly evolving consumer behaviour,” WPP Media said in a statement. “Touchpoints are now infinite and fluid, journeys no longer linear, and the funnel has flattened into a loop of constant consideration and immediate action.”
On the commerce side, WPP Media said Criteo, Ocado Ads, and DICK’S Sporting Goods are signed up to feed commerce data into Open Intelligence. Disney, Dotdash Meredith, and NBCUniversal will do the same on the sell-side, while The Trade Desk, PubMatic, Magnite, and Index Exchange are also signed up as ad tech partners. Open Intelligence will draw insights from across these datasets to help advertisers more effectively reach audiences, according to WPP Media.
Sell-side partners will also use Open Intelligence to power their own offerings, for example by building predictive audience segments based on real-time behavioural patterns; packaging inventory based on intent, relevance, and performance potential; and using InfoSum’s clean room technology to connect their own data to other datasets.
The Week in Tech
MiQ Unveils AI Tool ‘Sigma’ to Unify Fragmented Programmatic Ecosystem
Programmatic media specialist MiQ on Wednesday announced the launch of MiQ Sigma, a new AI-powered tool which it says will help unify the fragmented programmatic ecosystem. MiQ says that Sigma, which CEO and co-founder Gurman Hundal describes as “the culmination of everything we’ve built over the last 15 years”, enables advertisers to quickly draw insights and run or tweak campaigns across a range of partners, enabling them to take an “agnostic and unbiased approach” to programmatic buying. Read more on VideoWeek.
TikTok to Roll Out Ads in Search Results in UK
TikTok is testing a “search with ads” product in the UK, according to TikTok’s UK commercial chief Kris Boger, following the feature’s launch in the US. The product would allow the 1.5 million UK businesses on TikTok to pay for their videos to appear in search results, The Times reported, with the posts being labelled as sponsored content. Boger also said TikTok’s UK revenue rose by 50 percent last year, and that he was confident this level of growth could be sustained despite it being “a challenging period” for some businesses.
LG Ad Solutions Taps Experian Data for Targeting and Measurement
LG Ad Solutions has partnered with Experian to boost targeting and measurement capabilities in the UK, The Media Leader reported on Monday. The agreement will allow users of the LG platform to access audience targeting and insights from Experian’s ConsumerView data, including demographic, behavioural and lifestyle insights. “Our partnership with Experian allows advertisers to go beyond basic demographics, leveraging rich consumer insights to build deeper connections with the audiences that matter most,” said Ed Wale, VP International at LG Ad Solutions.
Meta Aims to Make Ads Fully AI-Automated by End of Next Year
Meta is aiming to make ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram fully AI-automated by the end of next year, the WSJ reported this week. The new ad tools will enable brands to create and target ads using AI, by uploading a product image and budgetary parameters, and generating the entire ad, including imagery, video and text. The ads would also be personalised so that users see different versions, based on factors such as geolocation, according to people familiar with the plans. For example a person seeing an ad for a car in a snowy place might see the car driving up a mountain, whereas a person seeing an ad for the same car in an urban area would see it driving on a city street.
IAS Incorporates Carbon Measurement with Impact Plus
Integral Ad Science (IAS), a media measurement and optimisation business, has partnered with Impact Plus, a sustainability tech firm, to allow advertisers to monitor the carbon emissions generated by their digital campaigns. The campaign-level emissions data will be incorporated into IAS reports, alongside media quality and attention metrics. “Digital advertisers are focused on reducing their carbon footprint,” said Impact Plus CEO Vincent Villaret. “By providing a comprehensive view of their media’s environmental impact, we can empower marketers to make more sustainable choices. Through this partnership with IAS, we’re providing marketers with the tools they need to achieve their campaign goals without compromising their climate commitments.”
Twitch Launches Products for Brands to Sponsor Creator Streams
Amazon Ads has announced new sponsorship solutions for its Twitch live-streaming service. Twitch Creator Sponsorships enable brands to engage with multiple streamers and their communities, according to the company, and can be activated in “as little as two weeks.” The products include:
- Channel skins: clickable, branded graphics that frame the video player during sponsored streams on both web and mobile.
- Streamer readouts: brand messages delivered live on stream by the streamers.
- Sponsored subscriptions: brands can offer 50 percent off subscriptions on a streamer’s channel for a limited time (typically one day).
