Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. There’s an industry calm before the Q4 earnings storm that is coming next week, so we’re doing it lightning round style for this edition. Starting with … ads on Threads!

Meta to begin rolling out Threads ads globally - After testing ads in the US and Japan last January, all Threads users globally will begin seeing ads starting next week. The gradual rollout could take a few months to complete, but Wall Street analysts are already bullish on Threads becoming a significant revenue driver for Meta. With over 400M monthly active users and data showing the platform has surpassed X in daily mobile users globally, Threads has become a legitimate competitor to the company formerly known as Twitter. Meta plans to bring new ad formats and third-party verification services that are already available on Facebook and Instagram to the platform.

Opinion: Meta waited until Threads hit 400M users to turn on ads. A luxury! Of course, they did eventually turn on ads. It’s their business.

Big tech companies can play this waiting game in new frontiers (see: Google Gemini) until they achieve scale that others (see: OpenAI) can’t. It’s a major advantage.

The Trade Desk’s CFO is out after just 6 months on the job🔒- Alexander Kayyal has left The Trade Desk after joining as CFO in August 2025, according to an SEC filing. Longtime executive Tahnil Davis, who has been with The Trade Desk since 2015 and served as the company's chief accounting officer since 2023, has stepped into the interim CFO role effective January 24th. The leadership change comes at a moment of heightened scrutiny for the leading independent demand-side platform (DSP) as it faces intense competition from Amazon and recovers from a bumpy rollout of its AI-powered Kokai buying interface. Wells Fargo noted that the departure adds to "continued fundamental and narrative volatility" and recommended that the company prioritize a finance chief with public company CFO experience (which neither of its prior CFOs had). Shares fell about 7% following the news. 

Opinion: Not great. Either Kayyal didn’t like what he saw, or The Trade Desk didn’t like Kayyal’s approach to managing investor expectations during a turbulent time for the company. Or both. Regardless, this doesn’t bode well for TTD’s 2026 outlook…

US-based TikTok is collecting even more user data. Here are the 3 biggest changes - New US owners, new data collection policies. Users received a pop-up requiring them to agree to a new privacy policy with some significant changes. First, TikTok will collect precise GPS location data from users who grant permission; previously it only tracked approximate location. The platform will also explicitly track all user interactions with TikTok’s AI tools, including prompts and AI-generated answers. Lastly, TikTok has expanded its ad offering to serve targeted ads across the web (outside of TikTok) using its user data. Precise location tracking puts TikTok on par with Instagram and X, and the expanded ad network means TikTok can now “follow” its users around the internet.

Opinion: Kinda funny how TikTok was forced to change hands from being Chinese-owned to being US-owned over data privacy concerns, and now it’s collecting even more data. The first few days under new ownership haven’t been smooth (outages, backlash about suspected censorship, etc.). In the wake of TikTok’s messy transition, a TikTok competitor called Skylight Social is gaining traction.

Paramount will use UFC to kick off programmatic live ad sales in sports events - Starting with UFC matches on January 24th, Paramount is opening up its live sports inventory to programmatic buyers for the first time. Paramount is working with major DSPs including The Trade Desk, Amazon, Google's DV360, and Yahoo to enable private marketplace buying for UFC preliminaries and Fight Nights, while reserving main card events as streaming “fixed units.” Paramount dropped $7.7B for exclusive US rights to UFC's full slate of 13 annual marquee events and 30 Fight Nights.

Opinion: When you're on the hook for $7.7B, you need to get paid pronto. As live sports shifts to streaming, we'll see more and more inventory sold programmatically. That will be great for smaller brands in particular because they won't have to fork over those huge upfront budgets required for traditional linear TV advertising. It may not be so great for traditional networks and broadcasters.

Samsung TV Plus surpasses 100M monthly users for FAST channels - Samsung TV Plus offers more than 4,300 free ad-supported television (FAST) channels globally. The service's streaming hours grew 25% year over year.

Amazon plans thousands more corporate job cuts next week, sources say - Amazon is expected to axe about 14K white-collar jobs, part of the 30K layoffs it announced in October. The impacted units will include Amazon Web Services, retail, Prime Video, and HR. 

Pinterest laying off 15% of workforce as part of AI push; stock plummets - Pinterest expects to complete the layoffs by late September as it redirects resources to AI capabilities and products. 

Verve Group unifies Jun Group and Captify US under the Verve For Advertisers banner in the US - Verve acquired Jun Group in summer 2024 and Captify in September 2025. Captify UK and Australia will still operate as Captify in those markets due to strong brand recognition. 

Pentaleap is powering Macy's ad deal with Amazon🔒- Macy's is using Pentaleap's ad server and mediation layer to connect to additional demand sources (like Amazon), in addition to Criteo’s onsite ad tech. 

ChatGPT Checkouts to take 4% cut of Shopify merchant sales🔒- Starting January 26th, Shopify merchants' products will be available for direct purchase through ChatGPT Instant Checkout, Google's AI Mode and Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot. So far, Google and Microsoft are not charging any fees for this capability. Like with ads, they can afford to wait.

Albertsons is putting digital screens for ads in more than a third of its stores🔒- The digital screens will roll out to 800 of Albertsons' 2,200+ stores this year following a successful pilot that has attracted more than 50 advertising partners.

YouTube overtakes Reddit as go-to citation source on AI search🔒- Transcripts and explainers now associated with videos have made it easier for AI systems than trying to process video content itself. YouTube was the cited source in 16% of LLM answers over the past six months, compared with 10% for Reddit.

It’s great to see our AI overlords level up their source material!

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