Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. The next wave of Q3 earnings came in. Once again, hot and cold…

More Q3 earnings!

The Trade Desk (👎): Revenue was up 18% to $739M, beating estimates. Eighty-five percent of customers now use the Kokai user interface. CEO Jeff Green once again downplayed competition from Amazon. Current quarter guidance underwhelmed. Shares seesawed before remaining down.

AppLovin (👍): Revenue was up 68% to $1.4B, beating estimates. The company launched Axon Ads Manager, an AI-powered self-serve ad platform, as it expands beyond gaming into ecommerce and CTV. Investors were unfazed by an SEC investigation into data collection practices. Shares rose 7%. 

Instacart (👍): Revenue was up 10% to $939M, beating estimates. New CEO Chris Rogers touted AI-powered tools and enterprise solutions. Current quarter guidance topped estimates, though the company flagged potential impact from the government shutdown. Shares rose 1.6%.

Snap (👍): Revenue was up to $1.51B, beating estimates. Daily active users were up 8% to 477M, topping estimates. Investors liked Snap's $400M deal to integrate Perplexity AI's search engine into Snapchat. Snap warned Q4 users may decline due to age verification rules in Australia, Utah, and California. Shares rose 9%.

Magnite (👎): Revenue was up 11% to $179.5M, beating estimates. The sell-side platform cited strong performance from ClearLine, buyer marketplaces, and live sports, plus early benefits from its streamr.ai acquisition. But current quarter guidance underwhelmed. Shares fell almost 10%.

PubMatic (👍): Revenue was down 5% to $68M, beating estimates. CTV revenue grew over 50% excluding political ad spend. The SSP says its AI platform cuts campaign setup time by 87% and accelerates issue resolution by 70%. Shares rose 13% in after-hours trading. 

LiveRamp (👍): Revenue was up 8% to $200M, beating estimates. LiveRamp launched three new AI tools and expanded first-party data activation on Netflix to 10 new markets. Shares were up 2% in after-hours trading and kept rising. 

DoubleVerify (👎) Revenue was up 11% to $188.6M, missing estimates. The ad verification company launched DV AI Verification to detect AI agents and low-quality AI content, and DV Authentic Advantage for social media brand protection. DV raised full-year guidance. Shares fell.

Integral Ad Science (🤷): Revenue was up 16% to $154.4M, beating estimates. The ad verification company expanded measurement to Meta Threads, TikTok Pangle, and Snapchat. Novacap's acquisition of IAS is expected to close by the end of the year. Shares dipped. 

Taboola (👍): Revenue was up 15% to $496.8M, beating expectations. The content recommendation company swung to $5.2M in profit from a $6.5M loss a year ago. The company said its performance platform Realize is driving momentum alongside strong contributions from Taboola News. Taboola raised its full-year outlook. Shares rose. 

Teads (👎): Revenue was up 42% to $318.8M, primarily due to the Outbrain acquisition, missing estimates. CTV revenue grew approximately 40% YOY, but there was a $19.69M net loss, leading the CEO to say, "this quarter fell short of our expectations." Shares plunged more than 40%. 

Viant (👍) Revenue was up 7% to $85.6M, beating estimates. CTV spend hit a record, accounting for 46% of total ad spend on the DSP. Viant touted a multi-year partnership with Molson Coors. Shares rose nearly 10% in after-hours trading. 

MNTN (👎): Revenue was up 31% to $70M, missing estimates. SMB revenue grew from 6% to 15% of total revenue, driven by a surge in inbound leads (75% vs. 2% three years ago). The self-serve CTV ad platform launched QuickFrame AI in beta. Shares fell. 

Stagwell (👍): Organic revenue was up 6%, beating estimates. The challenger agency holding company saw organic growth in most areas. Stagwell will partner with Palantir on an AI-powered marketing platform. Shares soared. 

IPG (🤷): Organic revenue was down 2.9% in what will be the agency holding company's final earnings report before it officially merges with Omnicom later this month. IPG further reduced headcount and office space ahead of the merger, increasing profit. Shares fell before making up some ground. 

Warner Bros. Discovery (🤷): Revenue was down 6% to $9B, missing estimates. TV ad revenue declines offset strong movie revenue, leading to a $148M loss. Streaming subscribers were up 2.3M to 128M. Plans to split into two businesses is on track for mid-2026. Shares seesawed, ending the day relatively flat. 

Paramount Skydance (👍): Revenue was flat at $6.7B, missing estimates. Paramount+ subscribers were up 14% to 79.1M, and Paramount+ revenue was up 23%. The company will raise prices and lay off 1K employees. Merger cost savings will reach $3B. Shares rose 6% in after-hours trading.

New York Times🔒(👍): Revenue was up 9.5% to $700.8M, beating estimates. NYT added 460K net digital-only subscribers, reaching 11.8M. Digital ad revenue was up 20%, and operating profit was up 26%. Shares opened higher the following day.

Opinion: Last week we talked about the big tech AI "Earners" (e.g., Google) vs. "Burners" (e.g., Meta). In reality, the big tech “Burners” have First World problems. This week's earnings tell us what’s going on one level lower, in the ad tech infrastructure layer. These companies have real problems.

The market is losing patience with ad tech middlemen. The Trade Desk and Magnite beat estimates but got punished. DoubleVerify missed and fell. Even “winners” like PubMatic (shares up 13%) continue to decline. The message is clear: Beating last quarter's numbers isn't enough anymore.