- Follower promotions: brand-partnered streams are automatically boosted to the top of viewers’ following list.
The Week in TV
Sequoia Capital Leads $100 Million Investment in Mubi
Mubi, a UK-based streaming service specialising in international, independent and arthouse cinema, has raised $100 million in growth financing led by Sequoia Capital. The FT called the move “a rare foray into film and media for the Silicon Valley venture capital firm”, best known for its early bets on Google, Apple and YouTube. The funding will help Mubi build out its global distribution network and invest in new films, according to the report, following its success with 2024 hit horror movie The Substance. “If you look at the box office for speciality films, it is growing year over year, very substantially,” said Mubi CEO Efe Cakarel. “You look at the biggest 200 films over the past three years in the box office, 69 of them [were] speciality films. So we are not talking about some small niche here.”
Channel 4 and Adform Offer Programmatic Access for BVOD Inventory
Channel 4 has partnered with media buying platform Adform to boost programmatic access to its BVOD inventory, the UK broadcaster announced on Monday. The agreement enables advertisers and agencies to transact via PMPs and Programmatic Guaranteed deals to activate campaigns on the Channel 4 streaming service. “We’re committed to evolving how advertisers can better engage with our viewers consuming high-quality BVOD content,” said Alex Wright, Programmatic & Data Leader at Channel 4. “Partnering with Adform allows us to offer greater flexibility and scale through programmatic buying, while ensuring our values around transparency and brand safety remain firmly in place. The result will see more effective advertising experiences for our audiences as well as more revenue opportunities for our brand and agency partners.”
Netflix Up and Disney+ Down in Latest Barb Survey
20.1 million UK homes had access to an SVOD service in Q1 2025, according to Barb’s latest Establishment Survey, up slightly from 20 million in Q4 2024, and representing 67.5 percent of UK households. Netflix led the pack with 17.4 million UK homes (59.2 percent), up from 17.1 million in Q4, with 28 percent of Netflix households now on the ad-supported tier. Meanwhile Disney+ fell to 7.3 million (24.8 percent), down from 7.6 million in the previous quarter, with 23 percent of subscribers on the ad tier.
Disney to Cut “Several Hundred” Film and TV Jobs
Disney is laying off “several hundred employees in film, television and corporate finance,” Reuters reported on Monday. The redundancies will impact multiple teams around the world, according to a source familiar with the matter, including film and TV marketing, TV publicity and casting and development. The news follows another 200 layoffs back in March, and 7,000 in 2023, when Disney sought to save $5.5 billion in costs.
Mediaset Spain to Replace Mitele Plus Streaming Service with MFE’s Mediaset Infinity+
Mediaset Spain, the commercial broadcaster owned by MFE, is replacing its Mitele Plus streaming service with MFE’s Mediaset Infinity+. The move aligns the streaming service with that of Italian sister company Mediaset Italia, following MFE’s acquisition of Mediaset Spain in 2023. The new service will be available online, via mobile app and on smart TV.
Canal+ Reaches Tax Agreement with French Authorities
Canal+ has reached an agreement with French authorities over a tax dispute between the pay-TV company and the Centre national du Cinema et de l’Image animee (CNC). The company, which was spun out of Vivendi in December, said it expects one-off charges on its income statement in the first half of 2025. Canal+ said the agreement “settles the disputes relating to past fiscal years and removes uncertainty regarding the possibility of a material additional disbursement.”
The Week for Publishers
TechCrunch Pulls Out of Europe
Tech and business-focussed publication TechCrunch has closed its European division, according to various reports and social posts this week. Founding editor-at-large Mike Butcher confirmed on LinkedIn that he and his European colleagues were “unexpectedly rendered redundant”. The shutdown comes months after Regent LP, a US private equity firm, acquired TechCrunch and its staff in the US from Yahoo.
MailOnline Launches New Social-Focussed Video Formats
Mail Metro Media, the sales house for Mail Online and Metro among other properties, this week announced two new social-focussed video ad formats: Must Watch and Social Headlines. Must Watch is a product for promoting new films, TV shows, or other entertainment releases, and combined onsite promotion with targeted social distribution across TikTok and Facebook. Social Headlines meanwhile mimics the Daily Mail’s post format on short-form video channels, running an 8-12 second video built from animated stills overlaid with the Daily Mail’s headline format.
