January 15th-January 22nd // Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes

Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. TikTok is banned, no wait, it’s back! But only for 75 days. Then what? Oh and The Trade Desk made their 2nd acquisition or all-time!

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Top Stories 👁️ 

The Trade Desk Is Acquiring Advertising Metadata Startup Sincera 
Source: AdExchanger
January 15th, 2025

Summary: The Trade Desk will buy programmatic metadata startup Sincera for an undisclosed price tag. Launched in 2022, Sincera will continue to operate independently, according to Sincera CEO Mike O’Sullivan, providing advertisers, publishers, and ad tech vendors with data from the programmatic ecosystem to help them accurately value ad impressions. Sincera crawls sites and programmatic auctions to surface data like which digital identifiers are being used the most, which ad tech providers have been implemented by which publishers, who has poor quality inventory, and much more. Integrating Sincera's tools into The Trade Desk's demand-side platform (DSP) will help publishers and advertisers understand which data signals drive the most value. 

The deal, which is only The Trade Desk’s second public acquisition in its history, will close this quarter.

Sincera and The Trade Desk already have some history. The Trade Desk used Sincera's data for its recent ranking of top 100 publishers of the open web. The Trade Desk’s venture group also invested in Sincera's $4.2M seed round in 2023.

Opinion: Well this is a fascinating and surprising deal! The Trade Desk doesn’t really acquire companies, so you have to wonder what Jeff Green has up his sleeve. Here are the few possibilities:

1. Simple: Give TTD customers a really cool, new tool to granularly pick over programmatic data and inventory in order to better optimize their TTD campaigns. Use it as a hook to attract more customers and differentiate from competitors. Shut down Sincera outside of TTD.

2. Ambitious: Continue to offer Sincera as a standalone data platform to the entire industry to help lift all digital advertising boats, especially as it pertains to data and inventory quality. Position TTD even more so as the freedom fighters of the “Premium Internet”.  

3. Jeff Green 4D Chess: Sunset Sincera and have the really smart Sincera guys build new shit for TTD that we can’t conceive…

We think it’s #2. Time will tell.

Other Notable Headlines ✍️

Kantar Media Is Being Sold to H.I.G. Capital for About $1 Billion🔒 - Kantar Media provides media measurement and analytics, including audience profiling and TV advertising / content ratings, to companies to help them make more informed decisions about their advertising and content. Kantar Media has 4,500 employees and works in more than 60 markets. Investment firm H.I.G. Capital is said to want to invest in Kantar Media and improve its offerings. CEO Patrick Béhar will continue to lead Kantar Media's business. The deal will close later in 2025. Private equity also owns a big chunk of parent company Kantar Group; Bain Capital Private Equity bought a 60% stake in 2019.

Nielsen Big Data + Panel measurement achieves MRC accreditation - The MRC has accredited Nielsen's hybrid measurement product for national TV ratings, aptly named “Big Data + Panel” just in time for the 2025 upfronts. The product combines connected TV and streaming data with its traditional panel data, which may assuage critics who have long argued that Nielsen has failed to keep pace with changing media consumption habits. Nielsen, the old-school TV ratings incumbent, had a huge fall from grace during the pandemic when it undercounted audiences and lost MRC accreditation for multiple products. Alternative currencies have emerged to compete, but Nielsen is still ahead of the pack.

This is the first time that the MRC has accredited this type of product "inclusive of persons level estimates," the MRC's George Ivie said in a statement. Comscore has an MRC-accredited big data product for household-level estimates.

Rokt Closes $335 Million Secondary Transaction and Merges With mParticle🔒 - Rokt specializes in ads running on the purchase confirmation page of ecommerce websites, while mParticle is an old-school customer data platform (CDP). Merging the two will enable mParticle's customers to advertise through Rokt, while Rokt’s advertisers will gain a better understanding of their audiences and how their ads are performing. Rokt will use the $335M secondary transaction—essentially a stock purchase agreement from investors—to invest in AI and machine learning, as well as $50M in mParticle’s product roadmap to develop Rokt’s products. Following the merger, Michael Katz will continue to serve as CEO of mParticle, Andrew Katz will become chief technology officer of Rokt, and Jason Lynn will continue as chief product officer of mParticle. This is the third CDP acquisition in less than two months; Contentstack bought Lytics last week, and Uniphore acquired ActionIQ in early December. The standalone CDP category is contracting…