These ad tech companies are built on a foundation that's rapidly declining: the open web. Google Search traffic to publishers has cratered (IAC's People saw search traffic drop from 54% to 24% in just two years). AI chatbots are replacing search. AI agents will replace browsers. Open web inventory that feeds programmatic pipes is drying up, and nobody in ad tech has an answer for how they replace that revenue.

CTV is an obvious life raft. PubMatic's CTV revenue is up over 50%. AppLovin is expanding from gaming into CTV. Roku just turned profitable for the first time since 2021. But here's the problem: CTV is fundamentally different infrastructure. It's walled gardens, premium publishers, direct deals, and proprietary platforms. The programmatic middleman model that works on the open web doesn't translate cleanly to streaming. And there’s only so much streaming to go around.

Ad tech (maybe) has 12-18 months to figure it out before investors completely lose faith.

Life360 Acquires Nativo for $120 Million to Expand Its Ad Tech Ambitions🔒- The family location and safety app is buying publisher-focused ad tech firm Nativo in a cash-and-stock deal expected to close in January. Life360 gets access to Nativo's programmatic tools, publisher network, and integrations with Time, Ziff Davis, and other publishers, while Nativo gains in-app data and inventory through Life360's 91.6M monthly active app users. This deal pushes Life360 well beyond in-app ads, allowing advertisers to reach families across mobile, web, and CTV.

Index Exchange Sues Google Over Ad Auctions Practices, Joining Ballooning Coalition of Publishers, SSPs🔒- The supply-side platform filed a complaint Monday alleging that Google illegally tied its publisher ad server (DoubleClick for Publishers) to its ad exchange (AdX), giving publishers and advertisers virtually no choice but to use Google's systems. Index Exchange specifically called out Google's 'First Look' and 'Last Look' practices, which allowed Google's own ad exchange to see impressions first and make a final bid after all competitors—even if publishers wanted to designate Index Exchange as their preferred exchange. The lawsuit adds to a growing chorus of companies suing Google, including USA Today, Business Insider🔒, and SSPs OpenX, PubMatic, and Magnite, all following a landmark April ruling where a federal judge determined Google maintained an illegal monopoly in publisher ad servers and ad exchanges. Everyone wants their pound of flesh. 

Meta is earning a fortune on a deluge of fraudulent ads, documents show - Meta documents obtained by Reuters reveal that the company projected it would earn about 10% of its 2024 revenue—roughly $16B—from advertising scams and banned goods, while showing users an estimated 15B "higher risk" scam ads every day. Meta only bans advertisers when its automated systems are at least 95% certain they're committing fraud; below that threshold, the company just charges suspected scammers a premium to make their ads more expensive rather than blocking them outright. The documents show Meta plans to gradually reduce the percentage of revenue from scam ads from 10.1% in 2024 to 5.8% by 2027. At the same time, Meta anticipates up to $1B in regulatory fines—far less than the $7B it earns annually from higher-risk scam ads alone.

Meta is monetizing fraud at scale and fines are just a cost of doing business. Brand advertisers should be furious.

Advertisers are stuck in the middle of the Disney-YouTube TV showdown, and they want answers - Disney channels have been blacked out on YouTube TV for more than a week over a carriage dispute, and advertisers banking on programming like "Monday Night Football" and college football to reach big audiences during the holiday shopping period are getting anxious. With roughly 10M YouTube TV subscribers losing access to ABC, ESPN, and other Disney networks, the media giant might not be able to deliver on the audiences it guaranteed to advertisers. However, four ad buyers told Business Insider that Disney had yet to provide any details about compensation plans as of Friday. The timing couldn't be worse: Fourth-quarter sports inventory is already oversubscribed, and ad prices are elevated, making lost reach "materially harder and more expensive to replace than usual," according to one media agency exec.

Carriage disputes are bad for everyone. Streaming IS the new cable.

TikTok Launches Podcast Network with iHeartMedia🔒- The network will have as many as 25 podcasts hosted by TikTok creators and distributed by iHeartPodcasts. They will also launch a new iHeartRadio station called TikTok Radio. 

Fortnite maker and Google settle five-year legal fight over Android app store - Google will loosen payment restrictions in the app store, and will lower commissions on in-app transactions to 9%-20%, down from 15%-30%. 

The Trade Desk And PubMatic Are Done Pretending Deal IDs Work - The companies have partnered on an API integration to help better manage deal ID campaigns.

Reddit Unveils Interactive Ad Format, Piloted by Paramount🔒- The new ads encourage Reddit users to engage directly in the feed. Paramount is testing the format for its new film, "The Running Man."

Google Intros 'Channel Performance' Reporting - Advertisers will be able to access data related to impressions, interactions, and results in Performance Max, its AI-powered platform.

Yahoo DSP Airs First-Ever CTV Ad Campaign, Starring Troy Hawke🔒- Yahoo is bringing a little fun to the DSP fight with Hawke, a fictional comedic character portrayed by UK comedian Milo McCabe.

The U of Digital Weekly Newsletter is intended for subscribers, but occasional forwarding is okay!

To subscribe visit Uof.Digital/Newsletters or contact us directly for group subscriptions.

And remember, U of Digital helps teams drive better outcomes through structured education on critical topics like programmatic, privacy / identity, CTV, commerce media, AI, and more. Interested in learning more about how we can supercharge your team?