The WIR: Omnicom Bets on Live Content, Disney Makes Streaming Shoppable, and Streaming Outsizes Cable and Broadcast Combined in the US

June 21, 2025

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In this week’s Week in Review: Omnicom goes big on live content, streaming overtakes cable and broadcast in the US, and Disney announces a shoppable streaming deal.

The Week in Tech

tvScientific Launches Cost-Per-Outcome Campaigns

tvScientific, a performance advertising company for CTV, has launched Guaranteed Outcomes, a new programme enabling advertisers to only pay for the outcomes they specify. The programme allows advertisers to set the cost-per-outcome (CPO) they’re willing to pay, and tvScientific delivers against those outcomes via fully automated campaigns. The offering has been tested with a select group of advertisers, including LG, Staples, ezCater, Crocs and Weight Watchers, and is now being made widely accessible. “CTV should be accountable, outcome-driven, and as easy to activate as search or social,” said Jason Fairchild, CEO and co-founder of tvScientific. “Guaranteed Outcomes is how we get there — but with the critical transparency that the black box solutions do not offer.”

Meta Announces AI Video and Highlights Tools for Advertisers

Meta announced new AI tools for advertisers and agencies in Cannes, including Video Generation capabilities allowing advertisers to turn multiple images into multi-scene videos, with text overlays and music. The social media giant is also testing a Video Highlights feature, using AI to create scrollable highlights of video ads using key phrases and thumbnails. “As we continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible with generative AI, we’re excited to see how these new tools and features will help advertisers and agencies unlock their full creative potential and drive meaningful connections with their audiences,” said Meta.

TikTok Rolls Out GenAI Text/Image-to-Video Tools

TikTok used its presence in Cannes to announce new features for its Symphony suite of AI products, including tools for marketers to generate video from text or still images. The tools let marketers upload an image of a product they want to feature, or write a short text prompt describing a video ad, and TikTok produces various five-second clips that can be used on the service. The company also updated its AI-generated Digital Avatars with an offering called Symphony Showcase Products, which generates videos with avatars that can hold, model or demonstrate products.

YouTube Launches Product for Brands to Brief Creators

YouTube has launched a new product within its Creator Partnerships Hub called Open Call, where brands can post a creative brief and desired audience, and relevant creators in YouTube’s Partner Program can create an unlisted Short based on the brief. The brand can then review the video and choose to add it to their channel. Sean Downey, President, Americas & Global Partners at Google, told press in Cannes that “almost all” brands will use this tool. “It’s the thing they ask us most for,” he said.

Ad Net Zero Updates Framework for Calculating Carbon Emissions

Ad Net Zero announced an update to its Global Media Sustainability Framework (GMSF) in Cannes, a series of voluntary standards for calculating and reporting carbon emissions across six media channels (digital, TV, OOH, print, audio and cinema). The updates cover the framework’s digital methodology, including formulae, data levels and default values, as well as the formulae for audio, print and cinema channels. “We believe tracking and calculation provide the best platform for reduction, helping to inform decisions which reduce waste without decreasing effectiveness,” said Sebastian Munden, Global Chair of Ad Net Zero. “By doing this, we aim to make a significant difference to the carbon impact of the global advertising ecosystem.”

CMA Launches Consultation on Releasing Google From Privacy Sandbox Commitments

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) could release Google from its Privacy Sandbox commitments, in light of the tech giant’s decision to keep using cookies in Chrome. The commitments were put in place to ensure the Privacy Sandbox tools, which were designed to replace the functionality of cookies, do not give Google uncompetitive advantage by favouring its own ad tech services. But with cookies no longer being removed from Chrome, the CMA believes the changes “are no longer necessary”, and has launched a consultation on whether to release Google from the commitments.

Supermetrics Acquires CDP Relay42 for Combined Marketing Intelligence Platform

Supermetrics, a marketing intelligence business, has acquired Relay42, a customer data platform (CDP), for an undisclosed fee. The companies will combine their data performance and customer behaviour capabilities into one platform, enabling audience building, targeting and orchestration across digital and offline channels. “We firmly believe that marketing intelligence can only truly deliver on its promise if it seamlessly combines data analysis with action,” said Supermetrics CEO Anssi Rusi. “With this acquisition, we’re delivering on that promise, combining real-time data with AI decisioning and cross-channel optimisation.”