Netflix shares soar as company reports surging revenue, tops 300 million subscribers - Q4 revenue was up 16%, reaching $10.25B, beating estimates. Full-year revenue was also up 16%, exceeding $39B. The streamer added a record 19M subscribers in Q4; Netflix estimates that its global audience tops 700M once "extra member accounts" are factored in. Its ad-supported tiers are attracting 55% of new sign-ups in regions where they're offered. Ad-supported memberships grew 30% quarter over quarter. Netflix credited its strong Q4 performance to its content, including season 2 of “Squid Game” and record-breaking live sports events like the NFL Christmas game and Jake Paul-Mike Tyson boxing match. Netflix will raise prices on some streaming tiers this year, which will further pad its bottom line. Netflix raised its 2025 guidance by $500M. Shares soared more than 14%. 

GroupM restructures its leadership team under global CEO🔒 - GroupM global CEO Brian Lesser is reshuffling his leadership team as WPP unifies its media agencies around centralized teams. Lesser is elevating Adam Gerhart to global chief client officer from his role as global CEO for GroupM’s Mindshare. Toby Jenner, Wavemaker CEO and global president of GroupM clients, will become global chief business officer. Mark Patterson, GroupM's global chief operating officer, will become global president of markets and business operations. To fill his position, Lesser hired Emily Del Greco from McKinsey and Company, where she was a partner and led the commerce media and advertising practice.

DirecTV Acquires Majority Stake In Invidi - Dish and WPP also have stakes in Invidi, which will continue to operate as an independent company. But DirecTV, which first bought a minority stake in Invidi in 2020, will gain more control over the company's data and tech, which includes tools aimed at helping TV providers deliver and optimize ads across linear, addressable, and streaming TV. DirecTV will be able to use Invidi's tech to better leverage its first-party subscriber data and monetize its ad inventory, which is sold across programmers that distribute their content on DirecTV. The deal's terms weren't disclosed.

Former MediaMonks Executives Launch Anthrologic to Help Global Brands Deploy AI Agents to Streamline Marketing Operations and Drive Growth - Tyler Pietz (CEO), Adrian Domek (COO), and Alex Gwin (CGO) want to help marketers use AI to modernize their operations. Anthrologic will assist marketers with determining which processes should be automated, augmented, or left alone. Anthrologic's menu of offerings include advisory services, solution design and deployment, and custom AI agent development. So far, Anthrologic has partnered with AI-powered marketing platform GrowthLoop and cloud giant Snowflake to help customers harness AI and worked with retailer Anthropologie.

Ministers force out chair of UK’s competition regulator - The UK government has replaced Marcus Bokkerink as head of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), aiming to shift its focus towards boosting business growth. Doug Gurr, former Amazon UK leader, has been appointed interim chair. This move signals the government’s desire for less interventionist regulation, particularly in mergers. Business leaders have been frustrated with the CMA’s approach, which may now evolve under Gurr’s leadership. Could this mean the CMA will soften its stance towards Google’s Privacy Sandbox and give them the green light?

Inside IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky’s $49 million golden parachute—and big new job at Omnicom🔒 - IPG's top four executives will get paid once Omnicom Group completes the acquisition. Their severance benefits will depend on the share price when the deal gets done, but the cash, equity, pension/deferred compensation, and perks/benefits would have totaled $48.6M for IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky if the merger had been completed on Jan. 15. Krakowsky will become Omnicom’s co-president and co-CEO. Ellen Johnson, EVP and CFO would have received $15.7M if the merger closed on Jan. 15; Andrew Bonzani, EVP and general counsel, would have gotten $11.8M; and Christopher Carroll, VP, controller, chief accounting and business transformation officer, would have been paid $6.2M. These folks made out well!

Other Notable Headlines
(that you should know about too) 🤓 

MAD: Campbell Named CEO, VML North America - Campbell will serve in a dual role that also includes VML’s global chief client officer.

A New Year And New Compliance Requirements: Additional State Privacy Laws Take Effect In 2025🔒 - Iowa, Delaware, Nebraska, New Hampshire, and New Jersey implemented their privacy laws in the first two weeks of 2025, and will be followed by Tennessee, Minnesota, and Maryland later this year.

Google signs deal with AP to deliver up-to-date news through its Gemini AI chatbot - Gemini will provide a real-time news feed with content from the AP. This is Google's first deal of this kind with a news publisher.

Trump highlights partnership investing $500 billion in AI - The partnership Stargate, formed by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank, plans to build data centers and prop up electricity generation in order to drive AI innovation. What AI innovation might we see in marketing this year?

That’s It For This Week 👋

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