LinkedIn Continues Video Push with New Formats
As a debutante at last month’s NewFronts, LinkedIn announced a revamp of its Wire Program, which connects advertisers to content from major publishers. Rebranded to BrandLink, this programme now includes content from top individual creators and ‘LinkedInfluencers’, including Steven Bartlett, Allie K. Miller, and Gary Vaynerchuk. And this week, the company has announced several new updates on the video advertising front. The company is launching ‘first impression ads’, a vertical video format for single-day campaigns which are reserved for the first ad impression targeted individuals see on a given day. It’s also expanding its CTV ad offering which it launched last year, and is now generally available in the US and Canada. Read more on VideoWeek.
The New European Rebrands to The New World
The New European, a pro-EU newspaper set up during the UK’s referendum on its exit from the European Union, has rebranded to The New World as it seeks to broaden its focus and move to a magazine format, the Financial Times reported this week. The New European initially launched as a temporary publication, but now has over 35,000 subscriptions and newsstand sales according to founder and editor-in-chief Matt Kelly.
Over Half of Top English-Language News Website Saw Traffic Fall in April
More than half of the world’s top 50 English language news websites saw year-on-year falls in traffic in April, according to Press Gazette’s analysis of Similarweb data. Of the top five websites — the New York Times, BBC News, CNN, MSN, and India Times — only the India Times saw year-on-year growth, while traffic for the other outlets fell. The Hindustan Times and Yahoo Finance meanwhile were the only publications in the top ten most visited news websites to see traffic growth.
PA Media Staff Vote Against Editor-in-Chief Amid Planned Staff Cuts
Journalists at news agency PA Media have passed a vote of no confidence against editor-in-chief Jack Lafley, Press Gazette reported this week, amid plans at the company to cut eight percent of UK editorial staff. Staff also voted in favour of a strike in an indicative vote. The PA Chapel at the National Union of Journalists says it put forward counter proposals to management offering an alternative to staff cuts, but claims these proposals were rejected without an adequate explanation.
The Week for Brands & Agencies
WPP Media Announces ‘Large Marketing Model’ Open Intelligence
UK-based agency holding group WPP’s media arm WPP Media this week unveiled ‘Open Intelligence’, which it describes as a “next-gen data solution and the industry’s first Large Marketing Model”. The news comes less than a week after WPP Media rebranded from GroupM, a move which itself was designed to convey the media group’s AI focus (as well as a more unified internal structure), and provides fresh details of WPP’s new AI-centred media offering.
“Just as Large Language Models (LLMs) generate intelligence and content from human language and imagery, our Large Marketing Model (LMM) has been trained to understand and predict audience behaviour and marketing performance based on patterns derived from real-time data about how people engage with content, brands, platforms, and products,” said WPP Media in a statement. “From this foundational intelligence, we can build bespoke models for our clients, each enhanced with their first-party data and fine-tuned according to their individual strategic business goals. Clients use these models to continuously optimise audience segmentation, creative development, and media activation to maximise ROI and real-world results.”
Madison and Wall Raises US Ad Forecast but Warns of Full Tariff Impact
Economic volatility in the US is causing fluctuations in an ad market tied to government policies which themselves appear to be changing on an ad hoc basis. In March, advisory and consultancy firm Madison and Wall lowered its full-year forecast to 3.6 percent growth (excluding political advertising) in anticipation of Donald Trump’s tariff upheaval. Now with early evidence of the impact of the tariffs, and a clearer view of how the US ad market performed during the first quarter of 2025, Brian Wieser’s firm has upwardly revised its outlook to 6 percent for both the second quarter and the full year.
But the consultancy warned that “significant downside risks” could still occur if the Trump administration’s policies are fully implemented, with a stagflationary environment still expected in the mid- to long-term. Read more on VideoWeek.
EY Consolidates Marketing Businesses into EY Studio+
Consultancy business EY this week launched EY Studio+, a new unit which will house its marketing, sales, design, and customer experience technology services, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. The launch is part of an effort to compete with the agency holding groups for more spend from brand chief marketing officers, according to the WSJ. EY Studio+ is aiming to grow its headcount by 10-20 percent across the next year, and will look at potential acquisitions to help grow its offering.