The Week in TV

Sky, ITV, and Channel 4 Set to Launch Joint Self-Serve Advertising Marketplace

UK broadcasters ITV, Sky, and Channel 4 on Tuesday announced plans to launch a joint self-serve advertising marketplace, in a move designed to draw a wider range of advertisers — particularly small and medium-sized businesses — into TV advertising. The three broadcasters say the tool will let SMEs access and purchase addressable inventory to run a single campaign across the three broadcaster sales houses, with biddable pricing alongside other tools. The idea is to mirror the types of self-serve ad platforms offered by the big social platforms and tech companies, which many SMEs are used to working with. The platform will be powered by Comcast’s Universal Ads tool and FreeWheel’s technology, and is expected to go live next year. Read more on VideoWeek.

TF1 Signs Netflix Distribution Deal in First for European Broadcasters

On Wednesday, Netflix announced a new first-of-its-kind distribution agreement with TF1, bringing all of the French broadcaster’s content to the streaming service in France. Starting in summer 2026, Netflix subscribers in the country will be able to watch all TF1 Group’s live channels and on-demand content from its own streaming service, TF1+, directly on the SVOD/AVOD platform. Ads on TF1’s content will be sold by the French broadcaster’s own sales house, and will be included in total measurement of TF1 advertising provided by Médiamétrie. Read more on VideoWeek.

Netflix Makes Inventory Available on Yahoo DSP

Netflix is partnering with Yahoo to make its inventory available through demand-side platform Yahoo DSP. The new partnership will roll out later this year across all 12 ad-supported markets, according to the streaming giant, with Yahoo joining The Trade Desk, Google DV360 and Microsoft as Netflix’s programmatic partners. The company has also expanded its targeting capabilities, allowing advertisers to target more than 100 interests in over 17 categories, including life stages.

Amazon and Roku Pool CTV Audiences Through Amazon DSP

Amazon Ads and Roku are pooling their CTV audiences, the companies announced in Cannes, creating an estimated global footprint of 80 million US households. The partnership allows advertisers to activate against Roku’s logged-in audience on Amazon’s demand-side platform (DSP), enabling them to reach users across the Fire TV and Roku operating systems, as well as the Prime Video and Roku Channel streaming services. “With nearly half of all TV streaming time in the US happening on Roku, and the power and depth of Amazon in retail and beyond, together we’re uniquely positioned to prove performance and differentiate DSP offerings for our shared advertisers and marketers,” said Charlie Collier, President of Roku Media.

ProSieben Makes No Recommendation on “Inadequate” PPF Offer

German media group ProSiebenSat.1 has said it “welcomes” the partial takeover offer from Czech investment firm PPF, but also called it “inadequate from a financial point of view.” The offer price represents a 17.4 percent premium to ProSieben’s share price, according to the company, but “does not adequately reflect ProSiebenSat.1’s earnings potential and long-term value.” The boards have therefore decided not to make a recommendation regarding the acceptance of the offer by shareholders.

Disney Grants Advertisers Access to Streaming Inventory Through Amazon DSP

Amazon Ads has partnered with Disney Advertising, the companies announced in Cannes, combining Disney’s Real-Time Ad Exchange (DRAX) with Amazon’s demand-side platform (DSP). The collaboration grants advertisers on the DSP direct access to Disney inventory across Disney+, ESPN and Hulu. “By connecting Disney’s premium content with Amazon’s deep consumer understanding, we’re creating advertising that works better for everyone – brands reach the right audiences, publishers maximise their inventory value, and viewers see more relevant ads,” said Kelly MacLean, Vice President of Amazon DSP at Amazon Ads.

TF1 Partners with GenAI Video Editor Aive for Multiplying Ad Formats

TF1 PUB, the French broadcaster’s sales house, has partnered with Aive, a GenAI video editing company, enabling advertisers to quickly generate multiple versions of a single video to suit different channels and marketing objectives. By automatically adjusting length, format and subtitles, the solution allows TF1 PUB’s creative studio to adapt creative to different formats offered by the TF1+ streaming service. “At a time when streaming video consumption is booming and increasingly multi-platform, Aive’s technological solution will also offer the TF1 group an unprecedented opportunity to massively increase its own production of video content on digital,” said TF1 PUB.

