November 4th-November 10th

Fox closes its $22B Roku acquisition ahead of schedule🔒 - Fox announced the deal in June and expected it to close in 2027. It’s paying $160 per share, which equates to a $22B purchase price, with about $14.2B in cash and the rest in Fox stock. Roku, Tubi, Fox One, and other digital products will sit in a new division called Fox Digital Platforms. Tubi Media Group CEO Paul Cheesbrough will be the division’s CEO, and he’ll co-chair it with Roku founder Anthony Wood. Mustafa Ozgen, Roku’s president of devices, products and technology, will become Roku’s CEO. Tubi CEO Anjali Sud and Roku Media president Charlie Collier are leaving. Fox expects about $400M in yearly cost savings within two years, which likely means layoffs.

Opinion: Roku was the last big independent TV operating system. Fire TV is owned by Amazon, Vizio is owned by Walmart, Xumo is owned by Comcast and Charter, and Google TV is owned by Google. Disney, NBCU, Paramount, WBD, and others all depend on Roku for distribution, and most give Roku a share of their ad inventory to sell. Their inventory now goes to their rival network’s sales team.

Streaming was supposed to end the cable model, where the cable company also owned some of the channels. That model is back. Every major TV operating system now belongs to a company that also has its own shows or IP. Networks will now just fight with TV operating systems instead of cable companies.

New York Times Company in exclusive talks to buy Letterboxd for about $330M🔒 - Letterboxd is a film review site with 30M users. Nothing is final yet, and talks could still fall apart. In July, it was reported that Netflix was interested in Letterboxd and bankers were floating a $250M price tag. A24 and Sony also bid, but A24 dropped out as the price rose. The Times would connect its ad tech to Letterboxd and keep it running as a separate site. The deal could help the Times reach its goal of 15M subscribers by the end of 2027, up from 13.8M today.

Opinion: It’s the Wordle and Athletic playbook again: buy a beloved niche brand and use it to grow the NYT bundle. The data is an added perk. Letterboxd knows what 30M film fans watched, rated, and plan to watch next, and the Times can sell that data to studios and streamers. The human-written reviews can also be licensed to AI companies. 

Amazon advertisers can now target shoppers that buy elsewhere via Attain🔒 - Attain is a data firm that collects purchase data from 15M people who opt in through its rewards and budgeting apps. Advertisers can build audiences from that data in Amazon’s recently rebranded DSP, DVA+. They can then target people who shop at Walmart, Kroger, Sephora, and other retailers with display and video ads on Amazon properties like Prime Video and across the open web. Most third-party data companies access Amazon demand through a middleman like LiveRamp, but Attain plugs straight into Amazon's DSP. Attain already helps Amazon advertisers measure in-store sales, and now it’s offering targeting.

Opinion: Amazon wants DVA+ to be the default DSP for CTV and the open web, even for brands that don’t sell on Amazon. Off-Amazon shopper data makes that possible. Walmart loses, since brands can now reach its shoppers without paying Walmart Connect. LiveRamp loses too. Since Publicis owns it now, data companies have a reason to go around LiveRamp and plug straight into DSPs. 

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