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YouTube - Trying out more episodic short-form content. LinkedIn - Expanding its verification system for confirming a user’s identity. Threads - Continuing to separate itself from Instagram on the business side. Snapchat - Adding more AI tools for Lens+ subscribers. X - Rebuilt its livestream API to give creators and third-party streaming platforms greater control over broadcasts.

A federal judge on Wednesday entered an order allowing Paramount Skydance to complete its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, provided the company follows conditions aimed at resolving concerns that the merger could harm competition.

“If you think that this is an overly pessimistic view, I want to assure you that it isn’t, because in some corners of the industry, this is how we’ve been operating for years,” asserted Hovaness, Omnicom Media’s executive vice president of specialized capabilities.

Go beyond rankings and clicks with data connecting SEO performance to revenue, conversions, AI visibility, citations, and business impact.

Radio host-read ads boost brand memory lift by 23% compared with traditional brand-made commercials, research by WPP Media and the University of Oxford's Saïd Business School reveals. The study, which analysed 337 campaigns across multiple markets, highlights that listeners are more likely to remember brands when ads are delivered authentically by personalities they trust and like.

Media companies face growing competition from creators on platforms like YouTube, where at least 85% of global views in 2026 have gone to creator content and Shorts continue to dominate, according to Chartbeat data. Evidence from South Korea shows 2-to-5 minute segments could improve efficiency and engagement while reducing reliance on Shorts and other formats that generate fewer views per video.

Google has the data, chips and distribution to win AI. So did Microsoft. Why Google's incentives may keep it protecting Search instead of disrupting it.

The original pitch of retail media networks was to find shoppers while they’re shopping and make the sale. Now that RMNs have accomplished that, they’re trying to convince advertisers that they can build their brands on their respective channel.

As media becomes more fragmented, traditional attribution leaves CMOs with an incomplete view of impact, and AI risks scaling decisions based on those flawed inputs. If marketing leaders are going to win over their CFO and deliver ROI, they need a new approach, one built on causal measurement rather than belief.

At CIMM, six crucial shifts emerged: AI agents now execute ad deals, measurement fuels real-time attribution, identity quality threatens the entire ecosystem, creative versioning explodes into thousands of variants, human research gains importance, and collaboration becomes non-negotiable.

That shift is moving the industry beyond what I think of as the "Content Economy" and into the "Participation Economy," where value is created not only by what media companies produce, but by what audiences choose to do with it. They share, create, discuss, recommend, remix, attend, purchase, and build communities around the stories and creators they love.

The shift is expected to continue. Performance-based fees have the strongest projected growth, with 58% of respondents expecting to increase their use, followed by value-based models at 43% and fixed-fee or output-based approaches at 36%.

For the first half of 2026, Publicis Media was tops in new business with billings of $3.24 billion, according to agency research firm COMvergence. That’s a global net figure that factors in wins, losses and retentions. Group level wins included Adidas (Greater China), HP, Microsoft and Prada. Omnicom Media ranked a close second with $3.15 billion with wins including Delta, IBM and Subway.