DAZN Integrates FIFA+ Channel as Part of FIFA Club World Cup Deal

DAZN has launched the FIFA+ channel on its streaming service, as part of a strategic partnership between the companies that makes DAZN the exclusive global broadcaster of the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup. The agreement, announced in December, included the integration of FIFA+ into the DAZN streaming service, with live fixtures, full match replays and additional archive content. “Combining DAZN’s streaming innovation with FIFA’s extensive football legacy, FIFA+ will be the ultimate digital hub for live matches, historic archives, and exclusive content,” said DAZN CEO Shay Segev.

The Week for Publishers

Daily Mail Plans Global Expansion

UK news publisher the Daily Mail has announced plans to accelerate its international growth, both by growing its global audience and making it easier for brands to tap into the Mail’s total global reach. Mail Metro Media’s chief revenue officer Dominic Williams, speaking on a panel at Cannes, said the company’s global teams are “working closer than ever before”, with a focus on “prioritising key partnerships and providing brands with further access to editorial for even deeper integration”. Hanna Buitekant, dmg media’s chief commercial digital officer, said the company is “exploring new engaging video options and tapping into our global editorial expertise to fuel compelling commerce content and to keep the user firmly at the epicentre of our digital strategies”.

PayPal Launches On-Site Shoppable Ads for Publishers

Digital payments company PayPal this week announced a new shoppable ad format which enables consumers to buy products directly through the ad unit, without leaving the publisher’s website or app. Business Insider and Vox Media have signed up as partners to the new format, called Storefront Ads, according to Adweek.

PoliticsJOE Puts Paywall on its Video Podcast

PoliticsJOE, a digital publisher aimed at younger audiences which covers UK politics, is placing full episodes of its video podcast behind a paywall, Press Gazette reported this week. Viewers can pay for specific videos for £3, or buy a monthly subscription for all content for £8 per month, though PoliticsJOE will continue distributing clips of its podcasts on social platforms. Oli Dugmore, editor of PoliticsJOE, told Press Gazette that the move was partly designed to make the publication less vulnerable to policy changes from social platforms.

DoubleVerify Aims to Boost News Investment with ‘News Accelerator Publisher Council’

Media verification business DoubleVerify this week announced the formation of the ‘News Accelerator Publisher Council’, a new initiative which it says aims to deepen engagement and transparency between DV and news businesses. DoubleVerify launched its News Accelerator initiative last year, amid calls from the industry for more work to be done to ensure brand safety tools don’t inadvertently harm reputable news sites. Publishers represented on the council include The Associated Press, The Atlantic, CNN, The Guardian, and The New York Times.

Social Video Services See “Trump Bump” for News Engagement

Traditional news consumption on TV, print and news websites is continuing to fall, the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2025 found this week, but engagement with news on social media is on the rise. According to the report, the first few weeks of the Trump administration saw higher news engagement on YouTube, Facebook and X (particularly among right-leaning users in the case of X), but there was no “Trump bump” for traditional sources as there was during his first term. “Now the challenges for institutional journalism are intensifying in the form of a platform-enabled alternative media ecosystem, including podcasters and YouTubers, that is proving engaging both for audiences – and also for politicians, many of whom no longer feel they need to submit themselves to journalistic scrutiny,” said the report.

Daily Beast Traffic From Reddit and Facebook Helps Offset Declining Search Referrals

The Daily Beast, a politics, media and entertainment news outlet, has seen a boost in traffic referrals from Reddit and Facebook, according to Press Gazette, helping to offset declining traffic from Google. During a panel in Cannes, Joanna Coles, Chief Content Officer and Creative Officer at the Daily Beast, said search traffic has been disrupted by generative AI. But Facebook has “changed their mind” when it comes to news, resulting in “a flood of traffic” from the social media service. “We get more traffic from our socials, we get a ton of traffic from Reddit, we are in a lot of conversations in Reddit,” she added.

Originality and Exclusivity Helps Boost BDG Revenues

BDG, the US-based publishing group whose brands include Bustle and NYLON, has moved away from focusing on search and social traffic, to focus on original content and exclusive access. “In the last six months, we’ve really been honing that editorial strategy and I would say the key tenets of that have been trying to focus on more original reporting – so more robust, original stories that only appear on our sites or our social channels,” Charlotte Owen, Executive Vice President of Editorial at BDG, told Press Gazette. The strategy has reportedly helped the group’s revenue grow 25 percent YoY in H1 2025, with flagship brand Bustle up 38 percent.