Dentsu Folds In-Store Attention Data into Media Planning Tool
Agency group Dentsu this week announced a new UK partnership which will integrate “retail eye tracking data” into its media planning tool. The move will see Dentsu use eye-tracking research conducted by attention specialists Lumen Research on behalf of the Co-op Media Network to inform media strategies. The research found, for example, that placements in smaller stores provide three times the attention and four times the brand recall of placements in larger stores. “Retail media is rapidly evolving into one of the most influential advertising channels,” said Katie Hartley, managing director of product and innovation at Dentsu. “Historically, it has been viewed as tactical rather than strategic, but this research and integration proves otherwise.”
S4 Capital Cuts Full Year Revenue Forecast Citing Continued Tech Caution
Marketing group S4 Capital this week cut its full year revenue forecast, saying it expects like-for-like net revenues to fall by low single digits. The company had previously expected broadly flat full-year like-for-like net revenues. S4 Capital said that tech clients, which make up a large part of its client base in comparison to other agencies, are remaining cautious in their spending amid tariff uncertainty.
Paramount Drops WPP Media for Publicis
Global entertainment business Paramount has cut ties with WPP Media after more than two decades of working together, Deadline reported this week, as part of a cost-cutting measure related to Paramount’s proposed merger with Skydance. Paramount has handed its media account to Publicis, according to Deadline, though did not run a formal review.
FTC Demands Internal Documents from Media Ratings Firms
The US Federal Trade Commission has demanded to see internal documents from media ratings firms including Media Matters and Ad Fontes Media, as part of an apparent investigation into whether these bodies were involved in illegal collusion to defund specific media properties. Companies which help advertisers navigate and understand issues like brand safety and misinformation have found themselves under increasing legal pressure since Elon Musk’s social platform X filed a legal complaint against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) and a number of advertisers, alleging an illegal boycott.
Omnicom Ditches Agency Specific Email Domains
Omnicom is moving all of its employees onto one unified email format, regardless of which individual agency brand they work for, Adweek reported this week citing an internal email. The company’s global CIO Craig Cuyar said the change is primarily designed to simplify the group’s IT approach, rather than a de-emphasising of agency brands. Brand identities will remain in display names and email signatures.
Hires of the Week
Condé Nast Names Stagwell’s Sophia Zhang as SVP Revenue Marketing
Condé Nast has named Sophia Zhang as Senior Vice President of Revenue Marketing. Zhang will focus on driving monetisation across all revenue streams, and oversee brand, B2B, client, and direct-to-consumer marketing strategies. Zhang joins from Stagwell-owned GALE Partners, where she served as CEO North America.
Seedtag Promotes Brian Danzis to CRO
Seedtag, a contextual advertising company, has promoted Brian Danzis to Chief Revenue Officer. Danzis joined Seedtag as Managing Director, USA in 2022, before being promoted to President, North America last year. His previous roles include Global Head of Video and Live Event Sales at Spotify, and EVP, US Agency Solutions at VideoAmp.
Magnite Reorganises EMEA Team to Support Springserve Expansion
Magnite, a sell-side platform (SSP), has reorganised its EMEA team to support the regional expansion of the SpringServe video ad server. The move sees Damien Véran, Group SVP, International, overseeing all international teams across EMEA, LATAM, JAPAC and Canada. Meanwhile Leon Siotis transitions to SVP, Business Development, International, focused on scaling new business opportunities for Magnite in the same regions. Rebecca Ackers will oversee UK operations as VP, Commercial, UK, while Rutger Maree becomes Commercial Director, Northern Europe, covering DACH, the Netherlands, and Eastern Europe.
This Week on VideoWeek
Peter Naylor Says Upfronts Are Evolving, Not Going Away
AudienceProject is Helping Vevo Demonstrate its Reach as a Publisher
New Guide from ID5: Building Addressability into the CTV Ecosystem
The Limitations of Attention Measurement
Curation is Solving Inefficiences but is “Not the Full Solution”
How YouTube Became an “Important Part of Channel 4’s Ecosystem”
After Google’s Cookie U-Turn, What Happens Now to the Alternative Identifiers?
WPP Media Announces ‘Large Marketing Model’ Open Intelligence
From TikTok to Ticket Sales: How an Imaginary Campaign Drove Real-World Outcomes
MiQ Unveils AI Tool ‘Sigma’ to Unify Fragmented Programmatic Ecosystem
The AI Advantage of an End-to-End Tech Stack
Madison and Wall Raises US Ad Forecast but Warns of Full Tariff Impact
LinkedIn Continues Video Push with New Formats
Ad of the Week
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