Economist Posts Full-Year Gains After Rocky First Half

The Economist has posted its 12-month results for the year ending 31st March 2025, with revenue up 4 percent YoY and subscriptions up by 3 percent. The UK publisher called the year “a tale of two halves”, with the first pulled down by budget constraints on partnerships, and the second marked by an uptick in digital advertising. “Profit, revenue and subscription volumes all showed steady rises this year, growing despite some continuing headwinds for our client-facing businesses, and with a strong second half compensating for a relatively slow first six months,” said Economist Group CEO Lara Boro.

The Week for Brands & Agencies

Havas Accelerates AI Pivot

French marketing group Havas this week at Cannes reaffirmed a commitment made at last year’s festival to invest heavily in its data, tech, and AI capabilities, which it describes as a pivot to becoming “an AI-driven organisation fuelled by human ingenuity”. The strategy, renamed from ‘Converged’ to ‘Converged.AI’, will now focus more on investing in agent-enabled capabilities, building towards a “human-led agentic ecosystem”. CEO and chairman Yannick Bolloré said the strategy is bearing fruit, highlighting the release of a new AI-powered video production platform called Vermeer.

WPP Announces New AI Integration with TikTok

UK-based agency group WPP this week announced an extension of its partnership with short-form video platform TikTok, which will see TikTok’s generative AI toolset ‘Symphony’ integrated into WPP’s own AI-powered platform WPP Open. WPP highlighted some of the key features which will be available to its clients, including AI-generated digital avatars of real people, AI-powered dubbing, and a tool which creates video ad assets based on a product detail page.

Dentsu Forecasts 4.9 Percent Ad Spend Growth in 2025

Japanese agency group Dentsu released an updated global ad spend forecast for 2025, predicting that total ad spend will rise by 4.9 percent year-on-year. The Asia-Pacific region is expected to be a strong growth driver, with Dentsu predicting 6.0 percent ad spend growth this year in the APAC region. EMEA meanwhile is projected to be up by 4.5 percent, and the Americas are predicted to grow by 4.2 percent. Looking further ahead, Dentsu predicts that nearly four fifths (78.1 percent) of ad spend will be “algorithmically enabled” by 2027.

McDonald’s Settles Lawsuit Over Investment in Black-Owned Media

Fast food chain McDonald’s has settled a $10 billion lawsuit filed by media mogul Byron Allen which accused the company of intentionally excluding Black-owned media properties from its media plans. Allen claimed that McDonald’s had unfairly labelled Black-owned media companies as only appealing to Black audiences, and also claimed that McDonald’s lied in statements about its intention to invest in Black-owned media — statements which Allen’s media companies relied on in negotiations. Reuters reports terms of the settlement haven’t been released, though McDonald’s continues to deny wrongdoing.

Dentsu Launches Global Commerce Media Partnership with Criteo

Agency group Dentsu and commerce media tech business Criteo this week announced plans for an expanded global partnership, which the two say will see Criteo’s complete ‘Commerce Media Platform’ stack used by Dentsu. This will include use of Criteo’s retail media demand-side platform and its performance buying platform, and access to custom supply packages through Criteo’s supply-side platform. Dentsu clients will also get access to Criteo’s consultancy services for retailers.

OMD UK Wins Premier Inn Media Contract

OMD UK, a media agency owned by Omnicom, has been appointed as the media agency of record for European hotel brand Premier Inn. OMD UK says it will use Omnicom’s operating system Omni to deliver more effective media, and will create a tailored service model for Premier Inn based on Omnicom’s ‘agency as a platform’ model.

Hires of the Week

Roku Appoints James Kelm as VP Product, Advertising and Media

Roku has named James Kelm as Vice President of Product, Advertising and Media. Kelm will be responsible for driving innovation in ad tech, audience targeting and measurement, and streaming ad formats, according to the US-based smart TV and streaming company. Kelm joins Roku from Nextdoor, where he was Chief Product Officer, following stints at Yahoo and Twitter.

News UK Promotes Charlie Celino to Director, Commercial Services

News UK, publisher of The Sun, The Times and The Sunday Times, has promoted Charlie Celino to the new role of Director, Commercial Services. He will oversee the new Commercial Services division, which supports the commercial teams across Times Media, The Sun and News Broadcasting. Celino joined News UK in 2018 as Sales Lead for the News UK Social Studio, before becoming Strategic Development Lead – Content, and most recently Strategic Development Director.